Eight years ago, I had…
+ Less than $10k saved
+ $25k in student debt
+ $18k in credit card debt
+ 5 different jobs in 5 years
Was working my ass off but given 2 kids under 2, we made just enough to pay $3k per month for an apartment, $4000 in childcare, and basically did nothing outside of going to public parks, spending time with friends to save money. I couldn’t even afford a flight cross country home without a panic over how we budget for it.
Here’s a few of the many disasters along the way…
In Jan 2018, one of our 2 cars (a 2013 Prius) that was actually worth more than our remaining loan balance of $8k blew a head gasket, Toyota said “wow never seen a lemon like this” as it was only 4 years old. That car ended up being worth $4k to trade in while I owed $4k more, money which we would draw from a savings that barely existed so I bought a $7k 2011 Nissan Leaf from their lot, it was the fastest cheapest solution and ended up being a disaster given the car could only drive 50 miles per battery charge even though Toyota sold me it as is saying it went about 80-90 miles per charge.
Then I got smacked with a $12k tax bill by the State of California in May 2020, deep into COVID mania claiming we checked a box wrong in 2016 in TurboTax related to maternity leave with our first kid, and they were reaching out just at the 4-year limit to make us aware we not only owed $8k but they charged us max interest over 36 months for being late and would not consider forgiving the interest.
Every time we got a little ahead, we had a setback, a kid would go into the hospital for some infection and despite having relatively good health insurance given our jobs, we ended up with some bill for thousands of dollars.
We moved in 2020 from the Bay Area to be close to family on the East Coast and that ofc cost us another $15k in moving across the country, which basically cleared out our savings.
I have never felt so completely helpless despite doing “all the right things” working my ass off to pursue challenging careers, going to a top university in the world, working endless hours, being dedicated to my work, my clients and career up.
And without sharing more, I pursued multiple career paths so I wasn’t just taking the easy road to be a cog in a machine, I was grinding and killing myself to use my unique talents or develop them to make something happen for us.
Meanwhile, I learned about crypto in fall 2017, put $15k on a credit card in total into crypto by Dec 2017, watched it 6x and eventually crash back to $11k of total value in 2018, mostly BTC, ETH, and a few other majors at the time.
All this to say, things started to turn around in late 2020, having seen every dollar that went into crypto between 2017-2020 round trip to nearly breakeven during the COVID market crash in April 2020, my lil portfolio was finally up.
I never got comfy last cycle. Once I found a niche in content creation, I just never stopped—podcasts, YouTube, Twitter etc. And whatever value that added led to opportunity to invest more in the things I held dear in DeFi and crypto.
8 years later, I have a beautiful home, one I can easily afford as we never aped into something beyond our means having lived paycheck to paycheck until maybe 2021.
I have no debt other than a super manageable mortgage.
I have written about 75 angel checks, some doing well (despite plenty of 0s) but overall I’ve continued to reinvest all profits back into the crypto, nearly all onchain projects, and across all chains despite a concentration / home in Ethereum.
My kids have no idea what we went through and prob don’t remember our tiny little apartment up until 5 years old.
I feel like most of our friends have no idea how f*cking desperate I was yesrs ago.
They have no idea how many nights I stayed up planning out…
How can I play this money game better than others?
How can I take risk investing into this misunderstood tech without rekting myself?”
Experimenting with @AIWayfinder autonomous agents to detect when stables lend rates go above 10% on @aave or if they announce an incentive on stable coins and notify me if/when this occurs.
If you're new to the @EchelonFND ecosystem, welcome!
We're building the infrastructure for competitive leagues, Web3 gaming (Prime Chain), and innovative game products—where players, developers, and creators win together— Powered by $PRIME.
Big Q1 coming up for @ParallelTCG
A few exciting things to note on the growth/marketing side:
- We have set a goal to hit 2,000 new PC players per week (currently averaging 1,400 per week in the last month). If we can hit this milestone and sustain it that will mean around 8K-10K new PC players per month (not including the 4X-5X amount of mobile players we expect post mobile launch)
- We are building the advertising framework to start engaging the South American audience (primarily Brazil). Ads will be run in Spanish and Portuguese and will kick off in the new year.
- We have a comprehensive mobile strategy. This is going to be the biggest launch we’ve ever done and we’ve stacked up the strategy with quality social content, celebrity activations, TCG/sci fi streamers/influencers, exciting giveaways and an exciting new cinematic
- We are exploring getting Parallel’s cinematics into theatres (initially across Canada and if it works we will look at the US). Proposal has been sent by Cineplex and we are reviewing it internally.
- As we scale out our products & games we recognize the need for https://t.co/juAOI6CfqW to be a site that encompasses languages for all our products (not just the TCG). We have been working on a website overhaul for some weeks and should be going live with it in Q1 (each of our products will have a dedicated landing page and https://t.co/juAOI6CfqW will be a page for Parallel Studios overall)
- iOS & Android testing for the TCG mobile have kicked off and will continue through December & January. If you want to be on the list hit up @Fitchinverse
- Our partners in the Philippines, India and Japan have all submitted plans on how they’d drive 4X-5X more downloads to our mobile TCG post launch. We are looking to lock in those promotional plans by the end of the year so they can hit the ground running in the new year.
- We are looking to spotlight community members (investors, collectors, avid fans of our lore and game). If you’re interested in being spotlighted hit up @CaliPnL
- We are planning to activate a lot of key influencers/streamers (not just in the TCG space) at our global championship final in Vegas. If you’ve bought anything from us, you need to be there! We’re going to paint the town in //
That’s all for now. Back to building 🔐
Basically every meaningful ETH pfp collection is up 10%+ this week
BAYC up 51%
MAYC up 75%
Kennel Club up 67%
Parallel Avatars up 56%
AlignDRAW up 37%
Peplicators up 30%
Pudgies up 28%
Doodles up 24%
Christ even Moonbirds are up 23%
love to see it