Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about one of the biggest unspoken benefits of being a flipper.
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One Of The Biggest Unspoken Benefits Of Being A Flipper
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about one of the biggest benefits of being a flipper.
Rob: Alright guys, so today on the episode we are talking about one of the favorite things I love about being a flipper.
Melissa: So, one of the biggest perks, benefits of being a flipper is the amount of money you can save on everything you do, which is pretty cool.
So we're going to dive into that a little bit because we have saved thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, just because it's like a side benefit of what you're doing. You're looking for deals. So why wouldn't you buy deals for yourself? Like why would you spend retail costs on things when you can get them for nothing? So.
Rob: So you might be here going. What are you talking about? How does this actually work? Well, we're in the market to buy and sell items, but at the same time we also find items that we need and we find them for the huge discount. Just like we're finding amazing discounted items that we're able to resell.
Well, when we need those items, we use them. To give you kind of an example of what's in our house of the stuff that we've done that has done, appliances. You know, we make a ton of money on appliances, but when we need appliances, we're not going out and financing an appliance at Lowe's or Home Depot or even buying a new appliance somewhere and paying cash for it.
We're not doing that. We're actually finding it from the flea market, from a thrift store, from a yard sale, something like that.
Melissa: We had that stove for like eight or nine years that was from the trash. Do you remember that? Yeah. And it was expensive. It was nice. It just needed a knob, I think. And didn't you or Boppy work on that?
Rob: Boppy actually fixed the little controls. My grandpa, instead of ordering new controls, he, Melissa's grandpa was a genius. He fixed the little controls. That's what went bad on it, was the knobs that turned the burners on and off, and he put some type of little resistor in it. Like I said, he's a genius.
We could have ordered the knob, I mean, order the controls themselves. But he knew how to fix it, so he fixed it for us. And we used that thing for, yeah, eight or nine years. And it was like, when we got it, it was like a $4,000 or $5,000 oven, still amazing, amazing oven it did like the oven dehydrated and it was just a really high end KitchenAid oven that we got, one of the top of the lines.
And that was one went bad with the little control. Somebody threw it in the trash. We picked it up, Boppy helped us fix it, and then we used it for years, so.
Melissa: And we even have a fancy dishwasher. It's one of those drawer dishwashers, like, that are really, we've had, that's what we, we liked that in our other house, and so we found another one in stainless.
That one came off of Marketplace. That was on Marketplace. So, like, all this stuff, and you just kind of, in your daily, search, you see something. And I think of, we went on a road trip a couple of years ago. You know, we like to do that in the summer. We came back one of the years and our dog had ripped apart our couch, like completely just tore it to shreds.
And the I was like, well, I didn't really love that couch anyway, but it was a, was it a lazy boy couch? So I was like, we can't get rid of it. I just didn't like the color. Anyways, he tore it up. So we had to find a new one and I kept my eye out at goodwill and phone for $80 and nice leather, gray leather.
And it's perfect in our house.
Rob: So real leather with recliners in it and no issues, no defects. Beautiful couch at, it was a goodwill. She got it at goodwill. So, but real leather. It's not the fake leather, not that kind of stuff. But versus going out and spending $2,000, $5,000 on a nice couch. Like I said, it's got recliners in it, a really nice couch.
Instead of doing that, she found it for $80. And, that's just kind of, that's what we're talking about with the perks, being in this business, being in the world of going to the flea market, thrift stores, yard sales, doing that stuff on a regular basis. And you'll find that stuff that you need in your house, that you can get for a huge discount.
And yeah, that's how you save a ton of money just on your own needs in this, in this industry. So it was really, really cool.
Melissa: And we'll do clothes to a little bit to an extent. We don't, I don't know. I don't, I wear just a lot of tank top jeans and workout clothes. And so I'm not really big into needing all the new clothes. For the kids, though it's been, beneficial. I know like, one of our daughters loves to shop and get new clothes, and so like, yep. Okay, let's go to the thrift store. We're gonna go find a new shirt for you.
So, and shoes, shoes are kids. We do shoes a lot.
Rob: Our kids go through shoes like crazy, crazy. So instead of going out and spending $50 to a hundred dollars for a pair of Nikes or something like that we go to, there's a, what is it called? We'll find them at the flea market.
Melissa: Yeah, we do get them at the flea market, but then we'll also go to Once Upon a Child.
Rob: Once Upon a Child that has good deals that you can spend like $10 for a pair of Nikes or Adidas or something like that. That we can get good, good quality, good stuff, and pay a fraction of what it actually costs new. And that just helps us save a ton of money.
Melissa: And you like the fun stuff too. So like we over the years have collected, this is, you could sell these, but you don't want to because we actually have gotten a lot of use out of them.
We have a cotton candy machine. We have a, snow cone machine and we use them at birthday parties.
Rob: These are all commercial. So you can buy residential, but these are actually expensive commercial units that make a lot of cotton candy, snow cone. We just got a popcorn a commercial, this one is a little bit more commercial It's not yeah, it is.
