I appreciate the responses. I still am having trouble wrapping my head around it.

The way I understand it is that, you must invest into this currency for it to have any real worth for you. And effectively, your fiat investment, is your proof of work. Then, your proof of stake takes over and you are rewarded for that stake through forging. However, if you can't invest, and have 4 NXT like me, than the estimation timer for forging a block is 70000+ days!! I'll be dead by that time, and probably my children as well...lol. The NXT wiki spells it out best, "The amount of coin you can earn is dependent upon the number of coins you hold, the total number of coins "active" on the network, and the transaction fees included in blocks on the blockchain."