Afford Anything - Making $100k from eBay and Airbnb with Jay & Ryanne

Episode Date: February 12, 2016

#11: Jay and Ryanne have created a beautiful life for themselves scavenging for resale items in rural areas and renting houses in the Shenandoah National Park area of VA. Read more at https://affordanything.com/episode11   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You'll do the game. Say, you're listening to Daddy's Podcast. You're listening to Daddy's Podcast. You're to see Daddy's Podcast. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being here. Welcome to the Paula and Jay Money Show, a real and uncensored show about growing wealth and financial freedom. Your host, Paula Pant, is a fun-loving globe charter who lives on the West Coast, focuses on real estate investing, and runs the blog at afford-anything.com.

Host Jay Money is a husband and father of two. who lives on the East Coast, focuses on saving money, and runs the blog Budgets Are Sexy.com. While they may have wildly different approaches to building wealth, they both have your financial independence in mind. Which one most resonates with you? Find out as you listen to the Money show. Here are your host, Paula Pitt, and Jay Money. Hey guys, Jay Money here. Before we get started today, we just wanted to thank you so, so much for all the kind words and reviews and emails we've been getting. It's been amazing. And we've been having a good time doing it, but you know, you never know what happens until you launch it and gets into the real world.

So we appreciate everything you guys have been doing. Thank you. Keep it up. I think we just hit something like 30,000 downloads and we're at the top of new and noteworthy and business list. It's been amazing. And it's because of you guys. So thank you, thank you, thank you. So, yeah, today we have two awesome hustlers on the show, Jay and Ryan from scavengerlife.com.

These guys have a killer eBay store, which they chronicle on the site with tips on how they do it. what to look for, how much money you can profit from some of these items, and a bunch of other awesome transparency, which, of course, we love here on the show. They've also got into the rental property game with having a really kick-ass place on Airbnb. The pictures are amazing, and they make a nice income off of that as well. So yeah, they're pretty much the perfect role models for how to have an ideal lifestyle built up by hustling on the side, and we really hope you like the show. So here they are, Jay and Ryan from scavengerlife.com. Hey, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to talk to you.

We are too. It's kind of like a coming of minds here from all different angles. I know you guys do multiple things. You scavenge for stuff and then you sell that stuff on eBay for a profit. And then also your Airbnb hosts. So I want to talk about both of those things. And I know that all of this is working together towards developing financial independence. So I want to talk about that too.

let's just approach these one at a time. Tell me about the scavenging for stuff and then selling it on eBay, because I don't know the first thing about that. Sure. We kind of got to this point in like six quick steps that we could go over real quick if you want. Yeah. Yeah. And then ask us its questions for every step. Number one is Ryan and I, we're a couple. But at one point, we were both a single and we both worked at TV companies, TV stations. We're kind of like tech nerds. And we were both thrifty people. So that was like, like, step number one. And step number two is we got together and we quickly realized that we, if we were going to be together, we didn't want to like live a kind of a traditional life. Well, we also started out in a long distance relationship. So I was in Boston. He was in New York. And then I moved to New York and we were like, we really want to work together. You know, like we really basically were like, we want to spend all our time together. And so we decided to

start like a business together. So we quit our TV jobs, but we were. We were, were still doing like a video tech nerd stuff. Yeah. But we were basically freelancing and we realized like that's really no different than just having a job. You're just hustling more. Yeah, you're hustling a lot more. So when we actually moved to rural America right before the economy, like the economy

was basically crashing like as we were driving across the country. I have this image of you in your car like on a road which is things falling. like an earthquake. Yeah, no, it kind of felt like that. Like gas prices were skyrocketing as we were like going across the country. And plus we had two cats in the car too, so it was fun. It was, yeah, very interesting. And we got to that point because we have good friends named Mikey and Wendy who live in a rural,

it's New Mexico, and they taught us, because they moved there from, it's New York, they taught us that if you move to the countryside, life just changes, you know. It's so much cheaper. Well, it's so much cheaper. I mean, the thing for us, we were living in San Francisco and we were meeting all these crazy people who were talking about like getting rid of money and just like that. All the peak oil people. Yeah, the peak oil people and like Mikey and Wendy were like, quit your job. That's what you should do.

You know, we're like, what? And so we moved to Virginia and we bought a house for $70,000, which we were like, wow, that's incredible. Like a door in New York City. Yeah, no, it was like amazing. And so here comes to how we got the eBay. So then once we're in the countryside, we're still trying to do freelance video work. But, you know, it's difficult. The reason why houses are cheap in rural America is because there's really no good work.

And so we realized that there was also in this country so much junk and trash and abundance. Yeah. That's just lying around. And we realized that we could take it and we could list it on the Internet and people would buy it. And we could make a living that way. And I have a question about that. So, like, I'm an avid, like, yard saleer. I grew up around, like, antiques and stuff like that.

And what I find, and I'm curious if you do, the more, like, rule you are, the more, like, old antique stuff from generation that's been passed down. It's actually, like, kind of valuable stuff just sitting around and collecting dust. Do you collect a lot of awesome stuff, too, compared to just Chotchkes and water and stuff? If you mean, do it, do it, we keep it or do it, we sell it. Do you find a lot of it? Yeah. Absolutely.

I mean, we are in a time in America where, you know, the baby. boomers have lived in the time of America's greatest wealth. They've spent their lives collecting and gathering and they have extra houses and storage buildings just to hold all the stuff they've had. And those people are starting to either die off, sadly enough, but it's a reality, or they're downsizing. And so right now there's this glut of stuff going out on the market, whether they're giving it away, selling at auctions or state sales or a yard sales. They're just like a treasure trove. And so that's kind of how we're making a living right now. I mean, it's just like you see on TV with people going to just storage lockers.

