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Retro, Our state/local tax liability was ~$5k… so that is definitely part of it… My husband is a school teacher and we make under $100K combined. We have a significant amount of charitable contributions that we could not deduct this year so that is another part of the equation. The final blow was the elimination of the personal deduction (7 people – 5 kids, + my husband and I (You weren’t including myself and my husband in your calculation) makes the new numbers turn out less for us. I use turbo for business also…
Hey everyone, I think I solved the problem on not being able to “shrink” the labels on the new shipping label page. It had to do with my “default” pdf printer (it was an off-brand third party ap that wasn’t giving me a re-size option for pdf’s) – I downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (for PC’s) and set that as my default program. Now once I “download” the label (one click) and then open to print, I have the option to resize. I use 75% for 6x4x4 eBay (mostly first class) boxes and 95% for regular size (priority padded rate envelopes and larger size boxes) The 95% reduces the size just enough so that the ink doesn’t “smear” on the blank portion of the half-label sticker and ruin the remaining label and the next print job! Sonia – I think it was you who mentioned may have had the same problem in the past. I still am shopping for the right Dymo, which I can’t wait to get and set up. In the meantime – I want to use up all these darn labels…
I think it is “do-able”, but I don’t think I am the only one who has complained about the increasing prices and competition at the thrifts. You have to work harder to find good stuff – it takes more time, but there is definitely profit to be made at the thrifts. It’s the same thing with garage sales. Some of them are absolutely incredible – people are moving and just want to get rid of their stuff and make pennies on the dollar. Others are price tagging everything with eBay listed-not-sold prices and these sales are just a waste of time if you are a scavenger.
@Retro – Nope, nothing wrong with our return – I’m a numbers person and I use turbo tax every year – I love doing our taxes. It’s all the SALT cap – our property taxes are ~ $9k a year and we live in a typical 2000+ Square foot 4 bedroom suburban home – it is just the way it is here – property taxes are ridiculous. We just were in the exact “sweet spot” that the new changes held no benefit for us. We were used to itemizing but the new SALT limitations and loss of the personal exemptions made things work out that we don’t surpass the newly raised standard deduction without counting the full amount of our property taxes and state taxes. The $2k child tax credit helped, but did not net as much as the old personal exemptions system when one was over the lower standard deduction from 2017. The 20% passthrough – while happy to have that also, it saved us well under $50 – but we’ll take whatever we can get.
Yes, I forgot to mention that I was very thankful for the $2k/child credit – we would have fared much worse without that one 🙂 It did help, but we still came out less than what we received last year with 7 personal deductions to claim in our household. I have one middle class friend that has 9 children and in a similar financial situation. They also came out way behind this year on their tax bill.
Hey Christine, I totally get it! I’m in the same boat … “it’s hitting people living a middle class lifestyle in an expensive, high tax area” – that is so US and I am trying not to be bitter – but these tax changes were such a downer this year for me. We don’t make a ton of money (my husband is a school teacher and I do very part time eBay – a lot of our neighbors are doctors and lawyers with dual incomes – they drive the BMW’s and I drive the beat up (paid-off!) mini-van, LOL). We live in a great (high tax) area by choice for the schools and amenities. This used to be OK considering our tax deductions gave us a substantial amount back that helped make this all doable. I didn’t realize the SALT limitations took into consideration state tax + property tax – so we capped out early and lost significantly over previous years. Also, taking into consideration that I also have 5 children – losing the personal deductions really hurt. This tax change definitely penalizes the middle class (who were formerly itemizing) and even more so anyone with 2 or more children. We can’t itemize now and have lost several thousands of dollars over what we normally receive.
Hello and welcome back! I missed the podcast and will be re-listening to it this afternoon while packing.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t list anything this week.. (I usually try to do at least 1 listing a day minimum and/or replace what I have sold at the very least – but this week I just wasn’t feeling it…so I took the week “off”.) It was nice to still have some “passive” income trickling in, at least it felt very passive to me! Here are my numbers:
My Store Week April 7-13, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1042
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $290.28
Cost of Items Sold: $6.49
Highest Price Sold: $105 (Small Fenton lamp, paid $2.99)
Average Price Sold: $41.47
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $21.47
Number of items listed this week: 0I did have one interesting thing happen – Last year (September) I “closed” out an eBay return because a buyer did not print out a label correctly and did not return the item in the specified time. Ebay let me keep the money and closed the return. A week later I did end up getting the item back and the buyer opened up a paypal dispute. I wanted to just let this play out to see what would happen. I submitted my “evidence” that the eBay case had already been closed in my favor. This spent months in “review” – I ended up losing the case and paypal released her funds, but sent a message that due to “seller protection” they would try to appeal this decision with the buyer’s financial institution. Months went by… and then this past week, I received a very unexpected paypal “case update” out of the blue that went like this:
We received notice from the buyer’s financial institution that Case ID xx-xxxxxxx has been decided in the buyer’s favor. However, because you’re a valued customer, we’re not debiting your PayPal account for the disputed amount.
