948 SP power-up! My participation in August #Spud4Steem by @papi.mati

Today I have made the power-up of 948.268 STEEM, increasing my total SP by 23,37% (4056.827 to 5005.095 SP). That makes me double proud of myself:

1. Every power-up is the reason to celebrate and powering up nearly 1000 STEEM, worth over 450 USD is a big investment. I hope that shows my dedication to the platform and proves that I am going to stay here for years, working hard together with the other users for the success of this platform

2. My total SP is over 5000 SP now which means that technically I joined the proud club of dolphins! Yes, I'm a dolphin now - I was not expecting to achieve this goal so fast but with enough motivation and limiting the withdraws to a minimum to be able to invest more, I did it. My vote power may be a bit lower, as I delegate almost 50% of my SP to three communities, but I'm fine with that. Delegations are another way how I am trying to contribute to the common success of this platform.

---

How to make the power-up?

1. Go to your wallet, log in
2. If you have SB|D, change it for STEEM in the inner market
3. Choose from the list next to your STEEM savings "power up" option
4. Choose how much do you want to power up and confirm the transaction

Voila! Your power up is ready!
It's a really simple and fast process.

---

Why to power up?

I believe it's good to remind all the users once again why powering-up is a healthy habit. I'm sure most of the users already know all the pros of power-ups, as it was mentioned in hundred posts before (even I was writing about it at least 5 times until now), but steemit grows rapidly, each day new users are coming, and that list might be useful for them:

• Power-ups positively impacts the value of STEEM and SBD. That brings new users and investors to the platform. In the long term it may increase the value of our savings
• having more SP, we earn more money: curation rewards are higher, we can also earn by delegating our SP to the communities we like and obviously, we get the attention of the big players who would rather up-vote users dedicated to the platform than users who treats it only as the ATM
• Our vote is getting stronger so our participation in distributing new rewards is bigger
• powered-up STEEM can be withdrawed after months or years (process takes a month though). I believe the value of STEEM will be increasing so after few years we can end with savings much higher than the cash we could get for withdrawing STEEM now

That's just very few of the reasons which should motivate you to invest in your SP. I understand that we all have some expences and some of us spend enough time on the platform to consider it full time job, so I am not recommending you investing 100% of your income (although if you want and can do it - go for it). I believe it's good to have a habit of investing regularly some percentage of the money earned on the platform. You decide if it will be 10%, 20%, 50% or different amount.

---

What's next?

It's always good to clarify what are our future plans, what do we want to achieve and when are we expecting to do it. Of course, every plan should be flexible. When I was joining the platform, I was assuming I will gather 5000 SP until the end of 2021, the opportunity to do it earlier didn't stop me in powering-up though. If because of some reason I would be unable to do it on time, that's also be fine.

I gathered 5k SP in 3 months so I believe it's realistic to assume that I will be able to double that until 2022. That will be my plan for the nearest months. In a long-term I'd love to become an Orca and I'm hoping to achieve it until 2024/2025. Of course, I will continue investing on steemit significant amount of my income, as I was doing it until now. I'm going to withdraw only as much money as it will be necessary.

---

Thank you for reading,
@papi.mati