I mean, we just kind of hustle and do it every day. And, you know, it's not easy. Yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not passive income. I think a lot of people think it's like some kind of passive way to make a living. I'm like, no, I'm doing this all day long every single day. I mean, this is not like I'm chilling, chilling out here. Yeah. So walk me through.

Like, let's say you go to. a yard sale or a thrift store, how do you determine, like, how do you look at an item and determine if it's worth investing in? I mean, because fundamentally that's what you're doing, even if it's a $5 investment, you're investing in something for $5 and then flipping it for, I'm just making up a number, invest in it for $5 and flip it for $15 and making that $10 spread. But how do you know, I guess how do you assess risk? For us, it's a smaller risk even than that. $5 is a lot to pay for something. So our thing is we, I want to pay a dollar and get at least $30 for it.

Holy, holy. So that's what our profit? Yeah. If we pay $5 for something, we want to make like $50 to $700. So that's kind of where we're at. And there's enough stuff out there where that's totally doable. And the way it started was just our own personal taste. I mean, the first thing we ever sold was a member's only jacket that we got from.

Because, you know, we were in this rural thrift store and I held up a jacket and I said, Orion, don't you think someone would buy this in Brooklyn? She's like, yeah. And you know what? Someone in Brooklyn bought it. So that started our business basically. So, I mean, for us also, it's a matter of, first of all, buying stuff that we think is cool. I want to look at something and say, I would put that in my house.

So I know someone else will. And then what's the price versus what I think I can get for it. And that comes from experience. But it also, the good thing about selling stuff on eBay or Etsy or wherever you're selling it, your experience can happen very quickly. I mean, you can put that online and within a month it sells for the price you ask for it. And you're like, okay, now I know. And it's Paul. I think you could understand this as well with, you know, it's your buying houses.

I mean, just the information is all online. So if we see an item, we can even go on our phone while we're at a yard sale or a store and just look it up and see, oh, someone just sold one of these, you know, for XI. amount of dollars. It's a good buy. Wow. In a given day or week or month, how many items do you process? Our eBay store, we have almost 5,000 items. Wow. Wow. Online and we sell about, you know, two to 300 items a month. That's kind of our... That's like 10 a day or something. Yeah, well, yeah, about. So it kind of comes and goes. Our thing is, is we just list it and forget it. So we don't fool around with auction. or anything like that.

Just put it out there so there's just more search terms online and eventually everything sells. We call it the pipeline. We call it filling the pipeline with stuff and stuff will sell every day. And you say you don't mess with auctions. So do you do like a buy it now on eBay? Are they all buy it now then? Yep, buy it now.

And the higher do make an offer. Yep. So what is your like your week? Like let's say you spend, I mean, you probably spend like, I don't know, 60 hours. Like I know it's not for like. You know, it's not passive, like you said. Like, how many hours or do you do like every Saturday, Sunday we're going to go shopping, then Monday, Tuesday, we're going to list them.

And then, you know, like, do you have a schedule or do you like, like, how do you, where did all the hours go, I guess? No. I wish that we were that kind of like organized. But, you know, that's a great thing. Having an online store means that things you're just selling all the time. So we don't have to have set hours. Today, we're not really going to do much eBay stuff because we're like doing this

podcast. And then we have to go do some other stuff. It's more about we choose every day how we want it to go. And we always say the best thing about our lives is we can wake up. It's without alarm clocks. It's naturally. And then we can just start the day. And we can do whatever interests us that day.

So whether it be working on eBay at home or going out and scavenging or working on our rental business or anything. We definitely mix it up. But like this week, we have piles of stuff that we're trying to get through for eBay. That's definitely on the schedule, but it's not like, okay, nine o'clock, we get up, you know. So I hope that helps. I mean, we're definitely self-motivated people, but the great reason, the thing we love about this life is we can choose each day what we want to do. Yeah, that's awesome. And do you choose eBay because you're in the rural area? Like, I'm in like the Washington, D.C. area. So, like, I use Craigslist for everything. And I, like, every Friday, I have a goal to

like list something. But I like to meet people face-to-face, and I hate dealing with shipping. on the flip side, you know, there's only a certain amount of people that can want an item. Like, if I put a member only, like, who knows how long that would take? Whereas eBay, all the hipsters are watching it, you know? Well, it is because we're in a rural area. Like, if I put some stuff on Craigslist this week and someone messaged me yesterday from the D.C. area. And I was like, oh, yeah.

Definitely, like, maybe too far for you. It's hard because I would love to sell on Craigslist. I really would. But it's quite far for people to drive. So that's the great thing about eBay. I am willing to ship. I am willing to deal with shipping. And it's really a whole world of people shopping on eBay.

eBay is the biggest marketplace. I mean, you know, and we sell to everyone on the planet. So we, you know, 25% of our customers are overseas, whether in Europe, Australia or South America. Yeah. Oh, wow. How are you able to, I mean, I'm sure by this point, you've got it down just through experience. But in the beginning, how were you able to figure out the. cost of, like make accurate estimates for the cost of shipping, particularly internationally.

