1st Day Selling IPods

Yesterday I had listed 3 of my 4gb Ipod Nanos. At the time of purchase, I went into it hoping for a profit of $10 each, which would have brought my expected profit between $350 and $400. Happy was my surprise when I was expecting 22 good and 18 bad Ipods and it turned out to be 29 good and 11 bad ones. All that would be extra profit for me since I can obviously sell a working one for more than a broken one.

I bought them expecting to sell them for a minimum of $80 for the good ones. The first three IPods I sold today went for $91, $96 and $116. One of them had no accessories and was beaten to death. It amazes me what people will pay for an IPod. Crazy.

I don't know if you can do the math, but I made as much profit today selling 3 IPods as I did working for 8 hours. Grand total spent on buying,refurbrishing, and selling these three was under 1 hour.

Tomorrow, I have 5 of those bad boys selling on EBay. Can't wait to see how well they do. No wonder I was always being out bid when i tried to buy them. Lot's of money to be made. Of course, that's only if they aren't broken, which I really had no idea about before I bought them. looks like this will pay off very well for me. Sweet.

Wholesalers

The different companies I am dealing with seem a little hit or miss. One sent me five catalogs in the mail with a welcome letter, another charged $15 and sent me a package of materials, and others didn't even lift a finger. Some gave me nice Excel database spreadsheets with all products listed complete, and others had half assed ones I had to manually update, and others don't have anything at all.

So, lets be honest here, why would I deal with a company that would make me manually enter 500 products by hand (6 hours), and the next company has a simple modify and upload to my server (15 minutes). Gee, which company do you think I'll be dealing with?

So far, I have a Game site mostly setup. I have Adult toys and lingerie coming soon. I also expect to do one for Tools as well. Once I finish setting up this first Site, the others should be little more than copying the website server files into a new folder and uploading different images and data.

I finally used OSCommerce Website. Configuring it was a pain in the PHP ass. Every bell and whistle had to be hand coded into it. However, now that it is mostly done, I really like the way it turned out. It's useful, looks good, and does everything I want it to.

Ipods Arrived

So, I bought 40 Ipod Nano 4GB 1st Gen. It cost $2140.00 and it was expect to have 22 Good and 18 Bad. If this was true, I calculated a profit of about $350. I've had a chance to go through about 1/2 the box and so far I have found 4 bad and 20 good. This is amazing because unless the other 16 are broken in half, I am going to make a nice profit on this. I estimate if I have 8 bad ones and 32 good ones, I'll profit about $850 which is 40% return on my money. Nice. Really Nice. I expect to start listing them on Ebay later today or tomorrow.

As I had expected, the reason most of them were returned (to Best Buy) was because the consumers were idiots. Many had a Folder with Exclamation when you turned it on. All they needed was to be reformatted and updated. I could see why they were returned, but come on people. Do a little research, huh? oh well, my profit. Three had bad LCD's, so those would be lost causes, but I have another that won't boot up. So if I can't get that one going, I'll just open them up and swap parts. Otherwise I'll ebay the broken ones as parts and get about $30 each.

Wholeselling

The other day I signed up for a Business License. It cost me $50 and was delivered a day later, I was quite surprised, seeing as how I was dealing with the state. I then spent about 5 hours today going to different wholesellers and filling out their applications and sending faxes of the permit and whatever else they wanted from me. The whole process in dealing with them is terribly slow. Even if they responded right away, I still have to wait for packages to arrive in the mail. I'm not quite sure why this stuff needed to be mailed instead of emailed, but hey, whatever.

I've also spent several days screwing around with various shopping cart software. So far, they all seem to suck setting them up. I'm not quite sure exactly what I am looking for in the software, but different ones had different drawbacks in design that left me unhappy. Once I find one I like, I should be able to setup a store with minimal work if they can include a database to import. If not, entering all that stuff in by hand is gonna suck.

Ticket Scalping

A few months back I had took at shop at Ticket Scalping. I bought about $1000 worth of tickets, at various venue's for the TranSiberean Orchestra. It took me two months, but I have sold the tickets and made about $500 profit. I sold two sets from Ebay, none from CraigsList, and mostly from StubHub. I would check in weekly and adjust the price to reflect the going rates. As long as I don't plan on needing the money anytime soon, i would definitely do this again.

