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Solana NFTs – Part 1 150 150 admin

Solana NFTs – Part 1

In the past 3 months I’ve dived head first into Solana NFTs. I thought it would be beneficial to recap what I’ve learned about the space.

2020 Crypto Experiments

One of the best things I’ve done in crypto (and I’ve done a lot of bullshit) was experiment in the bear market.

Right at the tail end of 2020, the stars aligned for ya boy. I had extra money, free time and knowledge of crypto from paying attention to the space for years. I noticed that the crypto YouTubers I had subscribed to suddenly started posting again and were hella excited in their videos. I didn’t know it, but it was a perfect time to invest too.

I started learning and using Metamask and Uniswap and buying coins early before they hit Coinbase. I started investing heavier into different coins that were launching and had hype behind them. I kept binge watching crypto YouTube videos and investing in coins they were talking about. I did this all with the expectation that the money I was experimenting with could go to 0.

Crypto is still rewarding me for that experimentation I did years ago through airdrops. The most recent one being Evmos.

So why experiment? Not only for the airdrops, but also because it’s the best time to experiment. The networks aren’t as clogged, so things go faster and things are cheaper. Everything’s calm and settled and you don’t have to learn on-the-fly as much. And ya neeeeeeever know. The things we’re experimenting with today might be normal in the future.

Welcome Solana

In that tail end of 2020, I did a lot of experimenting with ETH-based coins. ETH wasn’t as high priced as it is now and the network wasn’t as congested, so fees were lower.

Nooooooow there is a noticeable fee for everything on ETH! and it’s annoying. At the time of this writing fees are a lot smaller than usual, but I can’t justify using the network as much when Solana is such a cheaper network. Developers are developing high quality games, NFT’s and other resources on it.

I admit it. I had an affair with Solana. I’m sorry ETH.

Random things I’ve noticed or learned while experimenting in Solana NFT’s

  • There’s a lot of younger people in the space with me. Occasionally I’ll see 13-15 year old’s in the space. It’s kinda trippy. Voice chat and spaces expose your voice.
  • NFTs do well in a crypto bear market because it makes for cheap entries to projects that would otherwise price most people out.
  • It’s so great to not have to pay excessive fees. It’s faster and more cost effective. Everything in ETH had a fee and it adds up – staking, unstaking, withdrawing, sending, minting, etc. All fees associated with them. Different airdrops made the fees worthwhile though, so I can’t complain too much about them.
  • It’s more predictable – I don’t have to worry about things like sandwiches or inconsistent fees. I know what I’m going to pay
  • It’s easier to rug – People are starting to figure out the formula for their anonymous rugs and I’m seeing more and more in the space. It’s the wild wild west. Because it’s easier to rug, I appreciate the projects that are transparent and adequately Doxxed and are consistently available through voice and or video or a human social media account. I think this is the way things will eventually go.
  • It all happens on Discord and Twitter – Most of the details of Solana NFT’s are on Discord and/or Twitter. I do see some projects from time to time using Telegram, but for the most part it’s Discord and Twitter. I’ve learned to use Discord and Twitter VERY well.
  • The biggest most well known Solana NFT marketplace is Magic Eden.
  • Some people are happy with the smallest profits. They will mint something for 1 Sol and list it on Magic Eden for 1.01 Sol for a .01 profit (not even taking into account fees).
  • The digital art in the Solana NFT space is absolutely amazing. – There are so much great art that art alone tends to not be enough these days. NFT investors want great art AND some type of utility.
  • Words / phrases / platforms / resources that you gotta know if you’re gonna deal with Solana NFTs – mint date, mint price, supply, volume, hype, WAGMI (we all gonna make it), NGMI (not gonna make it), bluechips, degen, wallet, airdrops, tokens, proof, whitelist (WL), public mint, mint bots, snipers, whales, floor price (FP), Magic Eden and CoralCube.

In Part 1, I wanted to keep it more matter-of-fact style. Find out what happens in Part 2 where I give more of my opinion about the space.

