MyThriftHaunt

Prison Mail

Life May 20, 2018 Leave a comment

Well this is a first for me. I just received my first letter from a state prison. My nephew wrote me a letter finally. I wrote to him the first week of May. He was still being processed from jail to prison. From what he tells me he is still in the “fish tank”. Which he will be for a while until he is officially processed.

I was so relieved and happy to hear from me. Of course I cried when I read it on some parts. This is the first time anyone in my side family has been to prison. He will be there for a couple of years until parole. He hasn’t been there long but I can easily tell you one thing.

Prison is expensive. Which is ironic because of the people there probably have NO money. I’m actually just talking about the fees I have to pay to put money in his account. My nephew has never asked me for money so everything I have given him is my choice. My husband’s too because he supports my nephew too. I don’t expect my nephew to call me because he has his mom (my sister) & his fiance to call. Plus I never pick up my phone for an unknown number. Phone calls are expensive. They charge per minute so that can add up fast.

Yes I know I’m in a position to be able to afford these fees but it’s just weird and their system is just a little bit archaic. Oh well that’s just my thought for now.

eBay $1800.00 April

Life May 10, 2018 Leave a comment

Hello. Just want to give you an update on sales. On eBay my gross sales was $1800.00. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t work as hard as I should on eBay or poshmark. I haven’t totaled my sales on poshmark yet so that number would probably go up I am guestimating ( I know that’s not a word lol) at $2200-$2400.00. Overall I’m still happy with that number. Minus fees and taxes I was still able to pay my bills. I think you can guess from my last post my spirit is literally under a cloudy rain.

Which mean my posts will be more personal rather than financial. I don’t know. Having this blog is just a hobby for me. I do enjoy sharing tidbits of my life ( bad and good). Sometimes I wish I put more effort in to this because after posting I feel a little better. Sometimes I even go back a few posts and look back what I wrote and realize I didn’t exactly waste time.

As for my nephew, I haven’t heard from him yet. I wrote him a letter a few days ago. I hope he gets it. Some days I feel awful just doing normal things. I know I shouldn’t but when I’m doing simple things like going to the park, it makes my heart break that he doesn’t even have that freedom. I’ll be honest with you, from time to time I feel like I want to talk to a therapist. I talk a lot about it to my husband but he definitely has a one sided view that may not be the view I should be venting to.

Emotional Rollercoaster, Family Incarceration

Life April 28, 2018 Leave a comment

The past month has been an emotional rollercoaster to me. You see I mentioned before about an investigation in my family. It’s such a long story and the end result just brings tears to my eyes and question everything.

Here’s the gist of it. I have two sisters. They both have kids. One has a daughter, and the other sister has a son. I love both of them dearly. My sister withe the daughter filed a lawsuit at my nephew claiming he has been molesting and raping my niece for years. I’ll be honest with you I was shocked and understood my sister with the daughter’s situation so I just sat back and tried to support her the best that I can. Yet I have my sister with a son.

My sister with a son was confused and understood what is happening. I think in the beginning she believed my niece at first but as time went on, the stories not making any sense, and just the way everything was being handled she stood by her son. I talked to my nephew more so than my niece because I was under the impression asking her about the case would trigger her depressive episodes so no one asked her anything. Plus I rarely saw her because she lived in another state.

It’s not that I don’t believe something is wrong with my niece, but her stories and all the people involved don’t match up. In the end, because my nephew doesn’t have the money ( my sister with the niece is married to a well off ass) he took the plea. That literally broke my heart. I respect his decision because that’s what him and his fiance discussed. Which is why I just haven’t been in the best emotional state.

It’s not just because of my nephew, but the sadness & depression between my two sisters has taken it’s toll on me. Its hard to support both sides. my nephew has lost ALOT of family support. The weirdness has developed and this doesn’t include the loss of friends too. His social circle has become smaller. In the end though I support my nephew more so than my niece.

I think it has really upset the family members that don’t support him but how can I turn my back on him without finding out the truth? Either way, no one wins in this situation. Except the lawyers and the court.

Mom Life & Reseller Life Quick Update

Life April 2, 2018 Leave a comment

Happy Easter readers! Just a quick update on mom life and my reseller life. I really shouldn’t call it mom life. More like parenthood life. My husband is very much involve in our son’s life. While I’m the one who spends most time with him, my son enjoys his father too.

Today I notice my son really trying to communicate with me more. It’s mostly gestures but it is something. You see he isn’t speaking up to speed so I’m trying my best to not meet his needs all the time. I spend so much time with him that it’s second nature for me to just do everything for him without him asking. This morning he gestured he wanted his favorite pajama pants instead of some shorts I put on him. Even though this involved longer time getting ready for the day, I was happy to do it.

It’s April 1st. For us eBay resellers this means the new seller update will take place. I really haven’t been paying too much attention other than I will be losing the 10% discount for being top rated seller. Now I think you have to be top rated seller plus for it. Not a big deal for me. I’m not willing to change my 30 days returns with buyer paying shipping back to sellers paying shipping back. Nope not worth it to me. It’s such a big debate among resellers ( on IG at least) yet I stayed out of it mostly. I personally believe eBay made the changes for their own benefit. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business. This just means resellers like myself who specialize in used clothing is considered small potatoes. I’m sure other resellers in niche categories feel the same too.