I would advise no more than 6 tickets per show. For example, I bought for three shows. One show sold all 6 tickets within 2 weeks. The next show sold within a month, and this last show took 2 months and has had quite a bit of competition. Since you never seem to know before hand, diversifying was a good idea to keep the money flowing back in. I would also, likely, not bother selling on ebay again because of the expiring listings and added cost of shipping. CraigsList is free, but people wanted tickets at cost or less. StubHub clients were willing to pay a premium for the tickets, so even with StubHub's high fees, it was still worth it to use them.

Banks and Companies Suck

I can't begin to tell you how much I hate banks and large companies. In this case, FNBODirect.com that I painfully signed up with a few months back. It was a hassle to start the account, maintain the account, and now access my money when I needed it. They wouldn't Wire Funds to another bank (wasting days before telling me). They would transfer money back to my original checking account, but it takes like a full business week. to do this. It's slow as dirt! So, I need to make a payment for this Ipod order, so I paid from my private funds, but I have bills that are due tomorrow, and this transfer was still slugging along. So, I had to log onto FNBO website and figure out how to activate this ATM card they gave me (thankfully I called up to request it!), then went to the bank and withdrew the max they would allow me to so I could put it back into my checking and pay who needed to be paid. this made me late for work, having to deal with this added time waster.

So, I loose any interest this month that I would have otherwise made because the $2000 transfer is no longer collecting interest, the ATM $1000 is no longer collecting interest, the Fees from the ATM transfer (both banks), then the time it is going to take to transfer this $1000 back to the savings account when the $2000 arrives. Lastly, I lost 1/2 hour pay from work because it took me so long to deal with this mess. At least i won't get any added late fees from bills that i couldn't pay, or from the liquidators who threated a $300 fee for being more than 2 days with payment.

At least, in the future, I will know how to properly deal with this slow bank, what not to expect from them, and how much cash I need to easily access to run my business.

CubeCart

I found a free eCommerce Shopping Cart called CubeCart. I will be using that to setup my various stores with. I had previously downloaded one called ZenCart, but the configuration on it was assed-backwards. They gave the software away for free, but charged you for manual. WTF?!? Screw that.

I plan on opening three stores. One with Porn, another with Games, and another with self-help guides... like this site... except i will charge for it. I know plenty about stuff that I can sell information about. Three on my mind are buying real estate, advanced real estate investing, and now wholesaling. I know, I just started it, but I certainly don't need to charge $269 like I just paid. Pass along he same information for like $20 bucks or something. then charge extra for the actual list maybe. It's all about the up-sell right?

Liquidation Bid

I have been been trying to get into a nice score with liquidation.com. It has proven to be difficult since I can't for the life of me figure out how these people plan to sell this stuff at a profit since they bid so high for the merchandise. The big thing for me, is that the listing don't really mention the true condition of the stuff. Does it come with boxes and manuals, or is just thrown in a box and left for dead? Seems to be a bit both, but I am bidding while I assume the stuff is broken, and they are assuming it's in full working order. Well, hey, they are the ones who may lose a ton on broken stuff.

I wanted to make sure that my bids were fast and accurate so I made an Excel spreadsheet that would allow me to quickly enter in key elements of the sale, and then have it spit back all kinds of useful information, like what my top bid should be. So far, my bids have been well under what it sold for.

Today I got lucky (maybe) and I won an auction for 40 4GB Ipod Nanos at $2,000.00. Yes, the price seems steep, but the payoff should generate several hundred for me in the next two weeks. On Ebay they sell like hotcakes at $80.00+ each and I picked them up for about $50.00 each. So, even with the ebay fees and what not, I should walk away with a little smile on my face. I'll let you know.

Liquidation

I have solved the "How do they sell for so little on Ebay" question. As I had suspected, vendors go to sites such as liquidation.com and bid on boxes and pallets of stuff. Basically, you buy large quantities of stuff for several hundred dollars each, and then hope for the best.

