Rob and Melissa Stephenson, from Flea Market Flipper, talk about how to pay for your vacations with your flipping side hustle.
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How to pay for your vacations with your flipping side hustle!!
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we're going to have some fun. We're going to talk about vacation and how we pay for our vacation with our flipping side hustle.
Rob: All right, guys, today you are in store, all vacation talk about what we love to do is pay for our vacations with our flipping side hustle. Give you guys some tips and tricks on how you can do it too. So hopefully you enjoy this episode as much as I'm going to enjoy recording it for you!
Melissa: Because you love vacation.
So if you've been around at all, any of our stuff before, you probably have heard how much Rob loves vacation. Because it is actually the thing that really fuels you to actually do work. It is. I would say, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. Like that is your, like, you need something to motivate you. Because he's not a workaholic.
He works hard, but he's not somebody who is working all the time. You want to have fun. So we're going to kind of dive into what we've done the last couple of years for, flipping while on road trips. But also this kind of sparked just the other day, we were talking with friends trying to plan our summer this year. So we're like, oh, we were telling them like they should come on this trip with us or let's go do this together. But might need some extra money. Let's go flip something to make it happen. So we're gonna kind of dive into that.
Rob: Cool backstory is this friend that we are talking to about, you know traveling this summer with us going out, spending a couple weeks on the road, 20 some years ago I approached him about going on a cruise and he didn't have the money to go on a cruise. So I said, let's make the money together. We'll go and buy a couple things and we'll be able to pay for the whole entire cruise. We did it. We ended up buying a couple items from a local auction that I had gone to.
I've talked about that before with you guys, Salvation Army Auction. Bought a couple things. We turned around and sold them. Made at the time it was probably a thousand dollars, maybe a little bit over and he was able to go on the cruise, have a blast with us.
Melissa: That was like when you were 18, right?
Rob: This is a long time ago. And now we're in a similar boat, except both of us have, wives and both of us have families, kids, and they wanted to do this fun road trip with us. So I'm like, dude, you know, what'd be amazing.
Melissa: We could make a fun story out of it.
Rob: We could build a story around helping you guys flip something or flip multiple things to be able to pay for the whole entire vacation, because Melissa and I are so good at doing that.
So, he's like, okay, do I have to be on camera? And I said, you absolutely have to be on camera because it'll be fun, but he's on board with it. We're just trying to figure out if we want to try and flip it before we go and make the money or we want to flip it while we're on the road. We'll buy a couple things.
Melissa: Probably both is what we're going to end up doing. Probably. So last summer, we actually didn't end up going on a road trip, which was the first one in five years because we've done it four years in a row. And we're, we're planning on it again this summer. Cause last summer you didn't like that we didn't do it.
Rob: I did not. I enjoy our summer trip.
Melissa: Yeah. So, just to kind of give you an, an overview, like, well, I think we started this. When did we start this? Oh, it went in 2020.
Rob: 2020.
Melissa: 2020 and during COVID, your brother in law, our brother in law passed away. And so we bought a 15 passenger van, took his sister, two of his sisters, four of our nieces, our three kids piled up in this this 15 passenger van and had a trailer because we had a lot of stuff with us.
Everybody had, you know, suitcases and stuff. But we didn't fill up the trailer because we're like, whatever. And then halfway through the trip, we're like, oh, we have an empty trailer. What if we could bring some stuff back? And that's kind of how it started. And we did the road trip cause we wanted to get everybody's mind off everything and just go see the country.
We had never been out West. We'd never driven out there. We've never seen any of the national parks. And that was our first time. And then after that, we were hooked. So.
Rob: Yeah, and it was like Melissa said, we brought the trailer. It was an enclosed trailer that I had. We brought it, not for buying items because we didn't, it wasn't really on our radar.
We just needed it to hold all of our luggage for traveling for a month. Yeah. We had no room inside the van that we bought. All of the van was just four people. The luggage was when the trailer, but we did, we had a lot of extra room in the trailer and it wasn't a big trailer. I think it's 12 foot enclosed trailer that I have. But we pulled it and then yeah, halfway through the trip, we're like, well, why aren't we looking for some cool stuff to flip on the road? And we did it and it ended up finding really, really cool. The first year we did that, we went, didn't even go with the intentions of doing that. We just wanted to get away, spend some time with my sisters, my nieces, and see really, really cool stuff throughout the country. But the first year we did it, not even really trying to do it. What were our numbers on that?
Melissa: That year we got seven items that we purchased for, $1,235 and came back and sold them for $22,175.
Rob: $22,000 for a summer road trip. We got to see some amazing stuff. We had a lot of fun. One of my nieces is, she's kind of like an artist. So before we went on the trip, this is another kind of cool side thing. Before we went on the trip, we actually had her draw different scenes from the state parks
Melissa: that we were going to go to,
Rob: and we had, my sister paid to have them, I don't know, what would you call them put on stickers or decals, huge decals, like five foot by five foot decals and then we put them onto the van onto the trailer and we had a really, really cool road trip doing that. So we had a lot of fun doing that as well. But that first year, that was what really turned on our eyes to, or opened our eyes to being like, well, we can make money and go see really cool stuff.
And then we were hooked after that first year, we ended up doing the second year, 2021. We did it with the kids.
Melissa: We did it four years in a row. Last year was the first one we did, but we're planning on it again this year because there's still places we haven't seen yet. The second year we made it all the way to California.
That first year we didn't, we did like kind of the mid trek. The second year we made it to California. We've got 14 items purchased for $870 and came back and sold them for $17,000. So $17,150. 2022, we had 17 items purchased for $1,455, came back and sold them for $25,000. And 2023 items purchased for $1,100, came back and sold them for $21,500.
So that's just to give you an idea.
