I'm sitting right now in my church waiting for my turn to play organ during the graduation ceremony of Economics department at Vilnius university.
To spend time "wisely" while I wait, I've written a post, read a few posts of other people and wrote a few comments. The recent interaction on @tarazkp post got me thinking about our financial literacy.
Unless you are an economist or have an MBA, we are never really tought this at school. Not even the traditional system. But now the world has changed and is changing every month or maybe every week. New economic models are being developed and applied in real world. New opportunities for people to empower themselves come into play.
But it takes constant learning to notice those opportunities, to distinguish them from scams, and to be brave enough to act upon those opportunities.
I was thinking about traditional investing for a number of years but never really got into it.
Sure, when I would go into the bank they would sometimes mention investment opportunities and because I have this constant curiosity about new and exciting things, I might have taken the bait.
But to do that, at least in Lithuania you have to have the approval of your spouse. And my wife is much more cautionary than me. She doesn't tolerate risky endeavors very well. So she said no. No means no and I didn't argue with no.
But maybe it's for the better because when I first heard about crypto in the fall of 2017, I found out you don't have to have your spouse's permission to invest. You can take your own money and use it to buy some crypto. Of course, everybody knows the rule not to invest anything that you are not willing to lose. Therefore, I never invest anything that I would need in emergency or for my "fuck-off fund".
By the way, do you know what "fuck-off fund" is? Actually, this concept changed my life.
A few years ago I read some article on a mainstread business news platform that one lady was able to say to her current employer good bye or more likely "fuck off" when he wanted sexually harrass her. And she was able to do it because she had saved up 6 month's expenses worth of money in the bank.
I have read that 47 percent of Americans couldn't find 400 USD easily if they had an emergency.
This is Americans! The most powerful country in the world... What about the rest of the global population?
My financial rule right now is this: once you get a job, start looking for a new job.
It doesn't matter who pays you the money - your boss at the private company, the government in a public institution or a customer directly when you are self-employed or doing freelance work.
You have to think about the future when everything is OK now. When you have the revenue. You have to plan for the future when this revenue stream dries up.
Be learning new skills because maybe one day your current skills will be no longer needed.
If we look at Steem today, the same holds true. We have to learn new skills every day. Read and engage with content which is out of our comfort zone. Only this way we will grow.
There are people on this platform who are constantly adjusting to change, to market demands. And there are those who come with pre-existing notions and never learn anything new. They are on Steem but not really on Steem. They get some rewards of course but they might just as well do some blogging on traditional platforms where you can get paid in fiat.
Do you know when I decided to invest my own money into Steem? It was when I realized that I would not likely get some decent rewards from just posting. Posting and hoping for an occasional juicy upvote from a whale or orca wasn't going to make me financially independent.
Not rich, but independent. This is a big difference. To be rich people want to have at least 10 million USD in their account.
To be independent you just have to have enough constant rewards coming in. More money coming in than coming out.
With this view, I have an opportunity to empower myself on Steem. And even help empower some people from developing countries.
And now PalNet opens up even more opportunities... And even more challenges.
Will you learn about how PalNet works? What is PAL? How is it different from Steem? What is Steem Engine and what can it do for me?
If you're not willing to do some research into these and other questions, the chances of empowering yourself are very slim.
I don't want to recommend people invest anything into Steem or PAL if they haven't done their own due dilligence first.
What happens when the bear market hits? What all these people will say to those who recommended to invest?
"Where is my money now?"
It's dangerous to be a financial adviser of someone who is not willing to learn financial literacy.