Questions About Basil, Kiplinger’s Magazine, Castile Soap, Recessions, and More!

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. State retirement plan question
2. Working all my life
3. End whole life policy?
4. Thoughts on Kiplinger’s?
5. Getting value from used books
6. Salary negotiation
7. Way too much basil!
8. Recession worries
9. Saving digital notes securely
10. Dr. Bronner’s soap?
11. Knowing I’m making bad move
12. How I think about savings

One of the best noises in the world is that of a laughing child.

On with the questions.

Q1: State retirement plan question

I started a job with the state and they automatically enrolled me in their retirement plan. Basically a portion of my check is required to be put into the plan and the state matches it and a little more, and then it seems to be like a 401(k). Do I treat this like a 401(k)?
– Max

Max didn’t specify what state they are in, so I can’t give precise advice on this question. However, what Max describes sounds a lot like how the state employee retirement plan in Iowa (called IPERS) works, and is similar to plans in many other states as well in terms of contributions.

However, state plans vary a lot in terms of how they pay out. Some states operate much like a 401(k) plan, where your payout is related to how much you contribute over the years and how you choose to invest it. Other plans are much more like a pension, where you pay in a certain amount each year and then you get a clearly defined payout when you retire.

Regardless of how it actually works, in almost every case, this plan will provide you with additional income in retirement that will be on top of your Social Security income. Most plans have some kind of online portal where you can check your balance and the benefits that the plan will give you, as well as calculators where you can see what benefits will look like depending on how long you work there.

In most cases, you can consider the plan as a sufficient replacement for a 401(k) in terms of saving for retirement, but you may want to have a Roth IRA of your own to save even more. In some states, you may have to remain employed for a certain number of years to receive benefits, so you’ll want to make sure that you do so (this is usually referred to as “vesting” and usually requires five or seven years of service). Staying employed until you’re vested in the retirement plan is a huge financial boon.

Q2: Working all my life

My aunt sent me some of your newsletters and I hope you will have some good advice. I am 22 years old and due to graduate in the spring with a degree in construction engineering. While I like construction engineering just fine, I recently realized that the prospect of working for a living for the entirety of my adult life seems incredibly awful. I don’t want to work at engineering firms for 45 years and then retire completely burnt out and a decade from death, and I also don’t want to spend my entire adult life scrimping and saving so I can retire a decade earlier and have just two decades before death. It all seems miserable and fills me with dread about graduation and about what to do with my career. Hoping you’ll have some good “words of wisdom” beyond “suck it up” which is what everyone in my life tells me to do.
– Andy

I really don’t buy into the idea of “sucking it up,” because it assumes that you have to suffer misery in silence. An adult life where you feel nothing but misery is not a good life to live.

As far as I can tell, the secret to all of this is inner contentment. You have to find a level of contentment with the life you have and the good things in it or else your life will always feel rather miserable, as there will always be something that’s dragging you down because it’s not up to the level that you want. There will always be things in life that aren’t what you want, but there will always be things in life that are pretty good at the same time.

Essentially, there are two ways of looking at the world. You can dwell on the parts of your life that aren’t what you want them to be and allow that negative feeling to pervade the rest of your life, or you can dwell on the parts of your life that are good and allow that positive feeling to pervade the rest of your life. Everyone has a glass that is half full… or is it half empty?

It is incredibly easy to fall into a situation of thinking that “if X were true, then I would be happy,” but the thing is, if you were to fulfill X, would you actually be happy? Or would you just find a different X that would lead you to discontentment with your life?

I could make a long list of things that could be a potential source of discontentment for me. I’m blind in one eye. I’m deaf in one ear. I have an underactive thyroid (since birth) that seems to arbitrarily work better at some times than at others. My knees hurt much of the time, sometimes quite badly. I currently have more writing contracts and commitments than I feel like I can fulfill. My parents are getting old and are starting to sink into ailing health. All of those things could lead to a whirlpool of despair.

At the same time, I have a lot of things to be content with in my life. I have a great marriage that I feel is incredibly strong. I have a really strong relationship with each of my children. I have a nice home to live in with lots of space for my hobbies and interests. I have work that I quite enjoy almost all of the time and I have a ton of schedule flexibility.

I very much try to keep a “glass half full” view of my life, understanding that I have a lot of good things in my life and that the things that are less… enjoyable are okay and are often a necessary counterbalance, meaning I have to have some less good things in my life in order to have other good things. I also understand that my own poor choices in the moment can easily add to the misery, and making better choices in the moment is vital, as is working on my own thought patterns so that they don’t turn into a cycle of negativity.

I’d highly recommend that you read Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, as well as posts I wrote in the last year on stoicism, epicureanism, Aristotle, and secular Buddhism. A lot of the answers you’re looking for can be found there.

Just know this: you are far, far from alone in these kinds of feelings, and I think the answer to it is to start a journey down a path to internal contentment. The problem is that such a path is different for almost everyone. I wish you good luck.

Q3: End whole life policy?

My parents enrolled me in a whole life insurance policy when I was a kid that now has a cash value of around $7K. I am thinking about cashing it in and getting a term policy instead that has a much higher benefit and costs less per month and then use the $7K to pay off student loans. Good idea?
– Stephen

It’s a good idea provided you make sure that the term policy is in effect before canceling the whole life policy and that you’ve had the whole life policy long enough to avoid any surrender fees (you’ll have to check on that, but if your parents gave it to you as a young child, it’s probably true).

You’ll also want to make sure that the basis of the policy – the total amount of premiums paid in over the course of the policy – is more than the cash value, or else you’ll owe taxes on the excess amount. This info should be available from the insurer. If you and/or your parents paid in $6K over the years and you get $7K out of it, you’ll owe taxes on that extra $1K. This shouldn’t sway your decision – it’s just something you’ll want to account for. Set aside half of the amount that would be taxed so that you’re sure it’s covered when next year’s tax bill comes around.

I am generally opposed to whole life policies, as I think they try to do two things at once (be an investment and be a form of life insurance) and don’t do either one particularly well. If you need life insurance, get a term policy. If you need to invest or want to invest on someone else’s behalf, get an appropriate investment account (a Roth IRA or a 529 or an ordinary brokerage account).

Q4: Thoughts on Kiplinger’s?

What are your thoughts on Kiplinger’s personal finance magazine? Is it worth reading or subscribing to?
– Adam

Kiplinger’s does a very good job for the audience it’s targeting, which is individual people who love to tinker with their investments. If you’re into chasing the best mutual funds or evaluating which annuity is right for you, then you’ll get a lot of value out of it. It serves that audience very well.

However, I think that there is a much broader audience for personal finance than people who are interested in being individual investors. I think that Money Magazine comes a little closer to serving that broader group, although I think it’s also somewhat heavily focused on investment options.

I think that if you’re in a strong financial state and are interested in investing your money in a variety of ways and tinkering with those investments, you’ll get a ton of value out of Kiplinger’s. If that doesn’t sound like you, you probably won’t get a ton of value out of it. It’s a magazine written very well for its audience – the question is whether you’re in that audience.

Q5: Getting value from used books

My wife and I have a ton of accumulated used books from many years of book buying. We have realized that we will never reread almost all of them and want to seriously pare down. We had a yard sale with some friends in the spring but very few of them sold for more than 2/$0.25 which is how we priced them on the last day. That just didn’t seem worth it. The only used book store in the area isn’t taking any books right now. Tried to sell some on eBay but they didn’t sell at all and I don’t think it’s worth it. What can we do to get value out of these books?
– Jim

Used books, unless they’re rare or otherwise noteworthy, are notoriously hard to re-sell. Used book stores stay in business because they have a huge selection from which people will find perhaps one book they want. There have been some online book swapping services in the past but they have all seemed to have difficulty maintaining the service.

What I’ve done with my used books in the past is to mostly donate them. I’ve donated books to the local library. I often put books in nearby Little Free Libraries. If a friend has an interest in a book I’ve got, I usually just hand it to them without concerning myself over whether it gets back to me. The only exceptions to this are books that I believe I’ll re-read in the future.

