Creating a Business Multiple Revenue Streams-30 Day and 45 Day Update

Well I haven't created the next Google or Nike, but I have doing well with my side hobby(can't call it a business just yet).  My goal if I didn't type it the computer("the files are in the computer", name that movie?)  was to sell 1K worth of items on eBay, i switched that about 2/3 of the way through to make 1K profit, because for all anyone knew I could be spending 4K but selling 1K worth of items, that's not very impressive.

Well Said Sir, Well Said

I am happy to report I failed!  Well not exactly, I did reach my original goal of 1K in sales, but it did take me and extra 5 days to reach the 1K mark.  I have had over 100 items listed in my store called GQ Casual , give it a look if you would like, pretty much all Men's Clothing.


I would love to say I bought some used clothes yesterday and threw them on eBay the next day and I made a killing.  I have been doing this off and on since college, mostly with new clothes in college and used clothes over the last couple years.  I used a lot of trial and error, research, and knowledge about brands, sports, and what guys like to wear(hint I don't buy skinny jeans).  It took me time to develop a template for the items and change things like adding logos, telling why I sell on eBay "the man fund", and I even used to wash and steam almost every item I had, crazy amount of time.

Headquarters, Beats Me

EBay is not for everyone, taking the pictures, finding the items, shipping, listing the items this all takes time, but I enjoy 90% of it(listing it, not so fun).  As of right now I know this can make me money, not quit my day job money, but enough to have some extra money on the side to be used for whatever I want, whether it's paying off debt, going to a comedy show, or buying something I like and want.  Only time will tell on what I plan to do with this stream of revenue, but I do know it's currently coming in and I'm happy doing it.


Is there a business or hobby on the side that you do that makes money?  Tell me more about it, I love to see comments.

Cutting Back is Great, Winning is Better, and Earning More is Best

Sprint #1 and My Victory Pose

Everyday many of the personal finance blogs preach cutting back and living frugal.  I agree with and do my best to practice many of the principals talked about on a daily basis.  I however lean more towards the Big Wins and most importantly Earning More is the best.

I tend to look at it with examples, I can cut back on my groceries for $40 less a month, I can research on buying my next TV and save a $200 for the big win, or even better I can start a side gig and make an extra $500 month.  All are great, but as I prefer I'd rather go out and kill something and drag it back, you know earn the extra money.

I can't stress this enough, the best way to pay off debt, live comfortably, and be happier overall is to earn more, simple right. (I'm a work in progress and always remember you can't outearn your spending). This can mean so many things.  I turned to eBay to buy and sell items which earns me an income.  This just happens to be something I'm comfortable with, that I know a good amount about or have learned over time.  I work at a bank so it really has nothing to deal with my current job, just something I enjoy. I started doing this for fun, little extra money for going to a Daniel Tosh stand up, nice dinner for the wife and I, since it felt like what my Dad like to call his "beer money" fund, it is great.

So the question is Why can't you go out and do something similar, maybe you are a mechanic full-time, why not earn more by doing oil changes on the side, something simiple.  Let's say your a nurse, why not teach part time on the side.  There is a 101 different things you can do to give your income a boost.  I'm not just talking about your everyday full-time job working the 9-5, which you can also do Overtime, Bonus, Raises.  We can all make a little extra money and I am a great example of just trying something out that I figured out how to make extra money, who knew it would be eBay.

On that note I am very proud to announce, Sprint #1 has been completed, with some money to spare. 

I just paid the last little bit off and I am officially at a $0 balance on my student loan.  It's not a debt free scream, but it makes me happy to know I can do it.  I paid off over 3K in 4 short months!

It's been awhile between writing, but working overtime and eBay will do that, but as always expect more and more because this feels great and I want everyone to know it and share.

Please share an example of how you worked a side gig whether it was to pay off debt or buy an ice cream cone, I love hearing it.  Thank you!!!

Retire Rich or At Least Early

I recently read an article from Afford Anything with the article titled Party Like You're a 72-Year Old Retiree.  I like to read a lot of personal finance type of blogs and this was one of my favorites.  I planned on writing about something similar, but instead I'm going to take some of the key points and write about them in a little more detail from my side.

I'm 31 am I ever going to be retired???

