Can it be done?

Setting goals is the ultimate way to accomplish the things you want to achieve in life. I set my goal three years ago. My goal was (and is) to quit working before I reach the age of fifty. At least I don't want to work for other people anymore. I want to generate my own income and become totally free to do anything I like, anywhere I want.

It started during a summer holiday in 2014, where I met Henk. Henk stopped working a long time ago and travels across Europe six months per year.
The way he did it sounds quite easy, but it took him twenty years to achieve it.

Henk had a nice job, but not the kind that would make him rich. So he decided to manage his money.
He moved all the money he did not need, to all kinds of investments. Mostly in the stock markets. Because he did not have time to trade, he used different funds.
Then all he had to do, was to stay focused on his goal. To do that he managed his income. Every time he wanted to spend money on himself, he asked himself the same questions:
'Do I really want to have it?'
'Do I need it'?
'Can I get it at a better price somewhere else?'
Every Penny he spend on anything else than his goal was well considered, because that penny delayed his goal.

His discipline stuck with me and I soon began making some moves myself.
At first I calculated exactly what I needed to spend on my fixed charges and how much money I needed to do other things. The rest of my income I would spend on achieving my goal.

At first I payed off some of my mortgage, because the first and most important advice Henk gave me, was to get rid of all debt as soon as possible. But I realized that it would take me too long to achieve it.
From that moment on, I started to move money into the stock markets. I started trading (with leverage) and soon lost everything I put in it.
Not a good idea (for me). It made me feel stressfull. My eyes were glued to the screen the entire day and every move in the markets made me feel nervous. I needed another approach.

I began following certain people on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and enriched myself as much as possible about different investing opportunities.

I began investing in silver and gold. I learned that these two assets (especially silver) are heavily undervalued and might jump to extreme heights in the future.
But I also learned that I needed to deversify, so I moved a part of my money in carefully chosen shares on the stock markets.
This time I did not trade, but I hold them for the longer term.

In the same time I also started to get more interested in Bitcoin. I heard about it long before, but I was never really into it.
The first time I heard about Bitcoin, the price was not even 5 USD. I will not punish myself by wishing I bought it way back then. There was no way I could have ever known it would be so huge. And besides that, at that time I did not even know how to buy Bitcoin. And mining was (still is) way too complicated (read technical) for me.

I bought my first Bitcoin for around 250 Euro. It was part of my deversified portfolio, so every month I accumulated a little bit more. In the mean time the price moved up every single month.
Thanks to my research, I soon discovered other cryptocurrencies. I opened an account on an exchange and started trading altcoins with my Bitcoins. I was diversifying between different cryptocurrencies, but always kept the largest percentage in Bitcoin itself.
At that time Litecoin was my favorite altcoin and I still own most of them.

I did this for more than two years and every month my portfolio grew a little bit more. In the mean time I kept teaching myself about investment opportunities and trading.
In March of this year I heard Jeff Berwick of the Dollar Vigilante talk about Steemit. I looked into it and immediately created an account.
It looked very interesting to me, so I started posting some of my pictures there and it worked. I made some money.
I accumulated some Steem coins to power up my account and the price moved up and up and up.
Not hard to imagine that I was very excited and up until this day, I still am.

I am planning on doing a lot more here on Steemit. In my spare time I like to make pictures and Steemit gives me the opportunity to make some money with it. That money I can use to buy better equipment, so I can make better pictures in the future and maybe make even a little bit more money. Money I can use to travel and make pictures on other places in the world, which I can share here also.
This is already starting to sound like my goal. Stop working and do the things I like. Making some money on the side.

My ultimate goal is not te become rich, but to live rich, long before I reach my retirement age. Can it be done? We'll see, but I have all the confidence in it.

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Do you want to know little bit more about me? Check my introduction post:
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@bart2305/let-me-say