So, about a month  ago I made the realization that to achieve my very ambitious goal of earning $20,000 before I go to college I need to be making $600 a month. This to me, a fifteen-year-old kid who can’t drive himself, can’t get a “real” job and goes to school every weekday seemed insane but I tried and here is what I learned. 

The reason I even managed to get any money into my savings account that month was mostly luck and good timing. As I have mentioned this before I sell stuff on Ebay and at this time I happened to be selling four things. The first item I was selling  was an in-home portable planetarium, the second being my saxophone I had laying around which I used throughout middle school, third an astronomical picture-taking device my dad asked me to sell and finally 18 pounds of Legos.

I will first start with the thing that was the most money, obviously the saxophone. I bought this saxophone when I was in 6th grade when it had been used for 2 years prior. I then used it throughout my 3 years in band and I took good care of it. I cleaned it after every practice, I didn’t ever drop it, although it did have a dent in it from the person who owned it before me though it was still in good condition. So this saxophone has been used for five years plus and I am now a sophomore in high school which means it is 7 years old so considering I bought it for $950 and looking at other sellers on Ebay and offer up I decided to try and sell it for $500, however, my dad decided he wanted most of the money because he paid for it which was fair enough so it ends up selling for $460 plus $29.99 shipping and I ended up getting $60.

The next thing I sold was my dad’s astronomical picture-taking device. My dad purchased this for $250 and I sold it for $165 and I think I got $25 for it. After that was the planetarium. We had found the planetarium at a 2nd hand store probably a year or two ago for $15. We bought it after we looked on Ebay for how much they were going for. It seemed some were going for $100-$200 but all of them looked like different models so we bought it with the plan that if we didn’t use it we could sell it, which we did use it… once or twice, and then never touched it again. Recently I decided to put it up on Ebay for a bid and surprisingly it sold for just shy of $100. I shipped it off and sent it out and thought that was it, well it was not, apparently I was selling it as the pro model when it was really the classic. The guy wanted a refund, so he sent it back and I paid him the money and it was only after I paid him I realized he swapped one of the discs and there was a new one inside that still had the packaging instead of the old one. I don’t know if I got scammed or what so I just put it again up for a bid on Ebay, I did not try very hard on the listing and just ended up with $66. 

The last and final thing I sold was Legos which my mom decided it was finally time to get rid of them. We tried selling them at our garage sale and sold two bags but we still had 18 lbs. I ended up selling the $18 for $80 which my mom let me keep all of it. A few weeks after I sold everything my mom and I noticed that there was an $80 transaction from Ebay in the Paypal account. No one in our family bought anything or even went on Ebay that day. I later discovered that it was sellers fees which I did not know existed. I just assumed Ebay  made money by taking a cut our of shipping or listing fees. In the end, I just dissolved the money from the planetarium into the Paypal account as compensation for the fees. In total, I made $175 which I put all into my savings account.

Here is what I learned. Goals are hard, and one of the hardest things about them for me is starting, because “I don’t have time right now” or “I’ll do it tomorrow” but everyone always has time, every single day of your life, time goes by and you just have to choose what you want to spend it on. In my life, I use my time on things, retrospectively things I wish I didn’t spend my time on. There are so many things I want to do in my life but I will not do any of them if I spend every evening sitting on the couch watching Youtube. My goal of earning 20k before collage is not dying, however at this time I am not determined enough to work hard enough for the money. This summer I will hopefully get a summer job and I will be able to get back on track to earning enough money. I may do summer sales or I heard working on a farm makes good money, but the most important thing to focus on is what you can do now. Goals are hard, life is hard, learn to live with it.