Trying Out Swap.com

I am normally the type of person who simply donates rather than resells items.  For me, my time and effort is generally worth way more than any small profit to be made in reselling items at a garage sale or consignment, etc.

But, when it came time to re-purpose my maternity clothes I gave second thought to donation as my first option.  Specifically, because I work in a professional setting I had ended up investing a fair amount in some very good maternity clothes.  In particular, I had invested in several Seraphine maternity dresses (Kate Middleton is a fan) since I work in a field where I need to look good and present a polished, professional appearance.  And, I had at least three or four dresses that I had only worn two or three times.

I did a fair amount of research regarding on-line maternity (and baby) consignment stores.  First, I sure wish I had known about these sites when I was buying maternity clothes as I would have tried out some of these sites for my own needs.  I had thought about consignment stores when I first started my maternity clothes shopping, indeed I had even tried to find one.  But, I was thinking and looking for physical stores and not virtual.  Dang!  Second, a lot of these sites have very mixed reviews and reputations.

After doing my due diligence, I decided to go with swap.com for a couple of reasons.  Importantly, they seemed to have the best reputation based on my research (please note - I've not received anything in exchange for this review).  Also of importance, to me, they do almost all the work. They take the photos, write the description and they mail out the packages to folks who buy.  As I mentioned before, I don't have the time to be shipping out packages to customers since with work and a baby I can barely complete one chore a week.

So, this is how it works.  (1)  Sign up as a seller.  (2)  Order a UPS shipping slip.  (3) Pack up neat, clean and in good condition items and send them off to Swap.com.  You can also bundle items together so they sell as a set.  Swap.com then does the rest, taking photos, writing description, mailing to buyers, sending you the money (via PayPal).

As a test, I sent in a box of mostly maternity clothes (a few newborn baby items) consisting of mainly casual, lower cost items (not my fancy maternity work apparel).  And, I would say that it generally worked as promised.

Communication was good.  When Swap.com received my package they emailed me.  When my items were ready to price (about two weeks later) they emailed me.  While I am still learning the site, I found pricing to be relatively easy.  An error in a description and classification for an item was promptly corrected after notification.

And, so far, I have actually sold some items and money has been sent to my PayPal account.  I think the fees are generally reasonable since Swap.com does most of the work and they store the items for months with no charge (there are storage charges after a set time passes).  There is a charge for the in-bound UPS shipping and a $1.50 plus 25% sales commission for each sold item (or set).

With fees and competition, pricing is an art.  I set my prices by looking at what similar items were priced at.  So, I priced maternity t-shirts at $7 and sold several.  Not much of a profit at $3.75 but better than nothing.

I must say it was painful to price a skirt that I wore once at $12 when it cost me $70.  And my super expensive maternity jeans that cost $150 are currently priced at $15 (but they were worn many times).  With my next box, the professional maternity items, I will need to price so I can recoup drycleaning costs (since I had it all recently cleaned in preparation for consignment) and make a decent profit so that will be tricky.

I was somewhat befuddled by what was rejected and they don't really tell you why.  I had sent in a barely worn maternity maxi dress that was in the rejected pile.  You can choose to have rejected items shipped back to you, but there is a charge (of course).  I'm not sure what happens to the items if you donate them (which is what I probably will choose to do).  No idea whether they actually get donated or if the site simply sells them.  Inexplicable rejections was a very common complaint in my research regarding other sites.

I haven't yet bought anything from Swap.com, but I do plan to try it out for baby clothes.  I already know that with my baby there are outfits, especially the fancy ones, that get worn once (and some not at all).  One trick I've learned about recently is to leave tags on baby clothes until they are worn.  That way, if baby never wears them you can list them as "new with tags".  If you remove the tags, even if baby never wears that outfit, you can only list them as "good condition".  

2014 - Final Savings Numbers

(1) Max out 401k(s) -        $22,588    65%  (goal is $35,000)
(2) Max out IRA(s) -         $11,000    100% (goal is $11,000)
(3) Add to e/r fund -          $10,400    104% (goal is $10,000)
(4) Roof project -              $5,000       100%  (goal is $5,000)
(5) Vehicle replacement -  $5,000      100%  (goal is $5,000)
(6) House projects -          $3,000       100% (goal is $3,000)

Total:  $56,988  83%  (Goal is $69,000)

So, we saved almost $57,000 in 2014.  While a respectable number, we missed our goal by $12,000.  Mr. Sam was not eligible for his 401k until midway through the year and that is one of the main reasons that our 401k savings number was reduced in 2014.