Get in the practice of donating them or swapping them with friends. You’ll get way more value out of that than selling them two for a quarter. Plus, you’ll spend less time dealing with them and make a lot of people you know and people in your community happier.

Q6: Salary negotiation

What’s a good way to handle a salary offer? I just got a job offer paying about $10K per year more than I make right now. On the one hand I want to just take the money and run. On the other I think I should negotiate at least a little but I’m kind of scared as to how to do it. All articles I’ve found on salary negotiation seems like people playing hardball. How do I not risk my job or feel like a jerk?
– Seth

Is their offer in the range of what’s reasonable for the position in your area? If you’re not sure, do a little homework and make sure the offer is in a reasonable range for the type of job in your area. Does it compare with other job listings?

Negotiating comes with a little risk. They usually can rescind the job offer, though they usually won’t do so unless they feel you’re being unreasonable in the negotiations. If you’re asking for salary that’s outside the range of what’s expected for this job in your area, that’s potentially a reason to rescind the offer.

What I would do in your position is evaluate comparable jobs in your area and what they are paid for similar jobs with similar experience requirements and then make a counteroffer that’s within that range, explaining your reasoning in the counteroffer in polite language. If the offer is already close to the top of that range, I’d respond with some questions about benefits, like 401(k) matching and vacation time and the health care plan, and if those seem reasonable, I’d take it.

If you end up at a salary impasse, ask for some non-salary benefits, like a small amount of extra vacation time accrued when you start.

Q7: Way too much basil!

I planted some basil along the side of our house because a friend of mine said it would basically grow with little effort and he wasn’t kidding. I have more basil than I know what to do with. I borrowed a food dehydrator and am trying to dry out some of it and I told some friends to come and get as much as they want but I still have tons of it.
– Amy

I’d make some infused oil. Just get a big container of olive oil and, for every cup and a half of oil, blend it with a packed cup of basil leaves in the blender until it’s pureed. Then, put it in a skillet over medium heat for about a minute, then pour it through a fine mesh strainer, then pour that through a paper coffee filter, saving the oil. You might have to replace the filter a time or two. Put that oil in a jar and save it in the fridge and it’ll last for a month or so, and that olive oil will be amazing in anything that needs even a bit of basil flavor.

You can also just pick things clean, put it all in a large bag, and put it somewhere with a sign that says “FREE BASIL!” You could also just knock on the doors of your neighbors and offer it to them.

While you’re at it, I would dry as much as I possibly could and store it in the pantry.

Q8: Recession worries

What can I do to prepare myself for the upcoming recession? My job is pretty stable but what else should I do? Should I make any changes to my retirement account?
– Bailey

I wouldn’t do anything much. I definitely wouldn’t touch my retirement account, as you have no way of accurately predicting when the stock market or any other market will be at a high and when it will be at a low.

The one move I would make is to make sure you have a well stocked emergency fund. It should be cash stowed away in a savings account somewhere and it should cover at least a few months of living expenses, if at all possible.

My own strategy for an emergency fund is to just have a small amount automatically transferred every week from my checking account to an “emergency” savings account, and I never turn it off. When something big and unexpected does strike, I don’t hesitate to tap that money. There’s usually plenty in there. It’s a good practice, especially since credit cards are not a trustworthy emergency fund. They fail in times like natural disasters and identity theft and robbery, among other situations.

Q9: Saving digital notes securely

I have a bunch of old journals that I want to digitize and then destroy the originals, but then I want to keep the images safe. Don’t mind spending time on doing this because I’ll just read the entries along the way. What’s a good way of doing this?
– Natalie

There are a lot of ways of doing this. It really depends on how secure you want the saved pages to be and how frequently and easily you want to be able to access them yourself.

The easiest way of doing it would be to take pictures of each page with your phone, email them to yourself, then save those attachments in a folder on your computer and password protect that folder. You’d obviously want to delete the images from your phone and delete those emails as you go. If there’s nothing that’s overly sensitive in there beyond personal thoughts, this should suffice.

From there, you can get more and more and more secure, depending on what security needs you have. With my own journals, I largely don’t back them up, but the specific parts I have backed up, I simply have the images in a password protected folder, just like the description above. The worst thing that could happen is that someone might read them and know that I was struggling with some things, which might be embarrassing but wouldn’t be a huge deal, or that I was critical of someone. While I don’t want to broadcast that to the world, it’s also not apocalyptic if it was found. For me, a password protected folder is enough.

As for destroying the originals, the question I’d ask myself is whether I ever wanted someone – a child of mine, perhaps – to ever read them. If you ever might want this, I’d save the originals in a safe place. A safe deposit box at a bank is probably appropriate for this kind of thing. If that’s of no interest to you, destroy away.

Q10: Dr. Bronner’s soap?

Enjoyed your recent articles about homemade cleaning solutions. Have you ever tried Dr. Bronners? I use it at various dilutions for all kinds of things like shower soap and hand soap and dish washing and window cleaning. If you can get it at a good price it’s a good bargain.
– Chloe

Dr. Bronner’s is a type of liquid Castile soap, which is soap that’s made with vegetable oil (usually olive oil, though hemp oil and coconut oil are common) rather than animal fat. Since pure Castile soap basically consists of ash and vegetable oil, it’s pretty pet and environmentally friendly, and it’s a pretty good all around soap provided you dilute it appropriately for various uses (it’s mighty strong right out of the bottle).

Sarah got into a Dr. Bronner’s kick about a year ago, using it for a bunch of different things. The big issue we ran into is that it’s really potent (and pretty expensive) to use as hand soap, but if we cut it, it was really watery and our kids made a pretty big mess with it consistently. She had positive things overall to say about it, though.

I did some math on the variety of uses of Dr. Bronner’s and how much you should cut it with water or other ingredients for each use, and I came to the conclusion that if it works well, it would probably be a notable money saver over buying several different dedicated products for home cleaning purposes.

So, what I think I’m going to do in the near future is buy a bottle of it, use it for a bunch of common uses (hand soap, body wash, shampoo, various household cleaning uses) and see how it works and then turn it into a post. Look for it in a month or two.

Q11: Knowing I’m making bad move

Whenever I go do something it seems like I end up with a situation where I can spend money and I know it’s stupid but I want to do it anyway and I ignore the part of me that’s telling me it’s stupid. So I get nowhere. Very frustrating. Don’t now how to fix it.
– Kevin

That’s your inner voice talking, and it’s usually pretty wise. You’re just choosing to ignore it.

Most of us have two voices in our head, the metaphorical “angel” and “devil” that are used so often in pop culture, with one sitting on one shoulder and the other on the other shoulder. Your “angel” is quietly saying that this is a bad move; your “devil” is usually louder and is finding all sorts of reasons to do it anyway. Most of the time, the “angel” is speaking on behalf of the better long term move, the side that’s in line with your core values, while the “devil” is the one that speaks on behalf of immediate gratification and emotional desire in the moment.

What you’re dealing with is something almost everyone deals with as they try to change themselves. It is great that the “angel” voice is there, but the “devil” voice is louder and more compelling and gets your attention, so what can you do about it?

The best thing I can say is this: practice. In every situation you can, try to hear both voices, and make a conscious effort as often as you possibly can to listen to the “angel.” The thing is, the more you listen to the “angel,” the louder that voice gets and the quieter the other one gets. This is particularly true when you start seeing the benefits of listening to the “angel” in your life. Make that your goal every single day, think about it every single day, and give it your all.

This doesn’t mean you’ll be perfect at it – no one is. The point is to simply start listening to the “angel” more often, and the best way to do that, at least that I’ve found, is pure focus and practice. Keep the idea in mind as much as you can in the coming days and weeks: “I need to listen to the good voice and do what it says.” Don’t kick yourself if you mess up; just focus on doing it right the next time.

Eventually, if you do it enough, not only will you start seeing real positive results in your life, the voice of the “angel” will get louder and louder and the voice of the “devil” will get quieter and quieter. It takes time, of course, but what’s really happening is a change in your habits and routines.

