Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of stuff you have accumulated? Ever looked at the mountains of stuff and wondered how many Benjamins you could flip that into? Joining us today are a husband-and-wife team, professional flippers Melissa and Rob Stephenson. We’ll learn about how they started flipping, how to actually make money flipping, and how you could make flipping your side hustle. If you have ever wanted to learn how to make money on eBay, Amazon, or Facebook Marketplace, you don’t want to miss today’s interview all about flipping!
In our headline, we see how CDs have become a respectable option for parking some of your cash for safety. Stacker Jeff calls into the Haven Lifeline with a question about how to make up for lost time investing.
Plus, Doug brings some flipping-themed trivia in honor of Melissa and Rob coming on the show.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
Our TikTok Minute
Rob and Melissa Stephenson
Big thanks to Rob and Melissa Stephenson for joining us today. To learn more about Rob and Melissa, visit Flea Market Flipper.
Doug’s Trivia
- What’s the most valuable thing ever bought on American Pickers?
Need life insurance? You could be insured in 20 minutes or less and build your family’s safety net for the future. Use StackingBenjamins.com/HavenLife to calculate how much you need and apply.
- Jeff is 50 years old and is in panic mode trying to make up for lost time preparing for retirement. He wants to know if we have any suggestions above and beyond what he’s already doing.
Have a question for the show?
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Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when you’ll learn how to design and pursue your dreams with certified financial planner Frank Legan.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Unlocking True Wealth – Surprising Secrets Beyond the Dollar Signs!
Episode transcript
It’s Monday in the Basement, OG. It’s a great day. It’s the best
Monday ever. Are you kidding me?
It’s probably the best Monday ever. I think everybody out there can feel it too. They can just feel the energy today. Yes. Tell everybody
why it’s the addition by subtraction. In my opinion. I mean, it’s really, let’s see how long it takes everyone to figure out why this show will be the best show of Stacking Benjamins history, if I do say so
myself.
So good. But before we dive into all of that goodness, what do we need to do every Monday morning? Toast the troops.
Toast the troops. And since it’s later in the Monday, it doesn’t have to be coffee. It could be cappuccino, it could be, uh, latte, or just straight scotch like what you have in your coffee mug.
Exactly. Cheers. Cheers to America.
Not even on the rocks. Just hoist the bottle. Yeah. What are you, what are you sporting today? I’ve got a really positive message.
Oh, just a, you know, it’s an airplane dimension.
Yeah. You got some, like, specs on how to build your own A 10 or something like that. Flying device.
Yeah, I’m just letting everybody know, have a great day. Have a
great day. So we’re definitely, uh, definitely, there it is, nice. Just a positive message for everybody. Positive message. Gotta see the YouTube video on that one. Don’t mind the bottom of my mug. But thanks to all the men and women from Navy Federal and from Stacking Benjamins, we thank you for keeping us safe this weekend.
It’s the, you know, kind of first weekend of… Full time fall and, uh, or second weekend, I guess, but all because of you we get to drink coffee that says have a great day Or a cappuccino or a bottle of scotch like Doug. Cheers.
Thanks everybody. Let’s roll
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement, it’s the Stacking Benjamins show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug and today you’ll learn how to turn your love of finding great deals into profit with flea market flippers Rob and Melissa Stevens. In our headlines, did you buy iBonds last year when all the cool kids were taking advantage of those? Sky high rates? It might be time to move.
We’ll dive in. For our TikTok Minute, you’ll learn about a little known travel tip that’s buried in the airline’s fine print. Plus, we’ll throw out the Haven Lifeline to Jeff, who wants to know what he should do to make up for lost time from not investing earlier in life. And then I’ll share some picky trivia.
And now, two guys who are the coolest people on the show, really the only reason you’re even listening. It’s OG and
hey everybody, and welcome to a very special edition of the Stacking Benjamin Show. I think they figured it out yet. This is gonna be amazing. I am the og, not the fake OG on Twitter and across the car table from me. Wait, that’s his
line. You have no idea what you’re doing, do you? Eh, I gotta work
on it a little bit.
Doug, can you help me with this for just a quick second? Okay, I think I’ve got it, but I want one more rehearsal before we hit it for real. Excellent. I think I got it now. Let’s get this party started.
Hello,
darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking Benjamins
headlines.
There’s some big news out there, uh, on iBonds. About a, what, year, year and a half ago, rates for iBonds went through the roof and we, uh, we found in an article from Investopedia that, Everybody and their brother was buying iPads. Everybody and their brother. And sister. And Investopedia is making us think.
Check this out. They say if you own U. S. Treasury bonds, it’s a very smart time to cash them in, even if you don’t currently need the funds. That’s because two things are currently true. For one, I bond rates have fallen dramatically from the stratospheric heights they reached last year. That means you won’t earn nearly as much going forward.
And at the same time, rates on certificates of deposits continue to soar, offering their highest returns in two decades. This gives you the opportunity to move the funds you hold in I bonds into a CD. where you can lock in a record rate that’s guaranteed for months or years down the road. What do you think about that, O.
G.?
High bonds are a government bond that are tied to the rate of inflation, so when inflation was really high… You know a couple years ago, and that was kind of all the talk one of the benefits of high inflation was these Government bonds that were tied to inflation which nobody used because for 20 years they came out in like 1997 or maybe 98 But with inflation being so low for 20 years they were hardly ever used The way that they work is that the government sets the inflation rate that’s tied to the bonds once every six months.
And so anything you buy during that six months, you get that rate for six months. And then they reset it in May and November was inflation has gone down, thankfully. So to have these rates. So now we’re seeing these I bond rates are, are not the 9. 6. I think that was the number that was the highest number.
- Does that sound, sound right? I can’t, yeah, I don’t exactly remember what the number was, but it was in the mid nines and then they were sixes and so on and so forth. So. Now I think a brand new one’s three. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s like three and a quarter, maybe
three and a quarter. Maybe if you add new money to it or the refresh rate is going to be three.
So this article is spot on, you know, what’s interesting about cash I think is for so long we didn’t pay attention to it We would maybe kind of shop it a little bit if we thought we’re gonna have a you know, a decent sized emergency fund But you know if you had ten or fifteen thousand bucks in your savings account at Bank of America and it was paying 0.
1 Versus the credit union that was paying 0. 15 It’s a lot of inertia you and I have talked about this about changing banks how much of a pain in the butt that is You go, is it worth it to pick up an extra five bucks a year of interest on my 10, 000? No, it’s not. But now with interest rates and savings rates and CD rates, money market rates in your Schwab account are over five, that same 10, 000 is now paying 500 of interest.
So, if you haven’t paid attention to your rates yet, or you haven’t paid attention to taking a look at where you can shop this, I think it’s a missed
opportunity. A couple of questions for you. You mentioned refresh rate. Tell everybody what that is. I mean, I know. Of course, I, you know, I can tell them, but they
want to hear your voice.
Well, it is. Very sultry. Basically just in May and in November is when when the new rates take effect So so they publish them I don’t remember how far in advance but at some amount of time in advance four or six weeks and say starting in November This is the rate that you’re gonna get on your bonds One thing to note with iBonds now, anything that you purchased in 2021 has a base rate of 4, so you’re at least getting that regardless.
The iBonds that you purchased before 2021 didn’t even have a base rate, so you could quite literally earn zero on your bonds forever, I mean, if inflation was really low. So there’s at least that you’re going to get. But the way to check this, by the way, it’s super simple. The treasury website used to be very, very bad.