We must move on from that and focus on making money. Luckily the income from poshmark helps. It hasn’t eclipse the income I’m making on eBay but it’s nice to have that extra sales push.

$37 Watch Sizing At A Jeweler

Thoughts on $ March 16, 2018 Leave a comment

Today my husband and I paid $37 to size a watch. Yes I use to work for a jeweler. Yes I do know I overpaid to get it sized. Yes of course they tried to get me sign up for a credit card company. Yes I do feel like shit giving my money away. No I’m not hiding the name. It was Kay Jewelers the nationwide company jewelers that sells moderately priced pieces.

At that moment I thought “whatever” I could just buy a watch sizing kit and size his watch myself. Yet we were there already, and really just wanted this done. Of course it was our conversation for a bit. We obviously overspent. The service we receive was expected but the whole applying for a credit card REALLY REALLLLLYY turned us off. It truly felt like we were at a crooked car dealership.

You see they gave us an option to sign up for a credit card /account then they could waive the fee (watch sizing). I heard the spiel. I even felt sorry because I was that person behind the counter at one point in my life. Not for any jewelers I have worked for but for other nationwide clothing companies. I felt a mixed of someone trying to scam me then sympathy for this person because they were just doing their job. We obviously didn’t apply for a account with them. Overall the whole experience made me think how I want to run my reseller business.

When you sell online you lose that face to face contact with customers. There are both positives and negatives to that which I may blog about some day in the future. This whole experience made me wonder how can I improve my business. My obvious thoughts on Kay Jewelers is now them just trying to sign up for a credit card and made me wonder how can I give a better “connection” with the customer.

Perhaps I should use automatic messaging after purchases have been made, or add a card to all my packages thanking them for their patronage. I’m not sure what else I want to do but I definitely don’t want them to feel like I did when I was there telling them “no thanks we are trying to get out of debt ourselves.”

Sales During Vacation

Running A Business March 13, 2018 Leave a comment

Yes I’m being a bit of a show off and showing my sales from March 6 -11th. I was on vacation so any sales made was a GREAT thing since I had to put both stores on vacation mode. If you are wondering about vacation mode then keep on reading. I won’t go over every detail but just my brief experience.

During the time my store was on vacation mode I was only able to make sales on eBay. You see putting your “closet” on vacation mode at poshmark will show all your listing as “NOT FOR SALE” and some little blurb stating your vacation days. Poshmark automatically turns your store back on at the end of the stated vacation day. This is important to know if you are deciding which days to turn your “closet” back on. You do have the convenience to do it on your phone ( eBay APP does not let you turn vacation on/off, only on the desktop version).

On eBay you have the option to turn vacation mode on, AND have your listings able to be sold. You can also just have your whole store hidden ( I think it might be different if you had auctions, though don’t rely on me for that). Since I was gone for less than a week, my ebay store was in vacation mode and my listings are able to be purchased. It’s just my preference. You can go longer but some customers are so computer illiterate and impatient that explaining to them your current terms aggravates them *Yes eye roll*.

Overall of course my sales went down but I still made a couple hundred dollars in sales between those days. I was able to turn my poshmark closet on , on the weekend so I still got a few sales in there. Some of my sales were small sales but those items I don’t mind letting go low enough to make my money back. After all I’m still learning about clothing and that is an industry that’s forever changing.

$3,023 In Sales. 1st Negative Of 2018.

Running A Business March 7, 2018 1 Comment

Hello All. I ended February with my most gross sales ever ( this includes shipping, IRS considers shipping as income too). I also ended it with my first negative of the year. Overall the month was OK. Yes the money I got was great but I also had to deal with some high maintenance buyers/scammers.

Between eBay & Poshmark I made $3,023 in sales. Some of sales were high dollar ( $$$, triple digit sale #) items and they were vintage items. My favorite part of reselling is thrifting so to find these gems was like hitting a mini jackpot. I also like researching items and finding out the value. For vintage items, it’s really hard to pin point value but just finding the histories of companies is really fun to me.

I also got my first negative of the year. I emphasis year because I do get negatives like everyone. Negative do eventually disappear after a year so I just have to let it languish on my feedback page. I called eBay to remove it for feedback extortion but they wouldn’t budge. Even though the buyer has histories of leaving negatives and asked me to “handle” the return differently before she leaves a negative. I’m not surprise. I have never had success in eBay removing negatives. They do remove so much options for sellers to find out if a buyer is a doozy so really my faith in eBay has dropped just a little.

This doesn’t stop me from selling and it shouldn’t for you if reselling is bringing consider cash flow in to the family. I could also mention the other crap I had to deal with but I’m not. I’m going to focus on the positives of great sales and toast to more sales this year. If you had to deal with shitty customers I suggest for you to think of all the other ones who love their item. Out of the 3 shitty ass customers I had to deal with, 130 of them were happy.

Let’s also hope my last big sale of the month doesn’t get returned. I’m just like you and worry about returns.