Financial Fitness February: Day 10

General Discussion
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Normally, Day 10 would be a third of the way through a month, but since it’s February, the month is going by much faster it seems. Good thing we get an extra day this month!

Here’s my wins for the day:

1.) Listed 10 New Items On eBay

As a reseller, it can be really easy to get so involved with sourcing (my favorite part) that we fail to do our duty to list the items we source.

While you gotta have good products to sell, it does no good if they just sit in your storage.

Unfortunately, a lot of resellers end up storing more than they sell if they are not careful.

So today and the rest of this week, I am challenging myself to post at least 10 items a day on eBay so that I can start selling more in the near future.

While this may not directly affect my finances today, it gives me the opportunity to increase sales which will then impact my finances.

It took me a while, but I was finally able to create 10 new listings today so I will take that WIN!

FUN FACT: A fairly common resellers term is “death pile” which refers to all the unlisted inventory just sitting around. If you have been reselling for any period of time, unfortunately we all have one.

2.) Free Dinner (But I Worked for It)

It’s not really hard work, but mystery shopping is a great way to earn a free meal in exchange for taking the time to review the restaurant.

It has been talked about some in the past and although I haven’t shared much of my experience here in the community, I have actually been participating in mystery shopping for quite some time now.

Today’s mystery shop, I had to order food to be delivered to my house after which I evaluated both the restaurant and the delivery person.

The food was paid, as was the tip, taxes and delivery fees and also they paid me a little extra on top to do the job.

Can’t complain about a free dinner that doesn’t even require me to use any gas!

LESSON FROM TODAY: Not everything you do will have an immediate effect on your finances. However, the key to a better financial FUTURE, is to take steps TODAY to make tomorrow better!

Because most of my day was spent listing stuff or organizing my business expenses, I really didn’t have a lot of time to be spending much money.

I did have to pick up some items I bought to resell from an online auction, but other than that, I pretty much just went about my day as usual.

Now let’s just see if I can keep up with listing 10 items a day. I think that now that I am back in the swing of things, it will hopefully go much faster.

Have you done anything recently that may not of immediately affected your finances but will in the future?

Share your WINS with me in the comments!

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I too, hate creating listings on ebay and etsy. I’m very fussy about my photos and take a lot of time shooting the products in a light box and cropping and editing them to max the presentation. 10 listings a day is great, Jon!!

I’d say yesterday was a fail for me. I spent money on a new trash can, and to save embarrassment, I’m not going to share how much I paid for something to throw garbage into. But psychologically, I need to replace an open waste basket lined with a garbage bag kept in my pantry (eating up valuable storage real estate!) with a fancy, auto-opener, stainless, lidded trash can that I can leave in my kitchen. Now I feel better!

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Ahh, the death pile. I can relate totally. I have recently changed my buying habits to avoid the death pile, or in my case, death boxes (since I buy boxes of CDs). My CD supplier is always wanting to give me good deals, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to come home with 2500+ CDs.

Unfortunately, after getting them in the house, I would get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them and put off listing. Then they would sit, which would make it so I didn’t buy from my CD guy for several months. So, I recently got rid of over 2K of them (just gave them away, I didn’t want to see them any more and I needed the space). I emailed my CD guy and told him that I would only be buying 1 or 2 boxes at a time, but would be buying them more often, as that would allow me to process them within a few days. So far, it’s worked!

Any time you can clear out some of the death pile, that is a good day

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I love this post! Extremely efficient! I also participate in mystery shopping every now and then if time permits. They’re fun and free! I’ll try and work on my own list.

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@eber.a Thanks for the comment! I agree, that Mystery shopping is pretty fun and the added bonus of free food or money makes it even more exciting!

Look forward to hearing more about your financial wins!

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@jeremym sounds like you have a pretty good system in place now for getting stuff in and listed.

I am starting over since I took a pause to travel the US with my wife but I do have quite a bit of stuff that I stored away that I need to get out and get listed.

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Moore Income posted:

@jeremym sounds like you have a pretty good system in place now for getting stuff in and listed.

I am starting over since I took a pause to travel the US with my wife but I do have quite a bit of stuff that I stored away that I need to get out and get listed.

I have to have a good system or my place will quickly look like an episode of hoarders!