In many cases, you don't know what your actually going to get. Sometimes they have pictures, sometimes they don't. Sometimes its returned merchandise, sometimes it's office salvage.

As for me, i decided to try the high road and bid on boxes of IPods. I figure, even broken, it can be sold for $60 each. I bid on a box of 30 and a box of 50, no idea how good or bad condition they are. I am hoping I can FrankenPod them and maybe resell a few working ones to turn some profit, then either keep the rest for parts or auction them off as well.

There is a guy (or Two) on EBay right now that sells them. They seems to be doing pretty well for themselves. Selling them for $30+ each. At that point, it doesn't matter how much they go for each. Just pay about $25 or less each at wholesale and I should be OK. I would be looking about about $1000 profit or more, believe it or not.

Online Reselling

By basic is plan is to build a website using cascading style sheets. This means I can build one page, then use that template to replicate all the products I want to sell. I will then link them all through a free carting system I know of, then flow sales through PayPal. This is pretty much the same system I used years ago. The reason for building it manually, instead of an off-the-shelf system is cost. Using a pre-built cart would cost around $50.00 per month, plus setup fees. This way it will cost me $0 per month with $0 setup fees. That means more money in my pocket. Even if I wanted to expand, the pay version of this system is only $8/mo for 500 items.

Wholeselling

So, i made my way through all the diferent wholesellers on my list of several hundred. In the end, it came off to be a long list of items from an LTD catalog. Most of which I had no interest in at all, even though someone must be interested, obviously. What I narrowed it down to was to resell Board Games. The reason was the same as the adult stuff, bottom line was that were were only a few distributors I would need to deal with and be able to carry a decent selection of products. With Christmas here, I may be able to make a few bucks in the short term. From a brief email conversation I had with a distributor, I am apparently not he only person with this idea. He commented on the influx of new resellers.

AdWords Revisited

Apparently, all Ads placed on Google's AdWords system must be manually approved before being released into the wild. But, Now that it;s been OK'ed by some immortal being, it's cruising. In a few short hours, I've had over 1,200 ads placed, and had 6 hits (at .10 cents each, that's .60 cents). Here is the interesting part, with all the random keywords I chose (use your own imagination) by far, at over 80%, the number one keyword was (dramatic pause) Animal Sex.

Yeah, I know, right? It also sent me all 6 hits. Despite the topic (and the customers!) this shows a market for a product, which is what I was really hoping for. Once they get there, it's usual crap toys. If I was to target that market and advertise exclusively to them, selling products exclusively FOR them, I may well get a much better hit/miss ratio.

In my searching the other day, I remember seeing some blow up sheep or some such nonsense. Maybe I can find enough products and group them all together, then shoot at the target again.

Broken Ipods

There is quite a market for broken Ipods, believe it or not. You can buy them in bulk broken, take them apart, and put together a working one or two to sell. You can even resell the broken parts for profit. Seriously. I bought a broken Ipod and resold it a week later and profited $4.00. That was a profit of 5%, and it was infinitely less risk and hassle than the monitor was.

That case was buy one sell one. However, if I was to buy a lot 4 or more at about $40/ea then the profit margin would be closer to 40-50%. My only real issue would be constant packaging and inventory in/out. Of course, time to try and fix one can be an added expense as well, if I wanted to bother.

Advertising

While the mark-up on Adult Toys is crazy, and I am sure it makes plenty of money, the problem seems to be in advertising. Let's say there are 3 Toy distributors. Each vendor buys from them, but there are 1,300 vendors total. All 1,300 are either listed in some porn network, or they use Google AdWords. After 3 days, my ad has not come up once. Why? Too much competition.

The other problem is that there is no where else to list my products. Because of the adult nature, I am not allowed to list on Ebay, Froogle, Amazon, Overstock, or anywhere like that.

Seems that if I were to pursue this, I would need to take the Old-School Video Store approach. They openly rent regular movies, but in the back they rent the porn. So, i would need to setup a legitimate store to be seen on the big boys, but also sell the toys in the "back room". This would allow someone to buy a blender with a vibrator. While this may seem kinda silly, I wouldn't be surprised if it worked.

