1ST POST - ZERO TO HERO MY INVESTMENT JOURNEY

1ST POST - ZERO TO HERO MY INVESTMENT JOURNEY
Hello everyone,
I'm Acun. I'm a stock and crypto investor living in Türkiye. I used Steemit for a while and started sharing my cats' posts. Then, I don't know why, but I stopped. Previously, as far as I know, Steemit had seen a significant decline in its number of users worldwide. Then, if I'm not mistaken, I saw that Justin Sun had acquired Steem and integrated it with Tron. I recently decided to rejoin Steemit.
A brief introduction to myself:
I entered the crypto world in late 2017. At the time, I started investing in Bitcoin with the minimum wage I earned at my job. But then, unfortunately, I started trading spot and leveraged. I was hoping to earn money by purchasing Telegram signal group memberships with Bitcoin. As the years passed and my experience and knowledge continued to grow, I realized how big a mistake I made. If I were holding the bitcoins I gave to those signal groups right now, I would not have lost money with leveraged transactions and those bitcoins would have appreciated tremendously. :(
Anyway, I look at these losses as experience. A famous stockbroker has a great saying: "The money you lose in the stock market is your education." I find it true.
There's also another great saying: "If I had the wisdom I have now, I wouldn't have made these mistakes, but if I hadn't made these mistakes, I wouldn't have the wisdom I have now." This is also very true...
After going through certain periods of gaining experience and knowledge in crypto, in 2022, I came across a Turkish YouTuber's dividend retirement videos by investing in long-term dividend stocks in the stock market. Thanks to this YouTuber, I learned the importance of dividend investing and how it can be a great investment to financially secure ourselves in the future. Or rather, I gained awareness.
Starting in 2022, I started investing in funds and dividend-paying stocks on the Turkish stock exchange. I lost my father that same year. 2022 is the year I gained awareness about long-term investing. It was good in some ways, but it was one of the worst years of my life because I lost my father. :(
In 2020, I lost 60% of my BTC, which I had managed to accumulate little by little on minimum wage, in leveraged trading. Then, between 2020 and 2021, I invested the remaining $400 in masternode coins, increasing it to $2,000. I then increased this to $14,000 with two exchange-traded coins, which I then sold at a loss of about $7,000. In 2021, I started investing in DEFI for the first time with this money and learned about DEFI that year. But now I really laugh at myself back then. Because I still had no knowledge of financial literacy. And because I was a crypto bull and was earning high staking returns from DEFI, I was deluded into believing I had achieved financial independence. I was in it. :) I didn't know what market cycles were. It was as if I was living in a mindset where I always thought those high returns would come. :)
And when I lost most of that money again in 2022 and beyond, I realized that I didn't actually know anything back then and had been living an illusion. And after encountering the dividend retirement videos I mentioned in 2022, I began long-term investing in the Turkish stock market and continuously improving my financial literacy. I also realized that this process of self-improvement, learning, and acquiring knowledge isn't short-lived, but a lifelong process. I've been constantly improving myself ever since.
After a period of digging and losing in crypto, I entered the US stock market in 2024. I did this by selling my BNB, which I'd accumulated at an average of $284, for more than double the amount. I withdrew some of it and invested around $3,000 in US stock market options ETFs. I diversified these ETFs and created a portfolio by selecting various ETFs offering monthly and weekly payments, including options on the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones indices, as well as ETFs offering individual stock options. Currently, I'm growing my ETF portfolio by simply reinvesting the monthly and weekly dividends received, without making any additional purchases in these ETFs.
While I follow this strategy in the US stock market, in Turkey, I'm diverting more than 50% of my salary into funds and Turkish dividend stocks. In fact, I did this before I became unemployed a few months ago. I've been unemployed for four months now, but in addition to the government-provided unemployment benefit of 40% of the minimum wage for four months, my money market fund investments are generating returns that are close to the minimum wage. I also invest the dividend yields from my Turkish dividend-bearing stocks, excluding money market funds, without withdrawing them. I also have Turkish stock funds in my portfolio.
Ultimately, I still haven't achieved financial independence. And after this period of unemployment ends, I might find myself working a minimum wage job again. But I've come a long way since I started investing regularly in 2023.
My portfolio has grown significantly since then, and it continues to do so.




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