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You like that suspense I put in there? lmao

You know you do.

The Benefits of Free Time 150 150 admin

The Benefits of Free Time

In this article I’m going to share with you the benefits I’ve experienced through having lots and lots of free time. If there’s interest I can share the downsides too cuz uh…it hasn’t been all roses.

Backstory of Having Damn Near No Free Time

There was a period of time where I was working a job I hated then doing deliveries on the side and it felt like I was just spinning my wheels. My expenses = money I got from the job I hated + delivery money. I just kept hearing this message in my head that said “you’re wasting your time”.

Then, I went to a conference called Love Rising in Hollywood, CA led by Kyle Cease. A core message I got from that conference was to stop chasing money, and so that’s what I did. He published a book called The Illusion of Money not too long after this workshop.

I tried my best to do everything – especially creative work – from a heart-centered space. I really felt like I was fed up doing work and feeling like a damn slave. I quit my job right after getting out of that conference (because I was doing it just for the money), and life hasn’t been the same since. In many ways it has been amazing, and in many ways it has been horrific. I’m sharing the good stuff here now though.

Online learning

There is literally so much information on online that you can web surf through – especially with YouTube. I also like my local libraries online resources, and if your local library sucks then…I’m sure you can find a way to break some rules…Just don’t hold me responsible.

I tend to gravitate towards the practical information and online courses. People are taking their knowledge and putting it in online resources at a level that has never been seen before – especially with COVID. All i need is an internet connection and a device that can use that internet connection to show me stuffs. I just found another course I wanna take today from Scott Scorch (a little disappointed it’s only 2 hours long). It was a gateway to find the other courses on the platform though.

Finding Money to Play With

I’ve been able to “find” money through different ways. Lowering expenses dramatically helps with this a lot! No more car note draining my finances, and no more expensive rent. HAD I BEEN MORE PATIENT, last year would have been my first 6-figure year by way of crypto. 2020 was the first year ever I felt like I was able to play with money. And it was all because of downsizing, doing independent contract work as a gig worker when COVID hit, and binge watching videos on crypto.

Self Care

Sometimes I wonder how people deal with self care with a job. Meditation, hygiene, fitness, food prep/shopping, self care appointments i.e. doctors/dentists, vehicle care, living space care, fun/hobbies/creative outlets, assessments about all of the above, and learning about how to improve all of the above.

This about this – I’m a single guy, but what about if you’re in a household and have to take care of others? Many of these things can’t be outsourced or helped by a significant other. How do people adequately do self care when a job takes up such huge blocks of time. How do people fit all this in? I think the answer is many people don’t.

Doing Things At Different Times Than The Majority

In a populated city like Houston, Texas it feels so much better to do things when others don’t do them. I don’t have to sit in traffic during lunch time when everyone is one the road. I don’t have to deal with large crowds in stores because I can shop while everyone is at work.

No More Resentment For Things That Were Taking Up My Time

I don’t find myself saying “I don’t know enough time”. I could easily say that when I had a job, and it would make me resentful towards the job. I was spending a lot of those days working feeling resentment.

Lately, if I can deal with what others say and think about me and accept it and not be triggered by it, then I can experience that freedom. That is a part of the freedom. I might be called lazy or a bum, or not self sufficient (nobody’s really self-sufficient) in the short term, but over the long term things start to get really good. You don’t relate to money with this neediness and it can flow to you.

Depth and Quality Creatively

I put depth and quality together because depth has a lot to do with quality. I can’t get to the level of mental depth I could creatively as long as I was using so much mental ram on my job. This is the biggest benefit. It gives me room to breathe. I can step back and see the forest for the trees, and not always be stuck in the trees.

I don’t even think my brain could go into writing an article list this or many of the other articles I’ve written without sufficient space to let my mind wander into different rabbit holes. Eventually, the rabbit holes start to connect together in a way I can’t predict.

Nothing feels rushed now. Even if there is a deadline to things, I don’t feel the intense pressure I would feel going to jobs. I can take my time cooking up good shit. Good plans, good assessments, good articles, good presence with people, good quality overall.

