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I have been too lazy to move money from checking to investments for two years. It turns out I am a business genius.
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Sep 23, 2022 19:03
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| # ? May 25, 2024 22:32 |
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I haven't been able to find a thrifting/reseller/arbitrage/etc thread in BFC. I've posted my finds in many other threads, but haven't seen one to discuss the actual hobby/money side of it. Have I missed a thread like that somewhere else on the forums, or should I start typing up one?
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Sep 30, 2022 14:30
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Like, lining up at goodwill when the put out new stuff, and then ebaying it? My buddy did that for a bit. I think he made enough to live on for a while. Another buddy got into the idea of trading valuable collectables, but I think that just turned into a money sink
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Sep 30, 2022 21:13
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Pretty much that kind of thing, yes. Buying a cheap used thing, with at least somewhat of an intention of selling it later for a profit. It has given me a nice financial boost over the years, and it has also been a very fun and interesting hobby. The closest I've seen is a favorite find thread in PYF, but it's not quite the same. If there aren't any other threads I could take a crack at posting one. And yeah, it's possible to make a living from it, and yes, collectibles are a money sink!
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Sep 30, 2022 22:14
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We had a part time side income thread, but you should post your own because it sounds super interesting!
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Sep 30, 2022 22:28
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evobatman posted:Pretty much that kind of thing, yes. Buying a cheap used thing, with at least somewhat of an intention of selling it later for a profit. It has given me a nice financial boost over the years, and it has also been a very fun and interesting hobby. The closest I've seen is a favorite find thread in PYF, but it's not quite the same. If there aren't any other threads I could take a crack at posting one. And yeah, it's possible to make a living from it, and yes, collectibles are a money sink! My mom did this and made some nice mad money. She primarily used eBay, but don't forget consignment stores! Those are especially good for kids clothing, which is occasionally donated to Goodwill with tags still on because kids grow so fast. Link your thread please so I can bookmark it!
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Sep 30, 2022 23:36
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you can title it Thrift Store Arbitrage: Ruining it for the rest of us
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Oct 1, 2022 00:06
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Not sure where else to ask this as it's a bit of an odd question that loosely relates to business/investment... Here goes. My partner runs a software startup that just completed a first round of seed funding. One of the investors is a long term client of the startup whose own business has grown exponentially. We're in Australia, the investor is American. To say thanks for his continued support of my partner's business, we sent him a package of expensive Australian chocolates and gourmet treats and a thank you card. It cost close to $100 to post as the package was pretty bulky. I checked the tracking about three weeks after I posted it, and there was a notification that delivery had been attempted but because no one was home at the time, the parcel was waiting to be picked up from the postal office. I emailed the investor and said hey, you've got this parcel, here's the tracking details for you to go get it sorted, otherwise they'll post it back to me. He replied and said oh cool thanks for letting me know, I'll get in touch with USPS and get it sorted. This afternoon the parcel was sitting next to my front door when I got home. Am I under some kind of etiquette obligation to fork out another 100 bucks to try and send it again? I want to just crack it open and eat the chocolates at this point but that seems kind of rude. What do?
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Oct 5, 2022 10:22
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Pham Nuwen posted:you can title it Thrift Store Arbitrage: Ruining it for the rest of us Yeah I basically don’t bother going to thrift stores anymore because so many people are doing this stuff, there’s no gems to find anymore as a casual buyer 
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Oct 5, 2022 13:16
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Just a friendly reminder that the BFC Discord is an extremely helpful place to chill and lose money with friends. https://discord.gg/aVbTc8SW
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Oct 5, 2022 15:18
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bee posted:To say thanks for his continued support of my partner's business, we sent him a package of expensive Australian chocolates and gourmet treats and a thank you card. It cost close to $100 to post as the package was pretty bulky. What is the reason for return? If they just made a mistake they should give you your money back. If they didn't, yes but you should go talk to someone about what went wrong and how to resolve it. But first give them a call and have a laugh about the post office thinking you wanted a bunch of fancy chocolate. Tell them about how you're going to give it another shot in a few days. They might aggressively waive you off. Next time buy it in the states for delivery. The 2% fee is always going to be way cheaper than shipping. I spent $90 or something stupid to mail a 12x12x6 package Los Angeles to Sydney a year ago. Holy cow.
