April 3, 2019
If you sign up for Swagbucks using my link this month and earn 300 total SB before May 1st, 2019, you get a 300 SB bonus.
It’s worth it if you have a few minutes a day to earn some SBs. Your first gift card each month is discounted, too. I usually redeem my monthly $25 gift card for Target or Amazon and it costs 2200 SB instead of 2500 SB.
Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join Swagbucks and earn. I track my earnings here.
January 3, 2019
Monday through Thursday, Swagbucks broadcasts a live trivia game show where you test your knowledge to win cash prizes called SwagIQ. You’ll need to download the app to get started, and must be a member of SwagBucks if you want to earn (you do!). Sign up here if you aren’t already a Swagbucks member.
Tune-in at the appointed times by launching the SwagIQ app and log-in with your Swagbucks account credentials. The game show host will ask a series of multiple-choice trivia questions. You’ll have 10 seconds to answer each one.
Get the answer right and get SB (points you can use to get gift cards) and move on. Answer them all correctly and you can win a grand prize! If more than one player wins, the winners split the grand prize.
Get the answer wrong, you can still play along. Some questions have an SB award attached to them. If you answer those questions correctly, you get SB, even if you’re out of the running for the big money. And, if you’re in a groove but miss a question, you’ll have the option to rejoin a game by redeeming a few SB.
Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join Swagbucks and earn. I track my earnings here.
September 24, 2018
Photo by Sidney Pearce on Unsplash
My first round, I didn’t bother to comparison shop. I was in a hurry to make some kind of progress in shifting the glacier of boxes in my office so 3 books, 7 DVDs, and one broken 16 GB iPhone went straight off to Decluttr. They downrated the broken phone as though I had miscategorized it, even though I’d marked it with the lowest option they had given me on the selling screen, and we came away with $10.85.
Notes: Decluttr pays for shipping and doesn’t return unsold items. They won’t take items without barcodes, which annoyed me about two or three sets of CDs and DVDs that were in great shape but inexplicably had no barcodes. Your barcodes must be identical and the items must be in good shape. You need to enter a minimum of $5 worth of items to complete an order.
My second round, flush with having successfully emptied out 5 boxes of packing boxes, I was able to take an extra 15 minutes to check other DVD sites to see if we could get better prices. This time, out of ten DVDs, Decluttr offered me $1.37 for 4 DVDs. Second Spin offered $5.40 for 8 DVDs. Since the point was to maximize both income and clearing out stuff, Second Spin was our friend this time. Or so I thought.
June 26, 2017
After spending an astronomical amount on my phone replacement last year, and PiC’s third replacement trying to crap out, it was way past time to recoup any of our cost possible.
Note: this review is months after my actual sale experience so it’s a little dusty, but you’ll see the reason for that below!
I first signed up for Gazelle but they offered a whole $8 for one of our old phones which is absurd. The phone works well enough if you’re not a power user, which I am.
After poking around good ole Google for a while, Swappa looked promising, so I gave it a try with one of our Androids.
This process is a little bit less straightforward than selling on Poshmark, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!
After several weeks of renewing my listing, I had a buyer!
I was notified first of the Paypal payment, then the instructions to ship arrived. I gave the phone one last going over to shine it up nicely, wrapped it securely, and took myself off to the post office where I decided to send it USPS flat rate for the tracking and the confirmation.
The buyer was a bit weird though.
I updated the sale when I shipped and provided the tracking number but there was no reply. Swappa sent him a comment asking him to confirm receipt and formally complete the sale – still no response. The buyer had a week to do so, but didn’t, and didn’t leave feedback either, so Swappa formally completed the sale for me.
A MONTH later, he emailed saying that the phone didn’t work, even though it was in working order when I shipped it.
Since it’d been 5 weeks since I sent him the phone and it was in good condition when it left my hands, as advertised, I offered some basic troubleshooting options and left it at that. He could have attempted to charge it back through Paypal, so I kept the money on the side to wait and see. It’s now been six months with no further communication so it might be safe to say that this one has been put to bed. I think.
Final verdict: My listing sold for $63 less the $7 paid for shipping flat rate with insurance. $56 blows the Gazelle offer out of the water, even with the minor inconveniences and irritations.
October 24, 2016
Background: 2 years ago November, J. Money and I had a quick chat that spawned this post on earning side money and then I started tracking our earnings publicly because it’s always more fun that way. PiC is our resident Craigslister and I’m the resident Try Anything Once-er.