Now it’s like pretty bad. Just slightly bad. Yeah. It’s like it used to be like a two on a scale of one to 10 and now it’s a 3. 7. So if you have I bonds or you purchased them or any kind of bonds for that matter, savings bonds, whatever, it’s a really great idea to log them on the website cause they will show you when they stop paying interest, what the rate is, all that sort of stuff.
This is not just true for I bonds, but it’s it’s no joke We talk to people at least five times a year that say I’ve got some savings bonds What do you think I should do with them? When did you get them? Oh, I’ve been putting them in my you know I hadn’t taken out of my paycheck for a 50 increment since I started working in 81.
It’s like well You know, savings bonds stop paying interest after 30 years. So you’ve got this pile of money that you accumulated from 81 to 2011 that for the last 12 years is sitting there not gaining any interest whatsoever. It’s been over 30 years. So it’s a good place to put it anyway. Log into your Treasury website, treasurydirect.
gov You log in and it sends you, you know, all your security stuff. And then when you click on your iBonds, you just click, keep clicking into it until you see the rate. And it will tell you, here’s the rate on your bonds. If your number is three, four, axem. Time to, uh, 86’em? Is that what they say? Time to 86’em.
And, uh, and get that money moved over to a high yield savings account, money market fund, CD, maybe even if that’s your jam. Do you prefer
any of those three over the others?
That’s a good question. I would have to see a pretty profound CD rate above what money market rates are to motivate me to lock it up.
You know, like I mentioned right at the beginning, I know Schwab, we use Schwab as our custodian for our clients. Schwab money market right now is 5. 3 maybe, something like that, 5. 4. It’s variable, it changes, but not, you know, dramatically every day. So it’s closing in on five and a half. If I’m gonna put money in a CD for a year, It better be better than five and a half.
Otherwise, I’d say, well, I’ll just get five and a half right now. Now recognize that that money market rate could change. It could go, go down over the next year, in which case you would have been able to lock in that rate. So, but high yield savings accounts are in the fours, you know, high threes, low fours, money markets are in the five CDs are in the five.
It really boils down to what tier of your cash reserve is this. If it’s your first month or two worth of emergency fund, absolutely not a CD, because, you know, you need to have one or two months worth of liquidity. Months 3, 4, 5 ish. I think you want that to be in a local savings account or a high yield savings account You know that you can find or money market fund months 6 and beyond if you’re working on that 6 month reserve to 12 month Reserve I think it’s safe to use a CD if that’s if you’re pretty confident in your cash flow and you don’t you don’t need to Access that money
and last question before we move on from this When can I sell my I’ve got to wait a certain amount of time before I can sell not only just factoring in is it?
A good rate and a good time, but isn’t there I got to leave it there for a year 18 months
Yeah There’s two things to be aware of the first thing from a timing standpoint is no sales are allowed for 12 months after you purchase it So whenever you bought it, you got to keep it for at least 12 months from months 13 through month 60 So basically where everybody is right now, you know, if you’ve had it you’re gonna give up the last three months worth of interest So there’s a penalty for selling it today, which is you just don’t get that last three months Year 2 5
you’re giving up three months.
Year 2 5. Yeah, correct. Year 2 5. Correct. Yep, and then I don’t know how long it takes to transfer the money I’m lucky that you and I have talked about this. My I bonds are still at six and a half. Yeah, so I’m YOLOing that until, until they crater it, you know, in another month. YOLOing at 6%, baby.
All right, 2002
OG.
Straight cash, homie. You know, my whole 20, 000 in my I bonds, I’m. Hey, you know what? I’ve made 2, 500 in the last two years on Savings Buy, so.
Not nothing. That’ll buy me a bottle of
scotch. Quite a nice one at that. Yeah. You know. That’s kind
of entry level for me, but. Hey, um, so thanks for that. Great, great info as always, but now it’s time for us to take a look at what’s going on on the socials.
Socials? Yeah, we’re gonna have our TikTok minute. Normally. Boss man would ask us, you know, he’d pick you or me, which, you know, Yeah. Hey, Doug, do you think it’s going to be amazing or hashtag amazing? I cheated. I already
said it sucked. Yeah. What do you think?
Last time you baited me into making me say this is going to be amazing, because I always go the opposite way of you, and I got hosed on that deal.
So, what do you think about this one? I
already listened to it, and I don’t like these types of videos, so I cheated in advance. What the hell? Well, I’m like Head Cook and Bottle Washer around here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my responsibilities have increased greatly in the last… 18 minutes.
Yeah, you had to open one more
file.
Preparation, I had to turn stuff on. There’s a lot of technical things here you wouldn’t understand. This is really, this is really for the most important people in the show. But anyways, here you go, listen to this. This is… Erica two on YouTube.
Hi. It looks like you bumped me from this flight I was supposed to be on. Yeah, we overbooked it. Basically, we sold more tickets than seats on the plane, and to our surprise, everyone showed up. Well, what can be done? We’ll try to get on the next flight in a few hours, but there’s nothing else I can do.
Sorry, she has no idea. I follow Erica, watch this. Actually, I’ve read the terms. This is called involuntary denied Boarding, and in this case I’m eligible for compensation. Okay. How much money do you want? Well, it depends. When’s the next flight you can get me on? It leaves in. Two and a half hours according to the Department of Transportation.
Since the next flight you can get me on results in over a two hour delay, I’m entitled to four times the cost of the one way fare. I paid $375 for the one way fair. So that’s $1,500. Oh fine. We’ll get you your $1,500 and I’ll book you on the next flight. Do I need to pay for the next flight you’re booking me on?
Nope. We’re covering that in addition to the $1,500. And who taught you this? Erica taught me she’s a lawyer and reads the fine print so I don’t have to, that’s why I
follow
her. When Erica number two, whoever’s playing the flight, uh, you know, attendant, said, Oh, fine. That’s not the F word I thought she was going to use.
Yes. Have you ever been involuntarily denied boarding other than due to inebriation?
Stop bringing up last month. Uh, no, I don’t
think I have. Other than falling asleep at the bar and missing my connection? Dude, I was just tired. No? I had a long week. Sleepy. God, it was like one in the afternoon. No, I’ve never, I don’t think
I’ve ever been booted like that.
But that’s pretty, like, now I want to be. Now I want to look for the flights that are most likely to be overbooked. You know, like the heavy traffic corridors. Yeah. And
go. Sounds like a great way to spend a Friday afternoon. Like I’ve got other things to do. Sitting in O’Hare collecting 1, 500 stipends from
Southwest.
That happened to Fintern. a couple of years ago from, he was on a ski trip and he, he got bumped only from the first short leg from like Bend, Oregon to Salt Lake City. And he got bumped from that. I don’t think he knew the FAA rules on what he could demand. And he felt like he won the jackpot. They flew him first, when they finally got him on a plane, they flew him first class the whole way from, from Bend all the way back to O’Hare.
I think he got a thousand bucks, which was. Not four times, so he probably lost out there and didn’t realize it, but he was a college kid He thought he was hitting the jackpot. The timing worked out so that when he ended up getting back to Chicago He caught a free ride from some other kid who was going back at the same time back to Purdue And so he just felt like he hit the lottery.
King of the world. He could have gotten more.
