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Goals are good to have they keep us grounded, determined, and we get a sense of reward when we accomplish them. Some of us do EBay as a hobby and that in itself is rewarding. Yet, EBay as different and flexible as it is from a traditional 9-5 job sometimes still occupies our time with less than enjoyable tasks. (See “The Inbetween Work” Ep. 408) So having a goal, a purpose, a milestone to reach at, it gives us direction. Sometimes EBay can feel monotonous this occurs when we don’t have a specific goal we just pop into shops here and there or sit in the auction house chatting it up with the grumpy old man who says “tough sh** kid” when he outbids you.
So if Ebay is feeling like a grind. A sweatshop. Or you’re starting to get bored and fall off the wagon. Make some goals. Monetary, task-oriented, or curiosity driven. See if you can list X amount of items in X amount of days. See if you can systemize your spreadsheets. See if you can save X amount of profits.
All in all, just find your purpose (your “in order to”). Because let’s face it we’re not gonna do EBay forever. No one here is planning on working forever.
Just some random thoughts. My why: to raise capital for other investments.
What’s your why?
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Mainly real estate I like the asset class more than stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc. There’s an actual utility to the asset I can physically touch it and live in it. I can affect its price and understand its market on a very small scale. Versus say a stock.
Also other business ideas. I have a couple of ideas some more practical than others. Either way the starting point always comes back to real estate. It’s simply the easiest safest method for building wealth with leverage. (much easier to get a loan on an apartment complex than an idea).
I’ve saved my minimum to purchase a multi-family property and house hack with my family. However, I feel a correction coming on so I have a very high hurdle rate (floor for % based return(safety net built into the numbers to compensate for poor performance)). Due to this it just hasn’t worked for me yet because the market is still very pricey so cap rates are 3-5% if you’re lucky. I’m unwilling to accept risk which is too high. Something has to give. My risk tolerance or the market or my strategy.
As I see it I’m just building up more capital as a safety net. Time in the market beats timing the market and all that. Just too risk-averse to get in right now.
I know you just bought that building, so that’s interesting. I’d be interested to see how that does with the apartment upstairs and storefront downstairs, maybe a co-working space idk. You probably just started the gentrification for your main street.
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Agree completely. We feel better investing in local real estate where we feel we can have an affect on the community. We definitely hope we can kick off an improvement of Main Street by showing other building owners that can charge more rent if they upgrade their spaces.
We’ve seen real estate prices rise by 30% even in our poor little area. I’d keep saving cash till the nest correction. Then everything on sale 🙂
We couldnt have started buying property without selling on eBay.
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My why has always been about the $$$, but it does other things for me:
-it’s a fun hobby
-I like going to thrift stores, auctions, garage sales, etc. anyways – might as well make some $ doing it
-it’s low risk gamblingAs I plan to go full-time in the next year, yes, it will be about living as well – however, it still holds the same “why” for the reasons I do it instead of making $ doing something else.
Time to me is the most important asset – the more $ I make, the more free time I can buy now, or in the future. I also like to control my time – to choose what I want to do when I want to do it is the biggest luxury you can have in life. That is my biggest “Why” I do it…TIME
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Jay this is one point I want to explore with you. Seems like you don’t value those things cars, big house, etc. However, is it because you tie it to keeping up with the Joneses? Or is it because theres more cost than value. I like cars, I like nice houses however when I convert that 750k into time how many years is that really costing me? How will those years depreciate? Will I ever get this time back to spend with my newborn?
Seems like you come across as looking down on the folks who have fancy possessions. Is it because you enjoy a spartan life? Or do you assume they are irresponsibly spending their money?
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I’m sorry if it comes across that Im judging people. Not my intent.
I’m not making a moral judgement, but living large doesn’t work as a good strategy if you need cash for other investments. We also like low risk, so spending big on luxuries and trying to invest in real estate would be very risky. Currently the economy could tank, and we know we’re covered.
No way we could have just bought and renovated a building if we needed to pay $1k/month for two new cars. Or had a bigger house with a bigger mortgage. Or ate out all the time. Or had a nice fishing boat.