We did have some major expenses in 2014 that are not reflected (entirely) in our savings goals.  First, a new car for Mr. Sam which was paid in part with cash.  Second,  a new roof for one of our properties.  The roof was a savings goal, but also cost more than what we saved and we could no longer put the project off.

We also incurred some debt in 2014.  Mr. Sam's new car was paid in part with cash (about 40%) and the rest is loan.  Second, we added to our family in 2014 (which is why I've been away from the blog for so long).  We had considerable expenses related to the conception (via IVF) and related to the nursery and birth (most covered by insurance, but a big chunk that was not).   We also had a major house project prior to the baby arriving.  We are working on paying down the baby debt and it will be part of our 2015 savings/debt killing plan which I am working on creating.

2014 Savings Goal - May Update

(1) Max out 401k(s) -        $10,139   29%  (goal is $35,000)
(2) Max out IRA(s) -         $8,835     80% (goal is $11,000)
(3) Add to e/r fund -          $4,400     44% (goal is $10,000)
(4) Roof project -              $5,000    100%  (goal is $5,000)
(5) Vehicle replacement -  $5             0%  (goal is $5,000)
(6) House projects -          $1,100     37% (goal is $3,000)

Total:  $29,479  43%  (Goal is $69,000)

Can you tell things have been cray-cray for us, no posts in quite some time.  But, surprisingly, when I updated our savings chart today we are generally on track for 2014.

The roof project is done, cost more than $5,000 so counting that goal as completed.  We are making progress on our house project fund, but even with the roof done, we have several house projects that we need to attend to this year that likely will exceed our savings.  Now that the roof project is done, I will switch my auto savings to Mr. Sam's car replacement fund.  My car also has been acting up and I'm going to need to invest a couple of thousand into it in the next couple of weeks.  

As for 401k, I'm maxing mine out.  Mr. Sam will not be eligible for his 401k until September, in the mean time we are putting savings away so he can up his contributions come September.  But, we are behind on that goal.  We are making good progress on our 2014 IRA savings.  

$300 Rule & $100 Rule

As I have previously posted, I have a long standing goal to have plantation shutters installed in two bedrooms in our home.  But, since plantation shutters are very expensive I decided that I would update my plan and just get some new, nice shades for these two bedrooms.

I have done quite a bit of research, measured the windows, priced out my options and then I settled on a plan which will run about $800.

But, in our home there is another step I had to take and that was to discuss the project, the expense, the source of the funds (we have this money sitting in our house project account) with Mr. Sam.  We have a rule that anything over $300 has to be discussed and agreed to between us.  Most of the time we reach agreement pretty quickly, but not so this time around.  I've talked to Mr. Sam about this project several times, gave him the pricing, told him about my research, but he thinks it is silly to spend this kind of money on custom shades.   If we can't reach agreement then we don't go forward that is our rule.  We imposed this rule back in 2007, because we were trying to throw every extra dollar at our debt.  But, we have kept the rule because we believe that we should be in agreement that expenditures above $300 are necessary or a mutual want (vacation) or one of us convinces the other.

We did finally agree or he finally gave in, but we did reach agreement.

The other rule we have is the $100 rule.  When we are spending more than a couple of hundred dollars we have to wait a day for each $100 of the purchase.  So in this instance, if we are spending $800 on custom blinds we have to wait 8 days before we actually make the purchase.  This waiting period prevents expensive impulse purchases.

I haven't yet ordered the blinds because of the waiting period rule, but will do so next week.

2014 - Additional Goals

Previously I posted our 2014 savings goal numbers, I have a couple of other goals to list as well.

Back in March 2012 I posted about wanting to install plantation shutters in our front, first floor bedroom.  Well, almost two years later, we've not made any progress on this goal, although we have accomplished other house projects.

So, for 2014 my goal is to replace the cheap plastic blinds (that have been up since we bought the house almost 10 years ago) in the front bedroom.  You will note that I've not renewed the goal to have plantation shutters installed.  While that is still a goal, I recognize that plantation shutters are both an expensive and time consuming project.  I will, eventually, have plantation shutters installed, but for now my plan is to order blinds to replace the crappy plastic ones.