Porno Shop

When I was 18, people would ask me what I wanted to do with my life, and I said "Open a Porno Shop". 10 years later, people asked me what I was going to do, and I said "Open a Porno Shop". Two years ago, someone asked me how I planed on retiring, and I replied "With a Porno Shop".

Well, I was just comparing the DirectShip I mentioned in the last post with online stores vs. the wholesalers and I simply can NOT belive the markup on those sex toys. We are talking 40-50%... of pure profit. And If you ever seen the prices, that's not spare change, at all. I just compared this product (does it matter which?) and one store sold it for $75, another sold it for $59. My cost would be $40 to have it shipped from the warehouse, to your house. All that difference in the middle would go right into my pocket.

I am so all over this.

Ticket Sales

About 2 months ago I was given a ticket pre-sale invitation to buy concert tickets a month before the general public, and months before the show. I wanted to buy tickets for my family (6) but this was very expensive. So I bought 20 instead, heh. I had sold 4 on Ebay and 4 on StubHub. I had 6 for myself and still have 6 left to sell. At this point, I've paid up all the extra tickets, and like I said, I have 6 left. So, even if I sell them at cost, it will still pay for all of them, which was the whole point. Unfortunately, the show I have tickets for is proving to be difficult to sell because some other jack-off keeps under selling me taking my business. I am currently just above cost, and can't really go lower. Overall though, it should be worth it.

DropShipping

I think the Ebay idea was correct, but the execution sucked. The fact that some other guy flooded the marketplace with my product really pissed me of too. But this got me thinking, where did HE come up with all of them. The answer is likely in Wholesaling and Dropshipping. This would allow me to advertise hundreds of products, but not actually pay for any of them until after I was already paid, and the order placed. I list on Ebay, and when the order is placed, I give the shipping address to the warehouse and they ship directly to my customer. I profit the difference. I've spent the day researching this topic and I came up with a valid list of wholesale warehouses willing to do business like this. Since I already had an online storefront years ago, I already have a working knowledge of how to setup a store that accepts credit cards for free. All I need to do is populate it with products, then drive traffic there via ebay, amazon, overstock, froogle, and others like that. I am a really big fan of runing a business that doesn't involve me doing much of anything, even receiving the funds into my bank is automatic. If I use Andale, I can honestly set it, and forget it.

Ebay Sales

A big idea of mine, was pretty simple. Buy stuff on ebay at a discount, and then resell it properly for a profit. It wasn't supposed to be a huge amount of money, but I had hoped it would make up another hundred or two for the month.

Here's how it would work: Many electronic products are hot sellers, but improperly named. Or, it just so happened to fall under the radar for no particular reason. So, I chose a product that regularly sells for a specified amount, minus the expected profit, shipping, ebay relisting and paypal fees, then I am left with a ceiling price I can pay to buy it with. In theory, as long as I get a good deal, I should have no problem making money at it.

So, my first sale I shot for a Friday Listing and had it run through Monday 12pm PST. I was quite shocked when I did not get one bid. I immediately relisted it at a lower price, and shot for a Thursday sale.

As it turned out, I had twice as many views Monday to Thursday as I did Friday to Monday. I attribute this to more people either getting paid on Thursday, or looking forward to blowing the Friday paycheck before it even arrives. Anyway, I had 4 bids and ended up making about $10.00 or something silly like that. After looking at expired bids, it seems Wednesday was a super shitty day to sell (but great day to buy!)

While technically, not the windfall I was hoping for, if you change perspective it wasn't that bad as a dollar for dollar investment. Think about it this way, with a $401.00 investment on the 15th, two weeks later I had a 2.5% return on my money. To further put it into perspective, if I left that money in a High Yield Savings account (where it came from) it would have taken me 6 months to make that same $10.00.

If I left that $401.00 in the savings account, a year later it would be worth $20.00 interest. It's easy to see where I could make that on one sale. But, even if I follow the same schedule for the rest of the year, that same $401.00 would bring in another $260.

Now, sure, by itself it's not worth it, but if I put together 3-4 deals like that a week, that's another $200 per month income. Yeah, I know, it's nothing great. I'll admit it, I had hoped for better. Now it seems another company is flooding the marketplace with what I was going to resell next week. Figures.