When I would work at jobs, I very rarely got to see my own work. It was purchasing and data entry, so…it was gone as soon as I did it. I never got to see it or marvel at it or add to it or build on top of it. I’ve created a lot that I get to look back on these past years. It makes me waaaaaay more proud.

That’s it folks

That’s all I got. I’m thankful that I made it a priority to downsize and take my time investments away from chasing money and started to embrace and cherish the time I have on this earth. There is nothing like it.

Decentralized Everything 150 150 admin

Decentralized Everything

There was a time where everything was very centralized. It all came from one place. Money, media and news, information, laws, etc. They all came from a few sources. Then the internet came along and fucked that shit all up.

Youtube has instant media now. People can live stream things that are happening in REAL TIME. People can connect with others to find out information in a way they never could before or just watch a stream of Youtube videos on the subject and run it through their own discernment to find TRUE information.

Value is so subjective, and we can really explore the possibility space as to what’s valuable for other people. Like to watch YouTube videos? You watching YouTube videos is valuable to other people and they will either virtually accompany you in doing so, or watch a video of you reacting to another video. There’s a whole space of reaction channels on YouTube. For people with NO skills, the documentation of their experiments and explorations are valuable. People can follow your journey along in real time. You eating food is valuable to people.

P2P services are here now. You can rent or rent out pretty much everything you own or that someone else owns if it’s available to be rented.

Decentralized coaching? Decentralized Innovation and Funding for the Innovation? Decentralized workshops? Cryptocurrency has a space where there’s DeFi (decentralized finance!).

I’m pretty damn excited about the way things are shaping up.

Neediness In Crypto Investing 150 150 admin

Neediness In Crypto Investing

On September 17, 2020 I received a free airdrop of 400 Uniswap tokens (UNI).  At the time of this writing, this has been the most popular airdrop to date in the crypto space.  The day I received the airdrop, the price of Uniswap was goin all over the place.  That day it was swinging at $3-$8 and ended up stabilizing around $5.  This was my first airdrop so…I thought to myself “Oh my god, free money!” and sold those 400 coins almost immediately for $1400.  I was pretty happy.

Fast forward to today (249 days later) Uniswap’s price is selling at $24.24.  Those 400 coins I sold would have been worth $9,696 had I kept them.  3 weeks ago Uniswap reached its all-time high and was valued at #44.92…so 3 weeks ago 400 Uniswap coins were worth $17,968.

Deep in the Telegram and Discord channels of different crypto coins you’ll see wild success stories and some not-so-successful ones too.

Approaching the Market

The past “me” might have beat myself up over the decision to sell those 400 coins early.  The “me” now sees so many paths to $20,000 that it doesn’t bother me as much.  The main lesson I learned was how I approach the market can affect my results and the experience overall.

I don’t believe there are any accidents.  If I’m honest with myself, I can say I sold those coins early because that’s the amount I was comfortable receiving.  At the time, I was used to receiving amounts close to $1000, but not anything close to $17,968 at all at one time.  I was used to making $800 / week working my regular job and Door Dash on the weekends.  Attracting anything above $1000 at once was way out of my comfort zone.  If I had been earning $20,000+ checks outside of the crypto space, then I would have just left that 400 coins alone.  It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal to me, and I would have given those 400 coins the time and space to grow and mature financially.

The Real Work in Investing

It made me realize that the real back-end work to investing is becoming comfortable receiving the amount of money I want from an investment OUTSIDE of that particular investment.  That way, I don’t approach any particular income stream or investment with a sense of neediness.  I wouldn’t need an investment to go up in value during my specific timeline.  It can be fun, playful, and light vs serious and stressful when a coin doesn’t do what I want it to.