As previously mentioned in the May and June monthly reports, I gave mTurk a little test run.
My time was particularly tight in those months so it wasn’t a smart time to be trying new things but I wanted to dip my toes in and give it a wiggle. I think because it was so time-crunchy, my brain really needed to know that it wouldn’t last and the way to give myself hope for that is to do something new that feels purposeful and makes a bit of money.
After a couple months, spending nibbles of time when I was taking a mental break from work, I haven’t cracked any secret codes. Tasks are most available during business hours, and you do better when you spend time on skill-based tasks, I think. The tasks I’ve been qualified for are things like surveys which don’t earn much.
Whether it’s bad timing or lack of effort, mTurk isn’t for me right now. I’ll put this experiment on hold until I have a bit more time to play with it.
August 29, 2016
Background: 2 years ago November, J. Money and I had a quick chat that spawned this post on earning side money and then I started tracking our earnings publicly because it’s always more fun that way. PiC is our resident Craigslister and I’m the resident Try Anything Once-er.
One of my challenges in the Great Wardrobe Curation has been getting rid of clothes that need to exit stage left. They normally still have plenty of wear in them, don’t fit quite right but aren’t worth the cost of tailoring, or that I can’t tolerate wearing any longer, like heels. It doesn’t make sense to keep them and getting both space and money back would be double the fun.
With plenty of encouragement from Penny to give it a try, even with my decidedly unfancy wardrobe, and armed with her quick tutorial, I quickly made up an account on Poshmark and listed a handful of shoes. One pair of heels I’ll hold on to, for faking professionalism until I get better flats, but most of them can go.
At first it didn’t seem like it was meant to be. It took 4 hours to download the app. First, I never remember my Apple ID so downloading isn’t the breeze that it was from my Android. I mean, sure, security but sometimes you just want to be able to get your darn free app! Then it wanted 3 hours to think about downloading. Awesome.
Once the app was running, it was pretty simple to start listing things. They encourage you to list 10-12 items to start but in reality there was no requirement to do that so it seemed like the perfect way to tiptoe into selling a few things at a time. I just can’t commit to a huge overhaul in one go.
I created an account (I loathe creating usernames) and started snapping pictures. It only took 20 minutes to list four items, and most of that time was spent looking up the information and coming up with useful descriptions.
It was easiest to start with shoes since I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. There was immediate beginner’s luck with a rash of sales, and three sales and three weeks later, I’m still waiting for more real nibbles.
Most people want to negotiate so set your prices a little higher than you’re willing to sell for. That way you can compromise more.
You don’t need to bargain in the comments, your potential buyers have the ability to make an offer which you can ignore (it expires in 24 hours), counteroffer, or decline. If you decline outright, Poshmark will send you an email suggesting that you counteroffer so that there’s dialogue. Declining the offer means that attempt at a sale is over.
USPS ships you free shipping envelopes and boxes, as Penny had pointed out in her very helpful post. They’re really slow, though, and only ship in packages of 10 items each, so if you’re not dropping by the post office to pick up a box or two, it’s a bit of a commitment.
I’m incredibly impatient. I sold three items in the first 4 days of selling using existing packaging and then it’s been all quiet. After the first sales, I ordered a few basic shipping supplies from USPS and now I have STUFF sitting around the house, waiting to be used. I knew I should have waited!
You’re encouraged to package your sold items nicely. This means wrapping things in tissue paper, and adding a note for your buyer. As an inveterate recycler, I dug into my abundant stash of used tissue paper, sealed them up with thank you labels from one of my last labeling projects, and shipped in repurposed Amazon boxes while waiting for the USPS shipping materials. All were accepted by the buyers quickly and happily.
Speaking of acceptance, the buyers have 3 days after the package delivery to officially accept your shipped product or to file a report if they feel it didn’t match the selling description. You should be really specific about your items to make sure that your buyers know what they’re getting. I take pictures of any possible flaws for the item profile to be sure.
As a seller, you’re given a week to ship, but they like you to ship sooner. I didn’t have a problem with shipping within 2 days since I’m selling such low volume.
I won’t say this is a flop, it’s only been a few weeks, even if it feels longer. The early success certainly raised my expectations unrealistically – I always knew that I didn’t have a ton of saleable items but it was worth the try. Other than the Poshmark fee which I wouldn’t have paid if I didn’t make money myself, and some time obsessing over pictures and listings, I didn’t lose anything.