Domain Registration

I would have been able to register a .com address for this site, but .ifo was on sale for $3.00 instead of $9.00. Sure, I know it's not much saved, but I really thought it was the principal of the matter. I would not be getting richer if I overspend when I didn't have to.

Positive Wealth

Something I learned a long time ago is that someone who makes twice my salary, likely has the same amount of money to spend that I do. If you take, for example, someone who makes $50,000/yr and owns a $250,000 house and compare them to someone who makes $100,000/yr and owns a $500,000 house. The first obvious thing is that the monthly payments on the house are twice as much. If you know human nature, you can assume he is driving a car that cost twice as much as the first person.

By using this rational, anyone can save money, you just need to downgrade your lifestyle a little bit when you can.

Subprime Meltdown

I am really getting sick and tired of goverment comments, reporters, articles and common people all making comments about this real estate bubble. Everyone talks about it, but no one knows what the hell they are talking about. Since I do real estate investing, I know exactly what the problem is.

If you buy a house appraised at $250,000, you could get a 90% loan at $225,000 pretty easily, and make payments based on your income. When the ARM resets in 2-3 years, the interest rate spikes up so you simply need to get a new ARM. The ARM isn't the problem. The PROBLEM is that house buying slowed, so sellers lowered the price. Now, months later, that same house will only appraise at $225,000, which is what is currently owed. Now when you try for a new loan, you need 100% loan PLUS closing costs.

The issue isn't that ARMS are bad, or that the market slowed... BOTH happened at the same time, causing buyers to stop buying all together.

Now that foreclosures have begun making the way through the REO system, banks are dumping these properties back on the market for thousands less than homeowners. Now you have a $250,000 house selling next door to a $150,000 house. So, if that seller can't refinance it, he has to sell it, but he cant sell it. he may as well forclose too. Whether or not he can make payments or not, is irrelevant. Why SHOULD he, is the question.

Just wait though... the baby boomers have started to file for Social Security. Soon they will move into old age homes. Soon, all these houses will be willed to their kids, and then resold for much less than they are worth at that time, just to get rid of them in a market that doesn't need this much housing. Guess where i would like to invest my money? That's right, old age homes.

Irregular Monthly Bills

Some bills only show up every three months or so. These have always been annoying to me because they don't fit into my regular routine. So what I did was add up everyone who wasn't regular monthly bills. In my case, it was Water $65, Sewage $65, propane $100, Taxes for my house $375/mo and Taxes for my rental $350/mo. Based on when they are due divided by four weeks a month. Whatever the exact numbers were, that total came out to be $225 per week. So I have that $225 automatically moved from Checking to Savings each week. I base the rest of my monthly bill schedule off what's left.

While this doesn't really save any money, it makes sure I have the funds available to me when the bill is actually due. Even big ones like Taxes will have the funds available. Just make sure not to spend the money, that's why I frequently move large sums of money from my savings into a High Yield Savings Account. That will also pick up a few dollars per year in interest.

Lower Cable Plan

I guess I had a "Platinum" plan which was everything up to HBO,Etc. I called up Comcast and had them drop my plan down to Basic with an extra Family Plan. Platinum was $65/mo but now, Basic is $13/mo and Family is $8/mo. You do the math. We only lost one channel that my wife watched. My baby lost one too, but I don't think he really cared. We lowered it like 3 months ago, and barely even noticed.

Lowered Cable bill from $65/mo to $25/mo and after the first week, no one cared.

Closing Escrows

Escrows, in my humble opinion, SUCK.

The basic idea, is that you owe taxes every 6 months, and insurance every year on your house. The extended idea is that you have extra money in this account just in case taxes or insurance goes up next time it needs to get paid. This way, you pay month to month, the mortgage bank makes sure it gets paid on time. Every month, you have to pay Principal, Interest, Taxes and insurance. If you don't pay it in full, they won't accept payment.

This causes several issues for the homeowner.

