Scavenger Life

Trash to Cash. A podcast about making a living on eBay.

Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA


We last interviewed Mark Tew in 2016. Since we last spoke, Mark quit his job as a CPA, opened his own tax accounting business, sold his house, and moved his family to Nicaragua. He’s also had learned a lot more about doing taxes for eBay and Amazon sellers since they are his main client base. We dig deeper into doing taxes as resellers and best practices to make tax season much easier.

Website: https://notyourdadscpa.com/
eBook: https://notyourdadscpa.com/reseller-finance/
Email: mark@notyourdadscpa.com

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Scavenger Life Episode 314: Selling on eBay while in the Military

Every so often, we record conversations with other sellers. You can find them all here. How do we pick who we speak with? It’s always sellers who are scavenging and selling a little differently than we are or living a different lifestyle. It’s fun for us to learn new things or just help celebrate how scavenging can take different forms. We also look for people who know what they’re doing is unique and are proud of their accomplishments.

This recording is with Flavio, who is an active member of the US military. On top of his daily duties of safeguarding our country, he also scavenges and sells on eBay. Since he lives on base, he has to really manage his inventory in order to pass inspections. He’s frugal and has a strong vision for how he wants to spend his money to build his future. What’s most interesting is hearing how he tries to share this perspective with the men under his leadership, usually young recruits who blow all their cash on short-lived luxuries.

Flavio was fun to speak with and I wish I was as together as he was at his age. He’ll be here in the comments if you have any questions. Are any of you active military? Could you have imagined selling on eBay while serving?

Hope you had a good week.

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Scavenger Life Episode 309: Scrapping and Parting – Interview w/ Eric in Ottawa Canada


In true scavenger style, Eric from Ottawa Canada, is making ends meet by sourcing all his inventory for free, parting it out and then making money scrapping the rest. He’s the ultimate recycler. Check out his videos on Youtube, you can ride along with him as he scraps and parts. Also check out his eBay store for, some great parted out items (love his professional photos too). Thanks for chatting with us Eric!

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Scavenger Life Episode 284: Where did you learn about money?

James Collins is a good friend of ours. He’s also one of the well-known bloggers who focuses on Financial Independence aka “early retirement”. (If you haven’t read his series on the stock market, do so now). In our first conversation, Jim helped us understand how scavengers can leverage even small amounts of extra money selling old shoes into real negotiation power. Being able to tell your boss you might want to leave can push your boss to value you more and get you a raise. Or because we sell enough old shoes, scavenging has let us lead completely independent lives.

Jim had an idea for our second conversation: Where did you learn about money? Did someone teach you, or did you just learn the good/bad money habits of the people you grew up with? Do you have good habits with money now? If so, how did you learn these new habits? If not, how do you change?

I know I had to unlearn a lot of poor habits of how to deal with money. Even though I was thrifty in many ways, I also lacked a lot of the knowledge of what to do with money once I had it saved…so I would eventually just spend it. Until I learned to see money as a tool, I was always stuck in a hamster wheel. We can sell all the old shoes on eBay we want, but it won’t make a real difference in our lives till we know how to use that money wisely.

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