It's really great about eBay, actually, is they have calculated shipping. So I would weigh an item. Okay, these shoes weigh two pounds. I know that a box weighs one pound. So that's three pounds. This is the size of the box for shoes. And you just input that into eBay's, you know, listing template. And they calculate it for you no matter where you are in the world. So based on are a zip code in the buyers? zip code. So as long as it knows, the await, it automatically will change the shipping dynamically for different buyers. Oh, so every buyer on eBay, when they see the price of shipping, they're looking like me in Las Vegas, I would be seeing something different than Jay Money over on the East

Coast. Exactly. You got it. You got it. eBay's changed a lot since 1997 and 98 when I first bought something. I bought like a Michael Jackson's autograph, which I'm pretty sure is not a real autograph. No, it's pretty wacky. I mean, when we started doing this in 2008, I mean, so we've been doing this for a while now, it's kind of just grown over time, our tastes had changed. You know, at first, it was just selling like shoes and clothes because that's what we were kind of into. And then as we started getting into rental houses, it was more household goods and furniture and art and so. It's great. You know, it's fun. It's for us because it's a learning experience. And that's, that's really important for us because the,

technical aspects of selling online is really easy. The hard thing is burning out. And that's what you see all the time is people like, oh yeah, I sold for a year, but I just got tired of it. Or I got a customer who was bugging me, so I just shut my eBay store down. We hear that all the time. So we always just try and make sure we're just always having fun and selling things that interest us. All right, two things. One, if you ever come across coins, old coins, I'm a coin collector. So ask me first if I want it before. And then you could put it on eBay. And then the second on your site scavenger life, you have like this manifesto.

And there's like there's like four or five of them. I'll just name that. I'll just put that what they are. And then if you can go into. And I imagine this is how you like start an eBay store. Right. So number one, open a store on eBay. All right.

Very good. Yes, that helps. Number two, list 500 things as fast as you can. which is mind-boggling to me. Three auctions are for suckers. Four, the key to success is bulk listing, maintaining a large inventory, and the ability to store all your items in an organized way. And then lastly, once you have a large inventory, you can finally breathe, make a bunch of

money, and then just casually list as you scavenge for more treasures. Bam. Wow. That's all you have to do. Yeah. That's so easy. For a while, we were just doing this on our own, and we actually started a blog about three years into our selling because it can be a lonely process. We're just like there have to be other people out here doing what we're doing.

Who are they? So we've actually built a community of people, which seems a little bit counterintuitive because we're like teaching people to be our compete, you know, to compete against us. Right. But we really feel like there's plenty of room. It's all about like camaraderie rather than competent, you know. Yeah. You're not, we just think there's so much abundance out there. And we found this with the blog too.

Like, you know, we're telling. At first, when we started the blog, we were like, oh, are we telling everyone our secrets? And I'm like, but it's not a secret. Like, if you're a good business person that wants to make money consistently, this is what you have to do in this world. And I'm sure as both of you know, you can tell people everything and it doesn't really help them. Yeah, they have to do it. So the thing about bulk a listing, I mean, that's a big hurdle for people. I mean, if people really want to make a living doing this, it's a numbers game.

You know, you can't fool around with like five or ten items. You know, it's got to be, for us, it seemed like 500 items was like the first hurdle to where you started to kind of get some regular income and then start building after that. And, you know, and most people can't do that. but the people that really want to make this work, that's what they do. And that goes hand in hand with us saying, you know, especially when you're starting out, you have to do this like it's a full-time job, you know, and we have been doing that for several years. And that's why, you know, this week we're kind of like, oh, we're doing a little bit of eBay and a little bit of this and a little bit of that because we've, like built it up so high that it can cruise on its own for a little bit, you know. But when you're starting out, it's like, I remember when we are starting out and I was trying to,

to get to 2,000 listings. We were in our house that we were refinishing. There's construction all around me. I'm at my desk and I'm just listing because I'm like, I have to list because I have to pay for this renovation. I was just sitting there like super motivated to do it. Yeah, you're a hustler. That's what hustlers do. I love it. And I know on here, like I was trying to figure out how long all this would take if you followed your manifesto. And you guys mentioned like, hey, if you list 20 things a day, it'll take you about a month. But of course, you have to like buy in the 500. things and all that kind of stuff. Do you think like an average person, you can't just like quit your job and then just start listing because that's crazy. But if you did like nights and weekends for a few

months, you can probably be up and running from zero to 500 things store. Like is that reasonable for people that that actually are motivated to do that? Yeah. I mean, you know, we have people coming every week to our blog and they come for different reasons. Some people they've lost their job. Some people there who are tired and realize they don't have enough it's money and social security. There are some people who just hate their job so much that they just want to get out of it. There are people that just have kids and they're just like, I don't want to work and have my kid. Like I want to be at home. I want to spend time with my kids. I mean, some people do it the way we did it where they just like did it quickly where they just nothing else to add do and they could do it in a couple months. But yeah,

and then like what your suggestion would be very smart where you kind of balance it, where I still have a job, but I'm hustling on weekends and building a second business. So if I want to quit, it's my job I can. Some people actually, I mean, it surprises me. They like their jobs. So they don't want to quit. Imagine that. So supplemental income. So we have some members of our group who, yeah, they're just selling on eBay so they can make extra money to either pay down debt, take that awesome vacation every year, you know, buy a car. But we tell people, you know, when they're like, you know, I still, my job is okay, but I would like to transition into, you know, eBay full-time. We say, yeah, right, do it slow. Like, have a buffer, do them at this time.

So you like it. Right. Make sure you can do it and you want to do it. Right. Because some people don't. I mean, they're like, oh, I hate shipping. You know, so it's like. And then we know the people or, you know, and we see these people at auctions too where the buying part's easy. It's so easy. They go and they buy a car load. stuff and then they bring it home and it sits around them in their house.