Here are the case details:Buyer’s name: xxxxx
Buyer’s email: xxxxx
Buyer’s transaction ID: xxxxx
Your transaction ID: xxxxx
Transaction date: September 22, 2018
Transaction amount: $48.15 USD
Disputed amount: $48.15 USDThank you for your patience during this process. We appreciate your business.
You can find additional information and tips about buying and selling safely at our Business Resource Center. After you log in to your PayPal account, click Tools, and then click Business Resource Center under “Grow your business.”Sincerely,
PayPal(So, bottom line, Paypal refunded the buyer and also let me keep my money! It was worth it to “fight” this case instead of automatically refunding her. Win-win for all.)
I was hoping this day would never come – but the classic shipping label page went away for me today – so I’m dealing with the issue of not being able to shrink my labels for a 6x4x4 box anymore or print correctly on the half sheet labels without smearing ink all over the lower page. A real PAIN!!! I honestly haven’t tried downloading to a pdf and then shrinking – that is going to add too much extra “work” to my process. I’m going to shop for a Dymo online right now!
Quick Numbers, just another typical week for me. I have been very busy at home. I Hope the video job is going well.
My Store Week March 31-April 6, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1047
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $347.56
Cost of Items Sold: $44.21
Highest Price Sold: $58.49 (Women’s Suit)
Average Price Sold: $26.74
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 14I had one Bonanza sale this week, my first in quite a while.. a best offer. After sending this guy a new with tags $70 fleece for a steal, he emailed me that the item was stained all over and that he thought it was black. (Pictures were a hunter green, but not black and this item was in no way stained – it was brand new.) I told him to send it back. (I hope he doesn’t!) I am seeing an increase in clothing buyers complaining about items after they receive them for the dumbest reasons and to me it feels like many have been conditioned to throwing a bunch of imaginary “problems” back to see if they can receive partial, or full! refunds and intend to keep the items. Is anyone else seeing an increase in this type of behavior?
Retro, seriously, I enjoy tracking your numbers because you have the same size store as me. Consistently and predictably and for probably most of 2018 you would sell TWICE as much as me dollar wise almost every week on the bread and butter type sales. I noticed your very uncharacteristic drop in sales these past several weeks – it really doesn’t make sense why that would happen out of the blue – especially if you have done nothing different than what you normally do – continue to list, sell, and promote the same as before…
The only times I have noticed weird random drops in sales have coincided with times I have had return issues with buyers and have started reporting them and adding them to my blocked bidder list. I would have never mentioned this on the board before because frankly it sounds too “Conspiracy Theory” to me – but – just wondering – have you happened to have any weird returns, buyer issues, etc. lately??Thanks a lot for the heads up – that is going to make returns/cancellations all the more painful – we already were losing the .30 cent paypal transaction fee.. but now the entire paypal fee as well? Hmmm.. wonder if Adyen will be different?
One other thought… so there is an argument for having a “niche” market … but also another argument for having a huge volume “general store” like Jay & Ryan’s with 8000+ items… you are going to have a lot of good opportunities to gain good category rankings in a lot of different categories… helping your overall store in search rankings.
I see trends in my store all the time that support bcfol440’s theory… For instance I have a handful of belts listed for years – never sold… One day I will accept a low ball offer on a belt to move it. Then I will check my “watchers” soon after and there will be not just one or two but three or four other belts that have been sitting for years all of a sudden with watchers and views… It’s like the belt sale upped my ranking in this category and now for a while it will have some popularity in search and then slowly go back down again. This also happens with certain toys, and jewelry and many other things. My gut feel (no proof other than anecdotal) is that sales in a particular category give you a temporary boost in rank in that particular category…