Make it your goal every single day for, say, three months. “Today, I will try to hear the ‘good’ voice before I make a choice and I will do my best to do what the ‘good’ voice says.” Do that as best you can; don’t expect perfection, but expect improvement. That’s all you can do.

Another good strategy is to simply change up your environment: try to avoid even being in situations where you’re needing to listen to that “angel” and that “devil.” Rather than going out somewhere and then struggling with choices when you get there, make the choice to do something else entirely. Rather than hanging out with someone who constantly gets you in these situations, find other people to hang out with.

Good luck, my friend!

Q12: How I think about savings

The way I think about savings or about money in retirement or in investments is that it’s just another way of making money. If I decide to spend less and then have $100 to put away at the end of the month and I put it in something that earns 7% per year, I’m now earning $7 more this year and every year for as long as I leave that initial $100 alone. If I do that 100 times, that’s $700 a year forever. I like to look at it in $100 increments like that because it becomes something tangible in my life. I decide not to buy a $300 Switch and instead bank that money and now I make $21 a year without working basically for ever. I like it when little stuff adds up like that too. Not spending money on stupid stuff means I make more money without having to work.
– Joe

That’s a really good way of looking at things. You’re simply translating making good spending decisions into what that means when you invest that money. Money in the bank is working for you, earning more money for you without you lifting a finger. If you can get money in the bank, then you’re going to earn even more without lifting a finger.

The thing that got me going on savings was the compounding. Like you said, $100 means that if I invest it and get 7%, that $100 will earn me $7 a year automatically as long as I don’t touch it. But if I don’t touch that $7 either, then the next year that $100 earns me another $7, but that $7 I didn’t touch earns me $0.49. And if I don’t touch it again, that $100 earns me another $7, the $14 I didn’t touch earns me $0.98, and even that $0.49 I didn’t touch earns me about 3.5 cents. And on and on and on. It grows on its own.

You can maybe think of that as the money in the bank giving itself a raise because it’s been working for a long time!

Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

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How to Make Money on Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the most popular social platforms around, but it operates much more like a search engine. Think about it. When you use Pinterest, you’re often searching for something, whether it’s a creative idea, DIY hack, inspiration, or tips and advice on a particular topic. More and more people are using Pinterest professionally […]

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The Best Dropshipping Companies

Quick Sprout recommendations for dropshipping companies are based on months of research and testing. We’ll never point you to a product or service that we don’t believe in or have first-hand experience with. Our content is reader-supported, which means if you click on one of our links to a recommended dropshipping company, we may earn a commission.

Want to start a business selling products but not worry about shipping, storing inventory, or investing in that inventory upfront? Dropshipping — when you a product that’s shipped directly from the manufacturer to your customer — might be for you.

In this guide, I list and review the best dropshippers to help you get started.

Dropshipping solves a bunch of problems: no cash needed upfront, no boxes piling up in your store room, garage, or let’s be honest, in your spare bedroom. You never even have to touch the product or be responsible for the packaging or shipping. That means no more trips to the Post Office, either. Your dropship partner takes care of all that.

Today world’s largest cab company, Uber, does not own a single cab. World’s largest accommodation company, Airbnb, does not own a single hotel. Similarly, lot of ecommerce companies don’t own any inventory and just operate as a marketplace. If you ever had a dream to start a eCommerce business this is the best time.” —Saba Mohebpour CEO of Spocket, as told to Thrive Global

Before I jump to the list of best dropshipping partners, some real business talk: the benefits of dropshipping are also its drawbacks. You don’t have the inventory in your warehouse, so you don’t have control of a customer ordering something that’s out of stock. There’s no shipping work on your end, so you can’t control the shipping speed, or the packaging.

Long ship times = canceled orders.
Weird packaging = bad reviews.

And, you still need some money up front to build your website, put in the sweat equity of making that business take off, and all the other steps you’ll need to take to start your business.

Like any business partnership, you need to do your research on who you’re working with, what it’s going to cost you, and what you’re expecting to get out of it before you get too involved. This review will help you pick dropshipping companies that’ll work for your business — no matter your niche.

What’s the best dropshipping company for me?

Trying to find the best dropshipping company all up is a little bit beside the point. It’s like asking for the best eBay seller or the best store on Etsy. The things that make dropshippers great are a lot of the same things that make an eBay or Etsy seller great: They’re communicative and have fast shipping. The product arrives as promised. It looks like the listing and it shows up in one piece in packaging that looks nice and not chewed up by an alligator.

Just like an eBay seller, the best dropshipper for you is the one selling what you’re interested in buying (and reselling). They will reliably, communicatively, and quickly ship the product you’re after at a price that’s profitable for you — it’s about finding your best.

Most dropshippers use a Shopify store and an automation app like Oberlo or Spocket. If you’re new to dropshipping, this is definitely the easiest way to get set up.

Why Shopify is the best way to start your dropshipping business

That means, you are basically setting up the equivalent to any ecommerce store. For ecommerce stores, the clear winner is Shopify. It’s been the frontrunner for a while. What’s most important about that for dropshipping is that the app store is super robust. Most stores use Shopify, so developers looking to make a high-quality app develop it for the Shopify app store.

So, if you haven’t already set up your Shopify store, that needs to go on your to-do list. We have a post that’ll walk you through the step-by-step process for setting up your Shopify store. It’s easy. There’s even a course in the Shopify Academy to learn how to start a dropshipping business with Shopify: Dropshipping 101.

I don’t recommend dropshipping with eBay

It’s compelling to set up shop with a marketplace — you don’t have to start a website, pay a subscription, etc. like you would with Shopify. But, I don’t recommend it. Unlike Shopify that’s super excited and helpful with new dropshipping businesses, eBay is growing more and more against them. Here are the sticking points for me:

• Your store’s reputation is on the line — eBay is not forgiving and will downgrade accounts with reports of slow shipping
• You’re probably not the only one selling that item
• Your business case isn’t clear — why should someone buy that item from you, just another eBay store?
• eBay has been cracking down on dropshippers and resellers, asking for proof of having the item in possession and freezing your store until you send in that proof. Proof could be a photo of your ID card with the item — not a photo of the item from a different listing. See this article from eSellerCafe.com for more on eBay Aggressively Banning Drop Shipping / Arbitrage Accounts.

If you do want to build your dropshipping business with eBay, I’d spend a few weeks or months in the seller forums to understand the specific risks and challenges of dropshipping on eBay.

The 17 best dropshipping companies, suppliers, databases, and tools

Once you have your Shopify account and your store set up, you’re ready to link up with a dropshipping partner and get selling. But, it can be hard to break into dropshipping because most dropshipping businesses don’t like to share their items or their suppliers. The thinking is: you’ll just replicate their shop and eat into their market.

I’m here to help with this list of 17 dropshippers, databases and suppliers — along with their pros and cons. I’ve listed Shopify apps first, then databases and software, and finally online marketplaces.

1. Oberlo — Best Shopify plugin and directory

This plugin service works with Shopify stores. You’ll browse the Oberlo directory (which includes suppliers verified by Oberlo) to find inventory you’d like to sell in your store. You’ll be able to see how many pageviews, sales, and star-rankings each item and seller has. Once you make a sale, you’ll use Oberlo to order the item to be shipped to your customer. Oberlo has a forever-free Starter plan, but to unlock shipment tracking and order fulfillment monitoring, which I recommend, you’ll need to upgrade to the Basic plan at $30 per month. It’ll also raise your sales limit from 50 to 500. Once you crest 500, you’ll be in Pro territory, which is $80 per month and allows for multiple users as well. Oberlo has 4.7 out of 5 stars from 2,286 reviews in the Shopify app store.