I know that there’s also On your credit cards, for example, most of them have some sort of travel protection of some kind, lost baggage, delayed insurance All that sort of fun stuff. That’s a pain in the ass.
To qualify for or to claim? Well, like, we tried to use it on, um, on a flight that Tucker had because he fell really ill while he was there and we had to get him home and they made us jump through hoops and send all kinds of documentation and it was crazy.
Kind of like any insurance claim then, basically?
Yeah, but it shouldn’t be that hard. I just fix
it. Just be like I don’t feel good. Send me some cash Yeah, send me some cash. No. All right. Well follow Erica if you want these wonderful YouTube videos I I’m just not a big fan of the ones with the same people wearing different clothes like looking at each other Doesn’t that that kind of weird?
It’s just get another person. Yeah, like you have a friend I mean look at what we do. Could you imagine if I had to do? Well, I guess I kind of am doing it, right? Today you are. Both jobs? Should I like turn my head this way and shave my hair off? Wear a funny hat? Get super old and grow a beard? Or just shave your head and look like Joe?
That’s what I said. Or get super old and wear a
beard.
Wow, man, you are hating on the boss man now that he’s gone today.
I wouldn’t really call him boss. That’s probably overestimating the role. When
we’re on air, he’s like the boss. When we’re on air. Well,
okay. You’re not even gonna buy that one, are you? Agree to disagree.
Your ego will not even allow that to fly.
Co equals is what… I might even throw you into that. Anyways, what else are we gonna talk about today? What?
It is complete mayhem in the basement today! Moving along. You’re raising me up to be almost, like, half a rung down? Well… This is nuts!
The ladder isn’t very tall. Alright, I’m taking charge here, dang it, again.
We need to get to Melissa and Rob. They’ve been together for 14 years and started flipping stuff. I don’t know. Flipping, flipping each other off, flipping, flipping.
The flip in the furniture happens in usually like three months into the marriage, flipping furniture.
Like I’m so mad. I’m going to flip the couch over
like you’re sitting at the table, eating breakfast, and then.
You get, you know, are you taking out the trash today or are you cutting the lawn and then you just lose it. You
just lose it. Okay. Well, I don’t think they did that. They started, uh, back in the, in the mid nineties when you were still in, uh, rare peak physical form doing stuff on eBay. Remember eBay? What?
Do you shop on eBay now? I do now, I do, yeah. You do shop on eBay? Well, apparently they were doing it way back when you had to upload your listing in HTML and get paid by checks in the mail. In fact, I’m good for it. Send me my CD tower, or whatever it was. Flipping game is so much easier, simpler, with less risk than it used to be.
Obviously now, uh, they’ve got internet. Uh, Melissa came into this, uh, flea market flipping idea. It’s really helped their family, especially when, uh, when they had, uh, their third kid. So I can’t wait to listen to Melissa and Rob and Joe. Uh, we’ll bring Joe back in just to handle the interview here with Melissa and Rob.
I’m interested, but first you have a little bit of trivia.
As always, it’s why I am your equal. Almost. Almost. Hey there, stackers! I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. I went sailing over the weekend. Garage sailing. And boy, did I catch some great deals. I got a bowling ball, a beaded curtain, and a black velvet painting of a stallion.
All for just 30 bucks. I had to get out of there before they realized their error. What a deal. I’m gonna keep the beaded curtain and painting for myself to help set the mood in my bedroom. But I listed the bowling ball on eBay. I saw one on there for 200 bucks. That got me thinking there’s tons of unnecessary stuff around here that I could flip for a profit.
This morning I listed some pens, a cool stapler, and all the Joe’s podcast equipment. I can’t wait to see Joe’s face once I tell him how much money I got for selling all his stuff. So that brings me to today’s trivia question. What’s the most valuable thing ever bought on American Pickers? I’ll be back right after I figure out how the heck to ship a bowling ball.
Hey there stackers, I’m flipper and interior decorator, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Since I started eBay a couple of days ago, I’ve already made 300 bucks. 30 of that was from Joe’s podcast equipment. You know what? When he gets back, I’m gonna take him out for a nice steak dinner at the Sizzler to celebrate.
Here was today’s trivia question. What’s the most valuable thing ever bought on American Pickers? The answer? While the hosts of American Pickers have bought everything from Star Wars memorabilia to Aerosmith’s tour van. Whoa, that’s pretty sweet. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. It was a collection of vintage motorcycles and accessories.
that fetched the show’s highest payout at 90, 000. Hold on, they got Aerosmith’s tour van for less than 90K? Seems like some of the paraphernalia left inside would be worth that much. Anyway, here to tell you what kind of stuff to look out for to make the most money flipping, it’s professional flippers Rob and Melissa Stevens.
I’m super happy. We
finally, we overdue, have them in the basement. Rob and Melissa are here with us. How are you guys?
We’re excited
to be here, Joe. Thanks so much. Well, it is about time and overdue. I remember us talking about this. In Orlando at a conference, God, maybe five years ago, I’m like, Oh my God, this is so big.
What you guys do is so amazing. And we got to have you on the show. And then we did nothing. It’s all,
we all get busy. It’s all
good. Absolutely.
Well, better late than never. So let’s start here, Rob. Let’s start with you. You have been a flipper from way, way, way back, I hear. Yeah,
so probably when I was 16 years old, even before that, my mom would take me to yard sales and we would find stuff at yard sales back before any of the apps before eBay and that kind of stuff.
My mom would buy stuff from yard sales. She’d bring it home and she’d sell it in the classified section. So I got modeled from a young age and then just figured out that this is one of the funnest ways to make money and profitable as well. So we absolutely love it. Was
she doing it because it was fun?
Was she doing it because she was addicted to yard sales? Was she doing it to pay off debt, uh, get ahead? Why was she doing it? Yes. All
of the above. So we, I come from a big family. I have six older sisters. I’m the youngest and only boy. So seven people in our family. So my parents would go to yard sales to provide for us.
So we got secondhand clothes, shoes, that kind of stuff growing up. And that’s how they provided was through yard sales, but they also had the hobby of finding these cool things at yard sales. We lived in a, an area that was. I want to say it was more affluential. Is that the right word? Uh, yeah. Yeah, something.
Anyways, we needed not have a super expensive house, but all the areas around us were super, super expensive. So we would go to those yard sales and they would sell stuff so, so cheap. My mom would get really good deals on stuff and then she’d bring it home, clean it up, and then list it in the classified.
And they made extra money that way at the same time as being able to provide for us kids as well. It’s funny,
Rob, I didn’t flip it, but when we lived in Michigan for a couple years, we moved back to this, this community that was adjacent to really, really wealthy communities and they would, wealthy neighborhoods, and we would go to their estate sales.
And it’s funny, and this is why I’m going to sound really bougie. I’ve got this bad ass wine fridge that all of my friends talk about. They’re like, you’ve got the coolest wine fridge. I got it at one of these, these uber rich people were selling it for like 50 bucks. And this thing’s gotta be, I haven’t even looked it up cause I’m not interested in flipping it, but it must be thousands of dollars.
And it was 50 bucks. We talked to the person running the sale. They’re like, yeah, they’re just redesigning their whole house. Cause they’re bored. That’s it. You get some crazy, crazy. Do you remember, do you remember your first deal when you
were
16? Um, yeah, my first deal that I actually was a game changer for me was a NordicTrack ski machine.
This was when eBay came out.
