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From my perspective:
Medical Expenses: I totally agree on the hospital charges going up. My regular job has had me looking at people’s medical bills since 1995. I’ve seen hospital emergency room charges go from around $1,000 to over $20,000 for an average after car accident visit. Seriously, get in a car accident with whiplash, go to the hospital and five hours later you owe more than $20k! The medical bills in the last 20 years have gone to crazy town amounts but the insurance coverage amounts have stayed the same. It. Is. So. Crazy!
Housing Costs: Personally, we are stressed with taxes and insurance, especially flood, for housing and how both keep going up so much. We are on the coast in Florida which has a lot to do with it. Looking forward, we just think that these costs alone will make living here into our retirement not possible. We are currently getting ready to put our house on the market. Short term, we might just rent and put our money into something secure or buy a seriously smaller home and buy it outright with no mortgage. Long term, I’m hoping to move out of Florida. I’d like to live within an hour of a city like Denver or Atlanta so my access to scavenging is available but the cost of living is less.
Education: We’ve also been down the private school route and each kid was about $10k per year for middle school! Private high school is about $30k a year around here. That was more than my college tuition. We have the kids back in public schools and for the most part all is well. We also purchased the college pre-paid plans when they were babies and paid them off so hopefully college isn’t going to be too much of an issue for us when they get there.
antarestar I used to watch a lot of State’s Place videos and she taught me a lot and it really how I got started on ebay; but long term, I don’t really want to do what she is doing, I think I like the Scavenger Life model better.
If you start using Free Shipping and Free Returns, how much extra will you add to the price of clothes to cover all these extra costs?
I think $10I have three ebay accounts. My main account got the message for a high rate of returns and my 2nd store got the “your account health” email that basically said the return rate was normal and my third account which is the newest and smallest didn’t get that message at all.
I do feel that buyers who don’t want to pay for return shipping call items not as described.
I agree that this is a way to convince sellers to provide free returns.
Bleck. This makes me feel a bit Eeyore-ish about this aspect of eBay.
But, to put my problem solver thinking cap on, I think I am going to switch over most of my clothing listings to free shipping and raise the prices to compensate.
March 18-24
Total Items in Store: 884 + 514 + 223 + 1057 = 2,678
Total # Items Sold: 45 + 7 + 6 + 11 = 69
Total Amount Sold: $870 + $166 + $112 + 166 = $1,314
Highest Price: $100 (St. John blazer); $86 (Karen Warren Dress); $70 (Vintage Ramones T Shirt)
Average Price: $19.04
Returns: 3
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $50
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 80Notes:
* My 14 year old daughter started taking ebay photos for me! I’m very excited about this, she takes great photos, is fast, and I pay her $1 an item which makes her happy. She photographed 13 things for me on Saturday and by Sunday 5 of them had sold including two of my highest sales this week.
* I had a buyer try to return an item on Poshmark because she didn’t like the fit and then called the Free People pants counterfeit, I left a comment that it seemed like the buyer didn’t like the fit and therefore called them fake, Poshmark sided with me.
* I’m still working on getting my house ready to sell which is taking up most of my time. This coming week is my kids’ spring break, we don’t have anything planned but I’ll be taking some time off to spend with them.
* I had my best day ever in my big ebay store on Sunday: $346 in sales in one day! yay.
The Scam: You mentioned that someone bought a coat for $600 and then cancelled saying that someone took over their account. I had someone do this to my ebay account about a year ago. They bought $2000 worth of things in 15 minutes. They go in and change your shipping address and then they also make the purchases so that they are hidden. They ship everything to 600 Markley Street in New Jersey. It is a Russian scam thing. Fortunately, when it happened to me, I was online at the time so I could see all these purchases being made that I wasn’t making; I was immediately on the phone with ebay and Pay Pal getting the whole thing fixed. I’m not alone this has happened to many people over the years and is apparently ongoing. There’s a podcast that explains all about it on Gimlet media’s Reply All, #99 Black Hole, New Jersey. Here’s the link: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/99-black-hole-new-jersey
I listed 24 last week and 70 the week before. I’m slacking. I’m going to try and list 200 this week.
Week of 3/12/18 – 3/18/18
Total Items in Stores: 861 + 502 + 220 + 1057 = 2,640
Items Sold: 21 + 14 + 4 + 3 = 42
Total Sales: $488 + 247 + 54 + 76 = $865
Highest Sold: $44 Lilly Pulitzer skirt
Average Price $20.60
Money Spent $60
Listed 24 itemsThis week felt slow to me. It also felt discouraging since I had what felt like a million, but turned out to be 5 or 6 return cases including a couple where the buyer said item was not as described when the items were as described – like they said this is not a skirt, when it was actually a skirt. Bleh. I didn’t get a lot listed because I’m working on getting our house ready to sell and am moving lots of stuff around. I’m going to take a few weeks off from buying since I have discovered lots of things around the house to sell and also have some death piles to work on. Feeling kind of worried about the free returns thing, I think people who sell clothing are going to find this to be super hard; and while I’m trying to get away from clothing, it is still a majority of what I sell right now. I’m going to try to get lots listed this week and maybe things will look better next week.
Hey, thanks for the mention on the podcast. Just wanted to clarify why I let my 6 year old cut my hair: My daughter was born with strong opinions and a strong will and she is very persistent and independent, which I consider to be all good things. She started cutting her Barbie dolls’ hair as soon as she got them; she even had that giant Barbie head and cut it and then asked how long it would take for it to grow back. She would not stop asking and begging me to let her cut my hair starting when she was 4 so after a few years, I finally gave in. It was more about showing her that I trusted her than about frugality. Saving money was a bonus. Also, I have pretty straight forward hair – it is just long and gets trimmed at the ends, so it is basically just cutting a straight line.
P.S. She is 14 now and started her own Poshmark store recently.
Mark – how do you do with Coogi mens jeans and jean shorts – I come across them a lot and most of the time I pass on them. Should I be picking them up?
Another at home hair-cutter here – my daughter has been cutting my hair since SHE was 6! She begged me to let her cut my hair since she was 4 or 5 and by the time she was 6 I finally gave in – and she did a great job. I do go in every couple of years to the regular hair dresser but generally my daughter cuts my hair. I used to cut her hair but now she cuts her own hair too and does a pretty cute job of it.
03/04/18 – 03/10/18
Items In Store: 877 + 513 + 193 + 1057 = 2,640 items in store
Items Sold: 24 + 11 + 9 + 8 = 52 items sold
Total Sales: $429 + $184 + $264 + $167 = $1,044
Highest Price Sold: $65 Fendi Shoes, $50 Vtg Italian Flip Drip Coffee Maker, $45 Lilly Pulitzer Dress
Average Price Sold: $20.08
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 60
Number of Items listed this week: 70For the next couple weeks, we are getting our house ready to sell so I’m going to stop buying inventory for a while and list things from my house. I’m going to be busy packing and purging and hopefully getting things listed.
I haven’t sold one yet but I’m on the verge of trying this. We are planning to sell our house, so for the next couple of weeks, my focus is going to be on purging stuff from our house and packing up stuff we want to keep. I’m planning to try to lot up the stuff we are purging and trying to sell it in these junk drawer type of lots on ebay for the smaller stuff and on Craig’s List for the bigger stuff.
Today, I found Rag & Bone for the first time. I also picked up 3 St. John pieces.
While I was in line the girl next to me was bragging about the new with tags Burberry thing she’d found.
