"If I join Hive, will I be rich?" That's the question of one of our school students who happened to be in the business office this morning.
I replied, "Yes, give yourself 10 years; I think it's doable."
In the Philippine context, according to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, a Filipino can be considered rich if he or she is earning a monthly income of at least 219,140.00 PHP, based on an article published on 11 May 2024. That's around 3,830.00 USD. Unfortunately, less than 1% of the 118.8 million of the total population earns such an amount. This means that fewer than 118,000 Filipinos can be classified as rich. Source.
Reflecting on my response to the question above, I think my answer is misleading. That 10-year requirement assumes that a Filipino Hivian must satisfy a certain standard of discipline on-chain to achieve that goal, such as patience and consistency both in content creation and curation, as well as regularly setting aside a considerable savings for investment. Without this prerequisite, a Hivian can stay even longer than 10 years and still won't achieve the mentioned goal. I see many Filipino accounts here on Hive that still don't realize the potential of this Web3 platform to improve one's financial condition. We see this when the goal is quick cash and the amount of stake doesn't grow despite using the platform for five years or more.
In my case, this coming August 2025 will be my fourth year on Hive, and I could not say that I am already close to my goal. Last month, in May, due to the house renovation project, I started computing the total income I earn from my activities on Hive. To my surprise, I only earned around 1,900.00 PHP for the whole month of May. That's less than 34 USD. In other words, to achieve the PIDS number, I need to grow my yield potential 115 times more than the present yield I am getting.
Of course, there are other factors to consider for my computation to be considered reliable. The price of cryptocurrency is uncertain. A crypto project can crash to zero or can grow more than ten times as expected. Even though I believe in the prospects of Hive, I still keep in mind that what I am doing here is speculative. And that's why I cannot give a 100% assurance to anyone that your investment here will make you rich.
Moreover, there is also an economic factor. The prices of goods and services don't stay at the same level over the years. This will also affect the meaning of becoming rich.
Another thing that I consider my response as misleading is that the ideal goal for me is not to become rich, but to achieve financial freedom. There is a big difference between being considered rich by a Philippine economy standard and being a financially free Filipino. One can attain financial freedom without earning 220,000.00 PHP every month. The other case is also true: not all who earn 220,000.00 PHP can be considered financially free.
There is a huge difference between financial freedom and becoming rich in the PIDS sense. Someone who earns 220,000.00 pesos but spends 250,000.00 monthly can be considered rich but still trapped in the rat race. On the other hand, if you have a passive income of 20,000.00 per month and spend 15,000.00 during the same period, you can be considered financially free, and I think the latter is a far more worthy goal than the former. And not only that, the latter is more realistic and achievable with my current situation. I will just need to grow my current yield 10.5 times more. And I think, provided that the chain will still be here and, by God's grace, I am still alive doing what I have been doing for more or less 4 years, I wish to achieve financial freedom within the next 5 to 7 years.