Greetings to all the people who have reached this post hope you are very well.
For those who do not know me my name is Paúl Parra and this is my second post in the community, if you want to know a little more about me you can check this Post.
Without more delay, let's get to the subject: How was my road to find a wonderful place?
As you may know (those who read my presentation) I am a reading enthusiast, since my youth and thanks to my parents I was able to enjoy many books to satisfy my hunger for knowledge.
Into this vortex of books I found one that talked about money and the idea of making it work for you, I'm not going to fool you at that time it seemed like something incredible and even utopian from my point of view.
Undoubtedly it was something that had a huge impact on myself, sadly this book didn't tell you how to do/achieve it in a clear way.
Here is an image of the book that I still keep to this day after more than ten years since I read it.
For non-Spanish speakers, the name of the book is "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" By Robert Kiyosaki /Sharon L. Lechter.
A brief comment
While I'm writing this post I've taken the book to make the photo that you see above and I've noticed a detail that I didn't remember.
On first page we can see that the book is signed by my father, in addition to the date it was acquired and its value. what an incredible surprise.
This book was bought on August 14, 2006, for a value of $7.49, without doubt one of the best investments my father could have made.This is another of the wonders of reading, for such a small price the amount of knowledge that one is able to obtain. That people are not aware of this surprises me more and more every day.
End of the brief comment
Sorry for the "interruption", but it's something that happened in the moment and I wanted to share it with all you.
It was the book that awakened in me the desire to know more about money, finances and dreams (utopian as I saw them at that time).
But how could a young boy of 15-16 years old apply all I had learned. How to make money work for me, if we barely had enough money for the household (I'm not talking about poverty because we have never lacked food, clothes or education).
So reading and looking for alternatives that would allow me to start from zero in online business.
NEOBUX
The best place to start given my situation, basically it was a page dedicated to advertising projects (I know they have expanded their catalog of services but I have not followed their path for many years).
This is a brief description of what we found on their website
At NeoBux you get paid to take surveys, view advertisements, complete quizzes, play games and more.
Unlike many other sites, we will always offer the best possible rewards for your activities in a safe, accommodating and multi-language environment.
At the time when I started they paid $0.01 for each ad viewed and you could view up to four ads per day. I know it seems very slow but it was the only option I found that didn't require me to be +18/+21 (legal age) or an initial investment that only can be made with credit card (which no one in my family had money or credit card).
They had a referral rental system where you received 50% of what they generated (their 4 ads) and they cost $0.30 if my memory doesn't fail me the problem was that they could be very good and see their ads without failing or very bad and not see any ad in the 30 days that the contract remain.
Also, You could recycle them for new ones in exchange for paying a few cents but nothing guaranteed that the new ones would be better. You could also rent them for a longer period of time to get a lower rent cost.
After more than a year in this page I managed to raise a capital of $45.00 approximately, but I thought that this was very slow and looking for alternatives to invest that money, here is when I discovered the "RevShares" what a cursed word.
For various reasons and changes in "terms and conditions" in Neobux it was impossible for me to continue there but at least I had obtained a capital to start.
RevShares
During this part of my life, I lost my enthusiasm for internet business and came to consider the possibility that all this was just an illusion that a naive young man believed, but I also learned that you can't trust everything you see and in this world are many people and projects that the only thing they want is to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
I will try to go through this topic briefly.
A Revshare was a kind of company that was dedicated to advertising and share profits among all members who have purchased shares, so far everything looks normal, the problem was that we were customers and participants of the company.
We contracted the advertising plans and saw them ourselves.
I contract a plan of 450 visits and 45 shares at $1.00 each share.(not sure about numbres)
As the 450 visits were completed until you got 20% on the value of your shares and the "contract" finalized.
Looking back I realize that I was very naive not realizing what was happening and that I had fallen into a scam (pyramid/Ponzi).
At the beginning everything was going well and I was "reinvesting" my money non-stop, in my young and innocent eyes I had discovered the gold mine to produce money that would help me and my family in the medium term.
It never crossed my mind to recover the investment, I only saw how the numbers on the screen grew faster and faster. Until the day came when life teach me a big lesson.
