Hi guys,
In my posts I will be talking about cryptocurrency and finance purely from my personal situation and experience, since I think most of the people getting into crypto are in a similar state. One of the things the world of crypto seems to lack is complete openness and as a result normal small capital investors like most of us get dragged into scams, overvalued coins, coins that are pumped and dumped and are generally misinformed about what some projects and their potential are. I won't be shouting out pennycoins on the daily or 'the newest hottest ICO that will definitely be worth more than bitcoin in a month'. I will just be completely open about what I am invested in, why I am invested in it and how much I invested in it. My motivation for this won't be a hope for people to pump this coins or even that people follow me in my investments. I just want people to be able to be able to have at least one honest opinion on these coins so they can make a more informed decision based on that.
So who is this mysteriously open person?
My name is Zola and I am a 23 year history major from Amsterdam. Like most students I live in student housing, have a shitty part-time job, have spent most of my college years quite broke and am generally wondering what to do once college is over (which will be in 5 - 6 months c:'). Unlike most people my age I am also in the process of changing gender and am an avid visual kei goth. The past year I have had Lyme disease and the consequent antibiotics and medical bills I had to deal with. This also means that I couldn't work for about 6 months, i.e. I was broke as shit. Permanently 600$-1000$ in the red broke as shit, which is a situation you don't quickly recover from if you are still dealing with the effects of Lyme. Financially I was in a rot and I worked my ass of trying to get of that. So let's take a look at where I am at right now and what my future plans are.
Steps towards financial independence and investing crypto
From December on I started to finally be in a position where I had some money left and the cryptomarket was booming at this point so I thought never mind having some financial stability right now, let's put it in to crypto, hope for the best and cash out a part once I have seen the massive returns. PLEASE DON'T EVER PUT YOURSELF IN THIS SITUATION December was enormously stressful for me, since if I didn't make the right calls I would be left in the same situation I was in before. Never put in more money than you can afford to lose and never have more money in than you can imagine to have. I followed the hype trains of Verge, Cardano and Ripple just because they were hyped and people can easily convince you of the future potential. I looked in to the whitepapers a bit, but just to find confirmations of why I should be invested. Luckily I was able to step out of this with profit before the recent crashes and start to make informed decisions.
So where am I at right now?
Lets start with my financial situation outside of crypto. I started of by restructuring my income and spendings. And I think taking a step back and looking at your finances is always a great idea, but especially as a student. There is this philosophy of 50% direct costs, 30% spendings, 20% savings. So my total income was about 1400$, 52% would go to direct costs, 40% on spendings and 8% saved. I looked at what I could do differently and came to the conclusion that I could easily work 30 hours instead of 20 and I started doing usertests again (usertesting.com if you're interested, you basically get paid 10$ for reviewing a website for 15 minutes and you don't need technical knowledge). This increased my income to about 2k meaning my direct costs are now about 37% of my income. I lowered my monthly spendings to about 17% without giving up any quality of life, leaving with me saving 40% of my income a month and putting 6% in crypto. Currently I have 1600$ in savings, more than I ever had.
CRYPTO
I left about 1000$ in crypto, but now instead of looking for hype I was looking for quality projects or investments (Cardano is definitely a quality investment, but hugely overpriced for something that has not got a working project yet). So what cryptos do I own now?
- 3.5 Neo
- 39.5 Kucoin Shares
- 52 High Performance Blockchain
- 210 Internet Node Token
You might think why just own 4 different crypto, but since I am now making informed decisions I feel like there is no use to randomly putting small amounts of money in to crypto in hopes of it one day booming. Of course I will be diversifying as I go along, but I want to make sure I like the project and can put in at least 100$.
My crypto portfolio can basically be split in to 3:
- Internet Node Token and High Performance Blockchain, 2 relatively new projects with great vision that fills a need in the current market.
*Neo, this is a hybrid of a platform and a coin that pays you for owning it. You get paid a bit of NeoGas for every Neo you own. - Kucoin Shares, these are comparable to Binance Coin in the sense that they are linked to an exchange and allow for lower transaction fees, but Kucoin Shares have the added bonus of paying you a tiny bit of crypto every day. Kucoin is also a relatively new exchange that is growing fast, which I think will increase the price of KCS as well as the bonus that they give out everyday.
Kucoin is an exchange I think everyone in crypto should definitely check out since it is usually the first major exchange to list new coins.
Anyways I feel like I have been rambling on for long enough. If you want to follow the journey of my cryptoportfolio you can check it out here: https://altpocket.io/user/ZolaCrypto
I will post updates and crypto related articles at least twice a week, so if you enjoyed reading this and want to see more you could give me a follow.
I wish you all the best on your financial journeys!
ZolaTalksCrypto