And then they realize they hate to a list on eBay or they hate to take photographs. And then you find them and then you buy it all off of them. We go to their estate sale. Do you ever guys ever like compete with yourselves? Like hey, like here's $5. Let's see who can like make the most money on eBay. Do you guys do that stuff? Basically.

I would usually win. No. What we do is when something's sells for a good price, we'll brag about who bought it. Yeah, who found it? We'll be like, who found that? Yeah, I need like a leaderboard to see like track like football stats. Yeah, exactly. I know Paula's going to ask you some good questions about other stuff you're doing. So I want to slip these in before she does that. Oh, no, I still have a whole bunch of eBay questions in my head. This is fascinating. Well, I want to talk about like real life numbers because

I know you guys are pretty open with that kind of stuff. And Paul and I, we love numbers, you know, We love transparency. So you guys have been doing this for many years. Two questions. One, how much do you make on average a year or the last couple years? Like profit. Like how much do you make after all this is said and done? And then how much do you think you've made in the grand total of all the years doing it

if you have an idea of what that is? Just so we can like wrap our heads around like what's actually coming from all this hard work you're doing. So we probably net about 60K a year. I have like a $60,000. dollar salary. Right. Yeah. So total, actually, we've made almost half a million dollars. Like eBay has a thing where they show you your lifetime. Total sales. Expenses, cost of goods. eBay fees, PayPal fees, stuff like that. Yep. Just so, I mean, we love transparency. We kind of are like week by week. So every week on our

blog, we, how much it's we made every week and how much the items cost and the average cost and things like that. Wow. We'll send people over there. That's really. That's really. That is super cool. And have you found through doing all this what items are better? Like you've figured out the items are quicker to sell or more or more profitable. Could you just list off a few of those items that are good or that you've managed to like be experts in and then the ones that like suck and to stay away from or at least that you guys stay away from? Our thing is we love selling weird items. Like unique vintage. Vintage weird items. So like housewares and like pieces of art, you know, I mean, these are like one of a kind items because those are things that people will pay for because they're hard to find.

Yeah. So it's hard to be like this thing. So like, you know, anything like it's mid-century, you know. A lot of mid-century stuff. Like I like to sell carpets, vintage antique carpets. Oh, wow. That's like my, I wish that I could just sell that. But it really is changing.

I mean, like I said, we see. started off just selling clothes and shoes, and that was like 90% of our store. Six years later, clothes and shoes are maybe 20% of our store just because we got tired of it, you know? Yeah, we just, we like to find things that are interesting to us and that can bring a high profit, like a vintage carpet, you know, you can make hundreds of dollars and someone will sell it to you for five bucks because it looks like junk. And the other thing, the approach we have is we just sell anything because we never know

what we're going to go out there and find. Like, we just sold for $300. Yeah. 15 brass hinges. I mean, it's like, yeah, I think we bought them for like less than $10. And I was like, these are really nice hinges. We might use them in our, one of our houses, whatever. And then I put them up and they sold for $300. It was like, to someone overseas. Someone in the UK. So it's like, you know what? I found fascinating. I don't know if you've done this. Like I always look for coins and stuff. And, you know,

And there's like stamps and stuff like that. But I always find marbles for sale. And like some of these marbles, like there's one that was like chipped. It was like almost broken in half and it was like $150. And they're like, oh yeah, that was full. That's like a, that's a $600 marble right there. And I was like, do people buy this? And they're like, oh, there's like the secret like society of marble collectors.

Listen, there are collectors of the weirdest stuff. I sold a deck of playing cards from the 1800s for $600. Wow. I found it in a box. I was like, these are cool. They're weird. I don't know. I put them up.

They sold overnight to someone in Australia. So for those, you have to do auction for those, right? Because you wouldn't do a buy it now for $600 or you did? I did. I did a buy it now for $600. See, but the thing we love about eBay is they have best offer. So we can start high, $600 and then do best offers so people can make offers. So instead of taking a risk on an auction where I started at a $100.

100 and maybe only one person bids and so it only sells for 100, I can start high and then work my way down based on what I'm willing to, you know. Yeah, it's smart. That's in your manifesto too. I remember that. Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you do an auction with a reserve price? I hate those. There's a couple of reasons, like, because I also buy a lot of stuff too for our houses

and things like that. I really hate waiting for auctions as a buyer. I'm going to sit here and wait seven days. I want to buy this right now. So, sure, you can do a reserve, and then you have to pay for that reserve on eBay, whether it sells or not. Then a lot of times it doesn't meet the reserve.

You know, if I put a reserve of $1,000 on those cards, okay, if it doesn't, it's not going to sell. Here is a real quick eBay, a nerd thing. You know, we have 5,000 items. It costs us five cents a month for each item to be online, which isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. If we sell a couple items a month that pays for all of our fees. But if you start doing auctions with that other price on it,

with reserves and things like that. Then the listing fees are exponentially more. For us, it's about elisting it and forgetting it. So we just list it all up and then everything eventually sells instead of putting a lot of energy and time and money into individual items. That being said, there are several people that we've spoken to that we've interviewed on the blog who make a living on auctions. And that's just how they do it.

They like to move their inventory out quickly. They have a bookshelf full of stuff and that's it. They don't have storage buildings like we do. Yeah, yeah. Where's all your 5,000 of things? Well, that's a great thing about being in the country. We have three storage buildings. They're just there.

You know, and we have five acres of lands. Yeah, it's cheap. Storage in the country is cheap. Yeah. Every guy has a big old barn here full of stuff. So that's... Oh, I love that. Wow, this is incredible.

