I bought more Hive Power today. That's about the only significant thing worth mentioning. In the past, I would buy Hive and convert it to HP. I started poking around on Blocktrades and saw that I can buy HP directly rather than buy Hive and then convert. This is convenient. It's one less transaction to worry about.
I am also realizing that I could just as easily buy Dash from Uphold rather than Coinbase. I'm using Dash because of how fast the transactions are. I could use LTC too. I find LTC and Dash interchangeable. They are both fast and have low transaction costs. I'm curious if Uphold would cost less in fees than Coinbase.
I made a budget of about $20/week for buying Hive. By the end of 2020, assuming we don't get invaded by aliens, I should have an additional 2000 HP. If my debt reduction goes to plan, I can increase the budget sometime in 2021. That would yield something like 5000 HP per year or more. Of course, this assumes that I'm not also earning through posting and curation. And it doesn't take into account increasing my contributions as I finish paying off other things.
I feel foolish. I could have reached 5000 HP by now if I were more serious about Hive sooner. I think part of that was because it's difficult to be optimistic when your hard work barely earns 0.001 Hive as happens to most new users. I first started to feel hope when my account reached 1,200 SP, when we were on Steem. Getting to 1500 HP started to get exciting. Then something clicked. I realized that I could afford to buy my way up without it being a burden. So, here we are.
I recently read a post. I wish I could remember who wrote it. He's a whale here on Hive. In any case, he mentioned that he has a team helping him curate. In this way, he is able to contribute back to the Hive community more than he would be able to do by himself. I think that's cool. Perhaps when my account gets to a certain size, I could enlist the help of my family for curation. I could see myself retired in a few years spending some of my time curating and posting about my latest adventures.