If I want a million dollars from an investment, am I comfortable receiving a million dollars outside of that investment?   Would I be comfortable or ok with receiving a million dollars all at once in my day-to-day life?  If not, then a million dollars all at once might stress me the fuck out.  There was a time where after hearing that I would have been like “yeah right…give me a million dollars and see if I’m stressed out”.  It gets real though.  I’m in Telegram groups where a few people’s $100-$1000 investments are all of a sudden worth anywhere from $10K to $300k.  I see the hate and jealousy that gets thrown their way.  I see that owning a coin that shoots up in value could be stressful depending on the way they frame it.  Do you sell that coin and cash out only to see it rise 80X more in value?  Do you hold it and watch it crash to ground in value?  Do you go half and half?

  • If you do cash out…how much (if any) do you give to others?  What about homeless people you see on the street?  What about charities?
  • If you don’t cash out… are you watching the charts 24/7 to see when you should sell or what the price is currently?  Stressed when the number goes down, euphoric when it goes up?

I looked at the definition of trauma – a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.  It’s weird to think that having a lump sum of money placed in your lap can be distressing, but I can see it now.  Add to this the fact that many of those people who’ve seen their coins skyrocket in value don’t know wtf their investing in, and it was just a lucky gamble or a call from someone who does know about that coin.

Security is an Illusion

Nothing is static.  This includes investments, the value of money, the trends of different markets, etc.  There’s no need to let those fluctuations manipulate your emotions – but they will if you’re needing investments to somehow “save you” from looking at other parts of life you don’t want to address – like the job you hate that you can’t take a break from and/or the time and effort it might take to learn a skill that’s more valuable to the marketplace and one that is more enjoyable and provides you with more fulfillment.

One of the reasons the crypto space is shaking things up is people are waking up to the fact that the security they thought they had in money is being yanked from under them.  The USD has continued to decline in value while Bitcoin and Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have risen in value over their short history.  Printing money out of thin air doesn’t help the cause for the security-in-money case. In the long term I can see the writing on the wall for fiat money.  In the short term, I don’t know wtf this shit gonna do.

I’ve noticed friends try to approach me looking for me to give them a sense of security in their crypto investments in the short term.  I decline that responsibility.  The best I can do is invite you to  be an active participant in learning about your crypto investment and also explore the idea that the best security is to learn to not need security as much…kind of like the real work in investing is learning to not need investments.  ?

BTW…This is not financial advice, and I am not a financial advisor.  I learned to say that from the Youtubers.

Lessons I’ve Learned From Investing In Crypto since 2017 150 150 admin

Lessons I’ve Learned From Investing In Crypto since 2017

Crypto has taught me a lot overall about investing – not only in coins, but in everything.  With this article I wanted to share some lessons from the mistakes I’ve made.  I’m doing well in it now, but there sure were some expensive mistakes I made to learn these lessons.  If you’re reading this, you don’t have to make these mistakes.

Short story on how I got involved in crypto

In late 2016, I went to a conference on making passive income in a more heart-centered, courageous way.  I was working at a pretty shitty job, and I was getting frustrated with it, so I took some days off to go to this conference.

The conference wasn’t about crypto at all, but I met up with some people who were invested in crypto.  They not only showed me how to get into crypto, but why I should get into crypto, so I did.  I signed up with Coinbase, and I bought about $100 worth of Ethereum (ETH) when it was then trading at $448.64 on December 7th, 2017.  Within a month it had doubled and almost tripled.  Ethereum had skyrocketed and was selling at almost $1200 per coin.  I remember lookin at this like I had hit the jackpot.   Up until then, I had not made any other investment that had almost tripled my money, and so fast.

I. told. everyone.

Everyone who was in my world at the time knew I invested some money in crypto because I shouted it from the rooftops, and I had friends that jumped in too.

What I didn’t realize about the market, was that that was the peak.  Bitcoin and the rest of the market, including Ethereum, tanked and went down in value for the next two years.

This is when I learned my first lesson, and it continues to be the most important lesson to this day – Fomo will get you wrecked.

Lesson 1:  FOMO will get you wrecked.  

FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out.  When a coin or stock is going up in value and everyone is talking about it or it gets heavy news or attention, people are like “damn…I don’t wanna miss out!  I gotta invest now!”.  Many times new people invest from this pressured, emotional place, and it might take you getting wrecked to learn not to FOMO into an investment.  The danger in investing when all the excitement is happening is that that coin or stock or other investment could easily dip or even crash in value right after you invested, because you may have invested at a peak.

When everyone is excited and talking about an investment – whether it be stocks, real estate, crypto – anything, it’s way better to be ahead of the herd.  Be in it before everyone starts talking about it.  There are always opportunities to be ahead of the herd – to get in before things go up in price and value and attention, but it means you have to take your focus AWAY from where everyone is right now (the news), and being able to predict where things are going.  You can even wait until things die down and buy the dip, but don’t FOMO in.

Buy low, sell high.  Accumulate in the bear market when nobody is talking about what you want to invest in, so you’ll be positioned to take profits when the bull market inevitably comes and every one is talking about it.

Right now, everyone is talking about Bitcoin,  but there are amazing opportunities in certain alt coins (every coin except Bitcoin) to make life-changing profits if you’re willing to learn and be patient.

One thing that we did in that conference mentioned above was made a list of trends that would be important in the future, so we could be ahead of the curve.  We listed things like online education, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, robots, cyber security, cloud computing, e-books and audiobooks.  These are trends that are going to be important in the future.  These are places where you can be ahead of the herd.

Lesson 2:  Only invest what you’re willing to go to 0.  Don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. Do not bet the farm!

I lumped all these together in one lesson.  I ignored them all starting off.  I said to myself, “if this investment is going to triple, why would I not put everything I own into it?”.   Here’s why.

Having a significant portion of money and cash flow outside of your crypto (or any other investment) will lesson your sense of neediness.  You won’t be constantly looking at it every day to see  whether it goes up or down or left or right.  You can leave it alone and not think about it so much because its not a huge part of your net worth.  You can have strong hands when you see your investment take a slight or heavy dip in value and you won’t panic sell.

ALL MY CALLS WERE RIGHT in 2020! but I put almost all my money in crypto.  This was the mistake.  When I needed cash, I had to sell my crypto – giving away all my early positions.  It wasn’t very fun to see the whole crypto market as a whole rise like crazy while I had almost nothing invested in it.

Lastly, if you haven’t bet the whole farm on crypto, you’ll have cash to invest in opportunities you see.  If all your money is in crypto and the crypto market dips, your overall money will dip as well.  If you have cash, you can take advantage of the dips and buy on those dips.

Lesson 3:  Start small, find good projects and be patient enough to let it grow

It doesn’t take much to start investing in crypto.  I put $200 in PAINT and it gave me a little over 100,000 coins.  If PAINT goes to being worth $1, in maybe 2-5 years then that’s $100,000 off a $200 investment.  If it goes to being worthless then I’m out $200.  PAINT is in the NFT space and NFT’s are on fire right now, so I think it’s a good bet, but I’m willing to be wrong.  (This is not financial advice and I’m not a financial advisor.  Also, PAINT has not sponsored me.  I just like the project).

That same $200 isn’t going to get you very far if you just invested it in Bitcoin.  I would bet bigger if I was investing in Bitcoin or Ethereum because they’re the safest bets.

Good projects have a good team, solid roadmap, good use case.  It takes time to sift through and find the solid projects amongst the thousands of coins – that’s why they’re called gems.  The lower the market cap, the higher the risk of the investment.  I start with low to mid-size market caps and play the waiting game for them to rise in value.  Coin Gecko and CoinMarketCap tell you market cap information on coins and much more.  I use them all the time.

I start with YouTube.  It’s in a YouTuber’s interest to give you good, solid information that’s valuable.  It helps their channel grow.  That being said, I only use it as a starting point.  I do my research on specific coins AND the YouTuber that mentioned the coin and put it against my own knowledge and reasoning.  You are ultimately responsible for your profits and losses.