I'm going to get off this podcast. and go start my e-gain. Like, watch like I quit blogging. I quit this podcast. I quit everything. I'm just like an eBayer person. What do you guys call yourselves? eBayers?

eBay sellers? Hustlers? Where were scavengers? Scavengers. Because, you know, we chose eBay because, again, we're selling like weird old stuff. They don't have like a bar code.

There are some people, they only sell on Amazon because they're just buying like brand, a new stuff and a clearance and selling it on Amazon. Some people sell on on Etsy because they love the curated site and it's very beautiful and pretty, you know.

So there's lots of different ways that I do this. Okay, so let's switch to... Wait, wait, wait, wait, I have one more question. Yeah, yeah. How do you keep your stuff organized? Like, if an item sells, how do you know physically where that item is located? I wish that we had like a really cool answer for you. But really, we just keep things in plastic bins

and we keep things by type. So we have plastic bins full of like plates and plastic bins full of like camping gear. And so when something sells, we kind of know it's in one of these three bins and it takes us a minute to go through and find them. And like anything that's delicate or glass, ceramic stuff like that,

we have bookshelves where you can just see all that stuff in my office and in our house, unfortunately. It's definitely not like a system where like we could hire people and they could quickly learn. They would never find anything. Just because it's kind of like we're like those crazy people where like only we know where everything is, you know. Everyone else thinks you're hoarders, but you're actually asslers.

Exactly. And did people at the post office know exactly who you are? They're like, oh, God, these two again. No, they pick up at our house for free. I don't even step foot. What? Yeah, so people don't know why people don't know that. I mean, because people don't mail things normally like we do.

So you can actually email the person. post office and we do it every day and they will pick it up our porch it's so it's usps.com slash pick up we love the post office I love my helping him stay in business yeah I mean they say that to us every time they pick up they're like we love you guys keep giving wow okay I will now that's another benefit of being in the country because we can just keep stuff on our porch and yeah yeah yeah and our neighbors all have guns so it's all going into my house you know if you lived in a rural Like in an urban area, I wouldn't do that. All right.

Let's move on to, so you guys mentioned, so we have to talk about financial freedom stuff. And then also, you did something like rental or do you have rental properties or what's- They're Airbnb hosts, Jay? Oh, yeah. Duh, yeah, Airbnb hosts. Paula, that's your thing. I don't, I've never once, like, I just used an Uber the other like month, like one time in my life. And I know like Airbnb is like Uber for, you know.

whatever, renting. So you guys know that more than me, but you're like, I've just discovered the internet. Man, have you guys seen this? I think that's why we really love Paula and Paula's blog is because, you know, we really have learned a lot. So I guess in 2009, we were making all this money from eBay and we had sold, you know, and we had paid off our house and we had no debt and we were making money. I don't know. We aren't really stock market people or or we weren't at the time and we were like we want to get into real estate because again things are so cheap out here and we live in like a kind of a vacation spot you know people can come we bought an old farmhouse and we started fixing it up and that's the thing though we realize we love that we love fixing

up this old house that was important for us also we let me correct the timeline in 2009 we bought our house because of foreclosure we bought it in cash it was $70,000 um that ass that is Awesome. So we fixed this house up just using cash we were making on eBay, like I was saying, I'm like hustling there. And then we're like, yay, we're done with our house. And we took like a quick short breath and we were like, let's buy another house. And we bought, you guys remind me of myself. When I first read your blog poll, I was like, oh, she's just like us. He's like addicted the house buying. So that was in 2011. We bought, we bought the farmhouse. And like Jay said, we live in a rural area in the Shenandoah Valley.

So there's the river. There's the Shenandoah National Park. This is a place. So beautiful. Go visit. Go rent your place. Yeah, exactly. So people come here for vacation.

They come here for weekends from D.C., New York, wherever. And we knew that already. And we were like, we could do that. And we knew Airbnb because we'd used it for traveling. So we were like, let's jump in and do it. It took us three years to renovate this house. And then once we got the, first one is going and we're you know we're making about $40,000 a year off of that we just bought

another one that we're fixing up so we're going to have two hopefully by the end of the summertime that is awesome between eBay and Airbnb you're now at 100 grand I'm paying attention here I'm starting to add up exactly wait a minute so you're from Airbnb you're netting 40,000 after expenses or you're bringing in 40,000 at the top line yeah yeah it's grossing 40,000 And so we probably net about 32,000 maybe, 31,000. Nice. Because, I mean, Impala, and that's why it's like your blog and when you did your Airbnb experiment. I mean, you know, we can just make a lot more of money doing Airbnb, but it's a lot more work.

So we do all the cleaning. We meet everybody. You know, it's a lot more hands on stuff. But, you know, that's the other thing. We like it. We learn that we like hospitality. We actually don't want to just buy things and just not ever see anybody. A lot of cabin owners around here will push their place onto a management company because they are not around.

They live in other parts of the country. But even if they do live here, they don't meet people. They'll just say, okay, the keys are on the table. And we just, we didn't like the way that felt. Like we loved meeting people and talking to them about where they're from. People pay us because they kind of, it's one and experience. Like a personal experience. I go to bed and breakfast like at least once a year with my wife.

And that's like if the people are there and I get to ask them questions and I can feel like a local, I love that so much. And Shannon does beautiful. I mean, shit, I'm going to rent out your place for a. You got to come out. But you better make me breakfast or I'm not doing it. No, that's the beauty of Airbnb. People rent our house and they get to do it. Yeah, I mean, we don't have to cook for us.

