My sweet hubby takes care of the budget of our fixed income. Money comes in, money goes out. Every penny is counted and spent. Of course there is not enough money. When you are retired and did not really plan for retirement things are tight. This is a HINT for all you younger than us SAVE today and SPEND less than you make.
I can not really complain there are so many who do not have the income we have and still attempt to support a family the best they can. For this very reason I look for ways to share with others food and personal items when I find them at a good price. They will go to the food shelf via the church.
As I have shared before one of our biggest expenses is health insurance and will stay that way until I reach 65. It then will go down some. I am in no hurry to age to 65, but it is coming faster than I like.
So what is someone to do.? What we do is work at making extra money selling on eBay and Amazon.
We go to the local auctions to buy items to resell at those on line venues plus at the antique stores.
I always estimate that about one third of what we make on eBay goes to fees from eBay and Paypal.
Amazon is totally different, at this time we do not sell enough in a month to warrent paying a fixed monthly fee, so instead it cost us an extra $1.00 to sell. We would need to sell more than 40 books a month to make it pay, the sellers fee is $39.95 a month.
Besides eBay and Amazon we are selling at two different antique mall. We have a glass case in mall #1 and a case and small space in mall #2. We just expanded to the all of the small space the beginning of this year. Before that we had a glass case, a book case and few things in the area. Time will tell how we do but I feel it will be a good thing.
Payment to us at the antique stores is every two weeks. A friend of ours who has been in the antique business for over 30 years that we should set a goal to make at least three times our rent. One third is the cost of the space, one third is cost of goods returned and one third to us to add to our living expense.
My goals are to attempt to find more GOOD books to sell on Amazon. Finding good books is tough. To make it worth while you want a book that you can sell for at least $10.00. So many sellers on Amazon are penny sellers, this is not worth my time.
I look forward to increasing our sales at eBay. We sold about $6,000 gross last year. I would like to see this double if possible. At one time we did sell at least $1,000 a month but we have slipped from that sales amount.
Another way we make extra money is during the garage sale season we find items to resell at the local auctions to make some fast cash. Rather than wait for it to sell at the antique stores we turn some cash fast. We even do this during the winter time if we come across something at a thrift store or at one of our local book stores. I some times can find some good books that I can sell at the auction house for a profit. Just this week we have some gun books at one auction house and this next monday we have a few items to sell at the other auction house.
So my goal for this coming year is to bring in at least $1,000 a month to us after expenses at ebay, amazon and the antique stores.
1/4 would go into savings.
1/4 would be added to our income for the extras like eating out, a movie or just something fun.
1/4 would go towards paying extra on what debt we have
1/4 would go back into making more money
Week 1 and 2 are over and nothing went into savings as of yet. Money coming in has not been as good as needed, but that can change over night.
During the first half of the month on eBay we grossed $73.88
Amazon we sold 4 books for gross amont of $58.32
More time and effort need to go into our internet work.
I will update this after I find out what happened at the antique stores during the first two weeks of the month.
I was asked recently if I had tried etsy. My answer was with antique stores, auctions and internet business I have enough on my plate already.
Add into this time with family and work on my family research and my days are pretty full.
I am sharing all of this at Saved Quarter Challenge. Take a moment to see what others are doing.
Thanks for stopping by.. check back in a few days to see how the antique stores did. Grace
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