Before I get to the main idea of this post I need to provide a little bit of context first.
A journey back in time
When I was in university, all students had access to the campus restaurant where we could eat lunch and dinner every day of the week. The food was definitely not worthy of a Michelin star but it was good enough in my opinion (some days it was actually very good) and the best part was we could eat as much as we wanted for a fixed price of 2 Brazilian Reais (which is just about 0.40 USD in the current rate).
That's a bargain in any scenario and even more so when you are a broke college student and need every penny you can get for the important stuff, like beer. Oh, yea, and books, of course...
Since I and most of my friends ate there every day, the price of a meal became a reference to compare the cost of other stuff so situations like this were pretty common among us:
- "Hey, wanna go watch a movie?"
- "Nah man, nothing I really want to see, plus tickets are like 20 bucks. That's 10 meals!"
We were not thinking of the numerical value of money any longer. It had assumed the form of something much more tangible to us, which was food. Ultimately, that ended up helping us to avoid a lot of impulse purchases.
That kept going for pretty much all my time in college but then, eventually, we all graduated, lost access to the restaurant and little by little we stopped using our golden strategy
Fast forward to present days
Ok, that was a nice story (at least I think it was) but why am I telling you all this?
Well, one day not too long ago, I was at the grocery store and I was pondering whether I should buy something or not when suddenly I said to myself "Nah, I'll pass this time. I could get 50 LEO instead."
I'm not sure why I made that association - perhaps because 1 LEO was almost equivalent to 1 BRL these days - but suddenly I came to realize that I could use the same concept I did with the price of the meals in the university restaurant but using LEO as a reference instead.
As silly as it may sound, I find it very effective. I had no problems spending 50 bucks on shit I didn't need, but when I think that I could be getting LEO instead, I think twice before buying stuff out of impulse only.
I also know that 50 LEO may not sound like a lot but I have a lot of faith in this project so I believe in the future it could really be worth a good amount of money. Also, it adds up. Save 15 LEO today, another 10 tomorrow, 30 next week and before you realize, you got yourself a respectable little stack.
So yea, I'm still a "small cat" in this jungle, but I've seen my LEO holdings grow on a much faster pace since I started adopting this strategy so it works for me.
And there might be more to it.
A welcome side effect
A few days ago I was with a couple of friends in a store and unconsciously applied my newfound strategy, completely forgetting I was around other people.
When they heard me saying to myself that I'd rather get LEO instead they asked me what the hell was LEO. At first, I thought about saying "oh, never mind, I'm just thinking out loud" but, on second thought, I decided to explain to them a little bit of my journey on Hive and Leo and offer to help them in case they wanted to know more.
I don't know if they will actually pull the trigger on it, but one of them messaged me not long after that asking me more details about crypto and that "lion stuff" I was talking about, so maybe I'm onto something here!
Final thoughts
Crypto is changing my life in a lot of ways. Not only it introduced me to a whole new world of possibilities and freedom, but now it's also helping me to be more mindful about my spending. I think this could be the start of a nice little positive feedback loop, where I earn money from crypto, save more money because I'd rather buy crypto than stupid stuff, which makes me earn more money from crypto. I guess you get the picture!