2. Spocket — A Shopify database app with good reviews

Spocket is a database app of dropship items that you can sort by country and simply upload into your Shopify store. Spocket makes it easy to find US and EU items that’ll ship within your country rather than from China, cutting down on slow ship speeds. The Basic plan (25 products with unlimited orders) is forever free, and upgrading to Pro is $49 per month for 250 products and branded invoicing. The Empire plan unlocks unlimited products for $99 per month. The app has 4.7 out of 5 stars from 1,226 reviews in the Shopify app store.

3. Dropified — Popular Shopify app for AliExpress

This is another Shopify app for populating your store with items and automate your orders on AliExpress, including customer shipping address. However, there’s no Dropified marketplace, but rather a browser plugin that’ll let you pull from anywhere on the web. You can set up margin parameters and rules for changing the price points in your store. There’s a 14-day free trial; after that it’s $47 per month for the Builder plan, or $39 per month on the annual plan. The Premier plan, which costs $127 per month or $97 per month with annual billing, recently added a profit dashboard, Zapier integration, and an unlimited high-speed captcha solver. The app has 4.8 out of 5 stars from 104 reviews in the Shopify app store.

4. Dropwow — Negatively reviewed Oberlo competitor

An app that’s reminiscent of Oberlo and Spocket, but with more negative reviews. The tool claims to automate your orders and help you locate dropshippers located in the US and elsewhere. However, with only 3.8 out of 5 stars from 121 reviewers on the Shopify app store, and a monthly subscription of $29 per month, I don’t recommend it. There is a 7-day free trial if you’d like to give it a spin.

5. SaleHoo — Members-only database of 8,000+ suppliers

A $67 yearly membership grants you access to this database of wholesalers and dropshippers. There are currently 8,000+ suppliers on the site, and they’re all screened by Salehoo before they’re added to the directory. There’s a 60-day free trial period, and the customer service gets high marks: 9.6 out of 10 with 247 reviews on TrustPilot.

6. Doba — 2M+ products with so-so profit margins

This 2 million product database doesn’t just bring a number of suppliers into one marketplace — you’ll also place your customer orders within Doda as well. That being said, it’s not cheap and we’ve read a number of negative reviews, many of which mention that the prices aren’t low enough to profit. Doba has a 14-day free trial, so you can log in and run the numbers to see if a membership (which starts at $29 per month) is right for you.

7. Wholesale2B — Versatile supplier and dropshipping hub

You can do a lot of different things with Wholesale2b: sell its products on eBay, Amazon, on a Wholesale2B site, or your own WooCommerce / Shopify / Magento / BigCommerce site. Any one of these options costs about $20 per month. Handle the orders yourself by becoming a registered reseller with each supplier or pay Wholesale2B a 3% fee to handle that for you.

8. Worldwide Brands — Budget-friendly database

For $299, you can get a lifetime subscription to this database of wholesalers and dropshippers.

9. Wholesale Central — Best free dropshipping directory

This free directory lists suppliers you can work with individually to order products from. There’s nothing fancy about it — it’s like a phone book — but has useful information to use as you do your research.

10. Sunrise Wholesale Merchandise — Some of the best shipping speeds

A $99 yearly fee gets you access to Sunrise’s selection of goods. It’s a bit smaller than other databases, but the shipping times are pretty quick: typically 5–7 days. Packages arrive to your customers with a receipt from “Customer Service” that’s not branded.

11. Megagoods — US-based dropshipping supplier

A California-based warehouse that will dropship your goods under your packaging and branding, typically in less time than it’d take to ship from an overseas supplier. Pro tip: check the added fees to make sure that your margins are good.

12. Inventory Source — Timesaving dropshipping automation tool

An automation tool that allows you to either sync the suppliers products with your page (inventory automation) or to sync the entire customer purchase flow so that your orders are automatically placed with your supplier (full automation). Inventory automation is $50/month and full automation is $150/month.

13. Dropship News – Extensive free online directory

This free online directory of suppliers is worth sifting through. We found some great US-based suppliers. Most of each supplier’s dropshipping information is on their profile, which saves you some clicking around.

14. National Dropshippers — Difficult user interface

You can give a try to see if there’s a product that’s only available here, but if you can find it elsewhere you’ll probably be better off going with the alternative. Products are hard to find and search for, and the returns and shipping policies aren’t favorable. Free for the first 7 days.

15. DropshipDirect.com — Currently in hiatus

This site makes some enticing claims: 100,000 items in its inventory, a SaaS-approach to data, and quick shipping from its Michigan warehouses. However, the sign-up form is in private mode and the company seems to be on a year-long hiatus. We’ll keep an eye on Dropship Direct and report back.

16. AliExpress — China-based dropshipper with great user reviews

AliExpress is a Alibaba’s online retailer. It’s based in China, but doesn’t sell products to anyone in mainland China. The site has lots of user reviews and analytics that are super useful during the product research phase.

17. DHgate — 1M+ products, but check user reviews

There are over a million Chinese suppliers on DHGate. Best practice for buying off DHgate: check user ratings and feedback. Just like you would when buying something off of eBay, be wary of anything that could be a knock-off or imitation, and be prepared for slow shipping and nuances like new-with-box items arriving with their boxes unassembled.

How to start a dropshipping company

1. Find items to sell

Find your niche.

There’s lots of chatter on the internet about finding your dropshipping niche, but this is just a trendy buzzword for product-market fit: are there people who want to buy your product? From you?

If not, you won’t have a successful business.

You’ll have the most success dropshipping a product if there’s an audience that wants to buy it and doesn’t have an easy way to access it. That’s where you come in.

Some ways to find your niche: brainstorm rabid fan groups or audiences with a common need or interest (dog lovers, anime fans, parents who love to dress up their kids in matching outfits, sailors, very tall people, people who love 90s throwback tees). These are purchase-ready populations looking to love and buy things that they’re interested in.

See what’s trending on Facebook.

Doing a quick search of a phrase like “Get yours here” or “Buy now” and look at the videos featuring items for sale that are getting traction. This can give you a sense of which products are interesting people on Facebook right now. Look for a high number of views in a short period of time, then search for the item at a dropship supplier like Oberlo or AliExpress. Consider the price-point of the item in the video and the assets you can create for it. Can you replicate — or improve on — the current trending video? If so, you may have an item worth dropshipping.

Don’t sell anything dangerous or copyrighted.

If you’re a beginner, don’t start with something that goes in or on a person’s body. If you do not know the quality and source of the ingredients, and something goes wrong, do you have coverage for that liability?

Also, if there’s a celebrity or character from a movie franchise on the item, it could get you in trouble. Steer clear of mice with big round ears.

Look at seller’s reviews and order a test product.

How long has the seller been selling? What feedback have they been getting. When you order a test product, does it meet your expectations? What do you need to tell your customers so they’ll be happy when they receive the product?

Consider dropshipping only some items.

Just because you’re dropshipping some things doesn’t mean you need to dropship everything. Perhaps it makes sense to use dropshipping for large, bulky, high-priced niche items.

Say, for example, you have an online store that sells nautical gear. You may want to personally store and ship some items, but dropship the anchors. For items like this, your customers may also be more accommodating to longer shipping times since it’s a large and more considered purchase. Same goes for home goods: perhaps you keep small items in stock, but dropship the couches. You can increase your inventory breadth very simply this way.

Go directly to a supplier and build a dropshipping relationship with them.

This is a killer plan: there’s guaranteed to be less competition. You’re basically creating a new audience for an under-marketed product that’s not getting seen by a ready-to-buy audience. If you use a database, every single other subscriber is using that same database.

2. Nail the basics

Invest in a good domain name.

We buy all our domain names from Namecheap. (You can read our full review on the best domain registrars.) They come with free privacy protection. Skip all of the upsells — you don’t need them.

Set up your website.

If you go with Shopify, you’ll be up in minutes. Lots of dropshippers recommend the Shopify Brooklyn theme with a good font choice. You can also use another ecommerce option. Here’s our review on the best ecommerce platforms, if you’re interested in exploring.

Get a professional logo.

You can get one for a reasonable price (and no design expertise) with 99Designs. See my post about how to get your first brand identity on a budget for more details and how to run a logo design contest.

Use a professional email address.