I've settled on a blind company.  But, I have not decided on whether I'm going to order blinds or roman shades, much of that will depend on pricing.  Many of our windows that need replacement window treatments are the same size, either as a single window, group of two or group of three.  Off the top of my head, I have 6 bedroom windows, 2 study windows, 2 laundry windows).  As a result, the blinds that I order  now can, at some point, be moved from the front bedroom (after I get my shutters), to the back bedroom, to the study, etc.  Said another way, even though I still plan to get shutters the blinds/shades that I plan to order now will not be wasted when I want to upgrade to shutters.  Even at $100 a window (a high end budget), $400 in blinds will make me very happy (plus we've saved that money in our house account).

Also on the agenda this year is an office upgrade.  We are going to do an Ikea cabinet and bookshelf built in hackplus new paint and our budget is $1000.

Finally, a debt goal.  At present our debt load is @$538,000.  I would like to get our debt below $500,000 in 2014.  I have no idea if that is a reasonable goal or not.  I've got to do some number crunching since we did not include any additional mortgage prepayment in our 2014 goals.

2014 Planning - Third Time is the Charm

So, for the third time we are going to plan/try to save $69,000, maybe 2014 will be the year we hit this number.  Now that we have our 2014 total goal number, we have been working on planning.

Some goals are pretty easy to establish.

First, tax advantaged retirement savings.  I will max out my 401k savings, $17,500, in 2014.  We both will max our our non-deductible IRAs for 2014, so that is $5,500 each or $11,000.  We will save $17,500 for Mr. Sam in 2014, that money will be after tax until he is eligible for his 401k in September.  Then we will max out what he can contribute from 9/1/2014 until 12/31/2014 which Mr. Sam thinks will be about $12,000.  So, the monthly savings we do for Mr. Sam's 401k between 1/1/2014 and 9/1/2014 will be used to supplement income for the last quarter when he is putting the bulk of his paycheck into his 401k.  Then, the amount that is left over will be put into our trading account.  While Mr. Sam will not be able to save as much in 401k savings, we will make sure to save at least the same amount in our non-tax advantaged trading account.

(1)  Max out 401ks (goal is $35,000)
(2)  Max out IRAs (goal is $11,000)

As for our IRAs, we have already saved $1800 towards our 2014 goal.

Second, other savings goals.  I probably will maintain the monthly savings already set up which means we would put another $10,000 into our emergency savings in 2014.  I like having money go towards e/r savings.  With our various real estate properties, a health emergency fund makes me happy.  For similar reasons, I probably will keep the $200 a month that goes towards our house account.  With an old house, there are always repairs or projects (last year I imagined plantation shutters, but that project got put off).  This year, we are also likely looking at a roof repair or roof improvement on our carriage house.  Accordingly, I am putting $5,000 into roof project savings.  If the roof project costs less, then we will put that money towards mortgage principal prepayment.

(3)  Emergency account (goal is $10,000)
(4)  Roof fund (goal is $5,000)
(5)  House fund (goal is $3,000)

Third, Mr. Sam is going to need a replacement vehicle within the next couple of years.  So, the last goal for 2014 is car replacement fund (goal is $5,000)

(6)  Car replacement fund (goal is $5,000).

How about you, what are your financial plans and goals for 2014?

2012 Savings Goals - November Update

(1) Max out 401k(s) - $31,379 (92%)(goal is $34,000)
(2) Max out IRA(s) - $5,829 (58%)(goal is $10,000)
(3) Add to e/r fund - $8,400 (84%)(goal is $10,000)
(4) Pay down mortgage - $2490 (50%)(goal is $5,000)
(4)(a) Savings for goal (4) - $415
(5) House projects - $1,200 (24%)(goal is $5,000)
(6) Trading account fund - $50 (1%)(goal is $5,000)

Total - $49,763 (72%)

I've added a sub goal to our list, since at present, I'm allocating our mortgage paydown money to savings until I figure out how to prepay our new mortgage.

At present, we are approximately $9,900 behind on our 2012 goals and the gap is approaching $10,000.

What can I say about our current savings deficit and the fact that it continues to grow?

I can tell you that (1) we've spent thousands on certifications for Mr. Sam this year (to improve career opportunities); (2) I can tell you we spent thousands on refinancing our primary dwelling and (3) thousands on fixing our our primary dwelling for the appraisal for the refi; and (4) recently a few thousands on some projects at Rental # 3.

But, I can also tell you that in the face of the above we have failed to change our lifestyle in any significant manner.  We continue to eat out more than we should.  I just booked a girls weekend in South Beach, Miami and, of course, I just bought some fabulous art. 