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Oct 5, 2022 16:09
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Wierd question, but what constitutes "accepting" a two-week notice (in CA)? How long do they have to decide? I know we are at will, and as I understand it when I give notice they can chose to either terminate me right then or accept the notice. If after, say, a week they tell me that they don't need me anymore, what happens? It doesn't make sense to me that they would pay out the rest of the two weeks wages, that sounds wrong.
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Oct 7, 2022 04:48
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Target Practice posted:Wierd question, but what constitutes "accepting" a two-week notice (in CA)? How long do they have to decide? What's your goal here? They don't have to accept anything and can terminate you upon receipt of your notice. They can basically do anything. Most places will just pay you out to not get a bad rep and extract what knowledge they can.
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Oct 7, 2022 06:25
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employment is at will, either party can terminate the agreement at any time 2 weeks notice is merely customary. "monday blah 2nd, i won't be showing up here anymore, ciao". if your boss texts you at 10am why you haven't shown up, that's his problem if you gave 2 weeks notice and they were like "lol, no, you work here forever" that's effectively slavery which is expressly not permitted in most places (except some hospitals during the pandemic, apparently, an entire heart surgery team quit to go work at another hospital for more pay and the govenor had to get involved, still legally dicey) that said, there are countries, the phillipines, I think, where when you apply, you're expected to submit a "letter of good conduct"* from your previous employer, and most employers won't hire people without said letter. this gives the employer huge leverage to tell them they can't quit until they've hired and trained a replacement before they'll write them that letter *I forget the exact name of this letter
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Oct 7, 2022 06:52
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Makes sense. You can't break up with someone without their consent, so it follows that you can't hand in your notice at work if they don't accept it. Have you considered an online mindfulness course instead?
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Oct 8, 2022 20:17
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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Wondering how many people here with spouse/kids have gone the single car route. I now work from home full time and hardly ever seem to drive anymore. I've put less than 3000 miles on my car this year and thats been mostly due to long road trips where I went out of my way to drive my car because I dont want it sitting all the time. Its a paid off 2015 Subaru Crosstrek with 65k miles on it. Carvana is offering me $16500 for it right now. Which wouldve meant I essentially leased my car for 6 years for $1k a year based on what I paid for it. I figure I could use that money to get an ebike or something for my sporadic trips, then put the rest towards the new car fund for my wife and I. We're saving up to put at least 50% down on a new Toyota 4runner.
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Oct 10, 2022 15:43
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On your main topic: We functionally have one car, and we hardly drive it. We use a car to visit my parents, and to go out of the city a couple times a month. But we don't have kids and live in a walkable city. I recall you were in MN or something like that, and so an ebike is probably not an ideal mode of transportation for at least a few months of the year. Are you intending to haul the kid on an ebike if necessary? That could work but again, winters are dicey. You're never going to acquire a cheaper car to own and operate than the paid off car that you already own. On another topic: Car loans are still relatively cheap in real terms - around 5 or so% Why would you put so much money down? Avoid getting upside down (which you will, by default, it's a 4Runner), and that's it. Get that 84 month loan and pay it off early if you really want. I bet 5% on a car note will look pretty decent in 12 months time, and if it doesn't, you can probably refi or throw a few bucks at it.
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Oct 10, 2022 16:06
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Yeah Im in northern MN now, so winter conditions from basically November to May-ish. I wouldnt plan on taking the kid anywhere with the ebike, we'd use my wifes car for that. As far as putting 50% down. I guess we didnt have a reason other than it was attainable to us? We could use the extra to put into savings or something I suppose. I sort of want to buy a new car sooner rather than later because I feel like were going to be looking at 8-9% car loans in the not so distant future.
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Oct 10, 2022 16:13
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Is your wife's car always available in the event you have some kind of emergency? You have to weigh how important this is to you, of course, but when my wife and I have talked about it she is keen on having access to a car with a kid, even if it's not a financially optimal decision. Don't put money down on car loans above minimums to keep you underwater. I guess in a highly inflationary environment maybe that's not great advice and you could put a bit more money down, but in a highly inflationary environment you want to turn money in to goods ASAP and lock in a loan denominated in today's dollars. Note that I also don't consider the current environment in the US highly inflationary; the Fed isn't doing stuff like redenomination on a quarterly basis and poo poo like that.
