Financial Fitness February: Day 27 (Took a LOSS)

General Discussion
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Today not a lot happened for me.

I was home most of the day working on stuff for my reselling business and YouTube channel.

With my job starting back up next week, I am trying to get everything organized to be able to focus on my reselling business every day when I get off work.

That being said, I also plan to stop buying stuff in March and focus primarily on listing items so I can start increasing my sales.

I am going to try to set a specific goal of how many items I want to list per day. The 10 a day I tried before really didn’t work out so I want to make sure it is something achievable.

I am thinking about instead setting a goal of 3 a day with a stretch goal of 5.

Looking at the broader picture, if I at least do 3 a day, I will have listed 93 items by the end of the month.

FREE LUNCH AGAIN!

Not exactly what I would call a financial WIN, but it was nice to get to hang out for a while with a friend and business partner.

I was fully expecting to pay for my own lunch but he invited me and didn’t allow me to pay which was really nice of him!

I don’t take advantage of people, but I have no problem accepting a free lunch from time to time.

eBay LOSS

This isn’t even close to what you would consider to be a financial WIN, but I have been sharing about all my eBay sales, so I thought it only right to also share a loss.

A recent product I sold got damaged in shipment and I am now having to send out a new item to the buyer.

This means that I will be out the item cost and the shipping for the second time.

When it is all said and done, I think I will probably break even or lose a dollar or two but I am not worrying about it too much.

It is times like these which serve as lessons learned. I was trying to ship it as light as possible to save on shipping but I didn’t think the postal service would have handled it so poorly but now I know better.

I should also mention, the item I bought for $5 and sold for $77, actually ended up being restricted from international shipment and eBay refunded the buyer. But since they did not restrict it before the sale, they allowed me to keep the money which was really nice for me.

This isn’t my first loss, and I am sure it won’t be my last and as I write I am thinking over quite a few times I have taken a loss on items, but as long as you learn from the experience and do better next time, that is the way to turn a LOSS into a WIN!

As you can see from today, it wasn’t the most positive day for me financially, but I believe that if you can try to see the positive despite the negative, it makes for a much better life!

Have you ever had “one of those days” where nothing went right? How do you handle these situations?

Share any WINS!

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Hi Jon, I love your great positive attitude.

I’m afraid you touched a raw nerve with your item that got damaged in shipment. First of all, who else of us is not responsible when an item is in our care gets damaged or lost is NOT responsible for it? I had that argument with USPS and their answer to me was, “We have no idea how it got damaged in shipment. It could have been at the airline.” I don’t care, I paid YOU for the shipment. Furthermore, I have BOUGHT the insurance before and had an item damaged (as an Ebay buyer) and the USPS determined the seller did not package the item properly and so would not cover the loss AND the seller would not help us because he stated the insurance (that we paid for) should cover the damage. He stated that if we would send back the entire package WITH the broken glass at our cost (it was a picture with a glass front), he would return it to the company for a refund. The cost of shipping would have been ridiculous, especially when we found out it would cost us $4 to replace the glass. We offered him that option and he refused. I was livid. We paid the $4, I complained to Ebay, but as you can see I am still not over it…and YES I also gave him a bad review. Okay, I am taking a deep calming breath now…

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Jon, the bottom line is to never give up.

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I was feeling under the weather this morning so I didn’t walk my real estate flyers but I rescheduled for Monday. Every bit of income I get from doing that I’m going to put in my Acorns account, even if it’s like $20-25 at a time.

My other win - I passed the first qualification stage to be a rater on Lionbridge. You can google them for information. I have to study for, take and pass a test in order to qualify. They said I should spend about 10 hours studying for the test, which is do-able. I would be an independent contractor, which is fine by me. They pay $14 per hour. Another company that’s good is called Appen. I would be classified as an independent contractor, and I would work 10-20 hours per week which is fine by me since my part-time in-person job is 20 hours per week.

My other wins are continuing to shop more exclusively at Aldi. I swear this helps me to save $200-300 per month at the grocery store. I still go to Publix for certain things (like frozen fish, seltzer water, cider, dental floss) that I can’t get a Publix but that’'s okay. The added benefit is there is a nice little Cuban cafe next to Aldi that I like to go to that has amazing empanadas, cappuccinos and guava pastries.

Financial Fitness February has been fun so far! I’d love to see it continue into March, but I realize the acronym would change. But that way it helps to hold me accountable for my spending and saving.

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That sounds wonderful. I did not know you could make money walking real estate flyers.