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It would still be a FAR better scenario than defaulting on a standard loan. Imagine having a $50k loan that was called where you legit had to come up with $50k you didn’t have?
No joke, I felt really off on Monday and Tuesday. I really do rely on that dose of J&R positivity on Monday morning it seems.
Yep,
The MLM companies convince the newly converted that their friends and family “owe them”.I have a version of this shirt that I like to wear when I go out to yard sales. MLM attributed the lions share of the reasons this shirt spoke to me on a personal level. Lol.
I don’t really think I’d put MLM in the buy low sell high camp. They are all about “recruit more sellers”, and then each seller has to buy a minimum amount each month to maintain some sort of “status”.
Most MLM sellers just end up buying product for themselves that they won’t use until they give up.
Here’s a neat article showing the reality of selling DoTerra Essential Oils.
MLM schemes have stole alot of good friends from us. They become unapproachable leaches once the MLM gets their hooks in them. Can’t even have a damn conversation without them trying to market themselves or sell you something.
Yep, any personal item I sell with no profit gets a COGS of the sales price, and categorized as a “personal” transaction on my COGS spreadsheet. I always differentiate my thrift store, yard sale, Retail Arbitrage, and personal items.
Nice!
There ain’t a better feeling in the world than a fully realized efficient system put into practice.
I love when I get into that groove and crank out 20+ shipments in less than 30 minutes. The only thing holding me back is the ebay loading times when processing the label. I mitigate that by prepping the next item during the delay. Have to be careful though, so I don’t mix up labels/packages so I only partially prep.Yes, it appears the policy at my current 401k managing firm has a policy that if you leave work then you have 60 days to pay it in full. Otherwise they will consider it a withdrawal and you’ll pay the tax man 10% penalty and pay income taxes.
Something to think about though….do I really see myself at this place for 5 more years?
If I wanted to cherry pick, I have definitely had many weeks that I have worked only 2 hours on ebay and made $500+. Looking at my records, in the last year I’ve had 20 weeks where I did not list and made more than $500. My average items sold is 21 a week and it takes me less than 5 minutes to pull/pack items per item. Most of my sales are very easy to pack/ship. That’s less than 2 hours a week.
BUT, I had already put in the work to find the items, clean, list, photograph, and store. Nevermind the countless hours of research learning how to sell, all the time and capital I’ve invested in infrastructure, etc.
The easy part is grabbing it and shipping it. Those 2 hour weeks are when I sell a bunch of easy to ship items like clothes/shoes. I have 3 business day handling so I only ship twice those weeks.So I should start a business where I show people how to “Make $2000 a month and only work 2 hours a week!” After all, it is an accurate statement…mmostly.
Ebay has been doing alot of undocumented changes in the last few months. It is irritating!
Also, I have a 95% full bottle of Chanel I was just getting ready to list. Darn it!
The consumables I’d want is in the post: $70 for a 16″ wide large bubble pattern 980′ long. It comes out to like 7 cents a linear foot for a 16″ wide roll. Super cheap in the grand scheme of things. I could wrap a VCR in nice bubble wrap made on demand for about 25 cents.
The nicer tabletop version is the mini pak’r, and it goes for $400-500 used.
I’ve always contributed enough to 401k to always get the company match. All of them have always done at least a 6% dollar for dollar.
The last place I worked was the best. They contributed 3% no matter what – even if I did zero. Then they matched 6% dollar for dollar. Then they matched the next 6% at 50%, so another 3% match.
I was contributing 12% of my check and the company was also contributing 12%! Needless to say I have quite a bit in that account.At my current company I’ve focused more on my HSA. I do the 6% to 401k to get my 6% match, then I contribute the federal max every year to my HSA.
My plan was to get my HSA up to a point that I have 3 years worth of out of pocket maximums, so I want a balance of $27000 (high deductible insurance is da sux). Once I get there I’ll dial it back a bit.The big benefit of keeping it in a 401k is that I can take out personal or home loans against my own money. I can do a loan up to 50% of the funds I have put in the 401k (you can’t borrow against the company contributions even if fully vested). If I rollover my old 401k’s, I’ll have access to quite a large pre-approved loan potential. The interest rate is 6.5%…but the real benefit is 100% of that interest goes right back into my 401k. The only fees I pay is a $35 establishment fee and then $3.75 maintenance fee per quarter. The loan terms can be as short as 1 month, and as long as 5 years.
While I wouldn’t plan on using a 401k loan, it would give me peace of mind to know I had that card in my back pocket in case of emergency. Obviously a 5 year large loan would be a terrible idea in a good market and only there for emergencies unless the ROI exceeded potential market gains on that money.
Having said that, having access to that kind of money in a potential recession “buyer’s market” with the knowledge I have now could allow me to start making investments.
Now as for IRA’s and more control. Yes an IRA will give me alot more control over where I can invest the money. You can also do a different kind of IRA rollover and go ahead and pay taxes on the money. Then it will be tax free when you access it in retirement.
I tinkered in the stock market one time when I was younger and lost. It felt like gambling, and I am NOT a gambler by any means. So I never messed with it again. Granted that experience was in penny stocks which really is like gambling. I don’t have alot of confidence in my ability to guess which stocks will be winners and I don’t have time to spend hours a day trying to figure it out. I kinda prefer the mindless balanced approach of a 401k, at least in this point in my life.Items in Store 1196
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $492.00
COGS $37.00
Total Profit $455.00
Average profit $26.76
Average sales price $28.94
New Listings 12Summer goal: I’m likely going to miss my goal by about $1k once the dust settles after this week. Still not too bad at all for the summer! I had some great weeks and a few terrible weeks.I did not list nearly as much as I had planned – I had a 4 week stretch where I didn’t really list anything and that really hurt my goal. But on the bright side I got busy and lost a bunch of weight. I’ll take that over $1k any day!
This week was kinda ‘meh’. Yard sales sucked, so it looks like I’m done scavenging other than occasional thrift trips for a while. That’s okay as I have tons of inventory to pull from.
On another note, I got the wild hair to access my two old 401K accounts this week to roll them into my current one. One of them I hadn’t checked on in almost 10 years, and the other it has been 4 years. Holy compound interest, Batman! It was nice to realize just how much I have in my 401k. Now the next dilemma though – should I roll them into my current 401k or roll them into an IRA and get serious about my portfolio? Any investment gurus here who can offer some advice to a newb?
Ughhhh….
Can’t wait for all the bugs that will jack up my store that ebay will claim don’t exist…