It should be a sensible start (help@, support@) with your own domain name. I recommend getting G Suite for $5 a month per user. There’s nothing to trust about emailing a customer service that’s at yahoo.com or gmail.com.

Give your customer strong trust signals.

You can do this with high quality photos and unique item copy, a real and robust About Us page, and thoughtfully using things like discounted prices and pop-ups.

Ask yourself: Would I buy from this store? Would I feel comfortable suggesting it to a friend or family member? You’ll need some trust logos and some FAQs at minimum.

Set shipping time expectations.

Most dropshipped items aren’t going to get to the customer very quickly — and in world where Amazon Prime has set the standard at two days, that means dropshipments of 30 days feel extremely slow. If you don’t prepare your customers they’ll be very unhappy. We’ve seen very straightforward copy, like: All our items ship directly from our suppliers in China. Shipments are processed the day of your order and arrive in 25–30 days.

Make sure your orders go through.

Bundle credit card orders so your bank doesn’t cancel your numerous orders. Let your bank know what types of orders and in what quantities you’ll be placing, so they’re not flagged as fraudulent. There is no pain so rich as having to reorder orders you’ve placed. (You do have a business credit card, right?)

Prepare for returns and cancellations.

How will you deal with unhappy customers? What’s your return policy and how will you chargeback customer payments? Will returned items be shipped to you, or to your distributor? How will that work? Like with anything in business, it’s important to set it all up from day one like it’ll be a huge success.

Set aside money to pay taxes.

If you’re using Shopify as your payment gateway, once you get to a certain sales threshold, Shopify will automatically report your sales to the government. You’ll want to make sure you have money available to pay applicable taxes. We also recommend getting an accountant and a lawyer (we’ve heard good things about UpCounsel and LegalZoom) and setting up Quicken.

3. Differentiate yourself

Make your store listings and ads unique.

Remember, if you can quickly and easily set up a dropshipping order for a specific product, it’s likely another store will be able to do the same. You will need to find an edge: why would someone order from you, or find your store selling the product, and not your competitor?

Take your own pictures. Write your own copy. Shoot unique social videos. Really put thought into how to best convey the product and why a person would want it: What problems does it solve? Can it make them feel joy?

Import user reviews.

If you’re using AliExpress, you can import the user reviews. No one likes being the first to buy something.

Consider offering free shipping.

Do all orders have free shipping or only when a certain order spend is hit? What threshold or minimum spend works best?

I do not recommend offering “Free products — you pay shipping.” Many customers would rather know the price up-front than go through a purchase flow that says $0 the whole way through and then slaps on a $15 shipping charge. It’s 2019 and the norm is free 2-day shipping with Prime. People are catching on and aren’t happy about it. Read more from The Daily Beast in Instagram Influencers Dupe Their Fans With ‘Free’ Products.

Market your store.

Make sure people know about your store. This can be through word of mouth, social media ads, viral memes, influencer programs, SEO, a newsletter. You’re going to need visitors to make sales.

4. Iterate iterate iterate

Use ads to test and gather data.

We’re assuming that you’ll be buying ads. If you do, buy and use the data to test what’s working. What gets traction? Double down on it. What doesn’t? Trash it. This may lead you to changing your products, your ad style, your audience. Following the early traction means you head toward what’s working and away from what’s not.

Analyze your sales.

What’s selling well? What’s not selling at all? Is there any common theme in the items? Replicate what you can. Stop what’s not working.

Dropshipping vocabulary

Arbitrage – The simultaneous buying and selling of an item to take advantage of a difference in price for the same asset. Say there’s a board game for sale at Walmart for $20, but the lowest price on Amazon is $45. Arbitrage is listing the game for sale on Amazon and buying the Walmart game. For every sale you make on Amazon, you take advantage of a $25 price difference. If your arbitrage is online to online, with free shipping, the math suggests you could simply sell on one site, buy and ship from the other, and pocket all the profit. This does not take into account any hiccups: returns, merchandise not accurate, merchandise no longer in stock, price changes in either market, etc.

Dropshipping (DS) – The supply chain system in which a seller does not keep items in stock, but rather transfers orders directly to a manufacturer, supplier, or wholesaler who ships the item directly to the consumer.

Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) – Some sellers set a floor to how low you can advertise or display your product for sale. This is not the same as the price you can sell it for. So, the MAP price does not take into account coupon codes or sales, or other tricks like offering a gift card with a purchase, offering rebates, or doing things like showing an even lower price in the cart.

Dropshipping examples and press

You may have seen the posts we’ve seen — the ones about people starting dropshipping businesses and raking in the sales. We’re talking five-figures in a single day, six-figures every month. What is this magic sauce, we wonder.

The magic sauce is the same sauce as any other business: it’s a math equation based on margins. How big are your margins? How big is your customer base? What’s the conversion rate? How stiff is the competition?

Welcome to a little-known corner of the e-commerce world, where small entrepreneurs use social-media ads and hip virtual storefronts to entice people into buying products listed on online marketplaces such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s AliExpress.

The process often involves online storefronts transferring customer details to an AliExpress seller, which ships the goods directly to the customer; the storefront bills the customer. Called dropshipping, it is a twist on a fulfillment technique that major online retailers also use to send goods directly from their manufacturers to the customer.

The entrepreneur profits by charging a high markup, betting shoppers are unlikely to stumble upon the less-expensive goods on a marketplace site. AliExpress is the most popular such marketplace, but some entrepreneurs order from sellers on other marketplace sites like Amazon.

—“The Mystery of the $70 Hoodie That’s All Over Facebook,” Wall Street Journal

The mystery of the $70 hoodie is also not a mystery: it’s a one-time sale that’s not going to turn into repeat business. It’s a simple equation:

high price + low product quality + poor customer experience = repeat business

Dropshipping seemed cool because it made starting an eCommerce seem easy: I didn’t need to buy products in advance; I didn’t need to have space to hold them, and it didn’t require extra time and effort to ship the orders myself. Dropshipping does have disadvantages, but it really appealed to me, so I continued my online search.

There are numerous ready-to-use eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce or Squarespace. Most of them start at around $20 per month, which seemed like a good deal for a first-time entrepreneur like myself.

It took me two days to set up the store the way that I wanted it to look. Shopify is totally non-programmer friendly. All you need to do is open an account, select a look for your store, and that’s it – you’re ready to sell.

When I set up my store, I had no definite idea of what I should sell. I wasn’t sure if I should pick a product I was passionate about or just a random product I was able to find in dropshipping databases like WholesaleDirect.com or the like.

“This Guy Made $12K In One Month While Working Full-Time,” Huffington Post

“This guy” is Justin Wong, and he made his business work by studying Instagram marketing, set up affiliate partnerships with influencers, and matched his product with his marketing technique. And, he’s not confused about the pros and cons of that marketing strategy: when the posts age on a influencers feed, his sales go down.

My name is Jacky Chou. With my partner, Albert Liu (albeliu on Reddit), we launched a home decor dropshipping site that went from negative 3k to 250k a month in 8 months at 30-40% margins. We’re both first generation Asian-Canadians who moved from Vancouver to Berlin to work in marketing.

We started our dropshipping store as a ‘practice what you preach’ case study, as we’re both working as digital marketing consultants (Albert as a freelance Facebook consultant and I’m a founder of an SEO agency, Indexsy).

