If you want to learn about me and get inspired to see how simple freedom can be, this is a good example of a typical day.
I'll open up a bit to show what life is like when you work for yourself in a sustainable home business.
Let's begin...
I woke up at 10:45 AM.
This free recycled vacuum part sold online at 11:00 AM for $130 with cheap shipping for a nice start to the day.
Showered and hopped on an express bus to hand-deliver this free recycled pet ramp to the buyer for $65 cash. No time for real food, so I devoured two bananas.
This sums to $195 in revenue at no cost, and $167 profit after shipping and fees. Not amazing, but solid enough for before 12:30 PM.
Fielded "told me so" texts from my friend about shorting Bitcoin yesterday. These repeated throughout the day. I could've made a ton of money on a quick flip or two when the top blew off then, but I had no interest. It was pretty obvious it was going to reverse, but I didn't care. During the sharp pullback, I stuck to my plan and took a peaceful cat nap. ...I challenged him to a crypto trading competition with a steak dinner as the prize. I think this will be good to get me to leverage my comfort with charts like I had before I stopped swing trading almost 2 years ago. Since I'm holding 100% of my crypto long for now, we'll each make a new investment of something non-threatening like $500, and set a deadline to compare who has the highest balance from using Gemini.
Hopped on a bus/subway with my baseball backpack for a workout with 2 teammates for 2 hours. Got clobbered in the left shoulder blade by a screaming line drive while throwing batting practice at 25 feet. I have a high pain tolerance, but this was bad. I think the ball hit a nerve because my left trap went numb, and I had severe muscle pain in my shoulder muscles/ligaments. My shoulder blade is ok, but the blunt force may have strained my shoulder socket. TBD here.
Got ice, a bite to eat with teammates, and walked to two thrift stores. No excuses.
The first store had nothing. The second store had two good buys:
Sealed new Spongebob Lego set bought for $3.27 will easily sell for $65.
Rare oversized used tennis racquet bought for $6.52 will easily sell for $140-$160. The last used one sold for $200, but I'm not going to get greedy.
Yep, that's $9.79 spent for a guaranteed $205-$225 in revenue. That's a solid thrift store snipe, ladies and gentlemen.
Next, I hopped on the subway to meet a friend for dinner: a crab roll and lobster bisque soup with a beer.
Walked with my friend on the curbs nearby since the recycling was outside. It's a wealthy area, so I immediately found a few things:
HP printer with its printhead and ink intact.
Tested using full ink I found on the curb recently for "Great Success!"
The printhead works! That's an easy $75. Stupid owner for tossing this. Donate it next time foo'.
The display screen will sell for $25, the paper catch tray will sell for $35, the power supply will sell for $18, and the motherboard will sell for $25. I'll put the rest back out on the curb since those parts would be super slow sellers.
Motorized Electrolux vacuum power nozzle and wand. The nozzle sells for $100 regularly. The wand will go for $30. Not too shabby.
Apple laptop power adapter in mint condition will sell for $22.
Adding this up, that's $330 in free recycled revenue that should all sell within about 3 weeks. It's not a ton, but it's 100% free items I saved from being destroyed, and it was just while walking a few blocks to take the bus home... Opportunities are EVERYWHERE when you choose to see for them.
Combining the thrifting and this, that's a minimum of $535+ in revenue at $9.79 cost... which took me 30 minutes to find, mainly because I was trying to teach her. Not too shabby. Tack on walking the normal curbs by my apartments and a few more stores, and it adds up. I need to ice my shoulder tonight, so no more curbs for me.
I then hopped on a bus and walked 4 blocks to my apartment with all of this in hand (and my baseball backpack on). My shoulder was semi-lame, so carrying everything was a labor of love. Just by my apartment, I ran into a friend who insisted on helping me carry my two plastic bags upstairs while I still had my backpack and the printer.
I then visited my neighbor who's an orthopedic nurse for advice on my shoulder. She's going to ask her ortho team about my shoulder socket/nerve pain tomorrow.
I then took Advil, have been applying ice to my back and shoulder, took pictures of items for listings, and then wrote this post.
I'll now listing most of these items and a luxury stroller I found this week that sells for $200-$300 used, and several other expensive stroller parts I hand-washed yesterday. Music on... Game on...
Sales Number Crunching:
*Sales for 6/27 ended up at $195 for the day at $0 inventory cost. Total profit was $167, which is so so, but I'm not complaining when comparing that I spent about 1.5 hours doing actual "work," which I view as fun. For scale, projecting the numbers out over 365 days equals $71,175 revenue and $60,955 profit. I usually have more sales, but not today.
I would've gone to the gym if I didn't get hit by the line drive. I have to see how it feels in the AM. I will skip softball tomorrow, but really don't want to miss my 3 baseball games this weekend. Maybe I'll play my drums for a Dtube video as rehab.
Not a crazy day, but this is my norm. I was light on the curb hunting, but still bought/saved some good things so I didn't feel guilty about it.
Any questions?