If people have the money to live a high life and do the things they want, then more power to them. We don’t have that luxury. We can afford anything, but we cant afford everything.
We’ve all grown up with the signals that fancy stuff is the norm. Luxuriate all day, every day. Seems pretty nuts. Luxuries are special and feel good when they’re rare. I’ve been around enough rich people to know how ungrateful and unhappy they can be when luxury is just their daily life.
I don’t feel like we live a spartan lifestyle at all! I drive a great, reliable pickup truck that I could care less if it gets a scratch/dent. We live in a modest 1200 sq ft home that we renovated just the way we wanted (and its our forever home). I dress in clothes that make me happy because they’re so practical. And like Inglewood said, we own our time so I might as well be a multi-millionaire. Cant remember the last time I was stressed about having to wake up and work for someone else. Everyday is whatever we want to do.
But again, we wouldnt own our time if we needed to work for someone else to pay for luxuries.
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I can’t answer for Jay, but in my opinion I like “value”. For example, I bought a Honda Civic a few years ago – my first new car. I worked with a bunch of people who drive Mercedes, BMW, and other luxury cars and they would not stop “bullying” me about my choice of car, and previous cars.
My car was 1/3, or less, the price of their cars. In my opinion, a Honda Civic or a BMW do the same thing for the most part – they are to get you from point A to B. Also, the Civic has cheaper parts, cheaper maintenance, people/mechanics have experience working on them as they are popular, and they last just as long doing the same function.
I find the same thing with smart phones – I don’t have a top of the line Apple or Samsung phone – I have a top of the line BlackBerry – does all the same things I want it to do, for 1/4 the price. People mock my phone, but it does the same thing, runs the same OS as a Samsung, and I saved $800.
“Stuff” doesn’t bring me happiness – I find that simple experiences, and the time to do things is valuable to me.
Frugal is also cool to me – I have high respect for people who can save money doing easy things, or are happy having value items instead of luxury stuff. I find also a lot of people who value “things” are fake – you can hide your real “wealth” behind debt – you can’t hide how much free time you have – and when the credit options run out, the fake people fall pretty fast…
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I realize we’re a forum of people buying and selling stuff, but at the same time stuff is just…stuff. We see the huge quantity of it when we go to estate sales, thrift stores, auctions, etc,. There’s plenty of it out there. After seeing so much of it all of the time, it almost becomes meaningless, whether it’s “fancy” or not. It’s just stuff.
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I’ve said it before that attending estate auctions is a philosophical experience. We see a person’s lifetime possessions sold off in a matter of several hours. All that work of making money and collecting things just divided up and sold for pennies on the dollar.
Like you said, its all just stuff.
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Not at all. No worries. I just like the conversation. Stay at home dad so I haven’t spoken to a human all day.
However, whenever you ask someone who missed the work lotto pool because they didn’t go to work that day. They’ll most likely say no I’m good just the way I am. Or if you ask Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe as did some news article I remember reading for school he said something to the effect of who wants to be famous. I feel like there could be some confirmation bias. I too love the modest life I live but I’d be naive to think I wouldn’t enjoy the status, luxuries, and comfort money can buy. More so the comfort in the form of time.
Although…I do think all scavengers are cut from a similar cloth so we all enjoy the hard-earned rewards EBay brings us. Even if we’re not pulling in billions a year we all feel like the CEO of our stores. Speaking as former military being an EBayer has given me the most job satisfaction.
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I guess my why is very similar to most of the other answers, it gives me the freedom to do what I want pretty much when I want.
We live well for less, we own both cars, own our house, have no debt and have solar panels so our electric bills are a few bucks a month. When you no longer have any serious bills it is a lot easier to live well for less.
Just remember, when you have little cash the banks CHARGE you to keep it with them, but when you have a lot of cash banks PAY you to keep it with them… -
The biggest luxury for me is being debt free. Life is about making choices and I choose not to take on consumer debt, particularly for luxuries.
I much prefer to drive or own something that is older or less glamorous in exchange for being debt free.
It really feels different.. at least to me.
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I guess I have multiple “whys”
1. Ebay is my safety net if my day job ends again
2. Ebay as a part time gig made up the difference as my new day job was a 12% pay cut from my last job (but way less hours and was more safe).