— “We made 250k USD last month with our dropshipping side hustle. Oberlo / Shopify reached out to us to do a success story. AMA!,” Reddit

Further reading

• Buzzfeed News “Small American Businesses Are Struggling Against A Flood Of Chinese Fakes”
• Wall Street Journal “‘Drop Shipping’ Looks Set to Go Mainstream as More Retailers Get on Board”
• Racked “The Fake News of E-Commerce”
• Vox “Why an ad for bootleg Hallmark socks is one of the most ubiquitous of the holiday season”
• Inc. “Why Weebly’s CEO Is Saying No to the Hottest Trend in E-Commerce”
• Entrepreneur “Why It’s Nearly Impossible To Stop This Amazon and eBay Scheme”
• The Atlantic “The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed”
• Reply All “The World’s Most Expensive Free Watch”
• Inc. “How to Earn Money While You Sleep: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Drop-Ship Side Hustle”
• Vox “Here’s why Trump threatened to pull out of a 144-year-old postal treaty”
• Today.com “‘Drop-shippers’ reveal the hard work behind the legitimate work-from-home model”

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ESU summit paints optimistic future for workers, residents in Monroe County

Editor's note: This story is the first in a series of coverage on the ESU Economic Outlook Summit. Read more in the Pocono Record or online at PoconoRecord.com this week.EAST STROUDSBURG — ESU held its seventh annual Economic Outlook Summit, themed "Monroe County: Why do we live here?" on Friday.Monroe County residents had an opportunity to answer that very question in August, after the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance conducted a brief survey asking the [...]

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These Side Hustle Podcasts Will Make Managing or Growing Your Gig Easier

Inspiration from Mario Quintana, Natalie Fratto, Mark Twain, Pan Pizza, and More!

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life. Please enjoy the archives of earlier collections of inspirational things.

1. Mario Quintana on chasing butterflies

“Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.” – Mario Quintana

This is true for virtually every way you might want to improve your life. You can’t chase things like “happiness” or “wealth” directly – you’ll never achieve them. Rather, what you can do is cultivate your life such that those things are a natural outcome.

If you want lasting happiness, tend to your life so that the elements that seem to bring you happiness are well supported and the elements that bring you unhappiness are pulled out like weeds. Don’t chase happiness – focus on constructing a contented life that bubbles up with happiness.

If you want financial success, tend to your life so that you have good control over your spending choices and a good pattern of positive steps in your professional life. Financial success comes naturally once you have constructed a daily life with those elements.

Build your life into a beautiful garden and the butterflies you want will come. Spend your time chasing them with a net and dragging them to your garden and they’ll just fly away.

2. Natalie Fratto on three ways to measure your adaptability

From the description:

When venture investor Natalie Fratto is determining which start-up founder to support, she doesn’t just look for intelligence or charisma; she looks for adaptability. In this insightful talk, Fratto shares three ways to measure your “adaptability quotient” — and shows why your ability to respond to change really matters.

Her three main signs of adaptability are the ability and habit of asking “what if” questions and answering them well, having a beginner’s mindset about everything and never relying on or assuming expertise, and exploring new things as a basic life habit. Those things point to success in many areas of life.

If you want to be able to more easily handle unexpected events in life, one of the most powerful things you can do is simply make exploring new things a completely normal routine for yourself. Consciously choose to try new things, even if they seem scary and difficult. Make that a normal and consistent thing in your life.

What you’ll find, over time, is that new things start to come easier to you, no matter what those new things are, because you’re wiring your mind to be adaptable. At that point, unexpected events and crises are much easier to handle than they were before.

3. Jackson Brown on time

“Do not say you don’t have time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa.” – Jackson Brown

When you say you “don’t have time” for something, what you’re actually saying is that “this particular thing is not a priority for me and not important to me.” When you tell someone that you don’t have time right now to do something together, you’re telling that person that they’re not a priority in your life – it’s just a nicer way of saying it.

How you use your time is an expression of what’s actually important to you. If you spend three hours a day watching television, then that’s what is important to you. If you spend two hours a day exercising, then that’s what is important to you. If you spend three hours a day reading, then that’s what is important to you.

Look at how you actually spend your time very carefully. Keep an honest time diary, then look at it after a few weeks. Are these the things that are actually important to you? Compare that to the things left undone, the friends you didn’t see, the family members you didn’t check up on. Are those things less important than some of the stuff that you actually did?

No one is perfect here, but at the same time, improving in this direction is always a powerful move.

4. The Ten Things

As many of you know, I was really inspired a few months ago by the book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The core idea of the book is that you tend to get the most value out of a day when you choose one small thing (that serves as an element of a bigger goal, ideally) and you just nail it, and that strong success creates a domino effect of positive impact on your broader goal (and your life as a whole). For example, my “one thing” today might be to write an absolute killer article for The Simple Dollar.

The only caveat with that idea is that I’ve discovered, over time, that there is a limit to my productivity in a certain area of life in a given day. I can only write for so long before my writing quality rapidly declines. I can only exercise for so long before I feel dead and my arms are rubber. We aren’t robots.

So, what I’ve been doing lately is really focusing on the week ahead rather than the day ahead, and I’m creating a list of ten discrete tasks I want to absolutely nail this week. Most days, I try to nail two of them, but in very different areas so I don’t burn out.

I’ve found that this has been working incredibly well. For example, part of my list this week has been:
+ Conduct a dry run of my black belt test in taekwondo (it’s still pretty far off, but I want to be incredibly prepared for it)
+ Brainstorm and outline a week’s worth of articles for The Simple Dollar
+ Script, record, and edit a podcast episode (I’m involved with a podcast on tabletop gaming)
+ Do a double meal prep session (which should result in 7 full dinners in the freezer)
… and six other items.

Try it yourself. This Sunday, make a list of ten significant tasks you want to accomplish in the coming week. If you’re on a career path, make three or four of them career related, but also make some of them about other spheres of your life. Make it your goal to nail all of the items on the list this week.

5. E.B. White on explaining a joke

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.” — E.B. White

One of the interesting things about parenting is the need to sometimes explain jokes, particularly when kids are younger. The purpose of this isn’t to make that particular joke funny, but to enhance their understanding of and appreciation of humor so that future jokes are funny and they learn to cultivate their own humor.

This becomes awkward with other adults, though. If I tell a joke that completely whiffs, I usually just self-deprecate with it. “Oh, never mind… that was just an awful attempt at humor.”

Explaining a joke is rarely worth it, and should be avoided at all costs. White spells it out beautifully.

6. Basics with Babish – Pan Pizza

From the description:

This week on Basics, I’m taking another look at our beloved pizza and showing you how to make great pan pizza at home using a cast iron skillet, glass pie pan, or rimmed baking sheet.

I know how to make pan pizza, but I learned – at my count – seven little things to apply to my own homemade pizza making process from this video, and that’s why I wanted to share it.

This video manages to do everything that a good teaching video should do. It’s informative while still being entertaining. Not only that, it explains things in a way that a beginner could follow while still offering tips that a person familiar with the topic could find valuable. For me, for example, the single most valuable tip was that, when you’re trying to “stretch” pizza dough across a pan, stretch it a lot, then let it sit for a while, then you’ll be able to stretch it even further.

This is what I try to do – and on my best days, succeed at doing – with my writing. I try to write articles that are approachable to a beginner but include some useful stuff for regular readers and try to keep it interesting by weaving in anecdotes of my life. In this video, Babish pulls that all off really well.

Another thing worth noting – a video like this looks so effortless and clean when it’s done and you’re watching it, but I know from experience that a ton of work went on to make this video. This is something I’m going to touch on again in a bit.

7. Leo Tolstoy on changing the world

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy

How do you want to change the world?

I found that when I was younger, I wanted to change the world in the sense of being some kind of great leader or accomplishing something that would garner a bunch of media attention.

Today, I’d far rather change the world by improving a lot of lives in my community, or helping even a small portion of my readership actually improve their own lives.

I moved from someone who wanted to save all the starfish to someone who was perfectly content to throw back a starfish at a time.

I’ve learned over the years that the best route to being able to throw back a starfish at a time is to have your own life in good order first, to have a sense of what your strengths and weaknesses are, and to really focus on the individual you’re trying to help rather than focusing on making yourself into something “great.”

8. Plato on progress

No one should be discouraged […] who can make constant progress, even though it be slow.” – Plato

If you make it your aim to be just 1% better today than you were yesterday, and you keep that up for an entire year, then at the end of the year, you’ll be 35 times better than you were at the start of the year. Seriously.

Heck, if you make it your aim to just be 0.1% better today than you were yesterday, and you keep that up for an entire year, then at the end of the year, you’ll more than double your current state.

