Rob and Melissa Stephenson, from Flea Market Flipper, talk about one flip that paid for a new SUV.
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How 1 Flip Bought Us A New SUV!!
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers! On today's episode we are talking about a new car and more specifically how one large flip almost paid the entire amount for our new but used car. Alright, guys, today's going to be another fun episode. We kind of like to open your mind to what the possibilities are with this business, how we use the business in our everyday life and what we do.
So what better way than to jump on here and talk about one of the new cars we got a couple months back.
Melissa: It was actually my birthday present. So we woke up on my birthday and you said, hey, do you want to know what your birthday present is? That could be a loaded question. So I was like, I don't really know what like, what do you know?
What are you trying to get? I don't know. Like, cause he likes to buy random. Like I, I don't, I never know. You don't know, like, you don't know what you're going to get. So I'm like, I think so maybe, I don't know. And I also don't like to spend money. So I'm, I'm very, you don't, you'd like to get stuff at a good deal. But neither of us are big spenders, but you're more of a spender than I am.
I don't want, I don't like to spend money. So I'm like, do I want to know what you're doing? I don't know. So anyways, he told me as soon as we woke up.
Rob: I did. I showed her and I said, this is it. And she got really excited about it. And she said, absolutely. So we actually went and bought, I found it on marketplace.
So if you guys don't know, if you haven't been around here long, I don't buy new stuff. We don't ever really buy anything new,
Melissa: nothing like in our house, all of our, and it's not that we don't have nice things. Like there's our, our dishwasher is like one of those nice drawer ones, but I think you got it for free.
Did you get that one for free? I don't remember.
Rob: We, this is our second one. So
Melissa: like the Fisher and Paykel or whatever it is, like we have nice appliances, but they're all used. They're all not new.
Rob: They are. So we got a really good deal. So the back to our story about the car. So, at the time, so we don't have new cars.
I, right now we have two diesel. I, I drive a diesel, an F250. An old, my F250 is like a 2000. I love it. I love my diesel trucks. And then we have an excursion. It's like a 2002. So both of them, both of them over 20 years old. And I like them and I started having some issues with them. I also know how to fix and by just doing this more and more, I learned these two, they're both the same motors, this is a 7- 3, diesel motor, Ford makes the, the motor. I think it's the best motor they ever made, but when stuff goes wrong on them, I slowly, they are, but I slowly learn how to do it, and I do that kind of stuff, right now.
So, I had probably, a month where something was going down on the truck, something was going down on the excursion. And I'm like, okay, listen guys, we need something that is, we need something that's reliable. I need to buy something that's reliable. So we can, I still love both my other vehicles. I love the truck.
I love the excursion. We won't sell those because I love them. But I knew Melissa was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated too
Melissa: because when you're down to one vehicle, it gets hard because we really, we have got kids going to different places and different. Yeah. We're just all over the place with the schedule.
Like going, getting picked up here. One's going to sports here. So we can't really have one vehicle. So.
Rob: All right. So now you're caught up. You're caught up to Melissa's birthday. We wake up and I show her on the phone. I say, do you want to see your birthday present? She says yes. And I show her on the phone and I didn't know, cause it could have gone either way.
She could have been like, no, we're not buying that. I don't want to spend money on that. And she could have said that cause she does that sometimes, but
I think because of what car it was, She was super excited about it and she wanted it. So, I, I coaxed her with that and I got her.
Melissa: And you said you're going to use your eBay account.
I did. So, for that too, so that helped too.
Rob: Another pre frame of the story is we have a separate bank account that all my sales through eBay go into. It's kind of like our fun money, our travel money, or our when we need something money. Just like it was, you guys remember if you've heard any of our stories before, we had money on eBay and that was all the money that we used for to go traveling or new trips, stuff like that. So it's similar to that right now.
Melissa: And you had just had a sale, which we're going to talk about too, which kind of prompted.
Rob: That's it. So I had enough money in the account. I still don't tell you guys what the car is, but I had enough money in the account to be able to go and buy this car. I negotiated the guy down on the car, it was cool.
So there's a couple of different factors in what we paid for this car and the thing about it. So, what it was is it is a, 2014 Cadillac Escalade,
Melissa: our newest car.
Rob: It is by far our newest car by like 15 years. So the cool thing about it was, was it had high miles on it? So we didn't pay a ton of money for it. But it is a beautiful every, it was like in mint condition inside and out. Beautiful, beautiful car. The only bad thing was it had high miles, so, and I'm not totally scared of high miles. Our excursion and our F250, my F250's got I think almost 600,000 miles on it.
Melissa: 600?
Rob: Our, my excursion has three or two, just 250,000 or somewhere around there.
So I'm not super scared of high miles. But those are diesel motors. Yeah, this is a gas motor, so that is a little bit different. But I still thought it could be something and this one has had I think 260 or 250 on a gas motor. That's a lot of a lot of miles. But if it's taken very well care of and when you look at this the inside of it is mint condition. Somebody took really really good care of it outside.
No dings. No dents. It's in really really good shape. So somebody really took good care of it, which means, probably they had the oil changed. They did all the maintenance on the car and they kept it up really, really nicely, when we went to see it, I took Melissa to see it and she was excited about it because it is a beautiful car. And it ran very, very nice. So, I knew somebody took care of it, which now we've had it for a couple months now. And we haven't had one problem with it and we've taken it already across the country. I did, the Escalade. And the whole reason why I thought she would like this is because we've had an Escalade before.
