I have been retired for a number of years. By that I mean working at a job for somebody else or running a real business myself. As I moved through my 50s things changed. I was not married and had no children. What I did have was two elderly parents who were no longer avle to runb their lives. One day my mother asked me if I could take over my dad's check book and running everything financial economic.
Niw I had a decent advantage at the time. I had spent over the last decade working in Wall Street/ I had been a broker , a financial planner and in the end, a registered investment adviser. Because I was no longer able to be a full time worker but more of a a family manager, I burned through all of my savings. But, I was able to counter it all because I was good at what needed to be done.
It is important to understand that during the crash of 29 and the ensuing Depression that my father's family was wiped out. They lost their home and they lost their assets in the stock market. The result was my father never trusted real estate and never wanted to invest in stocks.
I was able to position family assets to insure my parents had no worries about money in the final years. But I did more than that. In the earlu 80s he had somebody managing his money and an big accounting firm doing his taxes. I took over both these functions and made a lot of changes. The result is my folks did fine and died living decent lives. Bt I went even further. I set things up so that both my brother and I would be OK in our senior years.
Understand that I did a lot of advance planning. What I did over the years was to take advantage of everything possible to insure things would likely work out as they have.
I was pretty busy with the day to day stuff as well as the financial issues. Dad passed in late 1998. That triggered some of the financial plans put into place and the result was my brother and I came into some excess funds. So, at the end of 2000 he and I had a lot of free cash arrive. By the end of Jan in 2001 I was abel finally to get that first tank I had been promising myself for years/ And at the same time I apparently caught a bad case of MTS. The tanks kept going up.
Not long after mom was diagnoosed with dementia and so began a dozen years of having to deal with this. We kept mom home he whole time in keeping with the pronise I made to dad to do so before he passed. For that last few years mom needed almost rount the clock home health aides. These were not cheap and I had to work hard to make sure it was all covered.
Early on most of what I needed to do besides run everything was just to be there to handle whatever came up. So I was able to devote a fair ampunt of time to fish and tanks. This went a long way to keeping me sane and happy. And then in 2006 I got the big break. I was offered the opportunity to buy a proven breeding group of zebra plecos. Depsite all the frears surrounding thios move I broke into my IRA and paid the amount needed. And then I got really lucky. Two weeks after bringing home the zebras on April 15, I got my first spawn. Two weeks klater the #2 male spawned. And for the rest of the year this pattern repeated itself. From may to the end of Novemeber I was getting two spawns a month producing about 25-30 offspring.
The rest is history. I manage to start selling the kids in the spring ot 2002. The resut was I got my cost for the fish back ot, Then sold ebough fish to cover every cent I had spent on fish during the first 5 years. And then more tankss, more equipments and more species with which I could work. the whole thing financed itself. My hobby was almost like a job except I did it as much for the joy of doing it as the the fact that it paid for itself.
I attended weekend fish events as a vendor. I joined a fish club. I was on a few forums like this one. I was able to get pretty immersed in the hobby and it kept me busy and happy. But out house is not huge. It works for two old bachelors but it is not fish friendly. My tanks spread out over 2 buildings and 4-5 rooms. But I did the work and continued to love what I was doing with fish and tanks.
Mom passed in early 2013. Demetia eventually works on the more subconscious/unconscious bodily functions. It degrades them until it becomes fatal. There were two major moments that occurred in the last 25+ years I have been keeping fish. The first one was the realization that there were more fish and tanks I wanted to have but for which there was no room. So, I had figured out that the only way I could have more fish and tanks was to have a fish store.
I did not want a store to make money but rather to be able to have more species to watch and with which to work. I knew I had enough money that I could afford to open my own store. All I needed to know is if I did this that I would not lose every dollar I would have to invest to get a store. No matter how I crunched the numbers. There was simply no way I could guarantee I would not lose every cent. So I abandoned the idea of a store.
Instead, I continued doing what I had been. I expanded my species by leveraging each one into another species to add. In the end over half of my 20 tanks were devoted to spawning and growing out the B&W Hypancistrus.
