Million Dollar Challenge Day 2

This challenge is about starting with $125 and doubling my money every year for 13 years to get to $1,000,000.00. For a breakdown on this see Million Dollar Challenge Day 0.

Status December 17, 2020:

Cash account: $125

Investment account: $59.70

What is going to be my strategy for doubling my money in Year 1?

I’m going to look for an item that is undervalued and resell it for a profit. And I’m going to do this until I have hit the target for Year 1.

Could this be one item that I buy for $125 and sell for $287.50? It could also be multiple items that I buy for a total of $125 and sell for a total of $287.50. That’s the challenge.

I’m going to start by looking on sites like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, ebay, and Mercari. I’m also going to resale shops in my local area. The idea here is to find undervalued items and then turn around and sell them for a profit.

Another part of my strategy here is to possibly find things that are dirty, or missing pieces that I can clean up, fix and complete, and resell for a profit. If I should have to buy anything to help with the fixing, that’s going to come out of my profits. Don’t worry — I’m keeping track of everything!

I’ve got a year to make this profit, so it doesn’t have to come in one sale. That would be nice, and easier, but it doesn’t have to be all at once. As long as I continue to make profit until I double my money — that’s the goal.

I’m also going to negotiate everything. Every dollar counts in this challenge, so I want to make sure that I’m maximizing my profit. I won’t have the luxury of giving away dollars or leaving them on the table, so to speak.

Of course, using this strategy could wind up with no movement for long periods. I’m not going to buy something just to take a loss on the item. It needs to make money every single time, or else I’m not going to achieve my goal. So I have to be careful with what I buy. I have a year to accomplish this, it doesn’t all have to be in one day. Patience and perseverance.

I have to admit, this is not a new process for me. I’ve been doing this for a while now. For several years I’d find some things that I like for a bargain price and then resell them later for a profit. I’ve done this with guitars and amplifiers, cameras and lenses, speaker equipment, tools, you name it, I’ve probably bought and sold it. The problem is that I’ve always used that money as my “fun” money. I’d use the profits to buy something I wanted for myself. For example, I’ve been buying guitars and related musical equipment for several years now, and selling the things that could get me the most money, or things that I no longer wanted. I now have a collection of guitars and amps that is worth a couple of thousand dollars, but my “total cost” for those items is nothing. I’ve bought and sold enough musical equipment that the stuff I have in my possession has been paid for by the profits on the sold items. Same for my photography equipment. I have a lot of value in my cameras, lenses and accessories, but I’ve paid for it all with money I made selling other cameras, lenses and accessories.

I’ve also been selling things on ebay for years. In fact, I started selling on ebay back in 1998. I couldn’t begin to tell you how much I’ve made on ebay — mostly because I didn’t keep very good records of what I was doing in the early years. Let’s just say that ebay has made a lot of money off of me over the years. Same with Amazon. I’ve used that site and many others to sell things over the years, so I have some experience doing that. And that will help with this challenge.

If you’ve never sold from a site like ebay or Amazon or Facebook marketplace, don’t worry. I’m going to go through the process as they come up.

Once I find something that is undervalued, I’ll detail the process of how I’m going to choose how and where to sell it. I’ll describe how to get going with these sites and what makes them a good choice. I’ll also try to give you the potential pitfalls of the various methods so that if you are doing this along with me, you’ll have some inside information for your challenge.

Hopefully, you can ride this challenge along with me to a successful, and profitable, nest egg of one million dollars.