I think that’s called a clothes hanger. Isn’t that called a clothes hanger? You
know it, that’s the exact one. So, we found those, people would, uh, move into Florida, we’re down in Florida, they’d move into Florida from the northern states, they would have these units, and then they would donate them to the local Salvation Army, Goodwill, that kind of stuff.
Well, we went to an auction at the Salvation Army, and you could buy these things for like five bucks, because they’d come to Florida, we could exercise outside, we didn’t need this kind of stuff. So, we would buy them from there, my first flip, my first flip that I recall is buying it from a Salvation Army for five dollars.
Bringing it home, taking pictures of it, listing it on eBay and selling it for like 350, uh, within seven days. And that’s when I got hooked and we shipped it from Florida back up to Michigan. So it made the trip down and then back up because we sold it and that’s how it worked. So yeah, it was definitely a game changer realizing not only that, it only took me a couple hours.
I was working at a Red Lobster at the time, um, making 5, 6 an hour. And then me doing this and spending three hours to make 350. more than I made in two weeks of working at Red Lobster part time. I was like, okay, this is a game changer. I’m going to really learn how to do this really well and keep going to the next level.
So that was my first flip. Yeah. But Rob, I
understand the money thing, but Red Lobster has those damn biscuits.
Cheddar bay biscuits, baby. I love
them.
I would
be. I would be 600 pounds if
I
worked at Red
Lobster. As a
little fun fact, they actually put him in the Red Lobster suit and made him go do backflips by the side of the road to get customers in.
So that was
his job. They found out that I could do a backflip on the ground. So they put me in the big Red Lobster suit and we were on a busy highway. They would send me out there to start doing flips on the side of the road to attract business. And so, yeah, that, yeah, fun fact on the side of my Red Lobster.
And that’s how Melissa found him. She’s like, I got to get with this guy. Yep. Well, let’s fast forward, Melissa. It’s 2007. You find this dude who likes looking for junk, like what? Tell me about marrying into this family.
I really didn’t know exactly what he did whenever I met him. Like I didn’t even know like eBay.
I didn’t know that was a thing and you could buy stuff, but I didn’t know that you could actually make money on it. And he had actually just flipped a house right before we met. So he had some extra money and then he’s like, sometimes I have money, sometimes I don’t. So that’s just how it goes. And yeah.
And then you would just always do it on the side. I’m like, I, he doesn’t really have a real job, but I guess, okay, he’s got money. I, so I think so. I don’t know. And then I kind of learned what he was doing and you’d actually did it out of the side of, or he was in a duplex and one of his rooms was all his.
eBay stuff room. So that’s kind of, he just did it out of the duplex when
we first met. Oh, that’s good. So the duplex didn’t, he didn’t look like a hoarder. Cause I could imagine there’s times when he’s got all this stuff all over the place, but it’s all in one room. It was all
in one room at that time.
We’ll talk about later, but I gotta assume then Rob, that what Melissa said about sometimes, you know, you got money, sometimes you don’t. That’s because when you don’t have money is when you’re in the middle of deals. I bet you’ve got a ton of inventory at that point and you’re
unloading it. Absolutely.
And that I prefaced our whole relationship with sometimes I might have a lot of money and sometimes I might not, but you’re absolutely right. So if you go out too much and that was in, in my younger years, learning the. I guess the teeter totter of, okay, you got to invest, but you also got to be bringing money in at the same time, um, so you can’t go out too much money in the investment to where you don’t have any money to survive and live.
And it’s taken a while to get to the point where you can actually do that the right way. But yeah, absolutely. That was part of our growth.
What’s the kind of flip, Melissa, where people undervalue something and you find a quick profit? There’s got to be one type of thing that people can get started with that’s probably, you know, a layup, an easy win.
Well, now we gravitate more towards appliances because there’s so much profit in them, but, and people, like you said, get rid of stuff for, you know, just out of, uh, they’re redoing their kitchen and they get rid of it and you can get it. for next to nothing. To start out though, like that’s a little bit bigger one to ship.
So it’s a little bit harder to start with it. I did a lot of baby stuff whenever we started having kids. That’s kind of when I got into a little bit more of the business was, I was like, okay, well what can I do at home? And so I started with having kids. Some kids stuff is expensive. Like I didn’t know how much like people pay for strollers and just like a lot of different brand name baby things.
And so it kind of got into that. And that’s an easier thing to start. That’s actually what your mom started with too, is baby clothes,
right? My mom loved baby stuff. Collecting dolls, and then she started with baby clothes and actually doing lots of them. I think she did on eBay, but even before eBay, she’d listed in the classified section of brand name.
So
it’s been pretty stuff. And that’s where you have to make sure that it’s a brand that people will reuse and like the brand. Absolutely.
Well, that makes sense to me because, you know, looking at that audience, guys, I think people that have babies in the house have to be frugal, whether frugal or not, they have to be.
And yet we have such this, you know, stigmas in society about what people wear and you want the baby to look good. So. Defining these high end brand names that parents are going to buy, but on a tight budget makes total sense to me. Like there’s always going to be, you know, it’s almost like Alex Harmozy, who’s a big marketing guy that maybe our listeners know, maybe they don’t.
He talks about how, listen, if you’re selling hot dogs outside of Wrigley Field, you’re going to have customers, right? For you, I think it’s got to be a little bit the same. There’s got to be a built in thirst of people that want this thing, like an appliance or like baby clothes.
Yeah. And we did.
I did really well with strollers for a long time.
I started and I still, you still, people pay like over a thousand dollars for a stroller sometimes. Like it’s crazy. And so we would go find these strollers for like 20, 50 bucks that were still in good condition and then sell them on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. And I remember I was like, I just want a Bob, a double Bob when we had the two kids, but 300, 350.
I’m like, Oh, I can’t keep one. I need to make the money. And like, Oh, finally we kept one. I was like, I’m keeping this one. And we ran that thing into the ground.
But you did hit the nail on the head. When you did say, so back in the early days when my mom was doing this, she took it from a yard sale, which had the potential of reaching a couple hundred people in a weekend to a classified section, which raised that audience to thousands of people.
We do the same thing now where we’ll buy locally from the flea market, from an app or something like that. And we throw it onto eBay, which has 152 million registered users. So we’re just taking it from a smaller audience and throwing it into a bigger audience. So we have the potential to make more money on that item.
I noticed
that you guys use eBay a lot and I’m wondering why eBay versus a place like Facebook marketplace or uh, what’s Mercado I think, or some of the other places out there, you seem to go eBay. Is it because eBay is better or is it because get to know one platform and know it really well so you’re able to maximize?
So it’s really the reach of eBay. Go
ahead. No, I was just going to say that, um, eBay has always been really well. And we’ve tried some of the other platforms too. We’ve tried Mercari. Um, we don’t, yeah, we can’t ship the big stuff through Mercari. And we typically do a lot of bigger items and Facebook marketplace is again, just your local market where we have, you know, 40, 50, 000.
local people, you can ship through Facebook marketplace, but you cannot get ahold of customer service on Facebook. So like you can get ahold of eBay customer service. So if something goes wrong, we can handle it with eBay. You can’t handle it with marketplace. So that’s why we don’t ship through Facebook
marketplace.
I know the Facebook marketplace also has a problem with scammers. You guys run into scammers very often.
Yeah, they definitely have a lot more than
the other apps, so. Yeah, eBay, once you build up your feedback on eBay, typically the scammers leave you alone, they know that you’re legit, you’ve been on there for a while.