We meet people for about 10 minutes and that's it. So that's all you get. And I'm looking at the pictures of your house on shampoo and booze.com. That's your other website, your Airbnb website. And it's gorgeous. I mean, this ridiculous floor to ceiling, like the most ridiculous window I have ever seen. It's beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, that's the one that we just bought.

Yeah. So that's a one with a mansion. Yeah. Yeah, this is gorgeous. And the reason why we enjoy doing is because we build our scavenging into it. So the way we redid our first a rental and our home is we scavenged a lot of the parts. We scavenge a lot of the flooring and the trim and tile. Appliances.

Yeah. It's great, you know. You can go on Craigslist. We're just talking about, I mean, we're getting like $2,000 stoves. For like $100. You know, beautiful stoves. Like, yeah. Yeah, people just give stuff away.

Basically, they're like, I'm redoing my kitchen. Just take this away. I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, you guys have found like the perfect mixture of business. I mean, it's business, but it's like fun and like life. I guess it's like a lifestyle business.

Exactly. Yeah. That's perfect. It's got to be or else we just couldn't do this. Like where you guys are located, is Aaron B&B even that like popular or are you guys like one of the only one? So that because of that, you also get more business. or people catching on or...

The other reason that gave us confidence is we live in an area where people have had cabins here for a rent since the 80s. So it was a known quantity. People were already coming out. People would already rent. People are using more... It's VRBO. Yeah. Airbnb is starting to get more popular. But yeah, but yeah, we're kind of like the newcomers on Airbnb. So we attract more of like the younger... Younger people from DC, you know. You know. I mean, it was like, you were joking how you just used Uber, but, you know, there's in D.C.

And in New York and wherever. Like, they're just, you know, and we would do this too. They're on Airbnb like, oh, I want to get away for the weekend. Let's just look at the map and see where we should go. You know, like people definitely do that. We hear that from people. And most of our company, you know, and most of the people around here that have cabins, they have their own websites and they were built in 1999.

Yeah, it's really. But they still rent too. They still rent all the time. It's amazing. Yeah. How much could I rent a room? Do I have to rent your whole house or can I just run a room? Whole house.

Oh, it's the whole house. Whole house. That's more expensive than just my room I want. How much on average do you guys rent it out for? I know like the peak season will be different and all that. But like if I want to come like on a, let's say a Friday, sometime in the winter because I'm bored. It's basically $200 and thing. Okay.

So more expensive than like a hotel, but you're getting this big ass huge. awesome rock star country hotel mansion place. It depends. A ton of her family. I love that. But break the numbers down because if you had, our house can sleep six people. So six people at hotel would be more than $200 a night.

Unless you're in college. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even at like days in. Like I even compared it to days in. I was like, we're still days in for six people. So your place is good. would imagine like if I was getting married and I wanted to be in the Shandendale Valley like with all this beautiful scenery that your place would be perfect for that. Yes. Exactly. We've had several

people come who were getting married or going to wedding. Spread the word. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, yeah. I'm going to I'm going to take a visit first and blog about it and make sure it has a J-Money seal of approval. But so far, and you said you bought the place for cash? No, we bought our house for cash. We don't live at our Airbnb houses. Okay. So we bought our house for cash and then I'll leverage that to buy our second a rental. Yeah, to get a mortgage for that. So how much, how much was the cabin, the Airbnb cabin?

It's not a cabin. It's a mansion. Okay, the cabin mansion. Sure. It was $150,000. Oh, so cheap. For an 1850s brick farmhouse, you know. Yeah.

On two acres. And then we probably put about $70,000 into it. So we really redacted. did it. I mean, like, it's top to bottom, H-back, electric plumbing, you know, we don't touch that thing for our lifetime kind of fixing up. Yeah, that was what I did with my first rental of the Triplex. I put $150,000 into freaking nearly kills myself along the way, but it's finally done. And so then we just bought our second one, and that was $120,000. And we'll probably put about $40,000 into it. Because, I mean, again, we like to go in and really just, you know, these are often

places that people haven't touched in 30 years. So they use some lot of lot. But then once it's done, it's done, you know, put on a metal roof. And we really do it right. We get really picky too, because for one thing, it is we're trying to make a high-end rental. So the one we just bought, not a farmhouse, but more of a cabin like you were saying with the big windows. You know, we walked in there. We're like, great. We love it. It's got great potential, you know. And then we cleared out, it came furnished. We cleared out all the furnishings. We gave it all away for free. and we looked at it and we were like, oh, we have to got this place.

Like we want this to be like fancier than it is. Yeah. So our mortgage on both combined, $1,600 for two houses. Yeah, for two houses. Like $500 less than my townhouse in D.C. that we're trying to get rid of.

Yeah. With no property, nothing fun. Yeah. And so, you know, eBay is kind of our engine that keeps cranking out. You know, we just put junk into the pipeline, old shoes into the pipeline, and then a money comes out the other side, and then we use that money to invest in these other businesses. And then those are making our money. And now, once we get this other rental done, we then plan on paying down our debt. Pay down the debt. I mean, Paula, I think that's interesting. I think you're just talking about

that, it's whether it's you're in the stage of keep buying more property or start paying down property and we're not sure either how big we want to get. Yeah, it's it's super hard to make that decision. I literally think about that every single day and every time I make a decision that, oh, I'm going to do this. The next morning I wake up and I'm like, no, maybe I'll do another one. Yeah, yeah. Some alert comes on, you know, and it's like there's this house for a hundred thousand dollars. I want to go buy that. Yeah, exactly. You know what I do to avoid all that? What? I buy nothing and I invested all the stock market. The thing that I like about this Airbnb, and I don't know if you have other things, but