3. Ebay allows me to not have to manage a strict budget. If we need something, we get it. We can debate the “wants”, but it would suck to have to debate the “needs”.
4. I just plain like doing it! The dream is to do what you love, and finding treasure where others see trash is what I love. It’s been that way with my hobbies well before I was selling on ebay. I think it was because I was a destructive delinquent child and I am subconsciously repenting. Lol! -
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I love this thread.
For us, it was independence. Most of our current culture is developed around being an employee. Succeeding in school is mostly about how to follow directions and please the teacher. That continues in most college classes as well. And many of those classes are designed to teach people how to get a high paying job that will also come with a 60-80 hour work week. Do that for 40 years, so that when you old and worn out and have little family relations from the grind you just went through, you can retire.
Yeah…no. That isn’t for us. It works for many people, and that is fine for them.
I fell right into that trap. Being good at all those skills put me right on that path. The good news was, I married above my station to someone who thinks and sees life differently. So the path changed.
Now it is about maintaining our own life our way. When we want to see family, we do. When we want to take a day off, we do. We still bust our butts at this (we are the same in that regard), but WE decide. And WE get to keep the fruits of OUR labor, and WE get to decide who to spend that money on. And WE get to decide what the business does next.
And since we are in charge of the ship, we know that we can weather the storm. We don’t fear the storm and what that will do to our job. We EXPECT the storm (cause there is always one coming) and we plan for it and we know that we will navigate through it.
Running your own ship provides a much different perspective on life.
Like many others here, our next investment will be in either a business or real estate. We are really getting close to pulling the trigger. Still more work and capital to build, but eBay is but one leg we plan to build on.
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T-Satt,
This is great post. You were in the trap and came out on the other side to control your own time and destiny. You are doing it the way you want and not what THE MAN wants. Good for you!
Mark
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@MarkS: Thanks. I’m not sure “control” is a good word though. Surfing more like it. Or keep with the captain of our ship theme.
There are lots of waves that are always coming at you, but also winds that you can use to your advantage, and stars to guide you. Roiling waters beneath you, but keeping to a goal in sight, use good tools to navigate yourself toward your goal.
You can’t control everything, but you can control yourself.
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@T-Satt – I like your analogy that we have this “path” pounded in our minds of what life is supposed to be and the path we are supposed to take since we start going to school and through life. There are so many people in my life that keep telling me that there is only one path to take, and they can’t accept that options exist.
Somehow, society equates success to just financial success. No matter what you have to go through day to day, as long as you make lots of money and have lots of stuff, you are successful.
In my family, the most financially successful relatives all had unsuccessful marriages, bad health, and short lives. Some didn’t reach retirement. Some of their kids barely know anything about them as they were at work or travelling for work all the time. People talk about how “successful” they were all the time – even if they died at 60 – and still hold them in high regard. I don’t understand it.
When I tell people I’m not pursuing another Engineering job, they all think I’m crazy. When I tell people I’m moving to a rural area with nothing go on they think I’m crazy. When I tell people I’ll make money doing several things (eBay, contract gigs, odd jobs, renting property) they also think I’m crazy.
I don’t understand what is crazy about wanting a huge property for 1/10th the price of a small condo unit in the city. I don’t understand why they can’t understand if my cost of living is 1/5th what it is in a major city, then I can easily get buy on 1/2 the amount of money. I don’t understand when I tell them that I can get up when I want, go to work in my underwear, that they expect me to get a corporate job where I sit in traffic for a couple hours a day, and my time is owned.
It’s hard to convert some people to thinking there is other ways to live life other then begging for a job, punching a clock 40+ hours a week, and desperately trying to find any piece of tiny real estate you can.
It’s just a constant challenge to convince those around me, and those who do care about me, that I’m doing the right thing for me, and that everything will be OK. In fact it will be better than OK – it will be what I want.
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I feel like I’m in a punk rock forum discussing the degradation of the consumer lifestyle 🙂
One thing I’m glad I learned early on was to resist seeking validation from other people. Appreciate people and their opinions, but live in a way that maybe only you know is right for you. That’s a big leap for many of us.