June 14, 2013
“We have to get this guy a house.”
Back from our various vacationtimes, we immediately saw that, while Doggle was thrilled to see us, he was also happier, peppier and more engaged than ever before. He’d been hanging his shingle in a house with a yard, kids and other pets for a week and amid the shameless spoiling, it was clear that he’d been taking dog lessons from someone.
Apparently the quiet life in a small apartment with DINKs doesn’t quite inspire the still-reticent Zendog to come out from his shell and do a doggy dance, or dash around happily pouncing on his toys four times a day nearly so much as the chaos of a full house does. It’s probably too much to hope that he’d picked up the notion of catch, but we actually have hope now that he might try.
So are we serious about getting a house for the dog?
Well, we’d been kicking around the idea of buying a house for some time now, and we designed our budget this year with a specific goal to save for a new down payment. It does feel like providing a yard is the next best thing we can do for our beloved Doggle. And yes, we want it for ourselves too, but let’s be honest, we’re doting parents and the dog is our happy excuse for a lot of things.
Early explorations of Zillow and Trulia revealed real estate listings that are literally jawdropping.
We’re planning to stay outside the city. Many 20 and 30-somethings may find it appalling that people would actually prefer suburbs to the bustling city, but it’s true of us. We love visiting the city but it doesn’t feel like home to either of us. Between the traffic, the lack of (free) parking, the tight quarters, we’re just not city people. And with the tech industry out here, and the salaries they pay, we couldn’t afford the city if we wanted! So, y’know…
We’d like to be within fifteen or twenty miles of the city for reasonable commutes, which also suits my need for a warmer microclimate, so that was our first search parameter. We’d definitely be paying more for the luxury of better weather and saving time on a daily basis. If we were willing to be in say, Hayward, where I know the weather is as hot as even I would like, prices would be far closer to reasonable. But the compromise is better weather for me, not great for me and utterly crappy weather for him. For this, we shall pay.
We’re looking for at least two bedrooms, we’d really like two bathrooms and a two car garage, and a decently large kitchen is important to me. If there was a room I could start converting into my own private library (The Dream), that’d be the best but I will settle for a good amount of wall space and storage. We have no storage where we are now.
Last, PiC is reminding me to keep searching in specific areas where the schools are better. Which is sensible, this may be where we stay for a really long time. It needs to be a pretty safe neighborhood with some staying power. Which also means we probably should look at more than 2 bedrooms if we’re going to have any spawn. I grew up in a small 2 bedroom apartment but as an adult, I don’t really want to do that again, albeit from the other side, if I don’t have to. It might be character building but I’ll find another way to impart that.
We’re finding one and two bedroom, one bathroom, one car garage single family homes in moderately close/decent neighborhoods are starting at A. Million. Dollars. Seriously.
This shouldn’t be any surprise when in some neighborhoods, $800k hardly gets you more than a two bedroom, x bathroom(s) condo or apartment.
And three bedroom, two bathroom with garage SFHs run more like 700K-3M.
*gulp*
The estimated monthly payments on those homes that are 3k-7k (in more extreme cases) are almost beside the point. I’d only feel comfortable to committing to a new loan if we had 200K in cash with a healthy uncommitted cash flow. We do not have 200K in cash.
We could make a pretty good run at it but it’s not going to happen overnight and as much as I fantasize about taking another job, that’s not going to happen either. Freelancing, maybe. A whole other job would be crazy and crazy-making.
We still hold hope this can work and maybe even in the next year or so. Not that I expect the market to get much friendlier over the next year, but we have steps to take to increase our buying power, and reduce our stress.
1. Reduce our current fixed expenses, including the current mortgage to make a significant dent in the down payment goal. We’re refinancing and going over all the other expenses to trim back.
2. Keep those fixed expenses low – I don’t want to commit ourselves to either too much house (payment) or too strict a budget. After nine+ years of living on a shoestring income to debt ratio, I refuse to find ourselves coming up empty on cash for the sake of a house.
3. When we get a decent cash cushion in place, I’ll focus on foreclosures to see if we can’t stretch our buying power.
4. Hope hope hope that mortgage rates aren’t abominable twelve to twenty four months from now.
It’s time to dig deep and turn on the saving engines again. It’s not worth cutting off our allowances, I don’t think, since it’s not much per month anyway, but I’d love to pull back a little bit everywhere.
::What else should we be doing?
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