what I hear when I'm meeting people from Craigslist selling, I do meet a lot of eBay sellers. And some of them are like, you know what, eBay's changed or rules keep changing. I'm getting screwed. People are like buying stuff for me. And then like 31 days later, saying, I don't want it anymore or it's broken. And then like they get like a bad review. And then all of a sudden like they stop getting sales. So you guys are obviously like making sure you're on top because this is like a big

part of your whole plan. But God forbid, eBay is like, I'm done with you today. For whatever reason, you still have these properties that can sustain you probably because your lifestyle is so cheap, even without the eBay. And I don't know if that part will factor into your overall, like what's the game plan or what's the empire building strategy, half eBay, half property or all property or whatever. Or maybe one of those decisions will happen, right? Like eBay will shut you off for like a day and you'll scare you or your house or burned down. You're like, I don't know if I want to do another. Yeah, like, whatever, right?

I'm not trying to be like, Debbie Downer. No, no, no. Smart guys are diversified, you know. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing, too, is, you know, in the wintertime in our area, we are still renting, but it's not as much as the summer. And the wintertime is when eBay is really big because of the holidays.

So it's like these kind of ebbs and flows are kind of the opposite for us. So, you know, we're making money on eBay when rental is slow. You know, eBay's slow in the summer. It can be. and then the rentals are going crazy then. So it's kind of a nice combination. Yeah, that's a good mixture. All right, Paula, you go ask your questions.

You know, I was just going to say what I love about your story is that it's, it's just so similar to, like I just relate to it so well. You're making money from eBay. We'll call that, for lack of a better term, we'll call it like your quote unquote day job, like an awesome lifestyle day job. But that's what you do to make money. and then all of the excess money that you make and save from that, you parlay into real estate investments.

So now you've got multiple sources of income coming in. And then there's actually a third thing too, which we haven't really talked about is basically what we've always done. So we're a video nerds. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. So we actually still do that work. I mean, we still run this video business and we still, I mean, we don't do a lot of it, but we have a couple of clients that we love and who love us. And we still do work for them. And the great thing about them is that these are travel clients. So we

travel to a Europe once a year and then somewhere in America a couple times a year. And we turn those into basically vacations. So like in September, we're doing a week-long job in Dublin. And so we're just going to go over there for about a month or six weeks, you know, go and do our job and get paid for it. And they pay for our flights. So all that's done. And then we're going to go. And then we're We'll just pay to stay extra and travel around Ireland. We're kind of talking about that right now what we want to do. Nice. And so what happens to your Airbnb rentals and your eBay business while you're overseas?

We have a good friend that we employed and trained to do the Airbnb rental when we're gone. Nice. He do that. He knows how to do it. He knows how to clean it. He knows how to meet people. And we pay him a percentage. That is awesome.

That was where I failed as an eBay host. was finding a reliable person who could be there when I was out of town. Even host. I'm sorry, as an Airbnb host. They're doing it wrong then. Yeah, that was my single biggest failure as an Airbnb host was my inability to find a reliable person. So if you found that, man, you've got it.

Yeah. Yeah, we feel very lucky. I hope that he stays on with us for the year. I mean, you know, and that's why we think if we were to get other rentals beyond two, we would need to start hiring multiple, you know, like even have employees. But that's, but the whole point of this is like, I don't know if I want to, you know, have to hire people or have people depending on all the, us for jobs. That just seems like against what we started doing this for was having any of that stress or pressure. So that's kind of

where we're at. Just in terms of eBay, what we do is technically it's kind of nerdy. We'll change our handling time to however long we're gone. So we'll be like, handling time on this is 30 business days, which a lot of people think it's insane. But we message people. We're like, we're away. We're traveling in Europe. Blah, blah, blah. And people, 10% of people say, okay, I can't wait for it. Just refund me. 90% of people are like, cool. This is a one of a kind thing. I never thought I'd find it. Just hold on to it. Wow. That is awesome. That's really cool. So your overall plan, let's get back to, I guess, like financial independence stuff. So you're making money. After you make the money, you're not just spending it like any normal person does, right? Like normal people that have

income, they just spend it on, God knows what, right? None of us are normal people on this. Yeah. So your lifestyle's cheap. So, you know, I don't know, you know, how much it costs you to live. But like my impression would be, if not now in let's say five, 10 years, you can probably, quote, like, retire early or at least be like financially free. Are a yearly cost, just our own personal life, It's about $22,000. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. You know, we have a wood stove.

I have a wood stove going on right now. That's how we heat our house. So I cut wood. That's how we eat our house. It's basically free. So, yeah, that's beautiful. Live cheap. This is a good, it's question because, yes, our hazy plan is,

have two rentals going, have eBay, and then use that profit, pay down all the property so we have no mortgage at all. Yeah. And then start using that property. And this is a thing that we're unclear about, but I guess start to put it in index funds. I guess that's a thing, you know. Yeah. I mean, it seems kind of daunting.

I'm like, man, you know, we'd have to be saving $650,000 to start to generate the 4%, which is whatever, $25,000. It seems like a lot of money, but I guess like anything, it just happens. It's a lot less money than people that need $2, $3, $4,000 to sustain their lifestyle. You know, and I've owned a house and that's what got me into in the money and blogging and everything in general. I bought when I shouldn't have at the peak of the market, no money down. So for me, I have a negative connotation with real estate. And also, I'm lazy.