Lesson 4:  Take profits

You’re not going to want to do this.  When you see your investment rising in value, it will be hard to sell a portion and actually take some profits because you think it will continue to rise.  It might, but nothing goes straight up and continues to go straight up.  There are twists and turns and peaks and valleys – lots of them in a relatively new and emerging market like crypto/blockchain.  WHEN to take profits is a personal choice, but take them.  In 2018 many crypto investors, including myself, learned this lesson the hard way when the crypto market came crashing down and we rode those coins all the way to the ground.

Lesson 5:  Look at the world like a sea of opportunity

How you see the market and how you relate to the market will affect how you trade.

If you look at the world like a sea of opportunity, then you won’t panic sell or be stressing out when a coin doesn’t do what you want/expect it to right when you want it to.  You won’t be dejected and down in the dumps when another coin that you don’t have rises in price.  You’ll know there are opportunities that come along all the time, so there won’t be any need to stress about an opportunity you think you missed.   Jay Z said “There’s a million ways to get it…choose one”.  If you can see the ocean of opportunities that are always there, you won’t be as attached to the outcome of any one particular investment.  You won’t be hanging on its every move.

Imagine you’re a surfer and you’re trying to catch a good wave (your investment).  If one wave doesn’t go how you want it to, just wait.  There are plenty of good waves comin.

Lesson 6: Develop trust in yourself

Notice I said “develop”.  You’re not going to start off with trust in yourself, but it will come with time and more engagement with the market.  You’ll be able to see the places you can get in early.  More importantly, if you’ve developed a string of small wins (meaning you’ve done a lot of step #3 already), you can start to trust yourself to bet bigger, and thus bigger profits come.  Trust will come from learning what to look for and conditioning yourself to buy good projects low and early and sell high.

Lesson 7: The gold is in private communities.  Pay to be in them if you have to.

Private communities, private telegram groups, and private memberships are all ways to get exclusive information.  Many times people have done research in those communities for you and are trying to help everyone do well and/or find the hidden gems.

You’re going to need to learn the language.  Here’s a great article on some common phrases and what they mean.  I would also give Coinbase Learn an in-depth look.  They might seem boring now, but learn about them again when nobody else wants to learn.  If you don’t take away anything else from reading this, take this message away – be ahead of the curve.

That’s all I got for now!  Have some fun investing!

Stock and Flow 150 150 admin

Stock and Flow

In the book Happy Money, a part that stood out for me was when he simplified wealth into two simple parts – stock and flow.

Stock is basically your reserves.  Questions like > How much do you have in your bank account?  What is your net worth?  How much money do you have right now?

Flow is basically personal cash flow…which equals total cash inflow – total cash outflow.

This makes it pretty simple to understand, and I see so much information on decreasing the cash outflow, but I see very little on mainstream media about increasing cash inflow.

This doesn’t take into account the stress / negative emotions that the cash

I also see this as a good social analogy.  How many aligned friends do you have now (Stock)?

Is there a good flow of meeting new people (Flow)? And/or Is there a deeper investment in the people you already are friends with?

Level-Up Moments 150 150 admin

Level-Up Moments

Have you had moments where you felt like your life really leveled up?  Are there any patterns you see in these moments?

For every level-up moment I’ve experienced, I can trace it back to something I embraced that was new for me.  Also, through taking in new input, it helped me see old things with a new perspective.

A Few Level Up Moments

For example, a moment when I leveled up socially was during a workshop.  I had been trying to solve this problem of making money in an inspiring, heart-centered way all alone.  This wasn’t working.  Instantly after meeting people who were making a living in a heart-centered way and connecting dots, things started shifting quickly in a positive direction.  I started making passive income every month after my first book was published 3 years ago (right after the workshop) and still continue to make a liiiiiiitle every month now.  This changed how I looked at finances.  I had been serving a company to earn money before…and that means I served one entity.  But with the book I published lots of people benefitted – in a smaller way, but the volume of people I served was waaaay larger and I loved a lot more of the process. From then on I saw how the solution to this problem was more of a social problem than a how-to, step-by-step, information / mental problem.  It made me look at the old way of doing things with a new perspective.

