I got into mining August 2017.  After researching and working on a business model, I found the margins were too small for me to make it a successful business.  I convinced my wife that this will be a hobby.  I bought a used Bitmain S3 and built a multi-GPU rig.  The plan was to reinvest the mined coins.

By December 2017, I mined enough coins to start a Zencash Secure node https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2047435.0.  Since January 2018, I have been mining and exchanging to Solaris (XLR) coins in order to start a masternode https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1831629.0.  I have been experimenting with staking XLR in an Unbuntu wallet.  Recently I found that Luxcoin (LUX) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2422372 that is profitable to mine and also supports staking.

Here is the interesting part, 1/3 of my weekly coin acquisition comes from the wallets, and 2/3 from the CPU/GPU miners.  Coins that I mined and HODL are at their Oct 2017 price.