#CryptoFinance Initiative: How has Crypto and Blockchain Technology Impacted your Personal Finance?

hetty-rowan (74)in LeoFinance • 3 years ago

2014, Lost my job and no income left

Let's start this post on December 1, 2014, when my contract with my employer ended and I ended up with no income at home. With unemployment benefits of only 3 months, there was a lot of pressure to find work again as soon as possible. It is one thing to absorb a loss of 100 euros per month, but it is really a different story to absorb 1100 euros per month. Needless to say, at the time I was busy looking for ways to earn extra income.

I had no idea, except the regular ways

But of course I didn't know where to look, except in the regular ways. Search for vacancies, all day long. Application after application, but in the crisis period with an awful lot of unemployed people, it was not easy to get a job. The Netherlands were in a big recession, and I found myself in a big depression.

2015 sold the boat and car

So after the boat and car were sold with pain in the heart in 2015, it was mainly adapting and surviving with so much income less per month. No more fancy things. Things that I considered normal became a luxury and I learned to think differently and, above all, to be very creative with, or better to say without money.

2017, Blogging for money on a Dutch site

Until one day I ended up on a Dutch blog site where you could blog for money. And since I wanted every euro I could get, I signed up there of course. That was my introduction to blogging and also earn something with it. Not that it went quickly there, but I did meet a few other Dutch bloggers who were familiar with Steemit.

December 2017, signing up for Steemit

@karinxxl and @anouk.nox persuaded me to sign up on Steemit and 17 December 2017 was the day. I registered my account and delved into a world that was completely unknown to me. Like many people, I had heard of Bitcoin. Of course! And afterwards I can kick myself, because the moment I heard about Bitcoin for the first time, it was in a serious offer to buy Bitcoin for 10 euros per Bitcoin! And that was also when I had my job and could easily have spent a few hundred euros on it. Oh… if only… But yes, many will think that with me. Then I laughed it off and seriously thought I had saved myself a lot of money by paying close attention and not getting scammed. Well, I'll never know for sure if it was a scam then or not. The fact is that I had heard of Bitcoin once, but didn't understand it at all.

I seriously knew nothing about crypto

And that was no different when I ended up on Steemit in December 2017. All I knew was that I had to blog and earn money from it. What Steem was, and that there's a lot more crypto out there than Steem alone, I seriously had no idea.

2018 I started blogging and earning some of this "MAGIC INTERNET MONEY"

In January 2018 I only started seriously with blogging and with that my interest started to grow a bit more in what I had now ended up in. Because in my opinion it was still “MAGIC INTERNET MONEY”.

No one in my personal life wants to believe in this

The fact that the people around me did not want to believe in it at all did not really help. But I persisted, learned more and more and started to earn some serious money. And that was of course welcome, because after the difficult years since 2014 in which I had only had to give up more and more, it was now very nice to be able to build something up.

End 2018 - mid 2019, VERY HAPPY that I had earned crypto

And at the end of 2018 to mid-2019, I was very happy that I did have saved up crypto. During that period I seriously took up crypto every week to be able to pay for my groceries so that I could at least make a living. When my camera broke, I had no hesitation in having crypto paid for it, because a photographer without a camera is not a photographer. I also bought a new lens by cashing out crypto, and the same is how I bought a new PC when my old PC broke down. And every time I have thanked God on my bare knees for ending up in the crypto world. And that by just blogging I could have built something up.

The Blockchain and crypto is a life saver to me

Without the blockchain, without crypto, life was much tougher for me at the moment. Had I been dependent on the government for my livelihood and could have done only what others would determine what I should do.

I still have a long way to go

I am not saying that I am well in the money now, absolutely not, there is still a very long way to go… but ... slowly but surely I am starting to build up again after I had to cash all the earned crypto out last year. I'm on my way back again. And I'm proud to say, I did all this on my own.

So how has the blockchain and crypto affected my personal financial situation?

A lot… without the crypto, I wouldn't have gotten through last year without incurring big debt, or falling back to nothing.

Renewed hope

But beyond that I felt worthy again, because even now that I didn't have a job ... I could take care of myself again. And above all, it gave me hope, hope for a better future. A future that is less regulated by the government and the banks. A future in which people again have more freedom and more ways to recover from a deep financial hole if you unexpectedly end up in it.

I could rebuild financially

So apart from the fact that I learned a lot myself, that I could rebuild financially, I also managed to pull myself out of a deep hole thanks to the renewed hope and I was motivated to continue.