Another level up moment is when I joined a 12-step program, and left a lot of my life up to my sponsor.  It was beautiful.  From the moment I got the sponsor, health wise and weight-wise my life was better.  I ended up losing 110 lbs from that moment.  Again…the answer for me was social.  They told me exactly what to eat and when and how to satisfy my hunger to be able to sustain it to lose weight and have a normal-sized body.

I had to embrace spending $500 on a workshop and traveling to Las Vegas. I had never spent that much money on a workshop and never traveled to Las Vegas.  That was new for me.  I had to embrace joining a 12-step program (I actually didn’t know it was a 12-step program before joining) and having a sponsor who told me what to do.  That was new as hell!

Now I’ve seem to come to a place where I’m being called to embrace more input.  Even with this blog…it’s not receiving much traffic now, but i know the steps to get it off the ground because I’ve repeatedly gotten things off the ground before.  It feels like I’m being called to get more of my work/art/ideas etc into more people’s hands, to put it out there in a much bigger way, and invite more feedback and be able to handle and process it consistently.  That will be new for me in so many areas.  It requires me to face many fears, but it seems unavoidable if I want to take my life in a direction where I want to make my living through creative expression.  It is feeling like one of those level up moments.

Back to You

What is calling you?  Is there something in your life that you want to level up?  Embrace the new as much as possible to spark a level-up moment!  New experiences or new travel destinations or new vacations or new workshops or restaurants or new habits or new trials or new input or new physical exercise or new groups to join or create.

You might find old, mental conditioning rising up in your mind to enhance your doubts and fears, but suspend the disbelief for a while.  Don’t block the energy that is leading you to new.  Follow the breadcrumbs, stay curious and follow the energy where it wants to flow on step at a time.  Keep consulting with the present moment and allow the next right action step to come through.

Voluntary Car Repossession 150 150 admin

Voluntary Car Repossession

About an hour ago, they towed my 2015 Dodge Charger from my driveway to some lot somewhere.

This car has been great to drive, but a pain paying for it and dealing with Chrysler Capital. I feel so much lighter today.

My payments were about $675 due to bad credit when I bought it. It was a decision made of desperation. I had been taking the bus before that in Dallas for a long time, and was just absolutely tired of the time it took to get from one place to another. Texas isn’t a great place to not have a car, and the test drive of this new car got me hooked.

In American Football, usually on a running play, the quarterback hands the ball to the running back to run. This is what I felt like I was doing with my paycheck. I was the quarterback and the bank that owned the car was the running back. If you need more of a visual, watch the video below and/or skip to 1:58 in the video to see this happen real time. The guy in the back is the running back, my paycheck is the football, and I am the quarterback in the front.

I just remember thinking that…every time we made that payment…either me or family who helped me out got screwed.

I literally look back and wonder how they even sold me this car. Looking at the numbers, I definitely couldn’t afford this car, which is why I put on a cosigner.

I’m taking responsibility for this bad decision and owning it, and the domino effect it caused.

Lessons learned? Avoid making decisions from desperation if possible. Look for more options. Don’t fall for the sleazy and dishonest sales tactics to get you to buy. Live within your means, but dive deep into the options of increasing your means.

Also, a big lesson I learned was to think bigger. When we signed the papers, I can remember wondering, “how can I keep up with these payments?” and trying to find a way to do that. And for the time I had the car, that’s all we did – keep up with the payments until we couldn’t keep up anymore. Now, I would think and focus on – how can I negotiate a low price and pay the car off in total at the time of purchase.

I also take responsibility for the people that sold it to me, thinking they got over on me. When they sold it, they were so happy. I could see this feeling of “gotcha!” on their face…like they were fishing and had caught one. While in the short term they profited off this individual transaction, it’s not going to look good for them in the long run. They further contribute to the bad rep car salesmen get. I can’t see myself ever looking at Chrysler Capital again in a positive light (more negative word-of-mouth). I’m reminded of the constant robot-like real humans that called me just to ask for a payment over and over and over again.

This was a source of shame, but writing about it has actually helped me. Hopefully it helps someone else!