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Hello.
I’ve been around on and off for a while, and am a avid listener to the podcast. My husband Dave and I have danced around working for ourselves and working for others for years. I have sold on eBay on and off since about 2005, but started to list more seriously in 2015. Since then, eBay has provided a really nice side income for us and has pulled us out of several would-be financial crises in that time. Right now my husband works for a local brewery and does computer work and uber/lyft on the side. The uber/lyft makes him significantly more money than his day job, and we are working towards him quitting and doing uber/lyft and his computer work only while I do ebay only.
We have three kids, aged 22, 11 and 7 who keep me busy and so it is hard to give as much time to listing as I would like to. But what Dave and I value more than anything else is being together. We were late in life to find one another and know that life is short and want as many moments together as we can have.
We are not financially in a great spot and are definitely that “typical” American family that lives paycheck to paycheck. However, we are hard workers, we are creative and we are smart. We are both pretty employable people and COULD go get work if we needed to if this doesn’t work. I have crunched numbers backwards and forwards and with the little paycheck he gets after we pay an insane amount for health insurance (healthcare.gov shows we can buy BETTER insurance for less if we buy it ourselves) we will be better off running the show ourselves.
So, we have been putting the uber/lyft money that we can aside to save up and have a goal of 3 months expenses. When that is saved up, he is quitting and going full time on uber/lyft while I go full time on eBay. We are hoping for March or April.
Its slow going to get my store back up and going to where it needs to be. I am back up to 600ish items now. I was up to about 800 before I had a bunch of medical stuff come up and had to stop listing for several months. My sales are SLOW but getting better as I get more listed.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to keep track of our process in this new step in our journey towards owning our own time. I’m not sure if it will be interesting for anyone else, but I figured maybe it would be. Thanks for reading and wish us luck! -
Glad you came back. There are several other people who have popped back in after some life changes, and who are now getting their store back up and running.
what Dave and I value more than anything else is being together. We were late in life to find one another and know that life is short and want as many moments together as we can have.
This is a super important motivator. We look at our bills and what we want. We always choose to have a less fancy life so we can have more time together. These are the moments we’ll remember. Not that I always had a new car. It’s fun to see life s a financial puzzle and solve it in a scavenger way.
And I always recommend people check out http://healthcare.gov. As long as the program still exists, it’s actually quite affordable to buy private insurance yourself. No insurance is actually “free” at your job. Employers just build it into people’s pay.
If you guys are hardworking and creative (and keep your living costs low), I see no reason why you cant figure it out 🙂
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Yep. Thanks Jay.
We are pretty frugal people. No cable, we don’t eat out, shop at the thrift for clothes and household things. Neither of us are shoppers. We buy groceries at the grocery outlet and cook lots from scratch.
We do have a car payment now b/c Dave needed a good car to drive for uber/lyft and our old beater wouldn’t have been approved. But uber/lyft cover the $200 a month car payment in our budget.
Yes, we are paying over $750 a MONTH out of Dave’s paycheck to insure the 5 of us. Insanity. A slightly better plan through healthcare.gov *while it still exists* will cost us $600.I laugh often about the things you and Ryanne talk about doing to save money b/c we do lots of them too. Although we do pay too much for our cell phone bill through ATT because we have so many lines used by so many different people that it’ a mess I haven’t tackled dealing with yet.
Anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence.-
Yeah, the new car is a business tool since he drives for Lyft. It’s not just a nice thing to have.
$600/month for healthcare insurance for five people seems pretty reasonable. Not cheap for sure, but that’s about $120 for each person.
As long as you know where you’re money goes and aways talk about it, you shouldn’t find yourself in a mystery hole of financial confusion.
Just curious: do you guys talk to your kids about money?
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yes its a work tool. Also, we literally did research to find the cheapest car with the best MPG and bought it…without regard o ANYTHING else about it. it gets 30-50 MPG and at a year old it was just over 10k so it won.
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Just for a point of reference, our numbers show that in order to be paying all of our expenses (business and personal) and putting a small amount in savings for if things go sideways we need to bring in about $6000 gross a month. Which, of course, works out to ABOUT $200 a day in combined income. This seems to do-able not to just do it.
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Jay,
We do talk a lot with our kids about money. Currently they want to go to the American girl store to buy a new doll each, so we have two jars on the entry table in our house. One for that trip to American girl and the other for sending Masai girls to School I’m Kenya. We sponsor a family in a small Masai village and sending a girl to school makes a significant difference in their lives. We have a friend who grew up in the village and she helps us get money to our sponsor family. Anyway…when my kids earn money, half goes in each jar. One half to help others, one half to save for fun. They make money mostly by selling things they don’t want or need anymore on Facebook to eBay. Sometimes they return cans and bottles. It works for us. Everyone feels good about helping others AND saving up for something we want. It also helps the girls learn about selling what you don’t want so you can afford what you DO want. -
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Hey Ice Queen! You sound pretty solid in your goals! Stick with the plan! My Husband and I are doing this full time (well, as much time as we really want). We are both in our late 50’s with small pensions from our jobs, but retired early after crunching our numbers and said to ourselves we could do this! We couldn’t have retired early without having a side hustle for sure. My husband retired first and I was still working full-time and listing and taking pictures etc. After I realized that we were making more on ebay than my pay check ( Postmaster for Canada Post) I took an early retirement – this reduced my Post Office pension – but we didn’t care.
I found for ourselves we have to have a bit of a loose routine for the business. Our day goes something like this.
Wake up when we are done sleeping.(Whenever)
After our coffee etc, we go to our shop/office and wrap the previous days sales.
Make shipping labels, we take photos, I do about 10 listings a day, my husband get the items ready for the next day’s listings and on and on we go.
We are to the point that we put in approx 3-5 hours 6 days a week.
The ebay business can go on autopilot for awhile without us, but we can’t let it go too long without our input. We have to continually list etc.
It’s a very powerful feeling when you own your own time and are confidant enough to not be scared. Good luck to you guys! -
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