And also, like, I just, you know, I have a property manager and I still hate it because every damn time they call it, it's never a good thing. It's always a bad thing. And plus, I hate, like, I'm becoming more minimalist over time. and I hate having these attachments of me out there in the world. You know, and this applies to my kids. I love my kids, but like if they get hurt, I get hurt. So it's like this weird, like it's just like an extra part of you out there that you have to worry about, right? You know, investing for me, it's easy.

And I, I, because of Mr. Money Mustache, Jim Collins, all these early retirement folks that are index lovers, you know, they finally convinced me, hey. And so I put like literally, you know, every single dollar, $400,000 of my money is all in like one, index VTSAX with Total Market with Fanguard. And now I don't think about it. The market goes down. My money goes down. Overall, it's going to go up. My money will go up.

And it's just like a click of a button. And that's it. And sometimes I have to catch myself. I'm like, oh, well, talking to these guys, I kind of want to have my own, like, mansion barn down the street, you know? Oh, that'd be awesome to have this cash flow. Oh, I want to fix up a house. But deep down, my personality, like, it just doesn't match.

So I think it's smart that you know how you guys are. to me that is daunting to invest in an index fund, like blows my mind because I'm like, what? Like, it's so easy. You just put it in there, right? It's like the opposite, you know, but we're using, we're figuring out you guys, me, Paula, what we like, what we're good at, you know, and then trying to get the system down in the game plan, you know. So it's interesting talking to you guys about that. I think that's why I'd love to hear from Paula or the reason why we like Paul is like, I think maybe we have a lot in common with her. We really love the challenge. of finding these deals out there, these home deals, and then the challenge of fixing them up, that's exciting to us. Yeah, I love that too. I love finding the homes. I love fixing them up. I feel like index funds have, they have a greater chance of long-term capital appreciation, right? Like, over historically, the stock market, the U.S. broad market has returned somewhere between

7 to 9% over a long-term annualized average. So, you know, let's, let's, just use 7% as a conservative estimate. Like, that's ballpark if the future plays out the same way the past did. That's like ballpark what you could expect over the long term. But that's like capital appreciation. So the dividends from that, the actual like payouts from that are much smaller. Whereas with real estate, it's not going to appreciate as much over the long term. If the future is like the past, just based on like historic averages, real estate's not going to appreciate or create that equity growth, but you can get a lot more cash flow out of it. And so that was a big piece of what drew me to it, because from an early retirement perspective

or a financial independence perspective, like real estate is what's really throwing off the cash. And you don't need as much money because instead of the equation being a 4% withdrawal rate as it would be in equities, in real estate, it's a cash flow calculation. Yeah. So yes. I think the other thing that comes into play for us is more of a philosophical thing. And one reason why I think we moved to a community that we love is that we're actually trying to keep our money in the here.

So we can't. Fascinating. Locally. I mean, we actually, before we bought a second cabin, we were almost about to buy a big property on Main Street, like a big. Like a commercial property. 10,000 square foot building that we were going to redo. But we realized we were going to.

to take on more than we could handle. So that may be down the road, but that's important to us. Like, we want to see what our money is doing. And we think we're investing not only in money and making a money, but we want to see being a healthy place. I mean, we're trying to help revitalize the community because our mainstream is pretty good right now. I feel, I feel kind of dumb saying that because we're so far from being able to do that. But that's what I think we would like our money to do. Well, and that's probably what's going to guide your decision on what the plan is for your future. I mean, I've never heard of that reason, which I love, you know, and I think, I mean, it's something I never think about because I've just not built that way.

You know, but it's true. Like, and if you look at, let's say index funds, right? Well, that's every stock there is, you know, that means tobacco stocks, you know, alcohol-related, like sinful stocks. If you go down to that level, in that case, I'm helping all this stuff I don't want to help, right? But I'd never thought about that until today, so thank you. No guilt. But you're right. There's that, like, what's the point of this whole life and money?

Like, as we all know, it's just a tool to provide for a lifestyle or whatever we want. But I like that. That's a very valid point that I've never seen. I mean, I've seen it here and there, but like you guys said it really well. And, you know, I'm not trying to brag here. Part of this lifestyle gives us time. And so we actually are pretty involved in our town. You know, it's a little 5,000 person town, so we're on committees.

Yeah, we're both like volunteer to do stuff. You know, organizations. So we're going to meetings. We know people. And we love that. We love that we can walk downtown. And I probably know about half the people in our downtown. And they know me, you know?

Right. And that's important to us. Yeah. You guys are like real adults. You're like adults, but you do like stuff, like eBay stuff for like kids, you know, like young people. I mean, and none of these people know that we still on eBay. So I'm sitting in meetings and we're talking about community stuff. They just think I'm like, I always just tell people, yeah, I make money on the internet.

You know, I do internet stuff. And people like, oh, yeah, exactly. They ask the same questions all the time. Like, my mom still asks you what a blog is. I've been new for like eight years. This is awesome. I think we covered a lot of friends. Yeah, this is really cool.

What are you thinking there, Paul Pee? I have no idea. I'm like, I'm enjoying this conversation. So I don't want it to end, but I don't know what else to ask. That's probably a good time to end. I don't know. We're talking to the podcast. You guys also have a podcast.

You said you had like 250-something episodes, you know. This is like our 13th or something. What are you guys thinking? It's a good time to end it? I'm sure you guys will get fans that we'll be like, we want them to be three hours long. And you're like, oh, boy. Yeah, maybe we'll check in like every year with you and see where your plan is and how many more properties. We do that on our podcast.

There are several people that we check in with like every six months just to see what they're doing. Oh, that's awesome. Make it know, Paula. Paula's our note person. She's like a great deal. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. Thanks for having us, you guys.

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