I am seriously addicted to shopping especially make up. Whenever I get my paycheck I HAVE to go and buy something new. It's pretty redic, I don't even get paid that much.
I'm addicted to travel. I need new passport pages soon and my savings account should be way fuller than it is. I also hoard frequent flyer miles, between all the alliances I probably have 150,000.
Haha Krampus me too. 17 countries in the past 5 years. I only take jobs that require international travel and my boyfriend and I pretty much only buy each other plane tickets for gifts
No specific addiction, but I have a "binge" personality. When I find something I like, I get preoccupied with it, with a "collector" mentality until I find something else.
Aside from food, my longest lasting semi-addictions include collecting stuffed wolves and huskies (huskies weren't originally part of the collection, but a lot of gift-givers can't tell the difference between huskies and wolves so a lot of huskies have ended up in the collection to the point I've given up and decided that huskies were fine too. I used to collect wolf/husky knicknacks too, but we don't have the space to display everything, so most of the collection went into storage), irish/celtic music (from folk songs to Irish/Scottish Rock), reading generically (cereal boxes if nothing else is available), and specifically science fiction and fantasy (and to a lesser degree, movies of the genre), and hobby crafts have been about the only life-long binge-prone activities (unless you count shopping. Not as an addiction in itself, but indirectly necessary for the acquisition of binge items).
I'm trying to turn my passion-prone personality into something that might pay for itself (or at least partially reimburse hobby expenses) and that is fiction writing (sci fi/fantasy of course) and opening an etsy store for my multi-media arts and craft items (which I'm hoping to open by the end of this month. Right now, I'm addicted to photographing my finished projects).
krampus & indiblue; That's really cool though. I mean if you have money to do that,why shouldn't you?! I would LOVE to travel at least twice a year.
geoblewis; YESS perfume!! I just found some website that sells perfume for $4-14. You can pick any brand you like and they send you a duplicate for it so I got so many!! I hope it's legit lol. I usually don't buy off sketch websites but my friend got some viva la juicy duplicate and it smells dead on!
BornToFly; I LOVE Lush products! Especially the rage of smells. But sometimes when I go into the store my head starts to hurt haha
kaplods; I know exactly what you mean! My local CVS store (drugstore in U.S.) offeres rewards cards and you can print out coupons in store every day and on top off that they always have either mascaras or eyeshadow 75% off! So I get like 5 of the same thing LOL.OMG I LOVE WOLVES if you don't have anywhere to store, feel free to send them my way haha jkjk. But seriously! I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. You know, I am an artsy person myself even though I choose a different major in college, I always took art classes on the side, like right now I'm taking watercoloring and I love what I make. I wish I could be able to open up a store! That would be cool!
kaplods; I know exactly what you mean! My local CVS store (drugstore in U.S.) offeres rewards cards and you can print out coupons in store every day and on top off that they always have either mascaras or eyeshadow 75% off! So I get like 5 of the same thing LOL.OMG I LOVE WOLVES if you don't have anywhere to store, feel free to send them my way haha jkjk. But seriously! I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. You know, I am an artsy person myself even though I choose a different major in college, I always took art classes on the side, like right now I'm taking watercoloring and I love what I make. I wish I could be able to open up a store! That would be cool!
Check out etsy.com. Opening a store is really easy and cheap (they only charge 20 cents per listing and then 3.5% of the selling price. You just need a paypal account).
I used to sell my makeover dolls (mostly thrift store barbies transformed into fantasy characters such as mermaids, vampires, fairies, elves, brides, historical figures...) on ebay, but ebays fees were getting outrageous.
I don't know how well I'll do with etsy, but at 20 cents per item, I can't lose (well, I can't lose much).
I absolutely hated when I'd spend nearly $2.00 on an ebay listing and then the doll wouldn't sell and I'd have to decide whether to try again or cut my losses.
I'm a little nervous about pricing, as I always started my ebay doll auctions very low. Sure it was a gamble, but I never was afraid of overpricing, and bidding wars were a real RUSH. Etsy is all set-pricing, so I'll either get my asking price or I won't.
I tend to underprice, because I'm a cheapskate. I ask myself "what would I be willing to pay for this," and usually my answer is "not much." So, part of my research for opening my store was seeing what people selling similar stuff charge (my gut reaction is usually "way too much" but then I look at how many sales the person is making, and I get a more realistic idea of what people are willing to spend for similar items).
My target date for my store opening is June 22.
One thing I would recommend though (and it's the only thing that's been holding me back) is opening a bank account specifically to hook your paypal account to (separate from your personal accounts).
A couple years ago, ebay was hacked, and while it was resolved relatively quickly, for several days our bank account was frozen. Someone had been able to temporarily steal money from our account (the transaction was never fully completed, so the person didn't get any actual money, but we couldn't get any money from our account, until the bank was able to get it sorted out, which took several days).
I disconnected my pay pal account from our checking account. There are advantages to having a pay pal account connected to a bank account, so hubby and I decided that when I was ready to open my store, we'd open a seperate bank account specifically to attach paypal to, and we wouldn't keep more money in it than necessary. That way if it did get hacked again, it wouldn't affect our daily lives while the matter got settled.
You can (I believe) open a paypal account with just a credit card, but you'd still have a potential issue of banking complications.
I hate paypal. It has no seller protection. You have to either pay for delivery confirmation/signature on every item you ship (which makes shipping costs ridiculous and people dont want to pay that) or every item you ship out you risk a loss. There are alot of people who know how the system works, and if they know you can't prove you got it to them (i.e they didnt have to sign anything acknowledging delivery) all they have to do is tell paypal they didn't receive it, paypal takes the funds back and you lose your item AND what it cost you to put the ad up and ship it. You can have a receipt from the shipper with dates, address, tracking, weight, etc and it doesn't matter...the ONLY proof they accept in a dispute is delivery confirmation/signature. I actually had emails from one lady asking me to take back an item because she wanted a different one from another vendor, when I refused she called paypal and said she never received it. Even her emails acknowledging receipt didn't suffice, paypal said their policy is "signature only" qualifies as proof.
Google checkout is much better IMO.
I've never (knock on wood) had a problem with a seller claiming they didn't get the package. I did have one seller who claimed the doll had gotten damaged during shipping, and was annoyed when I told her I'd refund her money and the postage only after I received the doll back. I never got the doll back, so I assume it wasn't all that damaged (or at all damaged).
I'll have to check into Google checkout. I didn't know that was an option.
I'm also of the addictive personality that will focus in on something for a shortish period of time (not collecting, exactly). But my long-stay addiction is books. I love books -- reading them, handling them, looking at them, organizing them on my shelves (by subject then alphabetical by author)... That's definitely my biggest addiction.
I also love to travel -- don't do it nearly as much as I'd like. But it looks as though next summer we'll be in France for basically 3 months, naturally tacking on some side trips to that stay.
Ugh. Shoes and jewelry. I have over 150 pair of shoes (I know, just SHAMEFUL!) and good lord I couldn't even begin to count my jewelry. I'm a silver nut - I don't like gold (thank goddess because it's so expensive!!!) and have tons & tons of earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings, toe-rings, watches, etc.
I really need to get a handle on this shoe/jewelry shopping thing, but I'm more focused on weight loss right now. Yeah, that's a good excuse!
It's my story & I'm stick'n to it!!!
Any "other than food'' addicts here?
haha jkjk. But seriously! I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. You know, I am an artsy person myself even though I choose a different major in college, I always took art classes on the side, like right now I'm taking watercoloring and I love what I make. I wish I could be able to open up a store! That would be cool!