If you get exhausted after two minutes of running, strive to add 1% to that run each and every day. Run two minutes today, then two minutes and one second tomorrow, then two minutes and two seconds the day after that. After a while, you’ll start adding two seconds a day, then three seconds, then four, and so on, whatever 1% of your time is. In about four months, you’re running a 5K without a break. In about six months, you’re running a 10K. By the end of the year, you’re doing a marathon.

Strive to do a bit better at anything in your life, every single day, and you’ll find yourself approaching greatness with surprising speed.

9. Five Books

Over the last several months, I’ve gotten more book recommendations from this site than I can even count. I’ve wound up looking for and requesting an incredible number of books from the library because of delves into this site.

The site basically conducts interviews with people in which they suggest five key books related to their career path or area of focus in life. For example, David Allen, the writer of Getting Things Done (a seminal productivity book), offered a list of five great productivity books and Joe Posnanski, a great sportswriter, recommended five books on baseball.

The thing I’ve found interesting is that, if I go to one of the interviews on a topic I’m interested in and I find that I’ve read one or two of the five suggested books and really enjoyed them, my interest in the other three skyrockets and I’m immediately requesting books from the library. This is far more likely to happen if I know I’m on board with one or two of the books than if I’ve never heard of any of the choices.

This is just a great place to dive if you’re looking for recommendations.

10. Michelangelo on genius

“If you knew how much work was put into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.” – Michelangelo

Quite often, what we think of as genius is actually the result of almost countless hours of incredibly focused work and deliberate practice. We see a basketball player make an astounding play, but what we don’t see is the fact that he or she spends several hours each day, every day, prepping for that moment, shooting baskets and running sprints and lifting weights and making passes and shooting turnarounds and on and on and on. We see a truly breathtaking piece of art, but what we don’t see is the many, many hours that went into every tiny speck of detail in that piece, and the many, many, many hours of practice and effort that went into building up the skill even needed to attempt it.

The best part is that a lot of that stunning stuff seems almost simple, like we could almost do it ourselves. We could make that basketball pass. We could make that creative play. We could bake that cake. Often, absurd high levels of skill make something very difficult look very simple.

If you want to get good at something, there’s nothing like hard work and deliberate practice. There is no real shortcut.

11. The “reading hour”

At the start of this current school year, I decided to start doing some of my heaviest reading right in front of my kids when they got home from school for about an hour or so. When they get home, I greet them and talk for a bit, set up shop on the kitchen table, put on noise-cancelling headphones, and read for a while. I do this at the same time that they’re doing after school chores or homework.

My original aim here was just to set an example for them of how to study. I wanted to demonstrate best studying practices for them in a very clear and tangible way and also make it clear that deep reading is part of a healthy adult life.

What has happened has been wonderful. Not only have I had more time to dig through some pretty challenging books, the practice has already rubbed off on the kids after just a few weeks. Once a few after-school chores are done (mostly related to taking care of pets and a few really straightforward household chores), they use that same exact time to camp out at the same table and dive into their homework, or if they don’t have anything, they start reading on their own as well. They’re not turning to the Switch or to online games or Youtube or anything like that. They’re either studying or reading.

I’ve started to call this the “reading hour,” and it has quickly become one of my favorite parts of the day.

12. Mark Twain on information

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” – Mark Twain

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve largely stopped reading or watching “the news” aside from a brief one or two minute scan of the headlines that I mostly do so I can follow conversations. This doesn’t mean I don’t read about current events, but I find that “fast” reporting is so error-prone and usually so full of bias that it usually puts the wrong idea in my head – something that’s either factually wrong or incredibly biased. I’d rather wait for detailed quality reporting, and that takes time.

So, does that mean I’m uninformed? In terms of headline news, I probably am. However, does the headline news ever actually change anything about my life? Am I ever going to take action on it? Almost never, and if I were to take action, it would probably be a bad action. Good quality reporting, on the other hand, often spurs me to do something, or at least helps shape my way of thinking.

The world seems to want quick reporting, but I’d rather have slow reporting with fact-checking and quality. It feels good to know that Mark Twain seems to agree.

The post Inspiration from Mario Quintana, Natalie Fratto, Mark Twain, Pan Pizza, and More! appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Parents: Cash In on Your Kids’ Old Car Seats at Walmart and Target

You know that old car seat your kid has outgrown that’s taking up space in your garage covered in juice stains and Cheez-It crumbs? Dump it in your trunk and bring it to Target or Walmart this month to snag some sweet savings on future purchases.

Coinciding with National Baby Safety Month, both mega retailers are hosting car seat trade-in events. 

Target’s program, which is in its fourth year, started Sept. 3 and will continue through Sept. 13 at all stores. The retailer is accepting all types of seats — even boosters. You can even return your car seat bases.

If your car seat is damaged or expired, Target will still take it. The company has partnered with Waste Management to recycle the old parts.

In exchange, Target is giving out coupons for 20% off select baby gear, including strollers and new car seats. Return your used car seat to the store’s guest services desk — you may see a large collection box nearby — to get your coupon, which is valid through Sept. 14.

Walmart’s car seat trade-in event is the first for the retailer. It’ll take place Sept. 16-30 at nearly 4,000 participating stores. The program won’t be available at all Walmart Neighborhood Market stores.

Bring your used car seats in any condition to the customer service desk where you’ll be rewarded with a $30 Walmart gift card. The retailer, however, won’t accept booster seats. The waste management company TerraCycle will recycle all materials.

Though Walmart suggests using the gift card to purchase more baby items, you can use it for anything, and it never expires. The trade-in program limits two gift cards per household.

Nicole Dow is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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Finding Your Tribe Without Emptying Your Wallet

One of the most powerful books I’ve ever read was Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The book’s focus is on how, in the last fifty years, people in America have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how many social structures, from bowling leagues and bridge clubs to the PTA and churches, have disintegrated, leaving much less social structure in their place.

The thing to remember is that the purpose of such groups isn’t to develop one or two lifelong friendships, but to develop social cohesion – a much larger roster of friends that you enjoy spending time with and sharing some of your resources with because you have overlapping interests. You meet up not because you’re best pals, but because you have some things in common. Sure, some individually strong friendships might develop, but social cohesion comes from having a larger number of individually less intense relationships – a cloth woven from strings rather than a rope or two.

What’s replaced that, for many of us, is a false sense of “social” structure. We fill our own homes with entertainment to distract us and find fault in our neighbors. We “touch base” with social media and texting, but rarely make actual time for each other. We use the internet to endlessly debate minor differences and keep raising the vitriol level to an unhealthy point. Most of the media changes of the last sixty years or so – television, the internet, cell phones – have made it easier and easier to not interact face to face while still maintaining a weak thread to other people, one that’s easier than ever to just quietly sever without noticing it. That, in the end, leaves us feeling lonely and isolated.

Throughout human history, humans have always congregated toward others, particularly those with common interests. We’re wired to do this because survival is easier as a group rather than by ourselves. On some deep biological level, we need to be around other people to maintain our mental well-being. That’s why loneliness is such a negative feeling.

On a deep level, many of us feel this sense of loneliness and lack of social cohesion, and whenever there’s a negative feeling inside of us, you can be sure that many businesses will pop up trying to “fix” that negative feeling. There are many businesses out there that strive to try to recreate that sense of social cohesion and give people a “tribe” to be a part of, whether it’s something like Crossfit or a martial arts school, a coworking space or a coffee shop, or even a church, which now seem to exist in every imaginable variety from large megachurches with arena seating to small groups gathering in what feels like a living room.

In many ways, all of those organizations and businesses are striving for the same thing: they want to fill that hole in people that’s created by the lack of social cohesion and loneliness.

The catch, of course, is that such organizations and businesses also often aim to extract money from your pocket at the same time. It costs money to hang out in a coffee shop or a bar or to use a coworking location or to join a martial arts school; even a church typically expects tithing. Those places do an excellent job of fostering community around a common interest, but they can really drain your finances along the way, as you’re essentially paying for staff to help facilitate that community and for the location with which to meet up.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a social group that comes with a cost to secure people and facilities. There are many situations where that’s good and necessary. However, it doesn’t need to be a requirement for such a group.