Starting off on eBay, when you don’t have a lot of feedback for buying or selling, you will have scammers reach out and try to scam you on eBay, but Marketplace, yeah, it’s like the wild, wild west. You don’t know what story you’re gonna get from somebody looking to buy it, so you definitely have to be careful.
But the biggest thing is cash on hand. That’s the cool thing about Marketplace. We do Marketplace too,
but just not as much
as eBay. No, but cash in hand for Marketplace. That’s your safest thing to do is you meet somebody at a public place, a fire station, a police department, a strip mall, something like that to exchange the item and then they give you cash.
That’s the safest way to do it that you cannot get scammed by doing that. eBay is different because almost everything you sell you ship and that all goes through eBay’s payment. Processing stuff. So you are getting the funds, but it’s being guaranteed through eBay doing it. So, um, yeah, there’s a little bit of scammers on both sides of it, but marketplace, you’ll receive a lot more on marketplace.
That’s
great. I’m thinking for somebody just starting out, getting back to the children’s clothes and the appliances, do you coach people to just look at one thing first, if you’re doing this part time, like become an expert in children’s clothing. So you can go to an estate sale or go to a, you know, moving sale, yard sale, whatever it is, and identify what the items
are.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And we actually, for people that we do coach, we tell them not just like a one item. This business is really cool if you can do it with stuff that you know you have experience in or a hobby that you have. So uh, whatever, there’s a lot of golf, there you go. Whatever your hobby is, whatever you like, or you already have a great knowledge base on that.
That’s where we tell people to start with. Start with that stuff because your learning curve is so much less when you already know what good golf clubs are, you know what good golf bags are, golf balls, all that kind of stuff. You already know that. You don’t have to go and find a golf club and then do the research to find out if it’s expensive.
So you can start with that. Baby clothes the same way. If you have a baby and you know what the expensive brands are and you enjoy that, you totally start there. That’s the best place to start when you’re starting out flipping.
I gotta imagine that there’s some mistakes that people really make when they start out that they find very discouraging.
What’s a frequent mistake when you’re coaching somebody that they’re making that you’re able to help them flip and do right?
I think a big one that we see a lot is, um, not taking enough pictures of an item for eBay because eBay, when they’re buying an item, They don’t get to feel it. Like in marketplace, you don’t see it or feel it.
They have, they’re buying it off the pictures. And so either their pictures aren’t clear enough or they don’t have enough of them. Or that’s, that’s a common one that we see. I agree.
Yeah. And it will lead to negative feedback as well. Yeah. To where if you’re not describing the thing that people have to remember selling on eBay is they don’t get to see the item before they pay for it and before they receive it.
Uh, so. When they get that item, if you didn’t have all the imperfections in the pictures, if you didn’t have, if you didn’t state in the description, uh, accurately what that condition of that item is, you’re going to get negative feedback in there. It’s going to throw your whole business model off if you’re trying to do this on the side or a full time gig.
Um, yeah, that’s a huge mistake that we see. Now we tell people, I mean, eBay allows you to do, what is it? 24 pictures, 24 pictures and a video. So for what we teach, we have people doing videos and all the pictures that they can possibly use up when we’re doing also higher profit items. So we’re doing items from 2000, 5, 000, and we want people to be impressed with the item they’re getting before versus being disappointed when they get the item because they didn’t know something about it.
I
was gonna add one other recent problem that we’ve had, which is kind of a good problem, was we’ve had a few people, like, jump in, do awesome, have a couple thousand, two thousand dollar sales right away, and then eBay held the funds for, like, froze their account for a little while, so now we have to go back and be like, okay, we have to start a little bit smaller, slower, grow your account a little.
But I mean, it’s awesome that they’d made those sales, but start your account, get a good standing with eBay, grow your account, and then we can run.
Yeah.
Well, that’s what I was thinking. I know you guys just did a road trip. You brought back some crazy stuff. You guys just across the country, getting stuff.
So fun. Great way to write off a trip too. I got to say that, but. Rob, uh, when you were talking about doing these higher end items, I gotta imagine you don’t coach people to start there, because I think that for you, the risk reward isn’t that high because you know what you’re doing, but somebody who’s brand new, if you start off with some of this high end stuff, you could get screwed.
Absolutely, and that’s kind of what Melissa just, uh, touched on was growing it slowly, and that’s what we tell everybody. Growing it slowly, not only starting off with 20 to 50 items or even lower than that, But learning the process of eBay before you jump in and, and start selling a thousand dollars item, a $2,000 item, it’s a lot easier.
Like the
freeze? Yeah, like the freeze in your account stuff.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So jump in and start with those low price items. If you have problems or you have a, a scammer or something like that, a $20 bill is a lot easier to take than a thousand dollars or $2,000. So we always tell people. Spend time building up your feedback in the beginning and you make mistakes.
You make mistakes in the beginning. Absolutely. Get the process down before you go to that next level and start doing high profit flips.
I think we met around 2016, was a big year for you, Rob. You’re doing this on the side. You’re doing it. You’re bringing an extra money. It sounds like you’re having a lot of fun doing it, but your company was changing.
Tell me about this big moment in 2016 for
you. Yeah, so this was huge. We had to decide to go full time into flipping. Uh, the company that I was working for, I was doing reports for an insurance company, homeowner’s insurance. They called me up and said, hey, we’re dropping your insurance, your health insurance, as of March.
It was April 1st. April 1st, they were dropping it. Melissa’s… Pregnant. This is two months or a month before? I was due, oh they’re dropping it March 31st. Oh my I was due April 1st. Let me get some salt out and sprinkle it on you here. We’re gonna give it to you hard.
So it was March 31st that we would be ending and I was due April 1st.
So we’re like, well that’s cool. You’re like, come
on baby, come on baby, come on baby.
So I called our HR and I’m like, so she’s due the 1st, if she delivers on the 1st. Will we still be covered? Is there some kind of grace period? And she goes, no. If she delivers the first, you’re responsible for all the medical bills after that, because we’re dropping you.
So, which is stressful, super stressful. But Melissa and I sat down and we’re like, okay, we’ve made money on the side flipping. We never thought it was a viable. Like a lot of people, I feel like when you hear that we’re flippers, it’s not a viable career. Like, who’s a flipper? Who makes money? Full time flipping and that’s a that’s the stigma that we had or that we even had on it.
And I told Melissa, listen We’re making some great money on the side We’re making more money on the side income than we are on the full time job, but the full time job is providing the insurance So I’m like let’s go all in and just make a lot more money and be able to pay for our insurance on the side And it was stressful.
We didn’t have like Well, a huge runway of money to do it. We just went all in and we did it and it was awesome We had also
decided I was stopping my job because this was baby number three and I was and we had three Three and under and so I’m like, this is just insane. I need to be home. I can’t I got to stop my personal training I can’t do it and I’ll just be home and you work and then they threw that in the mix.
I’m like, alright Well, I guess we’re both gonna be doing this flipping thing from home. Let’s So yeah.
Oh my goodness. I just can’t imagine the decision making and obviously it sounds like you haven’t looked back. Like this was the best thing you could have done.
Yeah. And I think we just needed that push too.
Like we never really, we always made more money flipping doing than both of our jobs, but it was just kind of like, there’s our extra padding right there. So I don’t know why we didn’t think it was something
you said as vacation money. So Melissa, I’d find a vacation cause I love vacations. I’d find a cruise.