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Oct 10, 2022 16:23
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I can't imagine going down to one car in socal in our decently walkable city. We have friends who have been always one car and it works for them but it's a mental effort to keep everything organized. I sort of see them winding up with 2 cars eventually. I work from home and my wife is a stay at home mom for now, and there are enough times where 2 cars is just necessary to not go insane. We have 2 kids and oh soccer for kid 1 and kid 2 overlap but are at different parks? Oh your at the gym but I need to drop off the kids somewhere? Or run some errands? And that is without weather. If one of our cars comes up for replacement we will probably get a leaf-style short distance electric something but I'm not selling either of our paid off kid haulers. They've done their damage to the interior and another car isn't going to improve that.
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Oct 10, 2022 17:04
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My wife and I have 1 kid 1 dog 1 car. It's great. More cars are more work. Yes sometimes there are challenges but very worth it to not have to manage and pay for 2. Feels healthier too. I've been low car my whole life, biking is way more pleasant. I borrowed a car today, for covering for someone at work who drives for their job. We're in anchorage, so winter is pretty much here Epitope fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 18:01
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My wife and I have one car and it's going great. I go into work 2-3 days a week. She works part time and goes in the other 2 days, but her work is actually close enough (~2 miles) so that she can bike when the weather is nice. Our baby is not yet in daycare, so we don't actually need to drive her places.
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Oct 10, 2022 18:05
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We have 1 car, no kids. I ride my bike everywhere though so if she takes it for something it is fine. If we both need the car for two activities we can always figure it out. Probably would be harder if we didn't live in Denver. 1 car is the best though.
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Oct 10, 2022 19:48
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We'd probably only have one car if I did not have car disease. I can and do walk to work whenever I go in and if it's nasty I can take transit. edit but this is like the ideal combo where neither of us have to drive to work, our neighborhood is very walkable, everything outside our neighborhood is in easy transit access (mostly) and we don't have kids to cause schedule problems!
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Oct 10, 2022 19:55
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We have a kid in daycare and at least once a quarter something happens (pops a fever mid-day) and one of us has to go get her. Uber will not drive a kid without a car seat (nor should you try) and uber in our area is.... horrific at best. Usually 9-45 minute wait to get a car. My wife goes into the office a couple times a... quarter? Month? If we didn't have the daycare requirement I'd have to drive her to the office then come back home, but she'd still have to walk from the gate of her closed campus. So we have a second car. Because of daycare we really need two cars unfortunately. There are actually three or four daycares in our neighborhood but they're all full so ours is across town. Sucks. If both of you don't need access to a second car 24/7 then yeah you can get away with it. Used to live 15 min walk from daycare, did just fine with one car.
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Oct 10, 2022 20:04
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Not really sure of the right place for this so here goes. I bought a house a little over a year ago that is in a Special Improvement District (SID) where home owners are assessed a semi-annual (4x a year) tax. The SID was a ballot measure that voters approved a few years ago to improve local school facilities. In my time of owning this house, I have yet to receive a bill for this SID that is NOT being assessed a late penalty fee. Even the first time I saw the tax bill they had already tacking a $35 late payment penalty onto it. I have yet to see an actual "Hey it's time to pay your SID assessment" before they have tacked on their late payment penalty thus far. Yes, they do have the dates posted online that payments need to be received by in order to not be marked as late, however they just link to a third party site that is failing to load, so it's basically impossible to discover when you need to pay this assessment by. How could I go about actually finding out what % of SID payments they are processing are being paid on time, vs how many they are adding this late payment fee to? In all the payment / notification process for this SID seems shady AF
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Oct 10, 2022 20:50
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Where you live seems to be required information to answer this question.
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Oct 10, 2022 20:56
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Wicaeed posted:Not really sure of the right place for this so here goes. Call your city council and ask. Or ask a neighbor.
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Oct 10, 2022 21:03
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More car questions. I knew used car prices were up, but I didnt realize just how close they were to new car prices, good lord. So if I wanted to get a new car now and trade in one of my paid off vehicles, how does that work with long lead times? Say I order a car now and it takes 7 months to arrive. Does my rate lock in at the origination date or when the car shows up? Will a bank or credit union even give you a new car loan on a vehicle thats going to take a few months to arrive?
