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Inglewood, one other way that occurs to me of cashing in on a property which you have quite a lot of equity in (for now), is to do the Smith manoeuvre (https://www.milliondollarjourney.com/the-smith-manoeuvre-a-wealth-strategy-part-1.htm).
Basically you use your home equity to invest in something safe, then you get to deduct the interest from your taxes.
(Disclaimer: I have never done this, but I have coworkers who have.)
Nice thing is, as far as I can tell, it works regardless of if and when the bubble pops. If the bubble pops, technically you’re “underwater” on your mortgage+HELOC but you still have an asset (your investments) worth the difference.
09/03/2019 at 9:05 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67312Yeah, it’s exciting. I couldn’t really test this one, no – I think you would need a full lab optical setup. I’m not sure whether I’ll ask for it back if they want to return – I’d have to do more research on whether it’s got any parts use. My gut says no, so I’d probably just refund.
The return rate is pretty low on scientific equipment, but this item is particularly high risk as I understand if it’s turned on in ambient lighting the circuits get fried. Just crossing my fingers at the moment.
09/03/2019 at 8:09 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67310I agree that ebay solds are a good resource for pricing, but for anyone who doesn’t know, watchcount.com lets you see the same price history, with the difference that actual make-offer sale prices are shown in place of the original asking price, which is all that ebay shows you. I find this useful enough to justify the hassle. I keep a watchcount tab open on my phone & use it for field research.
August has been my best month ever on ebay for both sales and cashflow, so this week was great.
Sales: CAD$3995, 6 items, COGS: $451 –> Item profit: $2951
Expenditures: $711 –> Cashflow: $2691
Listed: $310, 12 items
Hours: 7
Notable sales: my big sale was a single photon counter module, for $2200, shipped to Hong Kong. However, there is a fairly high risk of return on this and I won’t be pulling funds out of Paypal just yet. I hope it isn’t broken because I have one more to sell. Also sold a projector lens for $500.Yeah, I’ve been skimming and like Mark S says, it seems the USA is different from Canada in the tax implications of LLCs. I think it’s more favourable here.
My friend isn’t an accountant but he’s going to recommend me a guy. There’s a website he mentioned ownr.co which helps set up an LLC as well. He also suggested asking the accountant to review my previous tax returns for possible savings.
Good podcast as usual, a great start to another fiscal week on ebay. Congratulations on your big sale! Honestly, I would not have given that painting a second glance, so kudos. You were marvelling at someone paying that much money for a painting… well my dad is retired, by no means wealthy, and on a fixed income, and every year or so he’ll buy a painting from the local gallery for $1000-2000. I think he’s kind of treating himself. I personally would never do that, but it’s futile for the frugal to try and understand the prodigal.
On handling time. For most of my time on ebay I have had 3 day handling time, and done fine. (Hard to know how I would’ve done in the counterfactual, but it’s been good so far.) Recently I put my store on 5 day handling time for a camping trip… and never took it off again. That’s been true for two weeks and these have been two of my best weeks. I usually ship the next day or 2 days after payment, but it’s nice to know I have the buffer if something comes up, as in the life of a parent it does.
I had lunch yesterday with a good friend who does insurance brokering and financial planning (mostly to try and cut my insurance premiums down to size). But we discussed my business and he made it plain that although he’s not a tax accountant, he can pretty much guarantee I’ll save thousands of dollars in taxes by setting myself up as an LLC. It comes at the cost of a more formal structure where I’ll be “paid” a “dividend” from the company and the company needs separate bank accounts etc. But I’ll be paying a much lower marginal rate, and the dividend can be paid to my wife, whose income is lower than mine, further reducing it. So, I think I am going down this path in the next few months. We’ll see if the compliance looks too onerous but I’m willing to try anything after last year’s massive tax bill.
I had a great week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$2287, 15 sales, COGS: $589 –> Item profit: $1321
Expenditures: $545 –> Cashflow: $1365
Listed: $1800, 29 items
Hours: 11
Notable sales: 2 more microscopes for $700, 12 thermostats for $280 (this listing is OLD).08/19/2019 at 1:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 424: 1 Year Later, Our New Rental is Done! #66569Had a look at the airbnb listing. My compliments, it’s beautifully done in all aspects.
08/19/2019 at 9:27 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 424: 1 Year Later, Our New Rental is Done! #66551Congratulations on the new rental unit!
It’s been a fair to middlin’ week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$911, 9 sales, COGS: $192 –> Item profit: $565
Expenditures: $111 –> Cashflow: $647
Listed: $320, 9 items
Hours: 6
Notable sales: nothing earth shattering, my favourite sale is $120 for 4 knives from a big lot of silverware purchased 2 years ago.