And Melissa’s like, Go flip something if you want to go on a cruise. And I’m like, challenge accepted, bring it on baby. So I’d go and buy a couple things and we’d flip them and then we’d go on a cruise. So that was kind of what it was. But now it was actually, okay, you got to pay your, your mortgage. You got to pay everything you have with this income.
And that’s what we did.
The health insurance game. How did you solve that? Cause some people now start off right away with the portal and with, with the government. Other people look at these religious ministries. Not as actually sound, but work for some people. How did you solve the health insurance game?
Uh, we
just kind of said, we’re just going to be self insured right now, but then we did eventually get MediShare.
MediShare is one of the Christian, yeah, it’s a Christian health share program. And that’s what we’ve had for like four years, I think. Okay. Gotcha.
And you’ve had a good experience.
But we’re healthy, we’re young.
I was gonna say, like, we haven’t had to max it out or anything,
so, uh, yeah. Yeah, because the only thing that worries me about that is the disclaimer on the bottom of things like Metashare that say, This is not actuarially sound, because there’s Such a smaller pot of people that are in it that there could be a catastrophic thing that happens and then It’s it’s difficult.
Yeah. Yeah, and we haven’t had to use that yet. So our experience has been Pretty good so far. So yeah, we’re we enjoy it right now It is good You
know I mean every strategy has an achilles heel and to know that when you go in I think it’s half the bet you’re never going To get rid of all the risk and anything, right?
You you just you’re not going to I gotta ask about your relationship because I can’t imagine that you guys are smiling here at mom’s basement with Me, you get along great. There’s gotta be times when you disagree working together. How hard is it, Melissa, to work with your spouse?
It was a learning curve because I, it’s been years of a learning curve.
it’s, yes, but we
we’re, we got it, I think under control, for the most part. I am more somebody who creates the tasks. What am I gonna do this week? What are you gonna do this week? And then I’m like, so did you do those things? Like did you, and he’s like, I don’t have a boss for a reason, so you are not my boss.
So it’s learning. To be like, okay, this is what we said we’re going to do, but I, I can’t like get after him for if he doesn’t do something. So,
but it does sound like they’ll rob roles and responsibilities and who does what is super important. I mean, to some degree it’s got to run like a business.
Absolutely. And even where we’re at right now, it’s pretty cool because I am responsible for the flipping. So I find the items, I buy the items, I flip them. Melissa uses all the stuff that I do for our coaching side of the business, where she uses the content for shorts, for YouTube videos and that kind of stuff.
Um, she does everything on the back end. If I had to do anything with a computer, like even right now, we’d be screwed. We would not be on this call right now. If I was trying to set this up,
Rob wouldn’t have made it to the interview.
Yeah, I didn’t put it on the calendar. It was in our, our, uh,
Calendly. So that’s fabulous.
I’m glad you made that transition to coaching people because I want to talk about that. Let’s talk about some of the success stories that the people you’ve coached have had. I know that there’s people I’m sure that have gotten out of debt. Some people that have been able to achieve financial independence.
Can you maybe without using names, talk about some of your students and some of the things that you’ve seen? And we
have a whole bunch of other people on the show that are going to be talking about this. So we’re excited to have you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I can go buy it. I can do what I want to do. Now I have Melissa telling me not to do it. So as for our students, so it’s so much more rewarding knowing Melissa and I can do this. I mean, we, I’ve done this for 27 years now. I can totally find good deals all the time. We’re, we’re flipping stuff. We do it to stay sharp and because I love it.
But being able to help students make that money to pay off debt, to pay their mortgage, to do that kind of stuff. Just one of the person, uh, one of the guys that we were working with for this last, we did a six month coaching session, a close, more intent, uh, intentional one on one coaching with him. And after three or four months he was already at 25, 000 from coaching with us one on one coaching.
And to me, That’s insane. That’s to know that you’re actually helping somebody grow and his goal is to do it full time to grow somebody’s business and give them the confidence and the know how and just be able to be a part of that. It’s so much more rewarding than me just making money myself. It’s so much cooler to see those stories in people.
Yeah, that’s fabulous. I just think about so many people struggling out there and the answers in your community. I mean, it’s all, it’s all around you. There’s dollars to be, to be picked up. Uh, how do people get ahold of you guys? I know that you offer coaching. Where do they go if they want to get coaching, if they want to be a part of your mastermind?
If they want to work with
you. Uh, well, our website has all of the things, fleamarketflipper. com, but we are actually doing a new challenge pretty soon too, which we’re excited about. So to help people like get started and that’s going to be at learn to flip. com. So we were trying to help people at the getting started, make your first 250 and then grow it from
there.
So is that what the challenge is going to be? Make 250 bucks in three days, three days. That’s our goal. In three days.
Yes. Wow. How cool would it be to have an extra couple Benjamins and a half in your wallet after three days? That’s awesome. Right? Rob and Melissa, thanks a ton for helping our stackers get, uh, get a little more money in their pocket.
Just, just doing something as fun as this is. I think it’s a great thing yourself, but I think also if you are part of a couple, it’s something good to do together. It just seems like a fun way to work together. Well, Melissa, based on your answer, sometimes.
It’s a learning curve. It’s a learning curve. Well, we do have a lot of couples actually in our community.
All of these people are in a community too that now work together and usually it starts with one of them and then the other one’s like, no, that’s not going to work. Like it’s not a viable, and then they prove them wrong. And then they’re both in it and I like that they’re both gung ho. So it’s pretty cool to see that transition.
But you know,
Alex Formosy and what he talks about being with Layla all the time. It’s that Melissa and I have been married for, is it 17 years now, 16, 16 years now, and compared to, we’ve spent 24 seven together. So it’s like, we’ve been married already. 60 years with how much people spend with their spouse.
So we know each other pretty well from, you know, being together 24 7. So it is a really fun side hustle or a full-time gig that you can do with your significant other and just have so much fun with them. It’s,
it’s a blast. Hey, this is Joe Crane, host of Veteran on the Move Podcast. And when I’m not helping Veterans Transition Entrepreneurship, I’m stacking Benjamins.
Sweet! We brought Joe back just for a little interview. It was awesome listening to Michelle and Rob. Professional flippers.
But more importantly, we sent Joe away again, didn’t
we? Yeah, we were like, we’re good. We got you. And we sent him packing
again. We should do this more often. The
man needs a rest. Well, apparently he doesn’t have any podcast equipment, so…
Beep boop bop. Joke’s on him. You wanna do Haven
Lifeline? Yeah, hey, let’s throw out the laven… The
laven haifline. The laven haifline. Boy, are we mucking it up today. I don’t
know why we need Joe. We’re so polished at this. We got this wired. Let’s throw out the Haven lifeline and tackle some of life’s most important questions, OG.
Our friends at Haven Life Insurance Agency put what you value first, which is what today?
Oh, absolutely. It’s, uh.
Really prepped for this episode,
didn’t you? I have a lot of responsibility. I can’t be in charge of everything. You know, I’m really enjoying the 80 degree temperatures. I can get a little sunshine and get outside. It’s not a thousand degrees in Dallas So those are the things that I like the most.
You’re valuing something you have no control
over.
I value the things I have the least control over,
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Let’s hear from our caller, Jeff.
You’ve got mail. Joe and OG. I’m following your sage financial advice and I’ve achieved the following.
