July Expenses – $3745.91

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

Household $410
Entertainment $0
Transportation $90
Food $105.94
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $61.40
Phone $36.79
Health $2857.92
Total $3745.91

 

My July expense were rather high. This was due for paying for my dental implant surgery which was an expected expense. Other than that my expenses were fairly typical and were just slightly over my $1000 a month target.

I will still have to have at least one more oral surgery since I need three implants and they only placed one. I’m hoping the other two will be placed at the same time. I have already paid for all three implants so I shouldn’t have any more dental expenses for a while. Unfortunately, I will have another medical expense in September or October. I was scheduled to have a biopsy in June, but the doctor wasn’t available on the scheduled date and canceled the appointment. I decided not to reschedule the biopsy, but I’ve since been persuaded that it would be wise to have it done and I’m thinking I’ll be able to schedule it for sometime in September.

Entertainment expenses came in at $0 which is the first time I think I’ve ever had that happen. We went to the movies a couple of times using free gift cards.  The main reason this category is $0 though is because the local casinos have been generous in supplying us with free slot play and free meal credit. This provided us with free entertainment and even made us a little money as well.  The casinos will eventually figure out that we’re only playing the free money and not using our own money. Until then we will get all we can out of their comps.

My health expense should return to normal this month. We are traveling to Portland for four days later this month and at the end of the month I will begin an extended hiking trip. The airfare for both of these trips has already been paid so these trips shouldn’t add too much expense to the travel category. Other than those exceptions my expenses this month should be about the same as last month.

Flippy Friday – Ipad Air 2 16gb

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apple ipad air 2Welcome to the latest edition of Flippy Friday where I share one of the items I recently flipped through the Amazon FBA program. This week’s item is  the Apple Ipad Air 2 16GB. Ipads are great products to flip because they sell quickly. I don’t normally like to spend this much money on one item to flip, but I make an exception for iPads since they are quick sellers.

This opportunity became available when Target had these iPads on sale for $399. These iPads were going for about $445 on Amazon. Although the Target price was $45 cheaper than Amazon once you added in sales tax and Amazon fees this would have been a small money loser.  Fortunately, Target also had a Cartwheel deal for 10% off iPads which could be applied to the sales price of the iPads. This brought the before tax price down to $359. Once tax was added I ended up paying $388.19 for my iPad.  It sold the day it arrived at Amazon for $449. After fees I made $32.88 on this flip. That isn’t too bad for less than an hours work.

I also bought a second iPad using discounted Target gift cards. The cards were 7.5% off which just about covered the sales tax. This resulted in an almost $60 profit on the second iPad.  I also received 2% cashback on my credit card that I used to purchase the discounted gift cards. Although I don’t break my shipping cost down per item I know that the credit card cashback was easily enough to cover my shipping cost.

Many FBA sellers don’t like to bother with items with this small of a profit margin. I think it is worthwhile selling a more expensive item even though the margin is smaller since it still results in nice dollar amount profit. It would have been possible to use the Cartwheel discount four times. After my iPads sold so quickly I was wishing I had purchased a couple more. For now, I don’t want to take the risk of spending too much money on one item. I can’t have my cash flow tied up for too long and there is always a possibility that the price will drop dramatically after I’ve purchased the items. I’m happy with the profit I made on these two iPads and wish I was able to find deals like this more often.

How I’m Currently Saving 20% on Gas

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fuelgauge Last month I wrote a post on how I get quadruple savings on gas. Since then I remembered another method I sometimes use to save on gas. This method is actually simpler for me and results in savings of over 10% based on current gas prices.

This saving method is to spend $50 or more at Kmart. When you spend $50 or more at Kmart they will issue you a coupon for 30 cents off a gallon of gas that is good at participating BP, Shell, Speedway and Kmart Express locations. You need to be a Shop Your Way rewards member to receive the coupon. Only BP and Shell are in my area and I’ve only redeemed coupons at BP so I’m not sure how the process works at locations other than BP. At BP the coupon is good for a purchase of up to 20 gallons. Since my car’s tank won’t hold 20 gallons I don’t have to worry about going over this limit.

To redeem the coupon I’ve always gone inside the gas station and let the cashier add the discount to my gas purchase. Using the coupon is easy if the BP cashier knows how to redeem it. The cashiers often seem confused at how to redeem the coupon. Luckily, so far there has always been a more knowledgeable cashier available to figure the transaction out. The nice thing about this coupon is that your percentage savings grow bigger when the price of gas goes down. Currently our local gas price is $2.69 a gallon which is a savings of 11.15% per gallon. That is a pretty good percentage savings for only having to make one relatively small purchase.

