What's up everyone? This is going to be a random collection of thoughts, more than it will be an actual structured post, but I promise, it will have everything to do with finances, stocks, trading, etc!

My Journey Towards Financial Freedom

So, as the title says, this is the first post of my journey towards becoming financially free of debts, and to give my family the life the deserve to live! To start out, I guess I'll go back and give you a little bit of a backstory of who I am, and why I'm here in the first place, then we'll move along from there! As I said, this will be more of a random collection of thoughts, but I will try to keep it easy enough to follow along!

The Slippery Slopes of my Past

So, I guess I should start out by saying I have no financial/marketing experience. I've never had very good money management skills, and now that I look back on it, I realize that my parents never did either, and never made it a point to teach money management to me or my siblings. I don't blame them for not having the skills or knowledge of the subject to teach us, and living paycheck to paycheck is the most difficult life there is, in my personal opinion. I cant say that we always had what we wanted as kids, but we always had the necessities.

We did move around a lot, and that was purely due to my parents inability to pay their bills on time, and regrettably, that meant I went to 13...yes, THIRTEEN...different schools before I actually started my high school career at the age of 13. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of friends throughout my life, and never learned much of anything besides how to run away when things got tough.

So, fast forward to the end of High School. I graduated at 17, and started attending the local community college,and after the first semester, I met a recruiter and I joined the US Navy, thinking that I would have tons of money and finally have the freedom to do whatever the heck I wanted for once in my life. For an 18-year-old kid that was sheltered as sheltered can be, it was a dream come true...at first.

My highschool sweetheart and I had gotten pregnant with our oldest daughter right before I left for bootcamp, and we got married shortly after she was born. Soon after that, being away constantly took a mental toll, and while I was already drinking heavily (its the Navy, and sailors can, and will, drink like a fish), it started to not be enough, so I started branching to other things.

Needless to say, I was administratively separated from the Navy, and my downward spiral began. I hated myself so much, and the only way I could find a way to cope with it was to drink and use hard drugs. I bounced a lot from job to job after that, and started getting into Methamphetamines, and after another 5 years in that state, my wife and I divorced, leaving me in an even worse mental state, mostly due to my drug and alcohol usage. That went on for a little while longer, until I met my fiance in November of 2018. We partied together for a while, but then we got clean for a little bit and got pregnant with our Son, Junior.

The First Steps Towards Trading

Fast forward to about 3 years ago now, I had finally got off all the hard drugs, and started trying to find more and more ways to make a stable side income (even though I was working full time, it wasn't enough) so that I could finally give my family the life they deserved! After 10 years of letting my life, and myself, spiral downhill, I was finally attempting to stand on my own two feet and stop running from financial problems and trying to take them head on.

I started freelancing on a platform called Upwork, and while it helped for a while, it took me away from my family too much, just like my blogging on Hive did here recently. So, I started looking into stocks and learning how the market worked. I signed up for a platform called Public, then Robinhood, then finally Webull, where I got a few free stocks on each platform. It wasn't a lot, but I actually owned stocks, and even if I didn't sell them, it was something, right?

After doing the little bit of researched that led me to those platforms, I knew that Crypto was popular, and that investing in different coins was a solid plan for the future, so I got a few dollars worth of Doge on Robinhood, and a few dollars worth of Shiba on Webull. Soon after that, I started doing more and more research into crypto and the different brokers I had, and I quickly realized that the crypto I "owned" wasn't even truly mine since I didn't have a token wallet. At this point, I pretty much gave up and decided I didn't have what it takes to be a trader.

Moving Forward

Well, 2 weeks ago, I ended up losing my full-time job at the garage door factory nearby and started yet another downhill spiral. I pretty much gave up all hope and decided that I was worthless, and nothing I did mattered in the grand scheme of things. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how much effort I put in, nothing ever turned out right.

Then, out of the blue, my close friend came over for the first time in years, and we started talking randomly about the stock markets and forex trading and how lucrative it could be if you knew what you were doing. And then he introduced me to something that changed me..

"The Moving Average" Youtube Channel.

I know, it doesn't sound like much, but after I watched the first few videos, I started to relate to Arty, the channel's creator. He had been through a lot of similar experiences, had a wife, a kid, got divorced, and started with literally nothing. Then he tried his hand at trading and lost all his money. Then he tried again, and again, and again, until he finally learned from his mistakes and became profitable. Consistently profitable.

Overall, it just gave me a lot of hope, that things can and will get better, as long as I keep giving it my all! But, other than that, I do feel like I've learned a lot, and started looking at the charts and trying to see it the way he teaches; I also started demoing on a MetaTrader 5 account and can actually see the shifts in market structure and momentum!

As of now, I use www.tradingview.com for charts and analysis, and then I have my demo account from OspreyFX but I'm also looking into Hankotrade as a broker as well.

My Current Predicament

So, that leads me here, to the LeoFinance Community, because as much as I am learning about stocks and the market, I started to realize more and more that I am in way over my head here on Hive. I don't have a lot in my account, both my personal account and my Hive account, but what I have thought about is using some of my Hive funds to be able to withdraw into an external wallet (Coinbase, Metamask, Binance.US, Uphold/Gemini) to be able to fund my new brokerage account (only about $20-$50 to start).

Buttttttt, I have so many questions it isn't even funny. Like what wallet is best to use for withdrawing Hive, and which wallet as the least amount of Gas fees for transferring crypto? I currently am waiting on my ID in the mail to start the KYC verification for all of this, including my Robinhood Wallet, but I do have a Coinbase account and wallet (for the learn to earn crypto program and account setup bonus), I started looking into Binance.US (one of Arty's suggestions in an episode of "The Moving Average"), Metamask, and also a Gemini/Uphold account to verify my Brave Rewards Wallet and have access to my earned BAT.

Other than that, which coins are the best to withdraw, and to which wallet? Exactly how does the Swap.HIVE and Swap.ETH and Swap.BTC work when withdrawing from your Hive Wallet to an External Wallet? Which coin would you recommend? I know that BTC and ETH are more commonly recognized, but as far as my situation goes on strictly using my funds to fund a separate account, which would you recommend or suggest as a beginner?

Also, which do you guys prefer for wallets (Uphold/Gemini/Metamask/Coinbase/Binance) or brokers (if you use a broker)? As I said, I want to try to use this crypto I've earned along the way to fund a brokerage account, using only $20-$50 dollars worth of crypto to start (which is why I'm looking into OspreyFX, they allow deposits and withdraws in crypto) and slowly build from there.

I've taken a lot of advice from "The Moving Average", and I have learned a lot so far, but I know there is so much more to learn! So, if there is anyone out there that can help me with any of this information, all I'm asking is for a nudge in the right direction so I can finally learn more about what I'm doing, and earn financial freedom for my family in the future! Any help, advice, and information will be greatly appreciated!

I have started swaping tokens using HiveEngine just to get a feel for how it works, but I honestly don't know a lot about it, and I want to make sure I'm taking the right steps and doing things correctly as far as my personal goals are concerned!

Hopefully, this is only the start of my financial blog, as well as just one small step on my road to financial freedom! I will say that I do plan on making a post about just the trading aspect, from what I've learned over that past two weeks and what I've taken notes on, just to get others' opinions and thoughts as to what I can do to improve my trading abilities! I also want to do a post on my current strategies and ones I would like to know as well! So stay tuned, cuz I've jumped head-first down into this rabbit hole! :)

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful week!

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