Live Learn Invest

Investing in yourself for cheap

March 25th, 2007 by Kenric

I usually buy two books a month on finance, real estate or whatever I’m interested in.  Remember I mentioned in a post about personal development that you should invest in your knowledge.  Steve Pavlina’s post about it says that you should invest 3% of your income to it monthly.

Well, I’m here to show you how I do it with very little cost.  I usually get audio CDs instead of books.  I find that I can listen to them on my drives, while I work out and on plane rides.  I need to have that information drilled into my head so I will listen to a book over and over again.

This month I’m listening to Good to Great by Jim Collins, which I highly recommend.  But the review of that book is for another post.

I will go to Amazon.com or Ebay and see what the going price of Good to Great is on audio CD. 

At Amazon, new copies are $20-25 including shipping.  On Ebay, new & used copies are selling from $10-$20.  I usually buy my CDs from Amazon.  I’ll go to a blog that I read and use their Amazon affiliate link to buy because I can’t use my own and it helps a fellow blogger with a few bucks.

I bought a new copy of Good to Great from Amazon for $20 total.  BTW, prices of good informational books do not go down in value very much.  You can keep them for many months and still resell them for the same price. Fictional books like Harry Potter will lose their value pretty quickly. 

Once I’m done with it, I put the audio CD for sale back on Ebay or Amazon.  I usually get back about 90% of the money I spent.  I expect my Good to Great audio CDs to sell for around $20 including shipping on Amazon.  It normally costs $2.50 to ship out CDs media mail.  I will have spent $2.50 on an audio CD book that has an MSRP of $39.95.  And yes, sometimes you will even make a few bucks!  BTW, if you’re going to do this, don’t throw away any of those boxes that Amazon sends you the books in, you’ll need them later.  And don’t go popping the airfilled bags either, you’ll wish you hadn’t when it comes time for you to ship your goods.

BTW, if anyone is interested in buying my Good to Great Audio CD (unabridged), I’m selling it for $15 + shipping.

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