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Side Hussle Series – Declutter & Make Money

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We all have things lying around our homes that we have no use for anymore. Instead of holding on to them, sell them to someone who wants them and who will pay you for them. Look around, if you have unwanted electronics, clothes, furniture, books or CDs and DVDs, there’s a market.

Used Electronics – Those old phones, computers and tablets sitting around your home could make you some quick cash. Companies such as www.Gazelle.com, www.BuyMyTronics.com, www.NextWorth.com and www.uSell.com want your used electronics and will pay you for them. The items don’t even need to work! The process is largely the same for all four companies. Simply go to their websites, get a quote for your unwanted electronics, ship the items and get paid. These companies all provide free shipping and some are associated with national retailers so you can get paid right away.

Clothes, Shoes & Handbags – If you’re like me, you have items in your closet that you haven’t worn in years and chances are, you will never wear them! Consignment shops are a great option for helping you free up some closet space while making a little extra dough. A quick Google search will bring up consignment shops in your area. If you don’t have one nearby, try www.thredup.com. Thredup will mail you a bag for your unwanted items, with a shipping label so you can send your goods to them at no cost to you. They review your items and pay you up to 80% of the resale value of your clothes. Items that they don’t accept are either donated to a charity, recycled or mailed back to you.

If you have luxury clothing, jewelry or bags, you can try selling them through www.therealreal.com. They pay up to 70% of the item’s sale price. Like Thredup, The RealReal will send you a bag to mail in your luxury items. Alternatively, you may schedule a “White Glove Pick-up” with your Luxury Manager.

Furniture & Home Accessories – Like selling used clothing, consignment shops may be a good solution for selling your unwanted furniture and home accessories. These shops generally charge 50% of the sale price, but there are some advantages to selling this way. Namely that the consignment shops do the marketing for you and secondly, you don’t have to worry about strangers coming to your home. If you want to cut out the middleman, try www.Craigslist.com. Craigslist allows you to list items for free and buyers come to you. 100% of the sales proceeds are yours.

CDs and DVDs – Many independent music stores sell used CDs and DVDs. Search online for local shops in your area. Depending on the number of CDs and DVDs you are wanting to sell, they can often sort through your goods and let you know how much they can offer while you wait.

Books – There are plenty of online companies that are willing to buy back your unwanted books and text books. www.BookScouter.com will simplify the work for your by scanning 40 other websites and let you know which one will offer you the best price. For text books, www.amazon.com offers the most competitive buyback prices according to www.ExtraBucks.com.

With a little effort and some “letting go” you can free up some extra space and make a few extra bucks!

Budgets? “We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Budget”

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Budgets rarely work. It takes tremendous effort to accurately record all transactions so that you have a valid budget. Then, frequently, after all this effort, you rarely come back to the budget. That means that the work had no payoff. Furthermore, people often claim that they had nonrecurring expenses. Doing so, they artificially understate their expenses, not realizing each year has some nonrecurring event.

A much easier way to test savings is to take a twelve-month period, look at cash and credit card balances at the beginning and end, check for any inflows from gifts or other non-salary items, and then measure the change. Did the cash accounts go up or did the credit cards go up? That is your savings/dis-savings for that year.

Rather than doing a budget to adjust behavior, force a change. You can do that by removing money from your discretionary spending by contributing the maximum to a 401(k) plan, by an auto debit that put funds into an investment account, and other auto payments. If your credit card balances go up, then you have to make a decision to alter behavior, such as cutting entertainment, or decide to delay goals (retire later, no new car now, etc.)

How does cash flow relate to debts? Managing your debt means getting the lowest after-tax interest rate so that you pay as much principle with each payment to pay off the loan as quickly as possible. You can deduct the interest paid on a mortgage and an equity line of credit debt. You can deduct up to $2,500 of student loan debt. But you cannot deduct the interest on most other debt, unless used for your business (watch for a post on side hussles).

On-line Scams – some to look out for to protect your finances

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Our society today has growing appetite for social media and most of us use it for legitimate purposes: connecting with our friends, pursuing our hobbies or building our businesses. Unfortunately, part of the population has a more insidious use for social media: they want to scam you. Thankfully, a little vigilance can go a long way in protecting you from these cyber criminals. Here is one list you can use, from Norton Antivirus, showing the top five social media scams:
1. **Hidden URLs** – Those shortened URLs are convenient, but they may be links to websites you don’t want to visit, or worse, they could install malware on your computer.
2. **Phishing Requests** – When you get an invitation to click on a link to see a picture of yourself at some wild party, think twice. Once you click, you’re taken to a fake Twitter or Facebook login page where you enter you user name and password. Doing this gives the cyber-criminals complete control of your account.
3. **Hidden Charges** – Be wary of those on-line quizzes that offer to tell you interesting information about yourself like which 1960s sitcom star you resemble. If the quiz asks you for personal information, such as your phone number, stop. If you continue, you many end up subscribing to some service that charges a recurring monthly fee.
4. **Cash Grabs** – It’s great to make new friends, but maybe not by “friending” strangers on Facebook. That person you just friended on Facebook may soon be asking you for money. You can avoid this situation by limiting your social media connections to people you know personally.
5. **Chain Letters** – Sure, you want to be sure that Microsoft will donate the millions it promised to some worthy charity if you keep the on-line chain letter going. However, such “chain letter” e-mails are a way for scammers to access your friends to connect with them later.
Sites that are popular with users are popular with criminals, too. Be vigilant, keep your anti-virus and anti-malware software up to date and think twice before clicking on a suspicious link!

