Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
I’ve only had one big bin of Lego I’ve found – all I did was separate the figures (sold them as one lot) and then the rest into 5lb lots. Just spread the lot of lego on the floor and took a bunch of pictures.
I’ve been in the opposite situation – I had a bunch of home improvement items (essentially everything to kit out a whole bathroom that was never used – toilet, shower stall, vanity, taps, etc) and was contacted by a guy I despised to buy it. I told him no.
I got an offer from someone else online – told the guy to come by to pick it up and it was the same guy!!! He setup a new account to buy the stuff off me. He had the cash, I let it go, and avoid the guy ever since.
Good Wikipedia article – the ending was interesting with what we call “Swedish Rounding” in Canada.
In Canada, we no longer have a penny – so when paying with cash, your purchase is rounded to the nearest 5 cent increment – therefore, even though something is priced 99 cents, it is in reality a dollar (if tax free and the only thing you are buying).
I find mind games interesting. I recently watched a documentary on the “Dunedin Study” where they were discussing that you can predict as a child who would have financial issues when they were older. They did a test with the kids where they would place a marshmallow on the plate, and told the kids if they left it for 5 minutes, they would get 2 marshmallows. The kids who wouldn’t wait for the second marshmallow had a high rate of debt/financial issues as adults, where those who waited for the second one were financially successful.
It’s interesting how many financial mind games are probably hardwired at birth in our minds.
I never understood the .99 pricing, or gas stations that have pricing always ending in xxx.9.
If something is $199.99 or $200.00, it’s still the same price point to me. A penny doesn’t change my thought process.
But I do know relatives that will go out of there way to go to a 99 cent store instead of a dollar store to save 1% – so maybe some people are psychologically suckered by a penny?
Patches/Badges are my favorite small item that I can buy in bulk and make good money on – things like Scout patches, local sports teams, fire/police badges, or factory wear badges always come to me in a bulk bag and they fetch good money and can ship by lettermail. Most are also usually pre-1990 so they are starting to be cool/vintage items or accessories to vintage clothing.
I never find military badges though – I think collectors pick through the bags I buy, re-donate them, and leave me the $10+ scraps.
A truly cheap bastard is one who takes the cheap toilet paper from a public washroom for their home, and don’t see it as stealing…
When I fly, I like to get my assigned seat and be the very last on the plane if possible…an early entrance is my nightmare! I love to sit back and watch everyone crash the gate when boarding is first announced.
I’ll easily pay for checked luggage also. I don’t understand trying to cram everything in a carry-on when you can dump everything at check-in and wander the airport freely.
Some weeks I feel like fixing things up, others I don’t. I have a box of nice vintage stereo equipment to go through, and some vintage video game consoles. All of them are pretty worthless as-is, but when I fix them up, they easily fetch a few hundred $. So for me, I’m not selling an item as much as I’m selling my time and repair work to get something working again.
To me, working on vintage electronics is a puzzle that you have no clue what you are getting into – it’s enjoyable to me. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to get something working properly, others I spend hours fussing around before I get frustrated and gut it for parts…the fun part is you never know if you have something easy or something hard to repair.
I also delve into parts/components if I can’t fix something – sometimes the parts are worth more than the whole working item. It’s almost “unfixing” an item when you get into parts.
@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.
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…
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
We were thinking that as well – I know someone who has an AirBnB in Niagara Falls, and they are fully booked on weekends (Friday, Saturday, and some Sunday nights) but weekdays are very hard for them to fill, and in the winter it gets very quiet all around. There may be some cheap sleeps available.
When I was in college I lived with a woman in her 80’s for a year – rent free – all I had to do was cut the grass, shovel snow, and run the odd errand like grocery shopping with her. I’d even do that again if the situation came up for a quiet bedroom a few nights a week. It sucked as a single guy in his 20’s to have no privacy, but now I wouldn’t care.
April 2019
The April numbers…
Listings –540* (611 end of March)
Sales – 73
Total Listings added – “minus 2”*
Inventory To List – to be determine – collecting boxes of stuff from downsizing…
TOTAL Profit – $1735.90 – we also sold about $2500 of “junk” from our house this month locally.*
*This month we removed about 100 items, and listed about 100 items this month. We eliminated all our larger items, and some annoying items to ship this month. We sold them locally either through yard sales or on Kijiji.
