How I spent $500,000 in 2023

at the end of 2023 I did a video where I covered all of my earnings for a year as a professional esport player this video absolutely blew up on my channel and a lot of people appreciated this kind of transparency due to popular demand after that video I decided to talk about my yearly spendings as well it was a year when I had a lot of site projects Investments and Live Events so doing this research gave me a lot of clarity of what I should avoid in the future with my reckless spendings but at the same time gave me some good feedback where I don't want to save in 2024 this video provides a detailed look into my company's expenses and my personal investments from 2023 I've created the thumb stamps for easy navigation but I suggest watching the entire video for complete understanding well as lengthy is filled with insights that could benefit anyone making financial decisions not just those in Esports please not that personal expenses like food and clothing aren't covered the focus is on business expenses and Investments it's also worth noting that Investments are my own not tied to the business despite the seemingly High earnings in 2023 there are complexities involving expansion taxes and agency costs this video aims to demystify these aspects which are often considered taboo and share my financial Journey I'm splitting all of my spendings into 12 buckets we will go over them so I can explain what I mean and how expensive each one was first bucket is taxes and prepay tax well the long awaited topic of taxes this may divide people because I know I pay a lot when it comes to tax and the reason is that I made a lot of money however a lot of you will argue that the amount is not a lot at all bear in mind that the tax period for year 2023 has not happened yet in Slovakia so the numbers are going to be affected in total I paid 47,000 as tax and also I includeed so-called prepaid tax which is basically monthly down payment that is going to be accounted for once real tax period comes it's supposed to make your sudden expense to pay huge tax easier tax rates in Slovakia are lower compared to more developed European count so players with my income in for example Denmark would be easily paying double of what I did next bucket is my own salary plus dividends so I am the only employee in my own company I pay myself a monthly salary but also sometimes I have to pay myself dividends which if you don't know is like relocation of money from business account to personal account at the price of tax in Slovakia this tax is around 7% I believe and I paid myself € 11,000 last year in salaries and 241,000 300 in dividends that is a lot but 90% of that will be used for investing which we will talk about later in the video so next one is agency fee a lot of players within Esports are represented by agencies just like in real Sports I'm part of prodig agency which takes care of me for a few years now and I think our collaboration is is always on point they negotiate contracts deals and look for opportunities for me so I can fully focus on the game and practice they take a cut which is industry standard and that is 10% of your current contract deal monthly in that case I spent around €18,000 on these fees in 2023 alone paid mortgage this year I was able to pay off the mortgage that I had for my apartment I was paying 900 per month and the mortgage that was still left to pay was € 66,500 therefore I hit a big milestone of removing that big burden off of my shoulders is also one of the biggest single expenses I had in the whole 2023 office plus utilities so the apartment that I live in right now is also my office I own this place so I'm not going to include stuff such as rent but I still have considerable costs for this space stuff like maintenance and utilities electricity and internet is all part of the cost which was € 6,250 per year next one is accountant so I have my accountant as really any business should I wouldn't be able to keep up with all those sheets and numbers so I'm Outsourcing all of my accounting and I wouldn't want it any other way last year I paid my accounting €6,000 she takes care of my invoicing expenses bills Financial advising as well as communicated with tax departments Bank insurance companies Etc next is big one and that's content plus social media in this one I'm including all my cost when it comes to to my online branding all in all this bucket cost 26,2 45 and honestly it may look like a lot but I feel like expanding through content is something I truly enjoy I would like to increase this spending moving forward YouTube channel like mine requires editors and constant workflow that I'm simply not having enough time for as a professional player with a tight schedule and amount of travel that is why I have multiple editors and also a content manager who helps orchestrate these videos and content it's me writing it me recording it me saying it but they help me briefly I use social media manager as well but at the start of the year I figured I want to keep social media like Instagram and Twitter to myself for authenticity sometimes I had to hire a professional videographer to help me and consult certain stuff create b-rolls or simply get advice on gear that I want to use expanding my content open so many business opportunities for me that I am in the position where I can easily become a Creator and it would be f financially viable path for me however I still want to compete and that is my goal for now biggest single expense that I'm including here was personal 3mon coaching during summer of 2023 this coaching involved in frequent meetings with Snoop or Stefan which is ex League of Legends Pro player who established company helping others creating content the coaching started as my investment into realizing what content I want to create and how to make it possible then over time Stefan became not only my content Mentor but also personal and performance coach he helped me a lot with mindset and mental difficulties I had around the time of my bench in September these three months amassed to 155,000 cost but when I reached out to him we just made a major and I felt like it will be worth the money and boy it was worth it as the amount of knowledge and confidence i g were inexplicable next one is assistant I also have an assistant well in theory it is my girlfriend who helped me a lot during hectic periods when it comes to managing and