I’m maxing out pre
tax retirement and the catch up, adding to my small balance of 150K, contributing 8K annually to my IRA. Opened a standard three fund index brokerage account.
I’m contributing 8, 000 annually to my son’s 529. I’ve paid off all non secured debt, credit cards, and student loans. I have two small car loans totaling
40, 000 with
23, 000 in equity. I’m halfway through paying my mortgage with 250, 000 left, re fied at 2. 8%. I’ve done everything you should be doing at the age of 30.
The only catch is that I’m 50 years old, Gen X, cramming to meet retirement goals in a 15 year time frame. Should I pay off my house? Should I start stacking deeds for future income? Should I only invest in fixed rates because I don’t have time to
make up for losses? I feel like it’s too late to focus
on the standard 3 Fund Index brokerage account unless I repurpose it.
as my son’s future retirement account. What should a 50 year old Gen X er do to make up for lost time? Sweet! Thanks, Jeff. I’m a Gen X er. Are you a Gen X er? I am.
Absolutely a Gen X er. Coolest generation ever. That’s why we stole the cool letter.
But I’m more of a younger Gen X er than a more senior citizen Gen X er,
like…
Can we answer Jeff’s question? We don’t need to know how handsome you think you are and how youthful. Let’s get to Geoff.
It’s not think, it’s am. I think therefore I am, is that what the… What was that from?
Uh, how about, how about Rene Descartes? Or, or Immanuel Kant?
Someone said that. Yeah. I’m certain of it.
TM. Now it’s mine. Here’s the thing, Jeff. This is the problem that most people think of when it comes to saving and investing. They get to 50 or 40s or 55 and go, yeah, I’m out of time. I screwed up. I totally, there’s no, no hope for me whatsoever. I heard him say that he’s saving 30 grand a year in his 401k.
I heard him saying that he’s putting 8, 000 a year into… Uh, an IRA, which I guess maybe is a Roth or a backdoor. Um, I guess he put some money in a brokerage account too. I couldn’t keep track of all the numbers he’s thrown out there. Low debt. Eh, I don’t know that I would totally characterize the car payment as I just have a little car balance of 40K.
Um, I guess relative to the purchase price of brand new trucks these days, maybe that’s a little low, but um, you know, that’s obviously something to work on. But here’s the great news. The power of compounding is so profound that we can’t possibly imagine how it works. It doesn’t make sense in our brains.
And this is the big aha moment, is when you just accept the fact that doing the same thing over and over and over again for the next 15 years will be okay. It’s not gonna be as great as if you did it when you’re 30 a hundred percent But you’re right if you’d have done this when you were 30, you’d be in a different spot today But arguably you might be in a different spot with everything, too You can’t really just say well if I would have done this when I was 30 I’d have ten million dollars when I retired.
Maybe not Maybe you’d have retired when you were 50 and retired with the same dollar amount. So who knows? My point is, is that if you’ve got 150, 000 today, and you’re saving 000 a year, which is a profound amount of savings, that number is likely to increase, right? The 401k limits are gonna increase each year.
You’re gonna get pay raises each year, probably. Should you buckle down maybe and save a little bit more? Up to you. But here’s the great news. With just a normal 9 percent rate of return, you will get 1. 8 million in 15 years. which is a whole bunch of money from 150, 000 at 40K a year, right? Like, it just doesn’t even seem like that’s right.
If you can somehow manage to make this work out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years, and you’d say, well, I don’t want to work until I’m freaking 70, but hey, 70 is the new 50, so maybe you do want to, that number turns into 3 million. So somewhere between 65 and 70, you’ll have somewhere between 1.
8 million and 3 million. Plus, if you’re saving all this money, you probably have really decent income. So social security will be around at 67 and that’s another three or 4, 000 a month of cashflow. Also, if you have a spouse, there’s some other money there. So from a retirement perspective, I don’t know how much money you make and I don’t know how much money you need to live on.
But if you just do the thing that you’re doing right now, You don’t have to swing for the fences. This is where people get in trouble. People get in trouble because they say, I’m 50, I have to swing for the fences on every investment. I gotta go buy a thousand rental properties, or I have to be super aggressive in my investment portfolio.
No, you don’t. You just have to average something less than the market does. The S& P averages 10 percent a year. Do nine. You’re totally fine. Stick with your three fund portfolio. Do it for the next 15 years
and give me a call. Yeah, but OG, one of his main questions was, what do I pay off
first? Well, obviously the cars, you know, and not the house, because from a snowball method, you’ve got a, I mean, you’re not going to pay off a quarter million dollar house anytime soon.
Probably. I don’t know. I’m just saying maybe he’s got tons of extra money, but at 2 percent interest or 2. 8, whatever number he said, the arbitrage of investing versus paying the debt off, I would definitely be investing today versus paying the house off. Because again, 15 years from now. That 200, 000 mortgage is down to 100, 000 balance and you’ve got two million bucks in the bank So and a ton of equity in the house, and if you want to move, you know There’s a lot of pros to that staying on that path Which is another interesting thing because that’s you know You think about the payoff on your house and how it seems like it will never happen and yet Play it for 30 years.
It eventually works, right? It’s the same thing with investing Just do the thing that you’re doing and don’t deviate. The biggest problem that people run into is Trying to do too much Trying to get out in front of their skis and saying well I saw on TikTok that I’m supposed to do this or the Reddit Wall Street bets.
I’m gonna start doing You know, zero dated options, you know, because YOLO, you know, I’m 50. I don’t have enough money. No, just do your thing. You’ll have 2 million bucks. It’ll happen.
All right. Thanks for your question, Jeff. Uh, here’s the bad news for you. Great news is, yeah, OG has said you’re probably in decent shape, even starting at 50, uh, heading towards retirement, pay off the car.
Bad news is, we can’t send you a t shirt, man. I mean, I’d love to, but Joe’s gone. He’s our, he’s our head mailroom clerk.
He’s gone. He is the mail
clerk. So, looks like Doug finally gets his t shirt. It’s been years. I
get the t shirt, right? I got a message here from Gertrude. She says… What? Yeah, she’s in the sound room.
She says, no, I’m the one that sends out the t shirt codes. What? Doug, still, you do not get one.
Sorry, bud. Why the hell did I send Joe away for the… Oh my god!
Sorry. This sucks. Can’t. I think you and I both know who’s really in charge of all this. It’s Kircher, isn’t it? And, uh, we are 100 percent not gonna tick her
off.
Alright, Jeff, you get your t
shirt. Can you believe it? We made it, dude. I don’t think we
need him. I knew that in the first
two minutes. Well, I was pretty sure, but having burned through this in record time with what I can only imagine will be record listenership, I think it’s pretty obvious the direction of the…
Should we call it a new show? Is it a new show? Like every
This is People listening right now are gonna, are gonna say, I was there at the beginning. I heard the first show of The New Greatness, the spin what became the spinoff. It’d be like people who said they were there for, you know, Woodstock
or something.
Yeah, it’s gonna be just like that. So Anyways, I’m, I’m really excited about the future. What’s going on? Wait a minute.
I hear it. Oh, I got a knock on my door. Hold on. Awards already? We’re already getting awards. There are, UPS guy just showed up at my door. We got a win. Nice. Is it better
than that trophy?
The trivia trophy?