Lessons learned this month…
We spent just under $250 on new items this month – most still need to be listed – however, the total eBay profit for the month was great! Over double our survival number, and well above our “luxury” number. We also dumped all our large items either locally on Kijiji, and are having a yard sale next month where we will try to sell the rest. Since we are moving twice in the next year (more below), we didn’t want to lug around large items that may or may not sell.Next Steps for May…
The big news for us this month is my job will be ending in less than a year – just need to stick it out for all the goodies from the company and the government that will come from losing my job. I estimate I have at most 220 days of work left. I found out about it in a strange way – I was reading the local Civic News from City Hall, and it had a proposal for a new subdivision to commence construction next spring right where I work. I had to ask some questions to the new owners of the company I work for, but got an answer that the buildings I’m basically providing security for (not sure why they are paying me as an Engineer for security…) will be demolished in the near future and my job will be eliminated. I can’t wait!
We’re also taking a big step with our housing – we are preparing to get our current home for sale this month. We are moving most of our “stuff” to our new home, and items we need around here into a short-term rental starting in 2 weeks. The short-term rental is $350 a week, but will allow us to sell our house while we are in the area instead of trying to deal with a home sale from 4 hours away. Once our current home sells, we’ll be able to pay off the mortgage on our new home, and have lots of extra money to invest for our future.
The short-term rental however is small – it’s a 2 bedroom apartment essentially – just going to move in our inventory into one bedroom, our cats, and basics in the rest until my job ends. It’s a bit of a gamble to run 2 houses, a rental, and pay for it all, but if our home current home sells quick or not, it will relieve some of the stress of trying to sell a home full of stuff and cats, or trying to sell a home from 4 hours away. Either way, it may be a small financial hit, but will give us peace of mind during this transitional period.
Our current home will be nicely staged for sale at least – no litter boxes, no cat fur to rush to clean up before viewings, and no chasing the cats to get them in carriers before some comes to look at the place. We can “list it and forget it”!
Where our heads are at…
So the end of my “career” changed our direction a bit to prepare for it more than focus on sales. Once we are settled in our short-term rental, and our current house gets sold, life will be easier and less stressful. We’ll get back to listing again, and will only have a small move of our inventory and few personal items from the short-term rental. We also will spend some weekends getting our new life setup in our new home.
I’m also debating that we may move into the new home, and I just drive down on a Monday, stay in cheap hotels for the week (Monday to Thursday night), and go back on Friday night. It’s a 4 hour drive, but I don’t do anything at work at the moment – Mondays will be hard, but it’s only temporary – I may even lose my job today! I have no clue what the plan is for me, just that I need to stick it out.
Some nights I’m so excited I can’t sleep…the journey the next few months will be interesting.
05/01/2019 at 10:32 am in reply to: Well… full-time it is! My eBay Journey goes full throttle. New Journal #61028Enjoying your story – aside from eBay, several months ago not only did we start kicking eBay into high gear, but I have a similar health story – I’m 6’5″, and weighed just over 350lbs last year. The weight comes off easy when your not stressed. The last check-in was about a month ago and I was down to 320, and feel I am down to 310 now. I’m not doing anything crazy – the only thing I don’t do anymore is drink beer and I don’t crave junk food. Stress was the real factor, and probably led me to eat/drink bad things.
We’re on similar journeys, but take care of your health – it’s fairly easy to turn around things when your head is in a good place!
We’re packing up our house to move and have a shoebox of baseball cards and memorabilia (all pretty much worthless except a ball I had autographed by Nolan Ryan) bugs my wife. I used to have a truckload of cards and luckily sold them all except a few I like (I was lucky to grow up in Canada and like baseball – Canadian baseball card brands like O-Pee-Chee and Leaf held a bit of value just due to rarity to U.S. collectors).
Just looking at the few I kept brought back good memories of going to the local convenience store in the early 80’s and treating myself to a pack of cards or two as a kid. I wish I could capture that feeling again for 15 cents!
I still remember as a kid also going on trips to the U.S. and getting cards at gas stations on the way – and bringing home “Topps” “Fleer” or “Donruss” cards to show my friends and they would be in awe of baseball cards with no French text and more details on the player in English. I also remember my grandma buying me a set of Upper Deck in 1989 when they came out – it was the first factory set I ever got – but I always preferred building my own sets from packs and trading with my friends at school or cousins.
The memories are priceless to me.
-
AuthorPosts