Personal Finance

There are 3 posts tagged Personal Finance (this is page 1 of 1).

How to Sell Anything in 6 Hours

I'm leaving for India in exactly one week and I'm determined not to leave any major possessions behind that would be a burden on anyone.

The last major possession was my truck. I expected it would take at least a few days to sell. After all, it's not like there's anything special about my 11 year-old gas guzzling pickup truck with 215,000 miles on it, right? Everyone I talked to about selling it said I might get $1,000.

Within 30 minutes of listing the truck on CraigsList, I had half-a-dozen emails from people who said they had cash and wanted it right now... for $1,200! When I exchanged the title 6 hours later for $1,400 in cash, I had almost fifty emails in my inbox from people who wanted to buy it.

I've sold several other things in a similar fashion. Several boxes of bathroom tiles that were left over from when I owned rental properties a few years ago sold for $50 in 3 hours. Continue reading →

Think One Dollar

I sold my entire portfolio today. I wasn't going to, but after learning two tenants in one of my houses are moving out this Thursday, I took a hard look at my cash position and where it was headed. A third tenant in the same property left a few days ago, leaving three vacant units; an extra $2000 per month I need to come up with to pay the mortgage. One of my other property's also has a vacant unit that I'm about to put an ad in the paper for; another $800 I need to come up with for that mortgage. Oh, and the first floor tenant at my house, George, hasn't paid me rent in over 8 months; a total of $8000 worth of rent, all of which came out of my pocket to pay the mortgage. I'm sure you're beginning to see why I've become desperate enough to sell my entire portfolio at a 50% loss. Grrrrrr. You have no idea how hard it was to press those sell buttons, knowing I lost so much. Who knows, maybe the stock market isn't for me.

It's said, a penny saved is a penny earned. In today's terms, that penny is equivocal to a dollar. When we look in our wallet, or purse and see a dollar bill, we treat it with Continue reading →