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Oct 12, 2022 17:54
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Wondering how many people here with spouse/kids have gone the single car route. One thing you should consider going down to 1 car is what would happen if you suddenly went down to 0 cars. Car values are up so it's tempting to sell. The flip side of that is that repairs that took a 2 or 3 days three years ago take 2 or 3 months and rental cars are way less available. If the car got in a bad accident or had a transmission fail would you be able to borrow a car or find alternate transportation? Or would you be scrambling to buy whatever overpriced used car you could get your hands on that day? I like messing around with cars and we've gone from 5 in various states of repair to 2 good ones. But, I can't imagine making the jump down to 1 even working from home with no kids. It would make every single car problem an immediate emergency.
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Oct 12, 2022 21:33
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BaseballPCHiker posted:More car questions. Just stick with two working cars. If you want to get a different car in the future do it as 2 transactions. Buy (and I guess: take delivery of) the new car, and then sell the old car. Don't buy a tesla.
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Oct 12, 2022 21:40
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Well did some vehicle musical chairs this weekend. Sold my car at $2k loss from what I paid for it 5 years ago. Took some of that money and bought my brother in laws daughters old car, a 2010 Hyundai Sonata with 100K miles on it for $3k cash. Then put the rest towards the new car we bought, a Toyota 4runner. That plus savings meant we put roughly %50 down. Best of both worlds. New car for wife and kid and a beater that drives well enough the few times I need it.
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Oct 17, 2022 16:08
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I'm glad you're happy with your cars. TreasuryDirect / I-Bonds question - A "friend" mentioned something about buying I-Bonds for your spouse through TD and then "gifting" them to the spouse. I noticed I can add a new "Registration" to my account and buy under that. Does that solve the $10k Per Person thing if I put my wife in there as Sole Owner? Or am I stuck always having to login to multiple accounts?  I tried asking them this using their email portal and got the dumbest auto-reply: TreasuryDirect posted:Thank you for your interest in Treasury securities. Due to heavy volume, we are temporarily limiting our communication by e-mail. For us to respond to your e-mail, it must concern a pending case and it must state your case number in the subject line of your e-mail. It then suggested I call them. Somehow a call center is a better use of time and resources than email.
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Oct 18, 2022 01:36
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How often do you plan to log in that two accounts is a hassle?
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Oct 18, 2022 02:13
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:How often do you plan to log in that two accounts is a hassle? I was just hoping for a single pane. If the answer is no then so be it. Also logging in to treasury direct is terrible.
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Oct 18, 2022 02:29
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There's a tamper monkey script that auto bypasses the virtual keyboard, so you can autofill with a password manager. It makes login painless, at least. Still a terribly lovely UI once you're in.
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Oct 18, 2022 05:07
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You can also use developer mode in the browser to remove the read only attribute from the password form and directly type, paste, or auto fill it.
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Oct 18, 2022 06:32
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I get it. I'm trying to figure out if I can not need to track 2 accounts or if I should give up. This is purely in the "you can't get what you don't ask for" category.
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Oct 18, 2022 06:36
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I'm looking for a checking account for paying rent via online bill pay. I'd like it to have the following -No fees -No minimum balance -Pulls money out of the account as soon as they send the bill, even for bills sent by a check through the mail. Alliant Credit Union used to do this, but they now send a personal check and the money is only withdrawn from my account when my landlady cashes the check, which she does not do in a reliable or timely fashion. Not planning on using this account for anything besides automating a monthly ACH transfer in (initiated from a different account) and the monthly bill pay out, so all other features/conveniences/other accounts available are unimportant.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:18
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| # ? May 25, 2024 22:32 |
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THF13 posted:I'm looking for a checking account for paying rent via online bill pay. I'd like it to have the following I would suggest ally bank and making 2 checking accounts. When you pay rent, auto transfer $rent into the second account, cut the check, and ignore the balance. Title it RENT NOT HOOKERS if you have to to make yourself not spend it. Seed the account with $20 or something so that it won't hit $0. See if your current bank offers this first.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:55
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