The question I’m really asking is how do you “find your tribe” and find that kind of social cohesion today without simply opening the wallet and paying for that kind of social cohesion? This is a question I’ve been trying to suitably answer myself for years, and here’s what I’ve figured out.

First of all, there are a lot more free social groups and organizations in your community than you might think. The problem is that it’s often a bit tricky to find them. There isn’t a place you can go to just get a list of every open social group in your town. You have to dig around for them.

Here are some great places to look:
+ The website for your city – look for the community calendar or a list of civic organizations
+ The website of the parks and recreation department for your city
+ The website of the local newspaper that covers your city – look for calendars of local events
+ The website of the library in your city – look for their calendar of activities
+ The websites of the nearest colleges and universities – again, look for their calendar of activities
+ Meetup
+ The websites of businesses in your area related to your interests – see if they have calendars of in-store or community events

I live in rural Iowa and, following those steps, I was able to find dozens of potential groups to join and events that might coalesce into groups. Almost none of those groups come with costs – they’re usually organized by individuals doing it for pleasure and facilitated in public places or by businesses making the space available for promotional reasons.

What if you can’t find groups related to your interests? Start one. It’s actually not that hard. You simply need to secure a location for this type of meetup, which can usually be done by communicating with the local parks and recreation department or with businesses that might have space available and would be willing to let your group use that space, and then set a time and date and then promote the meetup as far and wide as you can. Share the information on every community group on social media, on every bulletin board you can find, and with local media as well. If there are any local groups even remotely related to the topic, share it with them, too. Come prepared to make things work in the way you’re envisioning – for example, if it’s hobby related, bring along plenty of things related to the hobby.

If you do start such a group, remember this: you may be needed to keep the ball rolling sometimes, or it may be that others take the ball and run with it. In either case, go with the flow. You’ll definitely need to nudge it along at the start, but if things go well, it will find a life of its own. Don’t hesitate to ask others to help by promoting the group or bringing new people or securing locations or whatever else needs to be done.

After a while, you may want to start hosting regular events yourself for smaller groups. Over time, I moved from attending some community game days to actually hosting a regular game day at my home for a rotating group of people. While I still participate in the larger community group (numbering 50-100 people), the people I invite are interested in a smaller niche (longer strategic games) – a tribe within a tribe, you might say. I’m also a part of a smaller book club after participating in larger book groups at the local library.

These steps have led me to have good friendships with a wide variety of people in my local area without spending a lot of money for it. I have good social connections with more people in my life right now than I have had at perhaps any other time in my life, including college, and it’s largely because I put in the effort to find these kinds of groups and, in a few cases, launch them myself.

Finding your tribe and finding the kind of social connection we all desire doesn’t mean you have to pay to go to Crossfit or hang out at a bar every night handing endless cash to the bartender. You just have to look around your community with an open mind and an open heart. Your tribe is out there waiting for you.

Good luck!

The post Finding Your Tribe Without Emptying Your Wallet appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Dear Penny: We’re in a Deep Financial Hole. Is There Any Way Out?

Dear L.,

You’re probably spending every waking millisecond wondering if this will be the day that the repo man shows up, the eviction notice arrives, or the power is disconnected. To say that it’s an anxiety-inducing way to live is a gross understatement.

And often when something is the source of great anxiety, it’s tempting to avoid it. You just want to get through another day, and asking for help is daunting. But you’ve got to.

A good place to start is the United Way-run 211 helpline, which is available to about 90% of the U.S. population. You dial 211, and you’ll be routed to a regional calling center that can give you information about rent and utility assistance, and guide you through the labyrinth of social services you may qualify for. They can also direct you to local food banks that could help you save money on necessities and free up some cash for bills. 

Another good thing about starting with 211 is that it’s a lot less intimidating to talk about your finances with someone you don’t owe money to — which brings me to the next thing I’m going to ask you to do.

You need to call everyone you owe and be brutally honest about your situation. Keeping your family sheltered is the No. 1 priority, so start with your landlord. 

You don’t say whether you’re employed or have other sources of income. If you do, you’ll be in a better position to negotiate a plan to get caught up. For example, you might be able to work out a plan where you pay by the week and tack on a small part of your past-due rent to your weekly payments. 

If you had a good track record of making on-time payments and are able to show that your current circumstances are the result of a one-time emergency, they’ll be even more willing to work with you. 

As for your car loan, some lenders may be willing to work out a forbearance plan, where you get a break of about a month or two on payments, but you’ll still have to make them up. They’ll consider your payment history, along with the reason for your request and how likely you are to actually get caught up.

Your utility company may have options for you as well, such as putting you on a payment plan or referring you to your local Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that can help with your bills.

Even if you’re not able to work out a payment plan for your past-due bills, talking to your landlord and creditors can mitigate the damage. For example, if you still can’t afford your rent, you and your landlord might be able to agree on a move-out date so you can avoid an eviction on your credit report.

Of course, if you have any way to earn extra money by doing odd jobs, working extra shifts or selling valuables, now is the time to do it.

You can also go to benefit.gov to learn about what government programs you may qualify for, but keep in mind that your application could take several weeks to process and even longer to get benefits.

Ultimately, you need to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. Maybe that means temporarily moving in with family or into a shelter, or surrendering your car and relying on public transportation.

But until you ask for help you won’t know what resources are available. While there’s no easy fix for this situation, you do have options — but the longer you wait, the fewer you’ll have.

Robin Hartill is a senior editor at The Penny Hoarder and the voice behind Dear Penny. Send your questions about debt to AskPenny@thepennyhoarder.com.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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First-time buyers ditching traditional starter homes and buying three-bedroom properties

This week's best current accounts

This week's best current accounts Stephen Little Fri, 09/06/2019 - 08:00

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First published on 8 May 2013

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20 ways to turn trash into cash

20 ways to turn trash into cash Emma Lunn Fri, 09/06/2019 - 09:13

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Will gifting my buy-to-let property lead to a big capital gains tax bill?

Will gifting my buy-to-let property lead to a big capital gains tax bill?

I have a buy-to-let (BTL) property with my daughter as tenant, using a mortgage for family members. I plan to pay off the mortgage and transfer ownership to my daughter. As I understand it, HMRC will view transferring ownership as selling it, so I will incur capital gains tax (CGT). The property is in south-east London and has increased significantly in value. As we’d have no income from a ‘sale’, the potential CGT is likely to be beyond our means or at best difficult to achieve.

We have two children and intend to pass on the house we live in to our son, so no IHT will be due. I believe the BTL property will be classed as an asset with IHT due at the normal rate at the time.

This is not an attractive option as my daughter would have to sell to pay the CGT.  Both properties are similar in value at about £350,000 each. I am married. Is there a better way to pass on the BTL property or will I have to find the money for the CGT?

Ray Black Fri, 09/06/2019 - 09:13

From

PB/Bedford

Assuming your daughter is no longer classed as a dependant, you are correct that the sale or transfer of the BTL property to her will count as a disposal for CGT purposes. CGT is payable in the January following the tax year in which an asset is sold. For example, if the sale was agreed in August 2019, then the tax is not due until January 2021.

You could transfer the property into a trust for the benefit of your daughter and then elect to defer the CGT until a later point – that is, when the property is sold. At that point, your daughter may qualify for main residence relief, which would help to reduce the eventual CGT tax liability payable. Please note, though, that property trusts are complex and can be expensive to set up. You should seek both legal and tax advice before proceeding in this way.

Another option for you to consider is to sell your daughter only a percentage of the property rather than all of it. This may help to reduce the CGT liability to the point that you may even be able to keep the value of transfer within your own allowance. This could mean that there is no CGT payable at all. You’ll need to speak to an accountant to make sure you get all the numbers right.

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“Rent control seems great for tenants”: Moneywise readers have their say