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!Inglewood: Amen brother!
Hike Your Own Hike. Best line I have learned in my hiking journey. You Do You.
If we were all the same, life would be boring. I love that on YouTube I can go down rabbit holes of subcultures and see other ways of being. It expands the mind and lets in new possibilities. I truly know that if I had to, and was single :-), I could live my life from a van, needing very little, making money online and at poker. Traveling the country, chasing good weather, and needing very little.
Just that knowledge ALONE is worth trying new things.
Seek Discomfort. It is how you grow.
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and to echo what others have said. we’re not against fancy stuff, it’s just that for most people buying fancy stuff means sacrificing your time to work for someone to buy fancy stuff. or to buy fancy stuff instead of saving for when you don’t have your job or investing in something else.
do i want a fancy electric car, yes, yes i do. but the cost of a Tesla is the same as (or close to) renovating a building. which i’m doing instead. that’s my choice.
was talking to a friend yestersay whose stepdad is, apparently, doing very well in business. he bought a big ass boat for 350k. $350,000! i was like, wow they should invest in property here instead, that money would go so far in changing our town. but rich people want to buy boats, so they can.
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@ryanne: Wow. Only think I know about boats. I hear a lot of people say “The two best days owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.”
But, you guys are doing what most people DON’T do. You buy assets. You buy things that go UP in value. Cars and boats go DOWN in value (unless they are collectibles), and cost money to maintain (which are costs you CAN’T use to reduce your taxes.
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T-satt, I always love reading your posts. I couldn’t agree more. In the military I always found myself running into bumps in the road or rubbing people except for a small circle of friends the wrong way. I would come home stressed to my wife and ask what was wrong with me. What I was doing wrong. Why I couldn’t get my job done the way I saw fit.
Then I heard a podcast one day. It mentioned that we’re not all wired to be employees. We’re not all cogs we can’t all mindlessly go through this predetermined path. That’s why sometimes we tend to buck at it or go through it roughly. We tend to do things in our own way so naturally some tensions arises there when we deviate from that predetermined path. I think children of entrepreneurs like myself, like ryanne feel that pull to work for ourselves. Seeing our parents do it only reassured us it’s possible. You can’t fit a round peg into a square hole. You can’t make an entrepreneur an employee.
I like the water and all but 350K on a depreciating asset with limited return and useful life. Yikes.
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@GoodsbyGarcia: Yep. Most of us full-timers are now Proudly Unemployable…
I had to go into the contract job for 4 days this week. Those days are more difficult to get through than listing (my least favorite activity). I like the work, and the people, but being FORCED to be there (and dealing with bureaucracy…) just suck the life out of me…
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Honestly, I made a series of poor choices in my late teens and early twenties that left me in a position where when I found out I was going to be a father forced me to take whatever type of gainful employment I could find to help provide for my family. The problem with non-skilled labor is that, for the most part anyway, it’s pretty tedious and mind numbing shit…
I spent 20 years hating each and every job I had. Underpaid, overworked, understimulated, and over caffeinated is a terrible way to spend a third of your waking hours. I spent nearly a decade working 3rd shift just so didn’t have to deal with overwhelmed asshole bosses, at least at night nobody is around and work can actually get done. So, last job ends and I do what I always do, start looking for something new. But this time, instead of just looking for a new job I also started doing research on working for myself. Fast forward a year, and I’m making more money, my boss in only and asshole occasionally and I’m infinitely less miserable. I’ve always been a self starter and have the work ethic to make it work…and so far everything is going swimmingly. Plus, my new boss is always willing to let me go play disc golf when the weather is nice, looks the other way when I decide that a 3pm beer is a good idea, and never minds when on Friday I work really hard until about noon and then spend the rest of the day smoking a joint and messing around on the internet.
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At the very core of it, my why is feeling good about doing something that works, something I am good at, and something I evolve from. When I shift strategy or set and meet a goal, I feel GOOD about myself in a way that was far more deeply meaningful than launching a project.
I would like to take my earnings and do something else with them, but the something else hasn’t dawned on me yet. I know it will – and I will STAY READY.
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