I can’t imagine that we need to make any changes to the community calendar. I mean. That was one thing that was pretty nice. We can keep that going, don’t you think? Yeah,
absolutely. We love what’s going on out in, uh, Stackerville. That’s a new phrase I just made up. Stackerville, TM. I like it!
That’s gonna stick. Uh, you know, we get great reviews all the time. Uh, we’ve got some polls happening out in the basement. We’ve got polls happening on Spotify. Let’s start with a great review we got from… Aristotle 503 saying, I’m a podcast addict and this is one of my favorites on personal finance. My one complaint is the extra bit they throw in at the end of the show.
Ask and ye shall receive.
We sh canned that, Aristotle. Just because of you. Just because of you. In fact, one of the most talked about things in the basement recently was shortly after the episode aired where Joe talked about us getting rid of the dessert. I mean, that, that went on fire in the basement.
People were freaking out about that being gone. Don’t worry. We’re still do it. We’re just moving it. And now it’s on the back porch. We go out back porch, have a couple of cocktails and talk about fun stuff. Funner stuff. Most is fun. Yeah. But thanks for that review. He gave us, uh, Well, I’m rounding. He gave us five stars.
It was like four, but I see there’s a little bit of yellow in that fifth star. So I’m going to round up to five stars. But, uh, thanks for that, Aristotle503. And we had a great poll in the basement, uh, just a short while ago asking, uh, Kevin Bailey, our amazing editor of the 201 asked, what’s your idea of a fun money date activity?
Tons of options. People put a bunch of their own options out there, custom ones, uh, over and above the ones that Kevin originally posted. But the, the winner, the clear winner was walking or physical activity. And I see that. I get that. Oh, you dirty old man. That was the first thing your brain thought of with physical activity.
Yeah. That kind of makes sense. I get it now. Don’t mind Doug. He’d a little
sad that it’s not your first. I thought
it keeps your mind off the money part of it. It sure does. Yeah. I like it. So that’s, uh, that’s what’s going on out in the community, but if you’re not here for the great listener call ins that we get on the Haven Lifeline, if you’re not here for us covering the latest financial news in the headline segment or the great interviews, improving the show overall, but But every level.
You’re here to just hear Doug and OG’s voice. We get it. I mean, that makes sense. But if you’re also here because you need to improve your team and put better people in your corner, OG and his team are currently taking clients. OG, where do they go to, uh, figure out how to get in touch with
you? Oh, pretty simple.
It’s just stackingbenjamins. com slash OG. See, try to keep it easy. You did make that simple. Yeah, stackingbenjamins. com slash OG. And we’re getting close to the end of the year, so if you’ve got some planning issues, tick tock, tick tock. Tick tock.
The death knell is tolling.
Well, you know, how many times do you get to the first of the year and go, I should have, da da da da da, I wish I would have known that my tax bill was going to
be this.
Like our caller, you could be like our caller, Jeff. who found out, you know, I’m 50 now, and I gotta, we gotta move. Well, but Jeff’s in good shape. All right, so that wraps up the informative portion of our show, where everybody learns so many things. How about we, uh, push ourselves away from the podcasting table and head out to the back porch?
You grab the booze, I’ll grab the Funyuns.
When was the last time you had a Funyun?
Um, let me think. Never. No? I’m not sure. I love onions, but
that is some That’s your new mission in life, man, is to go. The next time you stop at a gas station to fill up that big ol truck of yours with gas, 100 percent you need to walk into that gas station and get yourself a bag of Funyuns.
It’s just
a bag of heartburn, isn’t
it? I’m not going to give away the ending.
That’s not fair. Spoiler
alert. That’s the fun in Funyuns, Doug.
But if you haven’t had one, I mean, what’s your go to, uh, snack
food? Oh, great question. I, crunchy Cheetos. For me. Oh, really? Oh, no, what am I saying? So, in the armrest of the truck, you know, it’s a big, huge armrest cavern in there. Yeah. I have, like, aisle seven from a CVS in there, and I keep Combos.
What kind of Combos? Um, that’s also a good question. I prefer the cracker and cheese combo versus the pretzel and cheese combo.
Much more of a pretzel and cheese
guy. Yeah,
no, I prefer the cracker. Do you just, you know, get crazy and go like the pizza flavor or just… No,
no, just combos, yeah. No, just usually the straight up old school ones.
You know, I’ve ventured out. I’ve tried the buffalo wing. Mm
hmm. Mm hmm. Okay. So that’s your driving around. I gotta run to the bank, I get a handful of combos before I head in. Oh, you… A little carb loading. Are you in my truck with me? A little carb loading before I can
get my haircut. That is precisely what happens.
It’s like, run, get an oil change. Sweet, it’s combo time. What about, like, sittin on the couch? You’re not much of a snacker, though, are you?
Um, I’m not. I’m actually not much of a snacker. I will have, like, a whole second dinner before I save room so I can have dessert or so I can snack later. Yeah, I don’t do a lot
of that.
Yeah, you’re not a big dessert
guy. I mean, I’m gonna eat it. You put a good tiramisu in front of me. I’m going to inhale that. But
yeah, we got, uh, we had a little thing the other day at our house and we ordered a Cheesecake from Costco one of those like industrial sized cheesecakes. I’m listening that uh, it’s lasted the whole week I mean it’s taken the whole week for us to get through.
I mean it must be the thing must be 36 inches across It’s like it’s like a hubcap Gigantic and it’s thick it’s not like one inch of cheesecake It’s like, you know six inches of cheesecake times the width of your refrigerator barely slides in the shelf So that’s lasted pretty good. I’m really big into the Costco protein, peanut butter, chocolate protein bars.
I know that’s not really your jam, but, um, but they’re pretty
decent. It’s health food, Josh. Oh, not
at all. No, it’s a Snickers without chocolate wrapped around it. That’s
what it is. I love how they just slap the protein on there. Yeah. Moms feel good about putting it in their kids lunches.
You know, at home, I’m not sure they have a scotch.
If I’m going to fuse some calories up, I’d rather, I’d rather drink my calories than Those are the best kind of carbs. There’s really not a lot, thankfully. And no, no, surprisingly
not. Well, maybe not compared to a loaf of bread. Like if you’re going to have
a bagel or a glass of scotch, have a glass of scotch.
It’s more carb friendly.
This is the part where you say, Hey, Doug, I think you, uh, you got to wrap up here. You got to tell everybody what we learned today, right? And then I said, Sure do, Joe! First, take some advice from Rob and Melissa Stevens and learn what items hold the most value before you stock up on an inventory of second hand goods.
Second, if you have IBONZ, It might be time to review the returns you’re getting and consider moving that money into CDs or money market funds. But the big lesson? Joe just called and apparently a steak dinner at Sizzler is not worth all the podcast equipment I just sold. Looks like I’m gonna have to step things up a notch and take him to Denny’s instead.
Thanks to Melissa and Rob for joining us today. You can find their adventures at fleamarketflipper. com We’ll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins. com This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast, with help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn Invest podcast.
Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called The 201. You’ll find the 411 on all things money at the 201. Just visit stackingbenjamins. com slash 201. Wonder how beautiful we all are? Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t check out our YouTube version of this show, engineered by Tina Ichenberg.
Then you’ll see, once and for all, that I’m the best thing going for this podcast. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want to chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Yunkin are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
Say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the basement fun with other stackers, type stackingbenjamins. com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time, back here at the Stacking Benjamins Show.
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