So, with two months to go, including the expensive holiday season, it seems doubtful that we will reach our $69,000 number.  Rather, at this point, while I'm not amending our goals, I'm hoping to meet and surpass last year's savings number which was $60,060.

Rental Update

Earlier, I posted that two of our rental properties were vacant.

Rental #2, as I indicated before, has rented with an increase of the monthly rent by $5.  We had the property tented for termites which cost $800 and we also had a small electrical issue addressed which cost about $200.  Both expenses would have been necessary regardless of the tenant turnover.

Rental #3 is a work in progress, Mr. Sam was over at the property all weekend working on cleaning up the exterior of the property and having the interior painted.  So far we have spent $600 on labor and supplies.  We hope to have the property ready to show by mid-month, but obviously we are not collecting the rent for the month of October.

Due to the refinance of our primary property, we did not have a mortgage payment this month which means we have been able to utilize that money for all of these projects rather than dip into our rental property escrow savings accounts.

Rental Update

Rental #2 has turned over.  Our last tenant broker her lease and has moved out of town.  We already had her last month rent (September) and her lease break fee.  She never really moved all the way in and wasn't there much so the rental turn over consisted of changing the locks and cleaning.  

This is our best rental property and as such we have already rented the place for October and collected the first month rent.  I wanted to increase the rent by $30 a month, and we did initially advertise it at that level but then we reduced it as Mr. Sam would rather not lose a month of rent than collect a few hundred over the course of a year.  Before our new tenant moves in we are having the property tented for termites.  

Rental #3 is also vacant.  The tenants that were in rental # 3 were there for quite some time.  I have no idea as to the status of the property although I'm sure Mr. Sam has checked on it.  I assume there will be some turn over costs and we are unlikely to have the property ready for advertising for October.  Which means we likely will be losing a month's rent.  

This is our worst rental property for a variety of reasons but because it is a three bedroom we do get quite a few family candidates who are interested in it because it is cheap.

2012 Goals - September Update

(1) Max out 401k(s) - $27,697 (81%)(goal is $34,000)
(2) Max out IRA(s) - $5126 (51%)(goal is $10,000)
(3) Add to e/r fund - $7200 (72%)(goal is $10,000)
(4) Pay down mortgage - $2490 (50%)(goal is $5,000)
(5) House projects - $900 (18%)(goal is $5,000)
(6) Trading account fund - $50 (1%)(goal is $5,000)

Total - $43,463 (63%)

At present, we are approximately $5,600 behind on our 2012 goals and the gap is widening.

Due to the mortgage refinancing, our mortgage pay down goal is on hold.  Our thinking was that we will have closing costs approaching $4,000 and we ought to save our pennies for those costs.  Do we count the closing costs towards this savings goal or not?  Once the refinance is completed, our closing is scheduled for this week, we will have two years in which we are not permitted to pay off the mortgage in full.  I need to understand whether that restriction extends to paying extra towards the principal or not.  If we are restricted on paying extra towards the principal do we keep saving the money we committed to the mortgage pay down or do we put it towards another goal?

For the house project goal, when we were getting ready for our refi appraisal, we spent close to a $1000 on getting the house cleaned up.  Do we count those expenses towards our house project savings or not?

We also have the added expense of the life insurance policies coming up.  And, we also have to get our 2011 taxes done which will include a payment to the IRS.

In sum, we have a lot of outgoing expenses in the next few weeks, but we need to get our savings back on track.  Mr. Sam will max out his 401k savings by the end of September which will free up some extra cash to put towards our other goals.  We also need to get ourselves refocused and recommitted in order to close out the last year with saving success.

Headboard Project

Working on my headboard project today.

A few weeks ago, on bulk trash day, I spied an old, painted, wood headboard that had been set out for trash pick up. Since we needed a headboard for our guest room, when I returned home from my early morning walk, I made Mr. Sam get up and go pick it up in his truck.

 Today, I sanded the headboard utilizing Mr. Sam's handheld sanding machine. I started off with 50 grit sandpaper, then used 80 grit and finished with 120 grit. In between rounds of sanding, I washed off all the dust.  Once I was done with sanding, I then primed the headboard with white primer spray paint. At present, I'm waiting for it to dry and then I'll paint it with a bright white high gloss paint.

Total cost for new headboard will be zero dollars. With all the projects Mr. Sam does, we already had all the necessary supplies.