Let's say you owe P&I (Principal and Interest) of $1000. You also owe your Escrows T&I (Taxes and Insurance) another $300. So each month you must pay $1300 no matter what. However, if you closed your Escrows you would only owe the bank P&I of $1000. If you happen to be a little short on the due date, you only owe then $1000. You can come up with that extra $300 next week or even next month.

Another issue is that 'cushin' they build in for when the T&I goes up. If your escrows fall below a certain amount, they will automatically raise the amount due every month. So, every few months the computer looks at things and decides you need to pay another $50 "Just in Case".

Lastly, you know what the bank is doing with your escrow funds you give them? Of course, they are investing it and making money off your money. Since they are not giving you any interest rate like a savings account would, why let them make money at your expense?

So, here's what I did; I called Countrywide and told them to close the escrow account. We settled up on the funds left over. Now, I am responsible for paying my own taxes and insurance when they become due, on both my houses.

In order to make sure this happens, when my weekly paycheck is deposited into my local bank, money is automatically moved from checking into savings. The funds are then manually moved into my High Yield Online Savings Account. I manually do that part because I may want access to some of that money for some reason.

So what happens is that instead of Countrywide making money off me, I'm the one collecting the interest while it sits in the bank for six months. I also owe them much less per month than I did before, making the monthly payments easier to make. And lastly, i don't have some computer deciding I need to pay even MORE per month than i already am.

Think i am kidding about that computer? My final straw was when my payment went up again to $200 per month MORE than I actually owed anyone. So, instead of seeing how I owed $350/mo in T&I, it wanted $550/mo in T&I "Just in Case". So, all I had to do was take $3600 in taxes plus $600 insurance and divide by 12. That means that I only owe $350/mo. So if I divide that by 4 weeks, I shovel away $88 weekly into that savings account. For those of you who can do the math, yes, every few months there is a 5th week. That extra money can go toward any raised rates that may occur.

"Just in Case" went from $200/mo to $0/mo
I make 5.05% on the Escrow funds until they get paid every 6 months.

High Yield Savings

Once I started using a savings account with my bank, I realized it was offering me a whopping .15% Wow, way to give back, guys. So, after a quick search on Bankrate.com I compared different programs and easily settled on FNBODirect.com who were, at the time, offering 5.05% While this isn't the most earth shattering interest rate, it's a whole lot better than that paltry .15% Wachovia was offering me. HSBC had a better rate, but I HATE their company with a passion.

Opening the account was annoying, to say the least. Having to prove I was me, to deposit was bad enough, but when I had to prove I was me again to withdraw back to the same account, that was overkill.

However, now that it is said and done, I have a place to put my money, that I have 3-4 day turnaround access to. From what i read, the way they transfer money is old-school, so it's really slow.

Savings Interest Rate changed from .15% to 5.05%

Refinancing My Car

Somewhere in there we bought a 2007 Chevy Impala LTZ that cost us about $28,000 and a 6 year loan. This was an impulse buy that we never should have done. At the time, the goal was to sell this investment property and have the profits pay for half the car, then we would refinance it for a normal loan. The problem was that we were never able to sell the house, it turned into a rental. Now we had this $560/mo payment that we couldn't afford, not to even mention my own car which was another $489/mo.

My own loan for $489/mo was going to be ending in a few months anyway. However, I did have the funds to pay it off, if I chose to. At 1.9% it seemed pointless to pay it off. I would make more leaving it in the bank. So I decided to leave regular monthly payments, and pull the money from savings as needed.

I went to e-loan.com and had them bid for my wife's loan. I got two offers. One from RoadRules or some such nonsense, and one from Wachovia. Guess which one we went with?

They only lowered the payment by like $20/mo, so in that way it wasn't worth it. The thing is, since we lowered our interest rate from 10% to 8% it ended up shortening our term by two months. i also got to skip a month's payment as well.

Did I really skip the payment? Nope, put it into the savings account.

Lowered Interest Rate from 10% to 8%
Shortened Loan Term by 2 months
Skipped 1 payment worth $560

Refinaning My Rental property

Now that I was back in control of my day to day finances, it was time to correct this mortgage situation. My rental house was being rented out to a family that had a fire. I was being paid by the insurance company, and they were paying top dollar for temporary housing. The problem was that while I was taking in $2,800 i was still paying out $2,800 in mortgage, taxes, HELOC and Credit Card loans.