While I was watching the advertising as I did every day I saw a new RevShare that offered even higher returns I decided to take part of my earnings to put in this new page, when I made the process to withdraw the money a notification said that it can take up to 72 hours to make the payment, I didn't give it more importance and continued watching my ads.
The deadline was met but the money had not arrived, when I contacted the support they gave me many excuses and told me that in a couple of days everything would be solved (I was so naive).
After 10 days I still hadn't received "my" money and after 15-20 days the page disappeared taking with it my work of approximately 2 years, my illusions, dreams and leaving me with a horrible feeling.
I still remember that during the next few days I kept trying to log in to the page, contacting them through social networks (where they had changed their name probably for their next scam) in a desperate search to recover that lost illusions.
RISING FROM THE GREAT FALL
After what happened I made the decision to get away from that world, to focus on improving myself as a person, to train and continue learning.
Focus on my studies at school, university and be able to face life once again, but this time prepared with the knowledge and information so that a sad scenario does not happen me again.
During all this lapse of time, I never abandoned the ideas learned in various books, I was just preparing myself for when the time came, I always believed that it was possible and at some point I would try to do it again.
Once I had a "stable" job, some savings and had accumulated enough courage I was ready to try again but life had one last surprise waiting for me.
COVID-19
The pandemic came when no one expected it and here in Ecuador we had a work stoppage (4 months) in my case and then a partial reinstatement (partial salary) that little by little was depleting the savings I had.
Don't get me wrong I am very grateful and I know that I was among the "lucky ones" despite the stoppage I never lost my job and those savings helped us to get through the whole pandemic.
I don't want to delve too much into this subject as it seems to me like "rubbing salt in the wound" (Not sure how to said this on English) and you are not here for that.
A NEW BEGINNING
More than a year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we've adapted to this new "reality" and in February I decided that this couldn't wait any longer, I decided to start with this journey that many years ago knocked me down, I was ready to start this journey for second time.
Filled with determination, an even greater desire than in my youth and prepared for this adventure, on March 4th I took money out of the country for the first time, I knew the path I was going to follow and I had a start-up plan, a model portfolio.
Once I pay the respective taxes of my country (which are not low at least in my opinion).
- 5% foreign exchange outflows
- 2.03% other country taxes and bank commissions
- 2.5% Skrill-Binance transfer
As of today, April 5, 2021, when I am writing this post, for every $100.00 I take out of the country I pay $109.53 exactly.
I finally has my portfolio with the criptocurrencies I had chosen so far (maybe I will share it in future posts not sure if is a worth it topic) and set aside 20% for projects that might catch my attention.
DISCOVERING A WONDERFUL PLACE
Don't ask me how or why, but while I was looking for the last piece of my portfolio I ended up reading in a reddit section of Yieldg Farming where I find a post that simply had a link to this Post Introducing Cub Finance | LeoFinance Expands Into DeFi on the Binance Smart Chain.
I still didn't know I was at the entrance of a "WONDERFUL PLACE", after reading the post I started reading about the CubFinance project CubDocs. (By this time I knew that my money would end up in CUB).
After spending my money in "CUBs" and putting them in the "CUB DEN" I went back to LeoFinance to continue reading more about this unknown place, to know more about this project that supported "CubFinance" and little by little I fell in love with the community, the way of sharing ideas, the trust that exists between the members and the founders.
I saw that hard times happened, but that the community stayed together and the project kept moving forward, it was at that moment that I decided that I had found an amazing place and I wanted to be part of it.
I found that into LeoFinance more projects are carried out such as: LBI and SPI.
This way in a burst of excitement I closed all my positions in other cryptocurrencies (Thanks to beginner's luck I had already recovered the taxes paid and had a small profit in my portfolio of 3 days).
I converted everything into BNB, withdrew it to my wallet and in less than 5 minutes my investment portfolio looked like this:
Many thanks to everyone who has made it this far, at the end all this story took much longer than I had "planned".
I hope you enjoyed the story and got some learning from this post.
Again I thank you for taking the time to read my post, I will be very attentive to your comments.
I wish you an excellent month of April
See you next time
Pp. (I always like to sign my posts/letters with my initials Paúl Parra)