"My parents, in short, have the coolest retirement ever. And what’s crazy is that they didn’t start saving for retirement until their 40s. That flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that if you don’t start saving for retirement by age 25, you’re totally screwed"

The median income for households is right around 50K, so let's use that number for our talk.  If you take $400 every month(this assumes you have $0 saved so far) at a 6% rate(lower than historical data), at the age of 65 you will have 500K.  That's some pretty good coin, but it's so hard to think that far ahead and to be honest $400 a month sure does seem like a lot.  Also remember that we are relying solely on the stock market in this scenario and while I think the stock market is the Golden Ticket, people from the Great Depression, the .Com crash, and the recent crash of the housing market and bail outs, makes me a little nervous.  So is it possible absolutely, but 34 years of giving up $400 month to have a half of a million dollars at 65, doesn't really get me to excited, so I'm guessing it won't for you either.

Keys to Retiring Early

"Yet by the time they both turned 60, only 20 years after they began working, they were ready to retire. They probably could have done it sooner if they weren’t raising little ol’ me."  They have zero personal debt. They paid off their mortgage within 7 or 8 years. They’ve never taken out a car loan and they’ve never carried a credit card balance."

So seeing the big picture or little pieces of motivation that come along really help and the statement above did just that.  So a pretty broad example but a couple took 20 years of saving had no personal debt, paid off their mortgage extremely early, and never had a car loan or credit card balance to speak of.  I am taking steps to get rid of every one of these retirement killers.  I had a car loan and sold my car and thus got rid of the loan with it.  I have a mortgage, currently on a 7 year plan to pay it off(the other option is when I turn 60 or in 2033 it would be paid off, sounds terrible), and I can happily say I have paid off my credit card balance.  

Enjoy Today and Tomorrow

"Yes, you should still enjoy today. Don’t get so obsessed with retirement that you forget the present moment. Travel when you’re young AND when you’re old. The world will change a lot in the next few decades. You’ll get to watch it happen.

But don’t forget that packing your lunch to work, brewing your own coffee, driving an old car – that’s not really a sacrifice, is it? Not compared to what you’ll gain."

Enjoy today.  Travel, Explore, do what you enjoy the most.  Just remember that you should not do it with a credit card, cash advance, personal loan, or anything else that requires you owe someone especially the bank.  The last statement really hit home, especially with my Saving for Vacation with Grocery Money  I really don't mind packing my own lunch, brewing coffee at the house, and taking the bus or train.  It certainly can be tempting living in Chicago with all the great places to eat and drink, but like Afford Anything said it's not really a sacrifice is it?

Finishing up a Sprint and Saving for Vacation with Grocery Money

As I update my sprint to paying down my student loan, I made a bold claim that I was going to pay off a portion by the end of July, well I am happy to say I am still on my way, it's going to be tight though, because I have been holding off on using my "man fund" to pay off the remaining balance.  I just made a payment on 6/18/13 so the balance should be right around $800 with a little over a month to pay off, then it's party time!!!  LOL No it's on to the next debt, the borrower is slave to the lender and nobody wants to be a slave.

My next plan of divide and conquer is to plan and cash flow my vacation, no credit cards, no savings that I apply to debt, it will be 100% be cash flowed by cutting back!!! Cut it out you say guy from Full House!  Oh we will, I tell you, we will.

So our plan is to travel to San Francisco and possibly up or down the coast to some nearby cities.  The cost can vary and according the San Francisco visitor's bureau, tourists staying in a hotel spend $244 per person per day.  We are going to go about this a little differently, since we plan to vacation in early September we have about 3 months to save, we will then take the amount that we save and use this during our trip, if we have a $100 total we better find someone with a couch who lives in San Francisco.  The good news to start is our air fare is taken care of, we made the right move last summer and accepted Delta's offer for some free vouchers and and extra day in Nicaragua, BOOM, airfare paid for.

So because my wife doesn't like sharing any details about money and the fact that I love my wife and my marriage, I will only share the money we save, not any incomes or what we have budgeted for.  We will keep things simple, if I have $100 budgeted for and only spend $30, then more of the BOOM! saved $70 for "San Francisco is Fantastico"(patent pending).  This will also include money budgeted for eating out, this is our real vice where we spend far too much money.  The same plan will apply $100 budgeted, spend $40, and yep you got it BOOM Baby!!!! $60 saved.  Based on this while I don't have a concrete number my projected savings we will need is probably about $1000, which is about $300 or $400 month, so that's a lot of savings, but I love a challenge.