Since I’ve been reselling stuff on Amazon I’ve been buying stuff to resell for the $50 purchase requirement. If you don’t have anything to buy at Kmart you could buy a $50 BP gas card there to meet the purchase requirement. It has been a while since I’ve met the purchase requirement by purchasing gift cards so I’m not certain that it still works, but it used to work. If anybody knows if gift cards still work to meet the purchase requirement please leave a comment.

I was able to combine the discounted BP gas card I got on eBay with this promotion to get an over 20% savings on gas. Now that I’ve used up that gas card I’ve figured out another way to get 20% savings on gas. This method will only work for those who were lucky enough to enroll in Discover Card’s double cashback promotion*.  Discover is currently offering 5% cashback on up to $1500 worth of purchases at home improvement stores. By buying a BP gas card at Lowes I’ll get a total of 10% cashback. I’ll get 5% now and another 5% in the 13th month of the promotion period. Combining this 10% cashback with the over 10% savings from the Kmart coupon I’m able to save over 20% on gas purchases. If you have a Kmart in your are you should give this deal a try.

 

* Discover is currently offering a $50 bonus when you sign up through a referral email. If you’re interested in signing up for the Discover card leave me a comment and I’ll send you a referral email. I’ll get $50 for referring you as well so any referrals are greatly appreciated.

Flippy Friday – John Cena WWE Deluxe Trainer

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Since at least one reader has expressed in learning more details about how I’m making money with Amazon FBA I have decided to start a feature where I share the details of an item I’ve sold on Amazon. I’m calling this feature Flippy Friday. There won’t be a post every Friday but I hope to have a post on most Fridays.

The first product sale I will share with you is the John Cena WWE deluxe trainer.  This is a toy that I bought back in April and sold in May. I found this product while looking for clearance items at Sears that I could sell for a profit on Amazon. I haven’t had much luck finding products at Sears to sell on Amazon. This product is one of the few items I’ve found to resell from Sears and it was one of my more profitable items. I bought the trainer for $14.97 and I was able to sell it for $54.25. It is rare that I find an item that I can sell for that much of a markup. After deducting the $14.32 in fulfillment fees from Amazon I made a profit of $24.96. Since I also had shipping fees my actual profit was a few dollars less.  I don’t keep track of my shipping fees by product, but if I shipped this item by itself it would have cost me about $4 or $5.  If I shipped it with other items then this item’s share of the  shipping cost would have probably been only about $2. Either way it was a pretty good profit. What makes this an even better deal is the fact that I purchased this item with Shop Your Way points which meant that I effectively paid $0 out of pocket. Although not many items at Sears are normally profitable Amazon flips when you factor in special deals that pay extra SYW points more items become profitable flips. I’ll write more about the SYW program in a later post if anyone is interested.

After making a nice profit and quick sell with this item I went back and bought two more of these trainers. Unfortunately, it appears that many other FBA sellers also bought this item on discount. The price plummeted from $54 to $20. I sold one at $20 which resulted in a $4.44 loss and I still have one more that hasn’t sold yet. This just goes to show that even if you have a product that was previously profitable there is no guarantee that it will remain that way and you have to accept the fact that you will have some losses. Buying a product that has an over 3x markup is a low risk purchase, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk.

If you have any questions about anything in this post or FBA in general please feel free to ask. Although I’m far from an expert on FBA I will share what I do know.

June Expenses – $1002.00

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

Household $407.57
Entertainment $38.16
Transportation $126.12
Food $107.79
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $0.00
Phone $36.78
Health $101.72
Total $1002.00

 

My June expenses were once again fairly low.  I missed my goal of $1000 or less in spending for the month by just two bucks.  My health expenses were lower than I thought since I had only a $4 prescription and a $14 lab fee to pay in addition to my monthly health insurance premium. This month’s expense will be a lot worse since I’m having my dental implant surgery which will cost about $2700. That is a pretty good deal for three implants, but I still hate to pay it.

My transportation expense was slightly inflated since I bought a $100 gas card for $90 which I didn’t completely use during the month. I bought another $100 gift card for $90 this month so the expense will be slightly inflated again.

We may book some airfare to Portland this month. Otherwise, all my expenses will probably be about the same this month as last month. The health category where I have to pay for my implant surgery being the notable exception.