Be wary of these scams – IRS and investments

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It seems that we hear of a new internet or phone scam on a weekly basis. These scam artists are getting bolder and more sophisticated with each new endeavor. So, we wanted to alert you to a few new ones where the scammers are pretending to be IRS agents and financial planners.

**Taxpayer Scams**
This past year, the IRS issued a strong warning to consumers against an aggressive telephone scam. The scammers call taxpayers to inform them they owe outstanding taxes and demand payment over the phone. To lend to their credibility, the scammers will have the last four digits of the taxpayer’s social security number. If the taxpayer refuses to make a payment, the caller threatens the taxpayer with jail time, loss of driver’s license and, in some cases, deportation. When the taxpayer refuses to provide this information, the scammers call back pretending to be a local police officer.
If you receive one of these calls, the IRS requests that you take these steps:
• “If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue, if there really is such an issue.
• If you know you do not owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, you’ve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484.
• If you’ve been targeted by this scam, you should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their “FTC Complaint Assistant” at FTC.gov. Please add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments of your complaint.”
The IRS wants you to know that they never initiate contact with taxpayers via email to request personal or financial information. They also never ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit cards, banks for other accounts. If you receive an email claiming to be from the IRS, you should forward it to phishing@irs.gov.

**Investor Scams**
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) recently published a warning to registered representatives about three different scams where registered representatives may be subject to “Firm Identity Theft”.
The first scheme involves scammers fraudulently using the identity of legitimate registered representatives and brokerage firms to con investors out of their money by building websites that mirror legitimate websites of broker-dealers and registered representatives. The scammers claim they are registered with FINRA and SIPC. Victims who fall for this tactic are tricked into making payments or investments through the site. The scam artists collect the money and then disappear.
The second one puts a new twist on an old tactic by perusing international investors with and “advance fee scheme” or “mirror fraud.” Again, scammers use the identity of a legitimate broker-dealer and contact investors with an attractive offer. Examples of these offers include lifting a stock restriction or purchasing investors’ shares for an amount significantly above their market value. In return, the investor is asked to pay certain fees and expenses in advance. Once the investor has paid the fees, the fake broker-dealer steals the money and disappears.
The last scheme involves fraudulent checks. The scammer, using the stolen identity of a registered broker-dealer, contacts a customer is an attractive offer, like offering to overpay for an item on Craigslist. When the scammer sends the check, it’s for a much larger amount than the agreed-upon price. The scammer then requests the seller to mail the difference back to the scammer. In an effort to convince the customer of the stolen identity, the fraudster will use the broker-dealer’s true address as the return address on the mail sent to the customer. Believing they are dealing with a real broker-dealer, the customer is persuaded to send money. But, when the seller cashes the original check, it bounces.

Protecting yourself from these scams requires vigilance. If someone contacts you with and offer that’s too good to be true, it likely is!

Millennials Solving their Own Unemployment Problems

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Recent employment numbers released by the US Labor Department provided good news for many in the American workforce, but not for Millennials. While the overall unemployment rate held steady at 6.7%, Millennials rate remained high: the rate for 20 to 24 year-olds was 12.2% and 14.5% for 16 to 24 year-olds.
This generation, bearing so many unflattering nicknames – the “boomerang generation” or the “selfie generation” – are blamed for their own inability to enter the workforce. But is it fair to blame them when they are facing economic challenges unknown by generations before them?
First, Millennials are not unemployed or underemployed by choice. Those most stricken by the effects of the recession are, according to Tim Donovan of Salon, “young, undereducated, poor and all too often, minorities.”
Second, for those who are employed, these Millennials carry unprecedented levels of student debt incurred to get the education. The entered the workforce during the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Third, this generation, more than any other before, will have to create its own employment. There are no government programs in the pipeline out to save them. As Walter Russell Mead of American Interest states, “The turmoil of the new information and service economy means that Millennials will have to be their own job creators if they want to work.”
Fortunately, Millennials seem to up to the challenge. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, Millennials launched 160,000 startups each month in 2011 and 29% of all entrepreneurs were 20-34 years old. These start-ups not only provide solutions to Millennials’ unemployment problem, but also help support the economic recovery.