Here are a couple of simple plans to save a few extra dollars:

1. Make a list every week for our Groceries and project what we will spend before we go.  I did this and came within a dollar it was kinda freaky actually.  This way I know what I'm spending before I ever step into the grocery store.
2. Cash only.  I take out my budgeted money after each paycheck and only use that to pay for groceries.  If I want the chocolate cookies dough and it's $2 over what I brought, I politely ask to have it removed.
3. Do not eat out.  This will be the hardest to accomplish.  This will involve wait for it, making coffee and breakfast at the house, eating leftovers and sandwiches I brought from home, and even planning our dinners for the week and taking it out the night before(nice little Pot Roast in the slow cooker right now).
4. Say NO.  This also rings up as one of the more difficult things to do.  Say no to eating out, say no to that work lunch with everyone.  We are not going to totally cut off the eating out for lunches, but 1x a week is the limit.

The message here is finish up a sprint and let's save some money to go on vacation, because honestly do you want to wait till your 65 to go on cool vacations???????? 

I would love to see some comments on how you save on groceries and going out.  Thanks for reading.

Creating a Business-Multiple Avenues, Multiple Streams-60 Days on Fire

Squeezing me for my wallet!

I just got back from vacation from visiting Disney World and watching my Brother In-Law's graduate from high school, Congrats Omar and Jesse!!!!(If you read my blog that is, haha).  I will get into some of the saving and extra spending in another post I did during this vacation, hint Mickey and Minnie killed me.

Reading a comment from my previous post http://www.makingsenseofcents.com/ I realized I need to talk about and write about what I will be doing over the next 60 days and beyond.  I will be taking the steps to start an online clothing company, where I will be selling new and used clothing.  I heard a quote when starting a business, of course I can't find it right now to give them credit, but starting out, "I want you to put as much work as you would in 2 years into the first 60 days".  Sounds crazy right???  Absolutely does to me, that's why I'm doing it!!! I'm a big believer in if it was easy everyone would do it, so I'm hoping this is going to be terrible!

So my business plan is to acquire and sell clothing online, first with eBay, mixed in with Storenvy, and possibly Etsy, that's to be determined, the majority of the items for sale will be on eBay with a small mix in Storenvy.  All of this will be done in 60 days, the 60 day of Fire launch will be on June 9th and will go until August 7th, after this I will take a 2 week break and get all nerdy and put together spreadsheets, some ongoing, about what sells for brands, price, best days to sell, etc.  I also plan on really working on a process to see how long things take and if any of this can be done by others or is me doing all the work.


*********************************************************************************
Delay in Writing for a couple days, work will do that to you.

So the 60 day launch has begun, not of course with some obstacles.  I currently have around 75 items for sale found on the link above.  The obstacles included not having Internet for a couple days, we only use a Wi-Fi card and I left it in Miami and work always gets in the way.  So because of the promotions offered by eBay I used a majority of Buy It Now(just like it sounds) and only a few Auction with the Buy It Now option.  Another recent promotion will allow me to list the rest of my items available which is about 20 or 30 over the next couple days with what I have used the majority of the time with the 7 day Auction and Buy It Now.  I will continue to keep buying and keep listing, but so far i'm on Day 6 and things are on there way up

I'm on pace to sell an item a day with what I have currently listed, which needs to be a larger number, but with some of my Auctions ending on Sunday, this number should pick up.  60 Days on Fire has begun!!!!

Money Mindset-Owning a Nice Car



Mercury Capri Convertible



Growing up I was lucky enough to have a car that was considered mine, it started with a 1997 Red Mercury Capri convertible, which I think was my Dad buying a convertible during the summer and then realizing we lived in the snow filled winter wonderland known as Wisconsin.  I don't think I really had to pay for anything on that car, if I did it was minimal, insurance, oil change, gas(Yes I remember .99/gallon), nothing too much.



Mercury Tracer



I then moved on to what many people growing up know as my car.  A 1997 Mercury Tracer, Purple of course.  Many nicknames were given, "The Traca' You Can't Replace", "The Tracer You Can't Eraser", "The Purple Barney Car".  All great nicknames for a great car.  I think the car was a couple years old when my parents bought it, some of the upgrades were.... haha who I am I kidding everything was standard, nothing was power, cruise control, that would be my foot hovering over the gas pedal at the same rate, CD player, haha a radio was the only thing bumping in my car.(I did later buy a CD player when I worked at Circuit City).  During high school and college, my parents had me paying the car payment the best I could, about $160 month until I basically couldn't afford it anymore and my parents paid off the loan.


