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Steve, I have a 2013 Chrysler Town and Country. That’s my scavenger-mobile. Stow and Go is the reason that I bought it over buying a Sienna or a Odyssey as I really wanted to fold down one center seat to make it easy for my little kids to get in and out. I really didn’t want an American car due to the reputation for maintenance issues. Good grief, I should have stuck to that thought. I can say without reservation that this car is a piece of junk! I bought it new, so I didn’t buy someone else’s headache. It’s been in the shop five times in the past 6 weeks, each time with them telling us they’d fixed the issue…nope.
Last Sunday I had to limp it to the dealership, as it was overheating. It’s just non stop issues. We have a case open with Chrysler corporate so at least the dealership has been forced to cover the repairs thus far (the first issue 6 weeks ago was under drivetrain warranty, the rest of the issues were caused by that “repair”). I would not in a million years buy this vehicle unless you could get an extended warranty on it. There are other minivans with much better repair records. Yesterday’s repair would have cost us nearly $800 if Chrysler corporate hadn’t agreed that we had a good case and assigned us a case manager who advocated for us with the dealership. Too bad some other brands don’t adopt the stow-and-go idea…it’s really brilliant.
Hats are my jam! They are the majority of what I sell. I’d be happy to take a look if there are ones you need help pricing. My gut would be to price high since it sounds like you have some rare ones. Hats are FAST to list once you get your process down, so I wouldn’t hire anyone personally. Accounting wouldn’t worry me either…just use outright.
The buyer messaged me that he received the jacket and that he loves it, so it sounds like he’s keeping it for himself as opposed to reselling it. I did end up using signature confirmation and I insured it for the full selling price since it was a high-dollar item. In the future I’ll put a blurb about signature confirmation in my high-dollar listings just so the buyer is aware that I intend to use it.
I agree Auction Kenny! Who knows, maybe the buyer has access to a market that I don’t (like the Japan auction market where they sell vintage denim and other cool vintage stuff). It was one of my better sales of all time so I’m happy. It’s in the mail, and I definitely added Signature Confirmation for my own peace of mind. I understand that it only really protects the buyer, but for $2.55 I felt like it was a worthwhile investment.
Yeah but I didn’t take my own advice…I put a BIN on it. I should have listed it at auction with a high start and no BIN I think. It seems like it sold too fast at that BIN price. Then again, maybe I just attracted the right buyer and that’s what it’s worth. I’m just really not sure as there wasn’t anything to compare it to.
It was so hard to value though. It had actually sold once before on best offer to what looked like a really well known vintage seller/designer. He never paid! This time I put it up at auction with the $599.95 BIN and it sold within the same day (within hours actually) to what seems to be a vintage buyer/seller. I hope I valued it correctly…I thought that that was a high BIN but maybe it really wasn’t? I agree that it was a super rare find!
A vintage McGregor jacket that was made of dairy cow lol. The link above has pics 🙂 Words don’t do it justice 😉
I didn’t know that about Ebay requiring signature confirmation over a certain amount. OK, that makes me feel better about adding it. I’ll message the buyer about it too.
The OEM batteries require use of an official installer from what the website is telling me. I’m going to try to find one on Ebay again. The last time, my husband objected to all of the ones I found on safety concerns (coming from overseas, the type of battery, etc.)
Has anyone replaced the battery on their cordless Dyson? I found our cordless Dyson sitting on top of a dumpster at move out time at the local college a few years ago. The battery has worked great all along, but now it only holds a charge for about 3 minutes. When I looked at replacing it, Dyson doesn’t sell the batteries directly. The website says you have to go to some sort of official installer, which I’m sure isn’t cheap. The alternative (buying off of Ebay or Amazon) scares my hubby because it’s lithium ion and he doesn’t want a possibly sketchy battery. Just wondering if anyone has found a safe, inexpensive replacement battery…
Unfortunately I’m in the same boat with an unpaid best offer. I listed a vintage jacket and I got an offer overnight for $450 from what appears to be a well-known designer/vintage collector. It’s unpaid! I’ve filed a NPB and it’s still unpaid, so my guess is that this person isn’t going to pay. S/he has over 6000 feedbacks too. Figures.
Why was having Fed-Ex on the listings preventing your hard goods from selling? I have SmartPost on a lot of my hard goods listings, although lately I find Priority almost always cheaper so I tend to upgrade to that over SmartPost. If having FedEx on there is keeping stuff from selling I’ll take it off!
Just the one right now. We’ve owned a succession of paid-for houses, all possible because we paid off the first one at age 26. The one we’re in now required a small-ish mortgage on top of the principal we had from the house we owned outright when we bought this one. That’s the mortgage we recently retired 🙂 I swore I’d never take another mortgage, but this house was excellent for the price and we bit the bullet and did it.
My folks had a rental with 3 apartments in it when I was growing up. It was such an awful experience overall that I swore I’d never be a landlord. This was in a VERY sketchy town in MA though, so that had a lot to do with it I’m sure!
Go for it and pay off the rental houses! Then the rentals are all revenue and the house is an asset too. Pretty sweet! There is a couple on youtube (Mina and Irfan, not sure what the channel name is) and they have done some great videos on paying off mortgages. I love how Irfan talks about it like it’s a logical no-brainer. He also has a really interesting take on getting an ARM because the rate is so low and you’ll retire the mortgage in the initial period anyways. We totally should have done that in retrospect…I considered it but chickened out which is silly.
For me, it’s more the certainty of paying off debt vs. the uncertainty of the market. Don’t get me wrong, we have index funds. It’s just that I won’t gamble everything on those while I don’t own my house outright if that makes sense. This is the one topic where my view diverges from the view that the Frugalwoods couple takes. They carry mortgage debt on both of their properties. They have their reasons for it and it makes sense to them, but it doesn’t make sense to me. For me if I have debt, I don’t feel secure. If the market has a huge crash, they lose that money, but if they used it to pay off the house it’s immune to every crash. For me, I needed to be mortgage free before I went “all in” with index funds 🙂
Hubby and I paid off our first house at 26 and had a few more paid-for houses after that with the capital from that first house. I was never taking out another mortgage, but this house came up (a foreclosure) and it was just too good of a deal to pass up. One upside is that the kids (well, our oldest anyways) were able to be a part of the payoff process this time around. I printed off a chart and they got to color in lines as we hit each principal line on the chart. It stayed on the fridge throughout the payoff as a visual representation of what we were doing. They started saying “when the house is paid off, maybe we can do X”. Involving them in the process was a positive since they were old enough to get something out of it. I read financial books with my oldest at night (read a chapter and discuss) and while that’s valuable, being a part of a tangible process like paying off a house is better I think.
Mrs. Frugalwoods’s book is really good. I haven’t listened to the interview yet, but I preordered the book because I love her blog. Early Retirement/Frugal Living isn’t rocket science, but you’re right that most people don’t want to hear what it would take for them to get there. We’re an open book on numbers and we’re open that we’re frugal, paid off our house asap, at this point work mainly for health insurance and not income, etc. We still get the “oh, I could never do that”. Whatever. We aren’t exceptional people and we did it. It’s pretty basic math really.
This country needs real financial education and it needs to start early. I teach my own kids about finances, early retirement, frugality, debt avoidance, etc. and they learn by listening but also by doing. Jay is correct that a lot of problems in this country could be solved by an open conversation about numbers! I tell my friends that the people who look the richest are often one payment away from bankrupcy, and the person dumpster diving bags of coffee beans on the side of the road (me lol) is often the person who actually has the money 😉 Appearances don’t tell the truth, but numbers do.
