Archive for January 2017

It's no secret that you need money to live and I am not the most proactive person in the world which I will be the first to admit, so when I became exposed to the gigantically overpriced bill, aka. life, I quickly gathered that living of bank of Mum and Dad was not going to last long and I needed to make my own money.

The prospect of getting a job did not appeal to me as I didn't want to be tied down to hours in order to make a bit of cash along side being in full time education and so I turned to the internet, like any other millennial and google'd 'how to make money without a job'. So, I tried countless survey sites which offered me no more that pounds and pennies with the occasional gift card (if I was lucky), but even this took weeks.

After several failed attempts at making quick cash I decided to sell some old clothes on eBay to get quick cash, which I did. This then became a hobby and I would mostly sell clothes to buy clothes, essentially making buying new clothes cost neutral whilst also making a bit of extra money. (I was able to make money after buying clothes as buying a full priced item is unthinkable, maybe I'll talk about some tips and tricks for buying things you want in a later post).

This continued to snowball and now I have a small shop on eBay that makes a nice little profit that means I don't need a job in order to afford fun days out and fancy meals etc...

I stock my small shop with mostly charity shop and boot sale items. I buy the clothing for a few pound a piece and if it's a big brand I can then sell that item for a couple times the amount of money that I paid. What I really like about this is that I'm giving money to charity when I buy some of my stock and then when I sell it, the buyer is still getting a good deal as the item is a fraction of the cost if they had bought it in the shop and I make a little profit in the middle. Everyone is happy.

Here is a little break down of a recent shopping trip I went on to re-stock (what I paid and what I sold it for) -

Topshop jeans x2: I paid £3 each pair and sold each pair for £15 (RRP: £30)

Next work trousers: I paid £1 and sold them for £6 (RRP: £20)

American Apparel skirt: I paid £4 and sold it for £20 (RRP: £60)

Atmosphere dress x3: I paid £1.50 each and sold them for £7 each (RRP: £15)

In total I paid £15.50 and made a gross profit of £61.50

*All my RRP are ball park figures going off similar stock that is currently being sold by the companies

*I don't normally get this many high ticket items but I imagine a lot of people had a clear out around Christmas time so this is a particularly good shop with a big profit margin, how much I make fluctuates throughout the year. I also tend to stick to ladies clothing, mostly the same size as myself as I have more knowledge on what items I can sell and how much for.

Something else I recently became involved with were the deal sites that operate as forums and allow users to post deals they find. (I find Hot Deals the best site for this) I take full advantage of this and keep an eye out for the price glitches online, but this is a bit hit and miss. If an item is incorrectly priced online sometimes they send out the items and sometimes they don't.

I bought a Laura Geller makeup set for £15 (RRP: £60) and sold it for £30. I believe the item should have been displayed as £45 as shortly after I bought the item it was taken off the site and all similar make up sets were £45. The offer on eBay at the time was £1 selling fees on 100 items and so instead of fees alone being £3 on this item, fees for all the items I sold last month were £1 when they should have been roughly £20. (eBay/Paypal take 10% of profits as fees). Overall, I spent £15 and made a profit of £15, so I doubled my money! (minus a few pence for fees after the £1 is averaged out across all the items I sold whilst the £1 fee deal was on).

Another great find I got my hands on was the You Beauty make up advent calendar which had £270+ worth of goodies inside (24 items) and before Christams cost £70 and after Christmas I bought for £35 at 50% off. This was a cost neutral deal with a small profit as there were a few items I didn't want and so sold 4 of the items for £10 each which essentially made the rest of the items that I kept free.

(These are just a few examples from the past week or two)

This sort of savy-ness has allowed me to be my own boss and shop in order to make a small income every month whilst I am a full time student. I have a rotating wardrobe stocked with high priced items that I buy for a fraction of the price and beauty products that are essentially free!

*Postage costs were not included in any of the prices listed, the buyer paid for this on top of the cost of the item itself.

I'd be lying if I was to say that I have never felt pressured by society's image of what a woman should look like. I can remember so vividly watching videos of perfect women and their perfect bodies and scrolling through endless Tumblr accounts of Thinspo. Even saything that word in my head takes be back to being 15 *shudder*. By no means did I have any form of mental/eating disorder but the dreaded calorie counting started and didn't stop for several years. At this point I really didn't understand nutrition and became frustrated living on 1,200 of the wrong kind of calories and not losing weight.

This was a mentality I believed for several years until the fitness movement really took a hold and blew the skinny obsession out of the water, well....for me at least.

Throughout 2016 I wised up on nutrition and became more and more exposed to photos of super fit, toned and muscular women who were a world away from the thigh gaps and collar bones I had previously been aspiring to. It was like a switch, my brain did a complete 180 and all I wanted was to be fit, not just skinny.

When I was younger I was the flabby kind of skinny, I had no muscle which gave the illusion of being slim and all I wanted was to fit into the next size down. Working out and building muscle was a scary thought because at first I got bigger (or at least psychologically thought I did). It wasn't until about 6 weeks into working out that I saw my thighs become lean and the layer of fat was disappearing which revealed the muscle that I had been building underneath. This happened all over my body. Funnily enough, after beginning to overlook the weight loss obsession that felt as if it were hard wired into my brain and focus on fitness was when I really started to lose weight!

Now, to coin a phrase "abs are made in the kitchen", there is really no denying that working out is useless without a good diet. By no means do I follow the perfect plan, I still eat chocolate everyday (I battle my own inner demons on a daily basis - demons that take the form of a sweet tooth) but I incorporated my '5 a day', that old chestnut. Cravings began to alleviate as my body was receiving the nutrition it wanted. As well as this, the simple fact that eating more fruit and vegetables were filling me up and so I naturally ate less sugary foods to keep me fueled.

I am by no means perfect and on the days I eat a lot of 'bad foods' I tell myself that it's okay - every now and again you need to rev up your metabolism to stop it slowing down. I'd just kick my ass extra hard in my workout that day.

Being in such a happy head space allows me to appreciate the trends that are changing for the good and that instead of my social media feeds being filled with thinspo, I see smiling fit and healthy women who look like they can take on the world.

Fit is truly the new skinny...Or at least in my head it is.

*Disclaimer: I am not commenting on whether being skinny or not is a good or bad thing but that being healthy is what really matters and with health comes endless opportunities.

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