We had a 2007 Escalade. A couple, it's been years ago. Did we have it with the kids?
Melissa: Yeah, when they were tiny. When they were little. But then it broke and we, yeah, and then we didn't. We couldn't get it fixed
Rob: again. No, and then I sold it like that. So, But anyway, So that's what it was. I showed her, I asked her if she wanted it and she said yes and she was excited about it.
But the main factor on this was that I had the money from an eBay sale. This was right after we sold a dishwasher on ebay and it was a commercial dishwasher the Hobart dishwasher We probably did a podcast on it or a story about it. We might not have. i'm not sure, but
Melissa: we didn't do a couple podcasts for a little while. So we might not so might not.
Rob: But if we didn't I paid was it $250 or $350 for it.
Do you remember? Don't quote me. It was either $250 or $350. We bought it on the way back from a road trip that we did put it in the back of the truck. I think we did do a story about this because it broke the back of my truck. Was one of the frustrations because on the way back, my rear end, the rear axle on the truck actually went out and we had to have the truck towed home when we bought this dishwasher.
So I think we have told a story about it, but we bought the dishwasher. $250 or $350, whatever it was. We sold it for $6,250. $6, 250. And that was the money that I had sitting in on the eBay account that we have. And that was the money that I wanted to use to be able to buy this. So, drum roll, what we ended up paying for the Escalade, we paid $7,500 for the Escalade.
The gentleman was asking $10,000. We settled.
Melissa: In true form, you had to negotiate.
Rob: We did. We settled. settled on $8,000 once I, before I got there, I negotiated with him and we settled on $8,000. I do it just like I tell everybody, hey, I have $8,000 cash. Would you be interested? Would you take $8,000 cash for today?
He wrote back. Sorry, I offered him $7,500 and he said he would take $8,000 cash today. So we went there, and I ended up talking, which I don't like to do this a lot.
Melissa: No, you don't usually, that's a big point. You don't like to go back and say anything else. But there was, it wasn't, what was it?
Rob: Well, tires, they, and he didn't say anything about the tires that they were bald.
They were, yeah, not totally bald, but they definitely, were, need to be replaced. And I told him, and tires, I think we ended up spending cause I replaced them right after we bought it. I think we ended up spending like $800 or $900 on tires. So, but I knew that ahead of time. So when I got there, I asked him why saw the tires when I got there.
So I asked him if he would take the extra $500 off to help me pay for the tires. And he was willing to do it because he didn't disclose that in a listing and he disclosed, I think the sunroof needed a new motor. So one or two things he did disclose, but he didn't disclose this. And I told him that I was going to have to pay for it.
Anyways, he's very, very nice guy. Really, really enjoyed meeting the guy and, and buying the car from him, but he did agree to go to $7,500 on the car. All that being said is, one flip almost paid for this entire car that we bought. Which, it's amazing that our side hustle, or full time gig, whatever you want to call it, that we have this in our back pocket, this knowledge how to buy and sell items, it paid for this, this new used car for us, which is really, really cool.
Melissa: I like driving it. It's pretty cool. It was a, it was an awesome birthday present. So, and I, like I said, I don't like to buy. I am not a big spender. I don't like to spend money on, on things, but it's, it drives really nice. And I actually really, I really enjoy driving it. I don't even like driving that much anymore, but I enjoy driving that.
Rob: And if you're watching this, I mean, if you're listening to this, we'll have, the video version of this. We'll actually put some clips of the car so you can see what it looks like, but it's a beautiful car. The other thing is retail on this car was over a hundred thousand dollars. Escalades are not cheap.
So this was the platinum version of the Escalade. Really cool. It's got the, the steps that fold down when you open the doors and fold up. So it's a really, really cool car and it was in great, great condition. But all that being said was, it's amazing that we have a side hustle that with one or two flips, a couple of flips can buy something like this.
And you can use this to whatever you want to do, whatever you need, whatever it is, you have this in your back pocket that we know we can sell, make some money to be able to do this. If it's a used car, if it's a new car, whatever it is, you can totally do it. So.
Melissa: So if you haven't been trying to, you know, sharpen your skills in this flipping gig and you've wanted to, here is your time to go do it. This is us saying go and learn those skills. Cause these, it is, it is something, I don't know, this flipping gig has saved us so many times in the past before we even like, it was always, it was always there. It's given me a piece to know, like anytime we're in a crunch, if we need to make quick money, we can, like we, we have the skills to be able to do that.
So if that's something that you're interested in, if you like our business model, we have a workshop, you can check out our free workshop.
Rob: I was just gonna say that so it's all right if we send them to the workshop. Yes. Sweet the workshop you'll actually get to see a little bit more of how we find these high profit items, and you're gonna check it out that out too for yourself and see why this is such an amazing, amazing business model that we absolutely have grown, to love for what it's able to do for us in our business.
Melissa: So the link will be in the show notes. You can check that out if, our business model seems like it would be appealing for you. We love it. We love the people that we've been able to help with it and yeah, you can check it out and we'll see you on the next episode.
Rob: You are so amazing. Stick to flipping, get better at it.
We can't wait to see you guys on the next episode.