Nathan: Scavenging the countryside in Dallas, GA

[NC]

Hi, I’m Nathan. I started selling things on eBay when I was probably 13 or 14. I had some name brand clothing I wanted to sell and got my mom to let me make a PayPal account using her name. I continued to sell things over the years and have been selling casually on eBay for about 12 years.

Back at the beginning of this year, I stumbled into the Mr. Money Mustache blog and got fired up to pursue financial independence. I decided to start selling more seriously on eBay as a way to make more money and now I think I want to do it full time.

I work from home as a systems engineer and list things on eBay when I’ve got down time. I thought I wanted to pursue a career in IT but now that I’m actually doing it, I’ve realized it isn’t all that exciting and I look forward to getting out and scavenging more than I look forward to doing 8 hours of computer work each day.

I’m currently making $45,000 at my job and my plan is to match that before I decide to give my notice. While I think I could keep a considerably large eBay store going at the same time as working full time from home, I’d like to own my own time and be able to work when I want.

I’m sharing my story to becoming financially independent on my blog at Millionaire Dojo and I like how Jay and Ryanne put it “Why wait to quit your job in 10 years when you could do it now?” I still plan to put any savings I can make from eBay into index funds so I can eventually not have to work for money at all but I think eBay will be a more enjoyable way to achieve that than my job. I think it will be a cool mixture of the typical financial independence path and the scavenger life. It would also be cool to start making a little money from my blog as well.

Currently I’ve only got 140 items in my store but I’m working to get at least 500 items up and I’m not sure how big of an inventory I will eventually have.

Another thing I’ve started is selling things at an antique booth with my dad. I haven’t been doing it for a month yet but my mom has had a booth for a few months and has averaged about $700-$800 a month. The antique booth we’re selling at is very popular so there’s a lot of shoppers in it every week.

I like having the booth because I can buy things that are more of a pain to sell on eBay like glass and large pieces of furniture. So, I think having the booth will be worth it because I’m buying things that I would avoid if I was just selling on eBay. The booth is costing me a flat fee of $90 a month plus 10% of any sells so that’s kinda high and I’ll have to see what I profit after doing it for a few months. I’m trying to only go to the booth once a week right now since it’s 20 minutes from my house and I want to save on gas.

I’m finding the majority of my items at yard sales and small thrift stores right now. The sellers at the flea market near me seem to like their things a lot more than I do. I haven’t been to any auctions yet but will have to sometime soon. I’m about an hour north of Atlanta and have only been scavenging about a 10 mile radius of my house so far. If I were to branch out to a 50 mile radius of my house, the amount of places I could buy from are innumerable.

Well, this is starting to turn into a blog post in itself so I’ll shut up now. Look forward to learning new things from you guys and I have already learned lots of things from the podcast!

– Nathan

• This topic was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by NC.

[Jay]

Hey! I think you’re the first person from the MMM community that I’ve met to jump in as you have. Usually the MMM crowd work the job for 5-15 years and put all their cash into index funds.

As you said, we realized that why work for someone else for 5-15 year and then own your time? We might not be as rich as MMM, but we feel as retired as he is because we’re doing what we enjoy.

I recorded an interview with Jim Collins about how scavenging and FIRE can mix well together:

Scavenger Life Episode 255: Jim Collins talks about How Scavengers Can Achieve Financial Independence

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

[NC]

I don’t think I’ve ever been the first to do something so that’s cool!

If I can get to where I’m making enough money to live off and save a little too, I’m all in on jumping ship from the corporate life and selling full time! I’m able to listen to podcasts all day while I work so I’ve listened to quite a few of your episodes and you’ve convinced me that scavenging is the life to pursue lol. I can’t imagine a better way to become financially independent than to work for myself on my own terms. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if I can actually make it happen but I’m motivated to try it out! I’m only 25 so time is on my side.

I actually already listened to those episodes and they’re some of my favorite content I’ve ever listened to! Thanks for all the great advice you share here!

[Jay]

Plus, you can still do IT work on a contract basis. We still do our “career jobs” from several times a year. You’ll probably be surprised that people pay much more when you dont actually need the job.

[NC]

That’s true, always a good idea to keep the income streams diversified.

[Author]

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