Ginger Beards Quest To Be MF

Ginger_Beard

Ebay selling latest - Soap & Glory gamble - 3 out of 10 selling (finishing next week)
- Other items - 6 out of 13 selling (10 finishing today)

Total currently at £19.13 (not great, but it all adds up)

Ginger_Beard

Soap & Glory Gamble - 4 out of 10 items selling (2 days to go)

Ebay items ending yesterday = £22.81 (Postage will come off this)


Relatively happy with my ebay items. Postage will bring my profit down, but it's all stuff I never use. The S&G items aren't shifting yet, but I've got an extra bidder from yesterday. Only 2 days to go, so quite excited to see how it ends up.

I went down to my first car boot today, it was bloddy boiling! You won't be suprised to hear that as a ginger man, I don't do well in the heat, so I could only hack an hour of it! In that hour I bought 5 DVD's and 1 x computer game. I got one DVD for £1 - wallace & Gromitt were-rabbit, as it was still in the wrapping, but I got every other item for 50p, which I think is really good going. I'm now aiming to sell these for £2+ on Ebay.

I'm not going to be paying off my mortgage on these items alone, but I was pleasantly surprised with how many cheap deal there are to bag there, so I'm going to make it a weekly thing, and we'll see how it goes.

In total I currently have 28 items on Ebay listed, 6 of which have bids.

I have read MSE's guide to boost income, and I'm doing what I can or am prepared to do. Does anyone else have any little earners like what I'm doing with Ebay?

I've heard mixed things about books on amazon, and I haven't ventured onto it yet.......

katsu

Ginger, don't forget that if you are buying things to sell then you need to register as a business with HMRC. Lots of info on the ebay forum here I think.

Ginger_Beard

Hi Katsu

Thanks for the advice.

I'm already on it, as I'm one of the few good pirates.

Ginger_Beard

Hi all,

Just after some advice really.............

Has anyone done a mortgage spreadsheet? Are they worth doing?

Annoyingly, as I'm with Natwest, I have to call them to work out how my daily total is. :mad:

This might be a good way around it. Anyone that's done it, might recommend them, or even has one to use etc, would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Lois_E

I've done one that is on Google Docs. You can view it or copy it here.
Hope it helps.

Ginger_Beard

Thanks Lois!

I really appreciate that. I'm getting busy on it now!

Ginger_Beard

I'm loving the spread sheet Lois sent me. I got busy with it last night, and I'm now so excited to start overpaying to reduce that MF date. It currently sits at Aug 2039. :eek:
We're planning to remortgage in the next 4 weeks, as our current deal runs out 31st Oct 11. Prior to remortgaging me and OH will pay what we have in our savings which is likely to be around £2000. Not huge but it all adds up.
We're then likely to get a better rate as we're currently on 3.69%, but we're likely to go for a 2 yr tracker at 2.39%, which as of today is the best deal we can get, and then opt for a 20 year option as opposed to our current epic 30 yr option.
Also, at the end of March 2012, my shares will be paying out (if the company takeover goes through), which should see me have approx £16,000 :j I have never had this type of payout in my life! The closest was probbably a tax rebate of £500 when I changed jobs 4 years ago. We're planning to use the £16K to pay the max 10% off and save the rest. After that payment we'll be in a great position.

Remaining Mortgage - April 2012 - £120,500
MF Date - May 2029

OK back down to earth! I've still got 7 months to go until then, but as you can probably tell im pretty excited :j:j:j

Ebay - I now have 8 out of the 10 Soap & Glory products selling so just 2 to go, and they finish today, so after final bids and postage I'll be interested to find out if I made a decent profit. I'm glad I did it anyway, even if it doesn't make much of a profit, as usually Im way too sensible to gamble on things like that.
In total I have 28 items listed on Ebay, and 11 have bids on them. 13 of them finish today, I love final bid days, they're very exciting. I just hate the wrapping! :mad: I'm a typical bloke with the wraping as well, it takes me ages to to do a bad job with it. My OH just looks at me in disgust as I attempt to make it look good.

Time to eat some breaky and get cracking with the day. Have a great day everyone!

Ginger_Beard

Ebay update - 8 out of 10 S&G items sold - Total - £48.64
other items - £35.21

I paid £35 for the S&G items, so I have made a profit, but I was hoping for a little more. I'll relist the 2 items that didn't sell on Thursday.

For the other 3 items to get me £35.21, I'm delighted with that!

I now have 15 items on ebay, that have under 7 days to go, and 1 is currently selling, £3.50 total. We'll see how it goes next week.

Now it's the fun part...........wrapping! :mad:

Ginger_Beard

Well, as expected the OH couldn't avoid 'helping' me wrap the Ebay items after watching me attempt the first couple of items.
I don't know how she does it, but she always makes them look good, whilst mine look terrible but are bomb proof.
She said "You've actually irritating me the your wrapping that, can I help you?". Actually irritated by my technique, but in fairness, I was more than happy to help relieve her of the stress!
What a start she is. All done after 1.5 hours of wrapping.

Thanks to the spreadsheet Lois kindly recommended, I've done some very basic maths, and set myself the very realistic target of overpaying my mortgage by 10% every year. This will result in us paying off the mortgage in 10 years (Dec 2021). I think this is a great starting point, as it won't be easy, especially in the first 3-4 years, but it's realistic. I fully intend on beating this target and any amount of months or years I can take off this, is a bonus!

In Dec 2012 I'll be 39. So, paying off my mortgage by then will be a great acheivement, and if I can crank it up and pay it off by something like 35, then even better.

Have a great day everyone!