Go to steemd.com/@tradergurl and it will show you some important stats. Alternatively, steemnow.com/@tradergurl
If you don't claim it will just sit there asking you to claim it, as far as I know.
Powering down weakens your vote value/how much you give people when you upvote them and how much you can earn in curation rewards, it takes thirteen weeks to power down, dividing your steem power into thirteen chunks and making it liquid steem, which then you can sell for fiat money on exchanges.
Savings really has no purpose since it's not paying any interest.
Vests are the more complicated version of Steem Power. When you get a million vests, you graduate from red fish to minnow (I resteemed a blog from @marionbowes explaining this if you want to go look for it, earlier this week).
The stats sites I mentioned will tell you your current vote power and how long until it replenishes. Basically you don't want to bring it much below 80%.
Steem dollars used to be tethered to a US dollar, which is why payouts treat them as such. It's a bonus to us that they left it that way.
If your goal is to power up, 50/50 reward is better when SBD is worth more than Steem, because then you can buy more Steem with the SBD than you would have gotten in rewards.
If you decline, you get no rewards even if people upvote you.
Upvoting your own posts is not prohibited, but generally frowned upon. Less so if you are new, or do it only occasionally.
If you mean Steem, that is above Steem Power in your wallet, they are just the spendable version of Steem Power. It's the same, but Steem Power is just locked away and would take thirteen weeks to get it all out. We are getting a little bit now in author rewards (see the post I linked explaining why), or you can buy some in the market with SBD, or you can power down.
Your delegated power is "on loan" Steem Power to help new people have bigger votes/curation. It stops once you reach a certain level (mine stopped when I had 200 sp of my own). You can also get delegated power from nice people who want to help you out, contests, and by buying some in places like Blocktrades.
Your account value is based on SBD, liquid Steem, and Steem Power in your wallet.
wow, thanks for the long reply ! I understand it a bit better now, thanks, and thanks for the link. I did say I wasn't asking anyone to answer, but I'm glad you did :-)
No worries. It's a learning curve for sure!
to be honest once I build up any money I'll give it to a charity on here, if such a thing exists ? Am sure there are plenty of people living on $s a day that could use it more than me. I'd like to get my reputation score up but that's it, people associate low rep with 'not worth reading' unfortunately :-(
There are always fundraisers and such around; you can donate to a one time fundraiser, plant trees, fund schools in developing nations - those are just a couple that I know about. :)
thank you, will need to have a look. I'm currently worth $0.51 so won't be bailing out any third world economies just yet... but nice to know there are some worthy causes on here worth donating to.