Journey Through Investing with Steemit Rewards

I changed the title of this post from "Journey Through Investing with Free Money". I feel we should dignify what we make from Steem and Steemit more than calling it free. Saying it is free is not very accurate after all, the truth is it's not even easy. If you are getting big rewards consistently today, you must have done some or all of the things in the list below.

Survived the usual downtime when you were just starting in the platform
Learned how the platform, the currency, and the community work
Tried multiple things to get involved and get noticed
Continuously improved yourself in writing and formatting your content
Purposely learned new things to write about
Built networks and connections by engaging with the community

Steem Power Investment

A significant part of my Steemit rewards goes back to the platform as Steem Power. That is the first investment I've done from my Steemit Rewards. I've been doing that from when Steem was priced near a dollar when I joined in July, and the most recent was just last weekend. The return from the power up I've done between July to November is now over 200% (on paper for now of course).

The plan is to continue to power up on an on-going basis, although we are likely to do withdrawals in March to fund a planned meet up caravan across the norther part of the Philippines. We are starting with Bulacan Meet Up this coming February 17. When I am freed up from the corporate world this will be followed by a Pampanga, Tarlac, all the way to Baguio. While we will take out money from the platform, this is still an investment in our view to support the growth of Steemit in the northers Philippines.

Investment for Learning

I have opened a trading account funded from a portion of my Steemit rewards. I specifically created that account to learn short timeframe trading. I have been doing swing trades before where I hold positions for at least a couple of weeks, or as long as eight weeks. I have built a decent consistency in trading that way since I started in trading stocks a few years back before applying a similar strategy in crypto early last year. I see swings in crypto at an intraday that very rarely happens in stocks, and I thought about learning to do intraday to a couple of days type of trading. I acknowledged however, that I neither have the experience, nor the confidence in trading that way.

I couldn't get myself to risk money earned from my tough corporate role, but understood that the only real way to learn is to accumulate screen time when you have a stake. I found a way around these two extremes by putting some of my Steemit rewards into a short-term trading account. If I end up blowing that account as a tuition fee for learning a new trading strategy it wouldn't hurt as much, but I also wouldn't look at it as some game for I am still somewhat staking something. I look at this investment more from a learning perspective rather than for profit, although it was profitable making me 3-5% per trade before the recent crash.

Petrol Station Co-Ownership Program

We've been planning to invest in the energy/petrol sector for sometime now. Most of my winning trades from last year were from the energy sector, so to some extent we are already doing that. This plan is a little different though. This will truly be a passive income. They are offering a co-ownership program where 10 individuals will share the cost of putting up the station, the company will still run the business, and the investor gets 30% return per annum. They've been in operation for nearly three years now, operates eleven stations in my province, and the investors' review of the program are consistently positive. If you are in the Philippines and you are interested about such investment, you can visit their website to read about their Partnership Program.

We've been saving for this investment, but haven't quite raised the full amount with some of our money being in crowdfunding for farms, realty, cryptocurrency, and stocks that we don't necessarily wish to liquidate. We are now at a point where we can close the gap with our accumulated Steem Dollars. While this will be currency leaving the system, we will use this as a case in our Steemit promotion effort specifically to remove the negative connotation about cryptocurrency being "unreal". We will speak about how part of a real, and tangible investment was partly funded by earning Steem - a cryptocurrency.

From where I am, we don't get enough education in managing our financial; not in school, not at work, and most certainly not at home. Steemit presented an opportunity to have an extra source of income for many of us. We all managed to live even before Steemit happened, and we all have a choice to either spend the rewards in living an upgraded lifestyle, or re-invest our investment of effort; back into the platform with some expectancy that the currency will continue to move up, into learning something new that can potentially help us build another income source, or into another investment form. In the end the choice is yours to make.

In our planned Steemit Meet up caravan, we will allocate a portion of the time to talk briefly about financial wellness. Because the time may be limited, we will limit this to topics around living within your means, budgeting and saving tips, concept of emergency fund, and basic of investing. Basically things we hope someone told us about. Hive account@dandalion and I are both very excited to meet Steemians from north of the Philippines, most specially with the prospect of being able to impart our experiences in both Steemit and investing. See you all very soon!