Financial stuff

I’ve only put in a few applications in my job search so far, but I’m wondering if I should look for a different type of job. There doesn’t seem to be many job openings for attorneys and so far I’ve just gotten the one interview and they never bothered to contact me about my status after the interview. At this point I can figure out I wasn’t hired. I’m wondering if I should set my sights on a more easily obtainable job.

I delivered pizza before law school and during law school so now that I’ve finished law school I could probably get another pizza delivery job. This isn’t the type of job that I ultimately want, but at least I would be making some money. A pizza job or other entry-level job wouldn’t be very impressive on my resume, but not having a job doesn’t look good on my resume either.

It is possible that I might not even be able to get a pizza job. A potential employer would have to wonder if I would leave as soon as I found a better job. And I would have to admit that I would leave for a better job. If I do take an entry-level type job I will still be looking for a job that utilizes my law degree.

For now, I am going to continue looking for a legal job. I’ll also look for a part-time job that can bring in a little money. Hopefully, I can find something more professional than delivering pizza that would be ok to include on my resume.

After deciding this weekend not to attend FinCon due to a lack of money, Monday brought me quite a bit of unexpected money. I got a check in the mail for $450 from an ad I placed way back in April. The advertiser had stalled on paying a couple of times and I had pretty much given up on getting paid. Not only did they finally pay, they threw in an extra $50 for the delay. As long as the check clears I suppose the delay in getting paid was worth it.

The other bit of unexpected money came from a savings account I’ve had for a couple of years. Since I open savings accounts in order to get the bank bonuses, I usually have several accounts. I knew I had this savings account, but I hadn’t checked the balance in over a year because I had forgotten the password and security key. To get the password and security key replaced required calling customer service which is usually a pain. Since I was thinking I only had about $5 in the account, gaining access to it wasn’t a priority. On Monday I finally got around to contacting customer service and was pleasantly surprised to find out I had over $400 in the account. This was my own money and I always had it, but since I had forgotten about the money, it seemed like I had just made $400.

My first thought was that I could now afford to attend FinCon. After just a little more thought though I decided to stick with my original decision to skip FinCon and use the unexpected money to pay down my debts. Attending FinCon would have used up most of the unexpected money. Since I had already accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be attending, it wasn’t that difficult to decide not to attend even though I now had the money. Paying off my van loan is my priority for my money now.

I did splurge a little with the money though. I bought an Acer 10″ tablet for $150. My reasoning is that this will be a good entertainment source when I’m living in my van. I can view Netflix and other movies on the tablet and easily recharge it from the van battery. Since I got such a good deal on the tablet, I can probably resell it for the same price if I decide it isn’t worth the money.

I think I did pretty well with this unexpected money. How do you spend unexpected money?

I have been looking forward to the Financial Bloggers Conference ever since attending last years’ conference, but I have decided not to attend. Given my current financial situation, the conference is a luxury that I can’t afford. Between the conference ticket, gas, parking, and a possible hotel room the conference would cost several hundred dollars. There would be some irony in going into credit card debt to attend a financial blogger’s conference. I’d like to have my van paid off and some money saved by the end of the year and attending the conference would be a serious setback to those goals.

I could just get a refund of my FinCon ticket, but I’d like to let somebody else use it. If you are interested in buying my FinCon ticket, leave a comment or email me. I’m selling the ticket for the price I paid for it, $111.75, which is a good discount to the current price of $149. It looks like the transfer process should be pretty easy.

For all of those who are attending FinCon, I hope you have a good time and I’ll see you next year.

You have probably seen tons of advertisements from place offering to buy your gold the past few years since the price of gold has skyrocketed. These ads made me wonder how much I could get for a couple of small gold rings I had, but I never did anything about it because I doubted the rings were worth much. The other day I saw an ad with a coupon offering $10 for getting your gold evaluated whether they buy your gold or not. Since the store was close to my gym I figured it would be worth walking over and getting my rings evaluated.

The cash for gold place I went to was a jewelry store. When I went in I was directed to a desk to get my gold evaluated. The jeweler first tested my gold with a magnet too make sure it wasn’t just gold plate. The rings passed that test, which I wasn’t sure that they would. He then looked at the rings with a loupe and found that they were marked 10 karat. That is the lowest grade of gold there is, but at least the rings weren’t just gold plated. He then rubbed the rings on a stone and put a drop of solution on the stone which confirmed the rings were 10 karat gold.

The jeweler then weighed the rings on his scale. Unfortunately, they were very small and lightweight rings and only weighed 2 grams together. I was offered $20 for the rings plus the $10 bonus for the coupon and I accepted. It seemed like a pretty good deal since I wasn’t going to be using the rings anyway.

I later did the math and it was a fair offer. At first glance it didn’t seem like a good deal. After factoring in that there are 31.1 grams in a troy ounce and 10 karat gold is only 41% pure, the price I received for my gold was fair. I probably should have done the math before selling the gold since I couldn’t have done much after selling it if I didn’t get a good deal. Since it was such a small amount I wasn’t too concerned.

It seems that selling any gold you have laying around can be a pretty good deal. Especially if you have a coupon. Has anyone else tried selling gold?

A couple of months ago I found a free book on Amazon on the subject of how to make money selling things on Amazon.  Overall, I didn’t find the book very impressive, but it did have some interesting information.  One of the things I found interesting was the author’s suggestion that you could buy products on clearance deals at your local retail stores and resell them for a profit on Amazon or eBay.  That seemed unlikely to me, but I made a note to check the clearance deals next time I was in a retail store.

My first check of clearance deals was at a Walmart and they had lots of stuff on clearance.  Most of the stuff didn’t look like it would sell for much.  I did spot a Mint floor cleaner that had been marked down from $198 to $75.  It looked to be in new condition.  A quick check on my phone showed the floor cleaners were selling for over $150 on eBay.  That seemed like a good profit to me so I went ahead and bought it.  I figured if it didn’t work or didn’t sell I could just return it.

The floor cleaner ended up selling for just over $150 on eBay.  After fees I made about $50 in profit. I was a little worried that there would be a problem with the cleaner. The cleaner worked fine though, and I received positive feedback from the buyer. It was a pretty good profit for maybe an hour’s worth of work.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find another deal anywhere near as good as that one.  Maybe some stores have more stuff marked down low enough that you can resell them for a profit, but I haven’t found them.  If you are in a store with a clearance section it might be worth taking a look though. It is one more way of possibly making a little extra money.