Patience is paying off ⏳🤑

December 1st will be my 4 year Hive anniversary. I've spent every single day since I started back on December 1st, 2017 building my account from the ground up. I think in total I have invested only about $4,000, everything else has been earned in the trenches. Throughout this time I have continued doing everything in my normal life while also juggling this Hive work. I didn't want to be miserable throughout this entire building process, so I've used my modest paycheck from work to continue living my life as close to the fullest as possible.

I haven't had the extra fiat to invest in crypto regularly. I have to thank Hive for giving me a chance to take advantage of this huge wealth transfer. Without the opportunity to earn my crypto through blogging and curation, all of my hard work would have provided me with little to no results. Instead, my life has changed in the best of ways.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I got to spend it with some of my favorite people in the world. Throughout the entire day, I got to take occasional glances at my evergrowing Hive account value. I just posted a couple of days ago about the value of my wallet flirting with $100,000 (read that here). I only half expected my wallet to read $250,000 just 48 hours later, what can I say, I’m confident about Hive. Currently, my Hive is valued at just over $200,000 this very moment, but it constantly fluctuates. I am thrilled to see this but have a feeling that the value is about to explode even more over the coming weeks and months.

In preparation for a new life of freedom, I had a lot of work to do after a perfect Thanksgiving day. So I got started with some essential tasks that would enable me to better utilize my newfound wealth.

CRO has been on a big run as of late and I have been using my base-level https://www.crypto.com debit card here and there over the past year. I decided to finally stake $4,000 worth of CRO (should have long ago I know) and upgraded my debit card to the Royal Indigo level which offers 3% cash back on every purchase instead of only 1%, among several other benefits. It was a tough choice between the two metal debit cards at this $4000 level, I decided to go with purple over the Jade Green.

I knew that since I would be using my crypto to purchase things in real life a lot more now, it was a must to have a higher tier card. Every percent counts to me and I didn’t want to miss out on the perks of upgrading by staking CRO any longer. Plus I’ll also be earning 10% APY on my minimum 180 day stake period.

Another website that I love to use is https://www.bitrefill.com for gift cards. A lot of the places that I shop or eat have gift card options. This also gives me rewards for purchasing, but it’s separate from my CRO cash back. I prefer using gift cards when I can since it keeps me from having to deal with a centralized entity that tracks all of my finances. Crypto.com knows a lot about what I am doing, but they don’t have to know everything.

Apple is probably the place I’ve purchased the most gift cards. I found out that you can use a maximum of 8 gift cards at once on Apple. The largest gift card is $500. That means you can make purchases of $4,000 at a time. Plus you can just do a separate transaction if you somehow need to spend more than that, anything is possible with Apple’s pricing.

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As I write this blog, I am standing at my shitty day job that I’ve worked for around 8 years now (4/20/13). USPS has provided me with a consistent income since I dropped out of college at the beginning of 2013. At the time I was desperate for a reliable income, it was normal for me to only have $20 in my bank account back then. Usually my spare change was wasted on a tiny amount of weed to smoke and distract myself from the misery of not being successful. I had yet to begin my crypto journey and I was just getting past my binge drinking phase of my 18-20 years. I got stuck living with my parents until I was 25. I was pretty low and desperate to become a man.

I am so happy to say that my goal of leaving my 40 hour/week time suck of a job is closer to happening now than it ever has. I have 5 years worth of salary saved up and also a consistent income from my friends here on Hive that keeps growing, which I’ll never stop being thankful for.

Really the only thing tying me to this place is a measly $700 left on a $3,000 TSP loan that I took out to invest in crypto back in 2017. I was also slightly concerned about losing my dental and health insurance, but truthfully paying out of pocket won’t be as bad as I expected. A simple cleaning at the dentist only runs about $130. That’s basically the same price as paying for insurance all year, if not cheaper. I haven’t used my health insurance once since I got it. These are things I can live without. Thankfully I have capital to back up my health if ever needed.

Once I am not stuck in the black hole of getting up and going to work everyday, I will have so much more time to grind on Hive. I already post daily, but would love to up my quality even more and perhaps quantity too. Then add in even more time to curate with my healthy upvote and leave comments on other awesome posts. I so badly want to dedicate the main part of my days to this place rather than only my spare time when I can sacrifice it.

The goal of living off of Hive is imminent and it feels fucking amazing. Once I reclaim my freedom, my next major task will be helping my loved ones do the same. This is quite the lengthy process, the whole transitioning to a whole new way of life thing. I’m prepared to endure what is to come and find a way to make it work. I’ve been extremely patient throughout this entire process, often times it has been dreadfully painful. Both my interior and exterior have hardened to a supreme defensive level. I believe that I have what it takes to make it, do you?