I got my hands on some nice toners but again, nothing staggering.I had $600 worth of offers on Thursday but I got greedy and stupidly countered them – crickets in return. Oh well.
Good morning.
Went camping this weekend, and I’m going on a business trip on Wed-Thurs. So it’s gonna be a hectic week. I still have shipment from last week too, which was a good one.
Sales: CAD$3161, 10 items, COGS: $948 –> Item profit: $1663
Expenditures: $194 –> Cashflow: $2417
Listed: $220, 2 items
Hours: 4
Notable sales: big one this week was an addressing printer that sold for $2200 (paid just under $700 at auction). I hesitate to call this a home run because I did pay up, but I feel good about the hourly rate on this. Also sold a medical wall panel thing with otoscope etc. for $250 (paid $30).I have some thoughts about “home runs”.
First of all, let’s clarify that the whole concept of home runs is graded on a curve relative to your ASP (or perhaps median sale price?). So “you can’t constantly be getting home runs” is true tautologically, for the same reason not everybody can be above average.
BUT – can you build a business on those rarer (by definition) home runs? To a *limited* extent, I think I already have. Based on past dives into my selling data, for example, 25% of my profits came from $600+ items. Stated another way, for me, median sale price is $80 (bread and butter), but average sale price (which is what ultimately matters for income) is $148. So the higher dollar items are pulling more than their fair share of the weight, almost doubling the average from what it would be if I only sold “bread & butter”.
Now I know that other sellers have a much flatter price distribution where bread and butter stuff generates the overwhelming majority of their profits. But yes, I think it is *possible* to have a store that kind of capitalizes on outliers. It requires somewhat high risk tolerance, although not nearly as much as would be required to say, buy $10k worth of a single widget from China and sell it private label.
The contractors who install such cable need to know how much is left in a reel and so those markings are generally stamped on the cable jacket. The reel itself often has a sticker that says “400 ft” or whatever. If you look on the jacket and it says “392”, you know how much has been used.
Sometimes the jacket is stamped with a more random looking say 5 digit number. This is because a production run might generate miles of cable and they don’t want to stop and renumber all the time. In that case, look at both ends of the cable. The loose end, and the end tied into the axis of the reel.
Worst case scenario, just look at the cable near the reel centre and use that number to subtract. You’ll underestimate your reel a little but no biggie.
I sell this stuff and do OK on it. Just price it competitively cause it’s annoying to store.
08/06/2019 at 8:09 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 422: Ready for a Recession at Any Time #65958Good week, but I can’t say anything terribly exciting happened.
Sales: CAD$1256, 8 items, COGS: $138 –> Item profit: $927
Expenditures: $511 (mainly storage rent) –> Cashflow: $554
Hours: 8, $70/hr
Listed: $220, 17 items
Notable sales: water valve $275, 3 door openers $360.Yep, I am definitely seeing this on the horizon. I am actually kind of pleased because it may afford me an “excuse” to buy some cheap land, if it has a great big garage on it.
It sounds like GSP is a great program overall. However, as a buyer in Canada, it often prevents me purchasing things from the states that I’d otherwise like to, because it is quite pricey.
almasty, I 100% agree that dropping “losers” after 60 days is crazy.
That being said, I can see a trend in my business and it is that my storage costs are rising faster than my profits are. (At some point the curves will cross!)
Also, I track where this year’s income comes from and only 6% of this year’s sales came from inventory listed in 2017 (my first full year on ebay). But unsold 2017 inventory is 12% of listed items, and presumably ~12% of storage space.
Two choices are somewhere ahead: (1) make a process for culling inventory, (2) make a capital investment in storage space (J&R’s choice).
I don’t really see the percentage in blocking buyers for unpaid items. OK, they prevented anyone else from buying that item for a week. Is that a big deal? Maybe for a really hot item, but usually, not much of an impact at all. They might buy the item again & actually pay. I think for items with 3 people on earth who might be interested, you’re better off keeping the pool of possible buyers large, even if some are flaky.
I guess weird questions could be red flags, but nonpayment probably just means they’re disorganized. Let them buy it when they get their life back together.
Solid week.
Sales: CAD$1477, 12 items. COGS: $327 –> Item profit: $874
Expenditures: $436 –> Cashflow: $765
Listed: $565, 11 items
Hours: 10, $77/hr
Notable sales: broken gas analyzer $350 (risked $200 on this a long time ago thinking it worked), medical film $210 (lot paid off, lots more to sell).Thanks, that’s a fantastic answer! Much obliged for clearing up that mystery.
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