Rob: Awesome. On average, a $20,000 positive road trip that we, we don't spend anywhere near that for the road trip. I would probably say on average on our road trips, we're spending between $5,000-$7,000 to go. That's with hotels, that's with going to parks, that's with food and gas, all that.
That's about what we're spending on these road trips. And then we're coming back and making on average, roughly $15,000 is what we're making in the positive to be able to go and do that throughout the country. So, really, really cool to be able to do that. And I never really, like I said, this wasn't on our radar, but then when we did it and then we started sharing it with some of the people that are in our members group and then they started doing it as well and planning these trips out where they were going to see family in other states or they were going on a summer road trip or, you know, just going to see a state park somewhere around and then they are bringing a trailer and they're picking up stuff.
So it's really, really cool to watch not only what we've been able to do. But then watch what some of our members have done as well. So.
Melissa: It's, it's super fun too. It just keeps things interesting. Even what was it? Not last summer, the summer before was our road trip out to California. We went on a cruise to Hawaii, but to pay for that cruise, Rob likes a challenge.
So, he's like, all right, let me see what I can find a flip to pay for the cruise. And the cruise was $6,000. Yeah. So a little over $6,000, and then.
Rob: Yeah, no, I found a turbo chef oven We had sold two because we picked them up previously on a road trip and sold them for serious seriously serious money.
I paid four hundred dollars for them a piece. So eight hundred dollars total and we sold the first
Melissa: one for eight thousand one for ten thousand.
Rob: Yeah. That's what we sold those for. So I was looking for another one locally and ended up finding one I think it was $150, $125, somewhere in there. I found one locally that a guy bought a coffee shop and he was revamping it.
He just wanted to get rid of it, sold it for $125, picked it up. We sold that one and that this was my goal was to be able to do it with one single flip is pay for a Hawaii cruise. And we ended up doing it. I think you were like $200 short, right around $6,300 is what we sold it for and the cruise was like $200 over, but still, that's amazing. That's so cool to be able to do something like that. So. I kind of told my buddy that, like I said, this is a lifelong friend. We've known each other since we were like eight years old. I told him, what if we could do this? What if we could find either one flip or two flips, you know, to pay for the whole road trip for the summer, and have a really, really cool time.
So they're on board with it. Look out, we're going to have some more stories coming up that we'll talk about some of the items that we found and did that kind of stuff. But, how does this relate to you? If you do want to get out there and travel, but you don't have the finances to do it, maybe you can start thinking about Items that you can find in your local area, or even just being on the road.
And it doesn't always have to be huge items. It can be just an item that you can put in the back of your SUV, or even extend a hitch on the back of your SUV. Something like that, that you can pick up.
Melissa: We've had some moms do some amazing stuff in the back of their minivan. Like be able to just put stuff, which is just so cool to see, like how much you can even just fit in a minivan.
Rob: Yeah, we were just down in the Keys a couple months ago. That's right, right? Down in the Keys a couple months ago, because we love going to the Keys for lobster season every year. We go and catch lobsters, have a great time. We had another family that came down with us, had a good time, but I wanted to see if we could pay for the trip with something I could find in the Keys.
Now, if you don't know the Florida Keys, they're very small. You have one road, you can see the water on the left, you can see the water on the right, you got houses in between. It's very, very small, especially if we go all the way down, to the Middle Key, is where we actually lobster from. So, there's not a lot of places and room and we were able to find something now.
I didn't find it on the Keys itself I might have bought something on the Keys. I don't remember but anyways, I did it on the way back, once we got up to Miami, I actually found something that we picked up on the way back home. Picked it up for I think it was $150, $125 somewhere in there It was a range, picked it up.
I only brought extended hitch with me. So we paid $125 for it. I only brought an extended hitch on the back just for the purpose of being able to find something and throwing it on top of that extended hitch, so it wasn't even a big platform, but we did that. I found it, we picked it up, bought it for $125.
We ended up bringing it back and sold it in like a month or two months. I don't know what it was. It wasn't that long, but we sold it for $3,000. Yeah. I'm going to say $3,000 plus an extra four, four or 500 for shipping on top of it, which paid for our trip. It's just so cool to be able to do that kind of stuff.
So, granted, you know, we have a lot of experience with what we're looking for, but I'm looking for those high profit flips. And that's really, really what we've turned our business into. And at the beginning of the podcast, like we told you, this is part time. I do this part time. I flip items part time. I do it roughly last year.
We definitely averaged less than five hours a week, but on average, probably I would say five hours a week is what we spend on our flipping business. And then the rest of our time is spent between our kids, between our coaching business, between social media stuff that we do, between these, like this podcast we're doing for you guys in the video for YouTube, that's what the rest of our time is spent doing, but we still love flipping.
I still am constantly, I just shipped something out two days ago that we sold. We'll do another podcast on that later, but this is stuff that we're doing day in and day out. So the potential is endless for what you can use these finances for in your side hustle.
Melissa: Yeah, this is, it's a pretty, I don't know.
It's a great gig when you can have this as your like extra money because like when you go full time, it's a little bit different because you have to, you know, you have to budget a little more and you have to know like what your numbers are going to be. But when it's a, your side hustle, it's a lot more flexible.
And like, he's like, oh, I want to go on vacation. What, how much money do we need? And then he goes and makes it. So it's, it's pretty cool that you. What you're able to do options with this business. So, so we're working on mapping out our trip this summer. If you have any suggestions of national parks that we should hit, we've hit several of them. So there's still a couple on our list. Let us know our state parks. Hit us up on instagram. Let us know where we should make sure we go see. And yeah, so let's, we should have some more fun, more fun content on vacations and this stuff this summer.
Rob: Absolutely. You guys are awesome. You're amazing. Have an amazing day and we'll catch up with you on the next episode.