I ran things to suit myself and my desires. I am a privacy nut in the digital age. I refuse to register on social media except for a few fish forums like this one. I never had a web site either and I never sold my fish at auction unless it was to donate the proceeds to a fish related cause. Despite all of this I managed to sell a lot of fish over the years. Of course, this involved shipping fish which, fortunately, I am good at.
So for many years I kept busy with it all. And then the second major moment happed. Since I was about to turn 53 when I set up my first tank, I found myself in my 70s with 78 now in view on the horizon. The thing about old age is we run down. What I could do in my 50s and 60s was getting ever more challenging. So about 3.5 years ago I put into place a plan to back out of things over the next few years. The reason for this was simple.
Firstly. water gained a lot of weight over the years. In fact so did a lot of things it seems. I knew I could not keep up the pace needed to maintain the fish and tanks properly. Not doing so was out of the question as the fish were my responsibility. Their quality of life was in my hands. I realize that what I had been doing for the last 20 years could not continue. But while my head understood this, my heart dod not. I had to start to give up the thing that had given me a lot of pleasure for some time. I have to work in a number of the tank using a 3 step ladder. The problem with this is old people tend to fall off of ladders eventually. So this needed to change.
I am still hanging on to 4 tanks where I need a stool or the ladder to work in them. But soon these this will have to change. Old bones tend to break when they hit the floor. The one thing that is not a worry for me is having enouhg income to live a decent quality of life, For me retirement has not been a big step back in how I live. of course what I need is less demanding as well. What I really hate is the idea that ever month I am moving closer and closer to very few and then no tanks at all perhaps.
This is the real problem with one's retirements years. Old age sucks but we are also very lucky to make it there.
In order to do things with fish the way I have meant I had to do it as a home based rather than a retail operation. Over the years I have bought wholesale and imported with help from others. Despitre no site or social media I discovered i actually had a reputation in such places. I was told this by others. I never lacked for buyers who came fro, word of mouth of from meeting me at the weekend events. I was also posting in a few forums. beuase of the species with which i worked, people who want them managed to find me.
Today I am down to 12 tanks. All but 3 of them are planted. These hold my one remaining pleco species and their kids. The other 8 tanks are all planted communities save one which is holding only a lot of frogbit and assassin snails but no fish. This will not last all that much longer. I still love keeping fish and am really unhappy when I realize this will not last.
The tropical fish hobby has changed greatly in the past few decades. Most shops have closed and the fish trade is now more online than bricj and mortar stores. The internet has great;ly changed the game. For most of us the only option for selling fish is to be home based and to ship. These days I actually do sell some stuff at auction. My clubd has an auction at every meeting and I bring shrimp, snails and plants to sell, The club also does a public auction every January and last year and this I sold fish, plants, wood and used equipment at them. I do this because it also supports my club. They take a cut of the sales. I am happy to do this as the club is a great benefit to me and I an happy to support this.
So, for those of you getting on in years and approaching or in retirement, be aware that you are on a path of reducing your commitment to the hobby. Sooner or later old age will catch up to you if you are lucky and unlucky at the same time.
I am lucky that I had the ability to handle investments and plan properly for retirement years well in advance. Over the past year my brother asked me to take over managing his investments. He still works from home but the job is selling soil remediation services and the income is up and down from year to year. So he asked if I could help with his income from investments. So far I have increased it by 50%. I still have a few more changes which will raise it even more.
So. my advices to those exploring ways to make some cash from their fish is do not risk what you cannot afford to lose. My experiences have not all been positive. A few folks I treated well ended up ripping me off. One person still owes me over $10k I will never see and another owes me about half that again. Both are names many of you night know. This was unfortunate but not real harmful. What I lost was mostly potential profits not out of pocket money. It was my fault because I was trying to help smaller scale sellers and they screwed me for being nice.
To have a fish business requires two things, the money to fund it and then time you must dedicate to doing it. If you are going to suffer one of these as a loss, please make sure it is your time and not your retirement money.
(edited for the ususal typos)