What does this have to do with owning a nice car?  Well I didn't have a new car or expensive, I consider myself lucky for what I had, but nothing brand new or high end like a Mercedes Benz or BMW.  During college summers I lived in the Chicago suburbs and had the pleasure of working at a golf course that costs from what I remember around 80k to join.  So pretty much every car that rolled in there was a 50K car or more.  Rarely did I see the typical American Ford Taurus unless it was in the caddie parking lot.  I associated having money with having a nice car.  Which I think was one of the reasons I purchased my Mercedes Benz.  Now I bought it below Kelly Blue book value, but I felt like the richest man in the world.  My car payment wasn't ridiculous, nothing that I couldn't afford(asterisk )

I shortly realized buying a car with a payment was not smart.  I was paying about $300 month, not including insurance, gas, and maintenance which gets a little higher with a foreign car.  After moving from Florida(need a car), to Chicago(don't need a car).  I was able to sell my car after listing it on Craigslist, I took a hit out of pocket, I think I had to pay about $1200, possibly less.  This might have been the greatest financial decision I have made in my life.

Now when I see someone in my neighborhood driving an Escalade or new BMW, I think they are morons.  Why would you spend so much money on a car, is it to look good, feel good, these are items that are not going up in value?  That's a lot of money.  So let's say you make really good money and pull in 100K, a new Escalade costs about 60K, that still makes no sense to me, unless you are paying cash for this purchase I have to say this is a bad decision.  That's 60% of your salary.  I think knowone should have a car payment and the fair amount for your salary to car ratio should be right around 10%.  So make 200K you can drive a 20K car, unless it's cash then i think that bumps to 20%, so make make 200K a year and you can drive a used Escalade all paid for.

My Money Mindset when I am in the suburbs or nicer area is to see that same BMW and think that they are doing very well for themselves.  Owning a nice car seems to tell me that you have money.  This could be keeping up with the Jones' which is also something that can bring you down in the debt spiral of course.  But I think it's totally different, the guy driving the BMW is a guy doing well making good cash, the guy listening to Jay-Z driving the 60K Lexus is a moron to me.

Do you have a nice car with a payment or a lease?  Do you own a 1993 Toyota Corolla with rust on the side?  Do you ride your bike to work?  Take the bus, train, carpool?  How do you save money with your own transportation?

Birthday Presents and Dreaming Big



Happy Birthday from Google!!!

So besides Google apparently knowing everything, what happens on your birthday?  Do you throw a party, go out to eat, go to Las Vegas, pretend the day doesn't exsist?

Well I like to keep things simple, I might mention it casually here and there, but a birthday extravaganza is not on the horizon.  I live by what a comic once said, I'm only celebrating every 10 years, so 30, 40, etc., the rest is for the kids.  What I have done in the past is go grab my favorite drink or favorite lunch spot, it's relatively inexpensive and puts a smile on my face:)

So this year at the old age of 31, I will be having a relaxing birthday.  The wife made me breakfast, I'm eating leftovers from last night, and to cap it off I will be hanging out with the wife for a beer and probably some pulled pork nachos from http://www.baronbuena.com/ one of my favorite places for a beer in the city.  Yes life of luxury, gotta love it. 

I think this is being frugal, my guess is I don't pay a dime out of pocket on my birthday(thank you Wife!), but even if I didn't it wouldn't be anything Andrew Jackson couldn't take care of.  Any gifts of money I receive usually get a 50/50 split between let's buy something for me and let's pay off that debt.  I'm a big believer in small gifts to reward yourself and still attack the Evil Debt Monster, which I imagine to look like these guys over there.

Dream Big...........................Time to Reflect

It also brings me to a point to really think about goals and dreams I had growing up and recent as things change from a professional basketball player to owning the Milwaukee Bucks.

Watch out Herb Kohl!!!

It's amazing the things that change your life and your expectations.  Coming out of college, I had dreams of probably golfing every day and driving a Mercedes.  Life and poor decisions gave me black eye, pretty much swollen shut.  Then a beautiful woman comes in to your life and the swelling goes down and you can see great things ahead.  For those people who are exactly where they want to be and have reached or on track to reach life's goals, congratulations!!!  My journey is in progress probably took a detour to Mexico, I'm not sure if climbing a mountain or a hill, but I'm climbing upwards and that's the most important thing for me.

What do you do on your birthday that's special to you?  Where do  you think you would be at this point in your life?