Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

My fiances best friend sent me a really interesting article yesterday that changed the entire theme of this week's newsletter.

It was titled "Things You Need To Change if you Want To Have A Radically Different Life 10 Years From Now."

While that title is super clickbaity, the content within is pretty good. I'll provide a shortened and condensed version of it in the wisdom section below.

What it made me think about though, is how drastically my life has changed in the last ten years. I turn 31 in almost exactly one month, and as you can imagine, 20-year-old Garrett and 30-year-old Garrett would judge each other harshly.

Hell, my life is drastically different than it was three years ago, let alone TEN. Ten years ago I was:

• In debt to the equivalent of $30,000 (don't worry it got higher as I still had 1.5 years of college and a bankrupting trip to Japan still in my future)
• So uninformed and irresponsible that I forgot to pay my credit card bill of about $30 for over 7-months. I just forgot to.
• Had an arrest warrant issued over a failure to appear in court over a "failure to provide insurance" during a routine traffic stop because my insurance card was in my dorm room. (This was fixed promptly when my parents called the courthouse and provided proof of insurance. So embarrassing).

The point is I was a total mess.

And yet, I compare myself today to who I was then and there is no comparison.

A decade of growth is not something to overlook, and so it is the loose theme of this week's newsletter.

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

P.s. - Do. You. Want. A. Dedicated. Crypto. Section?

Just reply to this email and say "crypto" or "yes to crypto" or anything that gives me some feedback. Pretty please?

I now get messages multiple times a day across all of my social media from friends, family, and random people asking me about cryptocurrency.

I love answering your questions, but would it not be better if I just wrote about it more, or created a short intro course that enabled you to learn and invest for yourselves?

You tell me.

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🧠 Wisdom & 🥑Health Thoughts of The Week: How To Use A Decade

The article I was sent can be found here. It is in the form of an Instagram slideshow, but I will abbreviate, condense, and re-phrase the lessons learned below for all of us.

1) Become Self-Aware of your root motivations - The concept here being that before you can change habits that have deep psychological roots, you need to understand those roots. We become more self-aware as we age due to the knowledge + experience = wisdom equation, but spending time to identify some of these motivations will speed up the process.

2) Focus on what you can control, especially as it relates to the solutions of your problems - This is a classic taking action life lesson. If you have an issue, then take action to change it. Ask yourself, what is the one thing I can do right now to move me towards solving this problem. Then do that thing.

3) "Stop consuming toxic crap" - quoted directly from the article. Pretty basic shit here. The news, facebook, and twitter feeds are not your friend. Those are all places you should go if you want to get pissed off for no reason. Donuts, sugary drinks, and processed food are not your friend. They are cheap ways to wreck your body. Stop consuming toxic crap and in ten years you will be a literally different person.

4) The timing will never be just right - I didn't want to start a newsletter until I had 1,000 email subscribers and a way to monetize. Lol. Instead, I started this newsletter with no subscribers and over time have grown it to over 700. Still don't know how to monetize it properly, but hey, no one is perfect. This pairs well with number 2. Focus on what you can control because the timing will never be right.

5) "Do Tactile Things" - This one hit me right in the feels. "Doing tactile things...is how you make sure you're actually creating a life you want vs. creating the image of the life you want. Oof, that is powerful.

• Cook vs order out
• Read a physical book vs digital
• Go outside you vampire

This habit hits home for me, and I can imagine the impact it will have over the course of ten years. Covid fucked us all up in ways we aren't yet aware of, and part of that, I think, has to do with habitual seclusion due to forced lockdown.

6) If you're busy you're doing it wrong - Busy people are liars that can't manage their time properly. Busy people make excuses about how they don't have time. It's not that they don't have time, it's that they aren't prioritizing things well. Work smart and hard, not just hard. Prioritize what is actually important to you. Your family, friends, etc. over putting in extra hours at work. Prioritize your health.

7) Take action on long-term results, not short-term desires - When you decide what to eat today, instead of asking yourself "what sounds good?" and instead ask yourself "what will give me energy for the rest of the day?"

Going for a walk may not seem convenient in the short-term, but it will clear your head, strengthen your body, and force you to slow down. Remember, busy people, are lying to themselves. Don't be like that.

Make decisions for future you, not present you.

8) You're going to die. Choose goals accordingly - This is the classic "legacy" advice. What do you want to be remembered for? I bet it isn't perfect attendance to work, or "most slices of pizza consumed in one sitting."

Do things that you want to be remembered for. The easiest of which is spending quality time with your loved ones. It means more to them than you realize.

9) Stop judging people you don't like - When you spend time gossiping about, judging, or even just thinking about how someone did something you disagree with, you get them free real estate in your mind.

That is bad. You're not perfect. When you spend time giving people you don't like the time of day, you waste that time. That is time you could have spent loving on your kid. Or your cat. Whatever floats your boat. That is time you could have spent learning, building, or adding value.

On the flipside, give zero f*cks to what other people think of you. Especially when you are being your authentic self. That's why number 1. on this list is number 1.

Figure out who you are, what motivates you, and what you're passionate about. Then BE that person. Your future self literally depends on it.

💲 Wealth Thought of The Week: Other Uses of BlockFi

I've mentioned the company BlockFi many times as it pertains to Crypto. This week, though, I am going to talk about how some of my friends are using BlockFi to pay some of their bills each month.

To save us all time I am going to try to explain all of this in the fewest amount of words.

You can deposit the following crypto assets into blockfi to earn interest

I want you to focus your attention on GUSD and USDC. These two coins are stablecoins. They are pegged to the US Dollar and earn a whopping 8.6% APY that compounds monthly. This is currently something like 30x more interest earned than "high-interest savings accounts."

Well, two of my close friends realized that if they put their savings into USDC or GUSD they would be earning over $500 a month. There are also no rules that say you can't pull that interest earned out of the account and back to US Dollars.

So that is what they do. COVID took a nasty toll on their remote business, and so they are supplementing their monthly income with the interest they earn from BlockFi.

But here is another neat trick. On BlockFi you can choose to have all of your interest accounts pay the total interest-earning into a singular asset type. What does that mean?

It means:

• Your Bitcoin can earn you Ethereum
• Your Bitcoin can Ethereum could earn you USDC

This is really powerful.

I used this feature for a while to have all of my Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC earn me more Ethereum. This was back when I was accumulating as much ETH as possible in preparation for ETH2 staking.

There are really quite a lot of ways you can use this feature.

For example:

• Saving for a house downpayment? Have all your interest be in USDC
• Want to get exposure to a new coin but don't want to buy it? Have your interest earned be in that coin (limited to the list above).
• Need to build an emergency fund? Switch your interest earned to USDC for a few months

This is just a sliver of the power of cryptocurrency and the blockchain.

BlockFi also recently opened their waitlist for their forthcoming credit card that earns an unlimited 1.5% bitcoin instead of cashback. The Bitcoin you earn goes into a bitcoin interest account that earns 6% APY currently.

Quote of the week:

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources:

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

BlockFi - Earn interest on your crypto. Currently, you can earn 6% interest on BTC, 5.25% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC.

Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

I've earned thousands of dollars (in crypto) using blockfi the last few years.