I thought I "knew" how to make money before. But I was poor and wasn't making money. I wasn't very motivated to make money but I still thought if I were I'd make it.

And then I started trying and oooo was it hard! Mid 2020, I was getting desperate, trapped at home, savings dwindling, and I made a list of all my employable skills. I thought translation would be the thing that would pull me up toward some decent living standards.

Ultimately, while I was working toward getting a translation job, I lost $80, I don't remember how, and I was sad.

So I started trying to get a bit more money, and a friend of mine noticed it and simply told me to go talk to some guy.

I talked to the guy and he gave me a small job, then a bigger job, then a bigger job, and I was finally pushed into the world of professional web development.

When I made my list, I thought translation was going to be the highest earning job for me. Why? I made some calculations and thought it had higher salaries on average.

How wrong I was! And the answer was right in front of my eyes.

I thought these numbers were exaggerated! "Ahh only Americans can get these!"

And... I did have to go through an American in order to learn how to get them, but I got the last one on my own and I'm at $72k per year.

I'm nowhere near "rich" by my own standards but some people would disagree.

I'm definitely nowhere near a millionaire. I need 20 years to get there at this rhythm, as I saved $50k in a year.

With compounded interest, if my investments don't die in the typical DeFi exploits, I can get there sooner, maybe 10 years.

I really thought I knew, as a poor person, how to make money, but when I was shown the door, it was not what I expected.

And I'm still working toward broadening my horizons. I want to create some kind of digital services agency, as I have hired people in the past and know how to deal with this. Maybe I will be rich in the future, but it is 100% unrelated to what I thought before.

In this past year I've had so many chances to lose my income. I've had to be ruthless with my decisions, and have seen those who have fallen out of their jobs or who have kept very small salaries.

I learned that money, for me, is seeing who has money to give, and persuading them to give it to you in the biggest amount possible, and then saving it and making it grow on its own without major supervision.

For me, money is about finding money and mining it with decisive strength, consistency and careful observation. Money is out there. I just have to develop the methods to extract it.