Because this was during the Housing Bubble, finding a refinancing mortgage proved to be very difficult. I had a bankruptcy, investment property, owned less than one year... Every odd was against me. What I ended up doing was finding a Mortgage Broker, who found a Mortgage Broker, who found a bank. Cost me a little more, but it got the job done that no one else seemed to be able to do.

What I did was skip two payments, and put that into the bank. Mostly, those two months paid for the refinance fees. I was also able to squeek another $1700 cash out at closing. this brought my Loan to Value at 80%. this made the bank happy, and me happy as well.

Skipping Two Payments: $3,400
APR went from 10.4% (at 95%ltv) to 7.8% (at 80%ltv)
Monthly Savings: $300

When all the dust had settled, I was left with the following:

Private Loan: $10,000
Private Loan: $4,500
Credit Card: $9,000

Savings: $5,300

Cleaning Up My Mess

I was swimming in debit owing dozens of companies, 29 days late on both my house payments, and now came my first small court claim. I had to come up with something to fix this mess I created.

I managed to borrow $10,000 from my aunt and uncle. The terms were that it would be a secured loan in that it was tied into my investment property. When I refinanced or sold, they would get paid back in full. In theory, I could have done a similar thing to my own house, thus making them feel better about loaning my that much money.

So, I paid off most of the people I owed, but there was a few left. I finally found a buyer for my old car bringing in another $4,500. I used that extra money to pay back the last few lingering bills.

Preface

When I was 21, I had graduated college for Graphic Design. I had already worked for Marvel Comics, and figured this life stuff was easy. I am going to follow in the footsteps of Todd McFarlane, start my own company, and be rich by 24.

11 years later, Todd McFarlane is rich 20 times over, and I am in debt up to my eyeballs. While I am not quite sure how this happened, but I intend to put an end to it.

Something seemed to happen to me when I turned 35. It was like, overnight, my whole view of things changed. I realized that not only have I had all kinds of money with opportunities, but now I lost all of it, and I had a new baby to spare. I think, somehow, he changed my views at just the right time.

In 2005, we were financially fucked with credit card debit, house debit, and car debit. So, we did what we had to, and filed for bankruptcy. This killed our credit, but it was the best move for us. I can't regret doing it. My only advise, in retrospect, seems to be that "You can't eliminate your debit by consolidating your debit." Taking out more credit cards with higher balances will only give you higher monthly expenses. You must accept responsibility for your actions and you can either borrow from a relative and PAY IT BACK, no interest, or file for bankruptcy and move on.

In 2006, while I was credit card free, I had a leak in my roof, and it couldn't wait. I evaluated my options, and decided I would kill four birds with one stone, so I refinanced. What this did was reset my mortgage ARM, fix my roof, consolidate some bills, and give me a boat-load-of-cash to reinvest in Real Estate. So, my ARM was reset, my roof was fixed, my old bills were gone, and I bought a garage door, outside doors, 50" plasma TV, curtains, vacuum, leather couch... you get the idea. When the time came for investing, I found a really messed up house and dumped the last $20,000 into purchasing it. Since this blog isn't about Real Estate, we will just skip past the financial disaster that house was. Four months later, I sold it, with an $8,000 profit.

In 2007, I took that $38,000 check I got when I closed the house ($20k down, $10k to fix and $8k profit) and set off to reinvest it into another house. While I was looking around for another good deal, I paid up some back bills, and I bought a really nice refrigerator, double-door dishwasher, new computer, tires and breaks for my car, clothes, oh, and did I mention the brand new 2007 Chevy Impala LTZ?... you get the idea. When it came time for the house, I only had $15,000 left to buy it and fix it with. I ended up having to put $10,000 onto a credit card, borrow another $4,500 from my Mom, and spent $3,500 security money I received on it just to get by.

At the same time my baby was born, bills were all backed up and I was forced into a situation where I would lose my investment AND personal house. The Baby's doctor bills were all backed up and it had gotten really bad for us. If i didn't do something smart, I was going to lose everything I worked hard for.