September | October
NATURE, FINES & GETTING BACK ON EBAY
It's a fresh new month, and as such, I like to take a quick look back at the previous month and how it went, as well as outline my goals for the present month.
September was a strange one. Crypto was swimming in a pool of FUD, mostly unfounded FUD, but FUD nonetheless. September, for whatever reason, is also known to be a low month for Crypto.
It's October now and Q4 has begun. Cryptowise, we've already seen a taste of what's to come I think. We saw a good sized green candle on the Bitcoin chart. There were some positive bits of news that it has been attributed to, but I think it was just a general feeling of hope and excitement of exiting September and entering October. Everyone is feeling good and bullish, shifting us away from "extreme fear" to "neutral" on the fear & greed index virtually overnight.
September /
The past month's highlight for me was the time spent in nature on a camp site in Norfolk. The internet was quite patchy there so I was forced to spend some time away from the noise and FUD online. I also got to breathe in a lot of fresh air and experience pure silence and pitch dark nights that are nearly impossible in the city.
There were may nature walks near where I stayed. Land owners in England are often so kind as to allow strangers to walk on their land, as long as we keep to the designated paths. From memory, this is the same in Scotland and Wales. I've never been to Northern Ireland, so I can't really say if it's the same there. As a result, this country has the most number of official nature walks I've ever seen anywhere I've been before. This is one of the great benefits of living here.
In terms of finances, I managed to buy a few dips. I didn't catch them all, and I didn't catch the best ones because I ran out of liquidity like many of you. I am quite happy with what I have going forward. It should be fun watching the bag rise over the coming weeks.
Sadly I also managed to rack up some negatives. I got a couple of road fines; one by driving through a prohibited part of a road in my neighbourhood, and another on the M25 by breaking a speed limit. Personally, I think the fines are unfair, but as I did commit the contraventions, I do need to pay up.
I'm not a reckless driver - quite the opposite actually. What happened on the M25 was a closure of the left (slow) lane due to a crash just after a junction merge. The speed limit had also been reduced to 40mph to manage the traffic flowing through the area. I had to pick up some speed to change lanes to avoid colliding with an incoming trailer, who most definitely would not have been aware of the lane closure and was coming in at about 50mph. My choices were to slam on the breaks and slow to 20mph with the risk of being hit by an incoming car at the back, maintain my speed and get driven into by the merging trailer, or pick up my speed and clear the trailer to the front. I picked option 3 (the safest), but got caught by the speed camera that had been strategically placed at the junction. Oh well, I'd rather be alive to pay the fine.
The other fine was a cheeky little signage change by the council that has no doubt caught a whole bunch of drivers, especially if you live there and have driven though that road thousands of times like I have.
Any how, I don't let money get to my emotions anymore. If I think I have a case, I call and appeal. Otherwise I just pay fines and move on. It's just money, it comes and goes. In the time I wrote out the cheques to both governmental agencies that issued the fines, the volatility on my crypto portfolio had swallowed the amount paid. Nothing makes you lose respect in fiat money like crypto volatility.
October /
It's day 3 of the month and I am already moving in the right direction I think. I've been more productive in three days than I was in entire weeks in September. I've been going on my walks, even in the rain, and having time to clear my mind to think clearly about my goals.
One thought occurred to me on one of my walks. I decided to return to selling on eBay! What?!
Well, this is the thing. I have been side-hustling for a very long time and of all the things I tried, selling on eBay was the most successful before I found crypto. When I worked in the city, I also had an eBay shop that I sold the odd thing. When I quit that job to work for myself, my eBay shop was one of the ways I was able to keep paying my upkeep until I found my feet.
eBay has it's issues, but I still rank it as one of the best (and immediate) ways to make money if you live in a country where it exists. There are other alternatives like Etsy or Amazon, but I find eBay to be the best. I also sold on Etsy and Amazon by the way, but neither came close to how much I was making selling on eBay.
I don't remember exactly why I stopped selling on eBay. I think Steemit may have had something to do with it. The amount of effort and time I was putting into listing, taking photos, and shipping posted items vs how much money I was making, produced better success blogging on Steemit at the time. Also, I was working on being location independent, so having a large inventory like I did on eBay wasn't helping.
I'm not going to get back the same way I was on there with thousands of items listed, no. Instead I'm going to keep it more compact, starting with items that still hold value but are sitting in storage or gathering dust on my shelves. Probably no more than 50 items at a time.
The motivation for getting back on eBay were the fines I racked up in September. I figured, if I'm going to keep getting these little things that nibble away at my finances, why not cover them by releasing the value in stuff I already own, but are wasting away?
I've set an arbitrary £500 target for how much I want to make on eBay this month. It's not based on anything in particular, but I like to set goals so I can measure how well I've done or at least give me something to strive for. That should also cover all the fines and increases in utility bills that happened in September, after putting away a percentage for tax. Let's see how that goes.
I always strive to be debt free and owe nothing to anyone, but the system is set up to keep us in debt and slaving away chasing repayments. Even without borrowing money and living within one's means, it's very easy to incur exorbitant fines and other such things that throw many people in debt. Being debt-free and financially secure is an active process in this country.
Peace & Love,
Adé