Many of us are active in the crypto world with a very specific goal: We want to achieve financial freedom for ourselves. We are willing to do a lot to get there. Blogging, Tweeting, Staking, Hodling, Investing, and sometimes even Gaming. You name it, many of us are hustling all day every day. A lot of my articles cover the different ways to acquire some additional crypto currency for yourself, always asking the question whether the endeavor is worth your time or not. For many, acquiring (free) crypto is a way to generate wealth without having to tap into their (fiat) salary.
I'm among them and personally, I keep my everyday money and my crypto money strictly separated. Everything I earn in the crypto world is staying there until later. There's another way to increase your crypto holdings, though, and it's one that often times is severely underrated: Save your money! Instead of spending it all, use some of it to invest into your financial freedom!
Unfortunately, we often tend to overestimate the value of what we earn and underestimate the value of what we spent. People will spend hours after hours claiming faucets for micro payments but waste 100$ on a night out without ever giving it a second thought. That's not to say you shouldn't spend some of your money. Quite the contrary! If you can afford it, use some of your money to do something good for you every now and then. What I'm hinting at is more to always question what exactly you are spending your money on and if that's really a necessary spending.
Let me give you a very mundane example. On my way to work I'd always stop at a local bakery. It's a family business passed on through generations, they make some excellent buns and believe me, bun completely fails to translate what a proper German Brötchen is! I always get one for breakfast and I've also always bought a cup of coffee alongside it. Both the bun and the coffee were 2.6€ each, so roughly 3$. I never gave it much thought, it was just a nice way to start the day. Well, that was until I've read one of @revisesociology's amazing articles that actually made me pause and think about it.
Why was I buying that coffee at the bakery? Making my own coffee at home before leaving for work would amount to maybe 0.4$ for the same amount of coffee. Even worse, coffee is completely free at my office, so just 10 minutes later I'd get the same treat without having to pay for it at all. You might wonder what I'm getting at here. 3$? That's not much, is it? Well, I thoughz the same way, until I started to compare it with some of my crypto earnings that I'm so proud about.
3$ is about as much as I make on a really good day on noise.cash. It's a little more than I earn with an average article over on Publish0x. To make that much I'd have to claim the Freebitco.in faucet about 145 times! In short, compared with my crypto earnings, which I'm quite happy with, this actually is a lot of money! Another trick I have picked up from @revisesociology is to look at things over a longer period of time. So say I work 20 days a month, that's 20 coffees at 3$ each or 60$ each month! 60$, just think about it for a moment! Most of us would certainly consider any crypto endeavor that consistently pays out 60$/month without much effort to be more than worth our time. But instead of having to put in an hour per day to come up with an article, all I have to do is drink my coffee 5 minutes earlier or 10 minutes later. That's like the easiest money I've ever "earned".
When looking at your spending habits, it's really important to put things into context. We tend to look at these expenses as isolated events and because of that, they seem to be irrelevant, way too small to even care about. But once you look at the bigger picture, you start to realize how much money you'd be able to save if you just made little changes here and there.
Once you start looking for them, these little saving opportunities are everywhere. Parking fees you could avoid, using the public transportation when you don't really have to. Buying coffee instead of making it yourself, eating out when you just as well could have prepared a meal yourself. I'm not asking you to start leading an ascetic lifestyle, not at all. But I'm asking you to think about your spending habits and try to come up with ways to improve them.
Make it your own private Bitcoin faucet: Try to find ways to save 50$ per month just by changing your spending habits and then use these 50$ to buy BTC every month. I promise you, you'll earn more Bitcoin that way than any real faucet is every going to pay you.
Just as with everything else, it's important to do this in moderation, though. Always ask yourself if it's actually worth your time. If you can safe 0.2$ by parking somewhere else but getting to work takes 15 minutes longer because of that, than it's not worth your time! If you have to spend an hour more to do shopping every week, it's not worth it if you only save 3$ in the process. Just as with earning money, when trying to save money, always factor in your time. You are looking for simple ways of saving money, quick wins like the coffee example from above!
So, what do you think? What ways are there for you to earn some Bitcoin by saving some of your everyday money? Do you already have an idea what to look for? Please let me know in the comments, I'm looking forward to hear your ideas!
And that's all from me for today, thank you all for reading and see you next time!