planning and admin work all that kind of stuff I was actually looking into having a virtual assistant as I heard good things about it but in the end my girlfriend felt like she could help me more which I honestly agree with as partner job she made €4,000 next up is Hardware so this is gear and computer stuff this is probably my only real expense in my business apart from Outsourcing so when you are a professional player a lot of things will be sent to you for free for promotion or for testing thing but still I had to invest a lot of money to creating my content workspace so all the lights cameras green screen streaming PC microphones many more had to be purchased on top of that I upgraded my PC with the new components when CS2 was released and also bought a couple of Hardware pieces to have as a backup so Mouse headset Etc to add to this complete Furnishing of my office is also added to this bucket reason being is that it serves kind of purpose when it comes to background while streaming or creating these videos and I want it to look nice so there is that in total these purchases were 15,000 let's talk a little bit about software so this is very little bucket of spendings but since I touched on Hardware I might include software as well mostly I pay for subscriptions that help me organize my business and create content so stuff like notion plans Adobe Discord and bunch of other small payments I pay around1 per month so in total it was 1,200 next up is car gas Transportation I decided to bundle all these three topics together I don't travel that much I use car very infrequently since I work from home pretty much every day only a real travel time in my car is when I am getting a ride to and from the airport so in total my transports are €3,000 for 2023 surprisingly about quarter of it where taxi drives especially Norway where we boot camp a lot those prices are a bit crazy in Scandinavia so I might cut down on those in the future last bucket is other which made up for €35,000 and these are just things I wasn't able to put in any other relevant category it ranged from small purchases all the way to giveaways Bank fees Visa applications travel costs I tried to sort all of these out but after an hour or so I just gave up because it felt like I would it would just take ages and it would just drag the video for no real reason by the way if you're liking this video without baked in ads hitting that sub and like button would be amazing it would help me grow the channel content and reach even more people thank you you're the real G we're now shifting our discussion from business to a more personal topic my investments in both the real estate and stock markets however please note this is not Financial advice and I don't recommend blindly following my strategy I'm sharing my portfolio because it's been successful for me so far beyond the office we spoke about earlier I also own an apartment I used to live in and now rent out currently this rental is my sole income aside from my business in this section I'll discuss the Investments I made in 2023 for transparency I do own several other properties from earlier years these were sound Investments at the time but I'm not active in managing them I'm letting them appreciate and value in the future I might find Savvy ways to utilize them but for now they're just in part of my financial background so new apartment towards the end of 2024 I also bought a new apartment it's current being renovated and the plan is to rent it out to generate another stream of income the apartment together with renovation cost me 155,000 and again it was paid through the dividends as all of my personal Investments another investment I made was garage purchase this garage is however not written on my company but I bought it myself thanks to those dividends again that I mentioned in total I paid around €60,000 and it is going to be used as a renting space in lucrative part of the city so it is an extra income I already have starting from 2024 I don't only invest in reality sector a lot of my earnings are going into stock market and in 2023 alone I invested 32,000 I'm a passive investor for over 3 years and it is something I'm actually interested in a little bit I studied economics briefly at the University before going full-time into esport so I have some relationship with finance and how I want to spend it the biggest position I own is S&P 500 which is is pretty popular but I also play around with companies I generally like or follow so I know briefly what is happening in the market again this is not a financial advice by any means but here is a screenshot of my full portfolio as of recording this video personally my goal for 2024 would be to diversify more in my stock portfolio I will need to research a couple of companies in different sectors and maybe other parts of the world as majority of businesses are bound to US market so that is my 2024 resolution the platform I use for investing is interactive brokers and if they part some motivation in you to try investing yourself feel free to use my code that is on the screen and also in the down description below you will get $200 for free actually I'll will get it as well so both of us well so that was it you have all the information about my financial support 2023 if you combine this video with the one I made about my earnings as I already said multiple times I think it is interesting with talk about these things openly as it shows that being a professional player is not just sitting down and playing the game you will have to quite literally run a business and make sure everything is in check especially from legal point of view insurances taxes and Outsourcing is big part which you will have to figure out yourself so I hope this video gives you a couple of ideas or inspiration how to deal with all those overwhelming tasks if you have more questions let me know in the comment so I can grow my content better in the meantime I will see you in the next video that you should be already seeing on the screen take care bye-bye

Channel: STYKO

Views: 11,860

Keywords: STYKO, Martin, Styk, csgo, Slovakia, rifler, esports, gaming, player, gamer, professionalplayer, tournaments, officialtournaments, professionalgamer, competitions, streamer, headshot, Counter, Strike, Global, Offensive, APEKS, CS2, Counter-Strike 2, Source2, Source

Id: qFIYaV893gs

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 11 2024