It's a commercial one, popcorn machine on the side of the road. Yeah, that's where the popcorn machine came from. But the other ones we bought from the flea market. We have an ice cream, a soft serve ice cream, a countertop ice cream machine, that's a commercial one that you'd get and you'd find inside of a restaurant that you could go and and get ice cream out of. So we just have so many cool things that this this industry has allowed us to buy, to benefit our kids, our friends that we have friends around us that have kids.
We can use it at their parties. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's a lot of fun and it's really, really cool to be able to save money. That we, the stuff that we're able to do because of the industry and, and what we're able to. Save on these items is just insane. It's really, really cool.
Melissa: Yeah, I think we should do a rental business with all that stuff because that would be so fun, but maybe, maybe one day we'll start renting it out.
If you're not going to sell it, I know you want to keep it. That cotton candy and snow cone machine has gotten a lot of use though. I will say it's gone to lots of friends parties and.
Rob: To our kids' school for a fun day at the school.
Melissa: So like we could have a rental business on the side, all of our spare time.
Rob: All this was sparked with Christmas. Christmas is coming up and we think about how even just being able to go to the flea market, go to thrift stores, yard sales, and find items for our own kids, that might be a hundred dollar item that we find for $20. And, and it's a way for us to be able to give our kids really, really cool stuff at Christmas time, that we're not paying a lot of money for, and it's still like brand new stuff.
The majority of the stuff that we're buying is brand new still in the boxes. Some of them still have the price tags on them, and we're able to get them for pennies on the dollar, being able to do that. So that's really, really cool.
Melissa: I don't think you really expressed enough how much you love Christmas. So, Christmas is like, Christmas music starts in the summer.
We've already started listening, it's already been in the car for a while. Usually on the back side of our road trip. You start listening to Christmas music, but now it's more of a staple, it's on, you have a channel on your phone, so we listen, you love Christmas music, but you just love Christmas, and so like, giving gifts is something that you really like to do a lot, and so once we had kids, you're like, we gotta get them cool stuff, and so going to the flea market really helps us, we can get so much like value for our dollar.
And that's another thing that we've been trying to teach our kids too, is when they want to go buy something, we're like, let's go check out the flea market first or the yard sales, because your dollar goes so much further at the flea market or at a yard sale versus going to buy just something from the store for $20.
You can get it for $3 or $4 at the flea market. So your money goes a lot longer, a lot further. So a lot further. And then one other quick story we had about Christmas, which is pretty cool. I don't know what year this was. A couple years ago, one of our, blogger friends gave out $100 to 20 different bloggers.
They were financial bloggers, mostly, but, to see and go do good with. Whatever that means for you. So they had this fund and they gave it to people. So we're like, okay, what do we do with that $100? And we're like, let's take it to the flea market and we're gonna go find toys to donate or to give to a kid.
And we actually ended up finding, our friends were a pastor somewhere and they had a family that needed some help with Christmas. So they had two girls and a boy, which is what we have too. So it was perfect. So we knew kind of around the same ages. So we knew kind of what to get them. So we took the hundred dollars and went to the flea market and ended up getting I think it was $262 worth of stuff for $90 some. So retail and everything basically was new with tags or in a box like we're not giving it's not, it's not used stuff.
So, and then you also said, well, let's put in some of our own money, another a hundred dollars. And we ended up, you wanted to get this for our kids for Christmas, but we're like, let's give it to them. It was a playhouse. It was super cute. Like, just not like a, you know, a little plastic one. And it retailed for $400 and you got it for $45.
Yeah. So I think our total we spent on everything was $193, which it retails for $692.
Rob: So $700 for less than $200 is what we had to spend. So that just shows you what the potential is, and it's so amazing to be able to do this. And like I said, we'll reiterate this. This is not used junk at a flea market, a thrift store, yard sales.
It is, and you might wonder how the vendors, the vendors go and buy these things from liquidation places. They bring it to the flea market and sell it individually. They might buy it by the pallet, sell it individually at the flea market, 50 percent discount on some things and even more than that on some things that you can really really find amazing deals at the flea market to be able to do this.
Melissa: Yeah, so so that is our like you save money at Christmas. You can save money on everything pretty much and we also have a challenge coming up to help you make some extra money for Christmas So like we said Christmas is a pretty big deal around here. We have a lot of fun. You just, I don't know if it's like a whole big, it's a big production.
And so yeah.
Rob: I will add that it's not about presents. No, it's not. The reason for the season is Jesus. So just to let you know, don't go over the top with hey, the Christmas is not about presents. I just love giving presents. We love to be givers and that's what I love to do with my kids. I love to do with people around us.
Melissa: And when you can save hundreds of dollars and that helps a lot.
Rob: But Jesus is the reason for the season. Please know that. Don't don't write in and tell us. No, we know that that's our family. Yeah, we know that but this is just one of the things that we love to be able to do around Christmas time.
Melissa: So, so we are going to have a challenge starting the second week in November. I have, I lost the date, but go to Christmas Money Challenge. You can get registered. We would love to see you there. Our goal is to help you make $500 during the challenge till you have some extra money for Christmas. It doesn't have to be for presents. It can be, you know, like it just things, you know, rising cost of everything.
So hopefully that can help you out, and we would love to see you that week of the challenge.
Rob: You guys rock! Have an amazing day, and we will see you on the next episode!