We millennials have been joking about the avocado toast here in the States since your politican made his remarks.
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Nice to hear it reached all the way over there!
We have an āinā cafe behind our house that seats 90 and on weekends I have counted up to 30 millennials waiting outside just to get through the door (there are more waiting inside). It is beautifully fitted out but I wonāt go anymore as itās noisy, expensive and often the food and coffee is only lukewarm!
Itās not that good - call it the power of Instagram and Facebook.
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Saving money on avocado toast could mean a house deposit in 100 years.
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Thatās why itās important when on an international forum to specify when you are talking about a specific country; as terminology can vary, with a term meaning different things in different places.
To me a villa is normally a detached, upmarket property (although some can be semi-detached).
What a shame your husband refers to your earnings as a āpittanceā. I am sure many of those struggling to live on the breadline in Australia, would welcome the huge difference it would make to their lives.
He should be congratulating you on your entrepreneurial streak, rather than deriding what you earn 
If you guys donāt need the āpittanceā of the income you make, you could look at supporting young homeless people to help ensure they arenāt vulnerable on the streets at night through donating this income.
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and just over Ā£5000 in UK pounds
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Thank you, thatās what I think and thatās what I told him!!
He dislikes that so much of the work is evenings, weekends and holiday times as that is when he is at home. He also doesnāt like that when I hear the Air āchimeā I drop everything and respond - Pavlov at his best.
His major issue is that for the amount I allow it to manage my life the return is not good. He says: if you want to work that hard couldnāt you earn some ādecentā money.
Thereās quite a history of men getting uppity when wives donāt give them attention because of work lol.
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Or in developing countries where many live on less than US $1 a day.
What is he suggesting you do as an alternative that would give you the same flexibility, same hours and a huge amount more than the āpittanceā he says you currently get?
Iām sure weād all be interesting in considering such an opportunity
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I think heās suggesting I shouldnāt be working. He would be horrified if he knew that I was having this conversation with anyone, let alone strangers on the internet!
He dislikes that it interferes with āourā time, his attitude is that work is at work and home is home.
I enjoy it, most of the time. But I have to admit that in the early days before I had ironed out some of the issues, like accepting the management of properties that I shouldnāt have, he had to deal with me stressed and upset. That doesnāt happen anymore.
Ahh so he doesnāt want you to earn more money (as you mentioned initially), he just doesnāt want you working at all.
Unfortunately, there are millions of men around the world who donāt like their wives working or find it difficult when their wives have a more high powered role then them.
I am glad you feel you can offload here. Of course work is sometimes stressful, but if you enjoy it more often than not and it enables you to do things you otherwise wouldnāt be able to or donate money to those less well off, then why not.
Why not have a home office which you can use to separate business and pleasure and have someone that provides support for your business in the evening so you donāt have to.
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Thank you for your very kind message. I should add that this topic has only gone off on this tangent as I was accused of āshowing offā about the gross income of the places that I manage, and only being interested in money.
In my OP I was trying to point out that this is not a case of my ādadās car is better than yoursā but rather curiosity that no one in the three thousand people who have read my previous post asked me how I achieve, what I consider to be a good gross income, on a studio apartment.
I have always worked so itās not a power play issue. Itās more that we are now in a position where I donāt need to so he would prefer that I didnāt work when he is home as it intrudes on our life. I am painting it much worse than it is.
As far as I am concerned I am just clicking messages on my laptop/tablet/phone so donāt need a home office, but I appreciate your practical advice. When I travel and am in a different time zone my business partner takes over a lot of the immediate work.
My business partner and I have an agreement that it doesnāt matter who replies to guests, whoever can do it faster is best. However, she repeatedly says that when I am not travelling she canāt get a look in as I am so fast. I am a control freak who believes I can do it best, but the business wouldnāt exist without her and she knows this. We work well together and I am very grateful for her counsel.
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Thanks for taking the time to lay it all out. This is all good advice. Itās a well worn path for those of us who have been hosting awhile but you never know when someone new to hosting is going to stumble upon the forum looking for some tips on how to stage their listing.
And when converting the currency and teasing out all the details we find out there is nothing exceptional about what poppy is doing. Sheās just a property manager serving an upscale market.
I donāt mean to insult or demean what you do @Poppy, you are clearly doing a great job and there is nothing wrong with being pround of your work. But as it turns out most of us are doing pretty much the same in our markets. Thatās probably why no one asked when you dropped the statement the first time and no one asked right away the second time either.
Maybe I did the math wrong but if you are grossing $10,000 a month and taking 20% as a fee, then giving 30% of that to your business partner you are making about a $1000 a month when converted to US dollars. Thatās about what I make on my one Airbnb rental. Like you, I donāt have to do Airbnb, Iām retired. Itās easy work that I do from home in my spare time. I enjoy it. Luckily I donāt have to answer to anyone for my time.
Iāll answer this again, and clear up about āviews.ā That doesnāt mean that 3k people read your previous topic or all the replies in it. It means 3k people clicked on the topic. They may have glanced at it, they may have scanned the posts, they may have read nothing and clicked away. There are several of us who read all the post and frankly, I donāt remember you dropping that in there. And the reason is probably because we donāt think itās that big of a deal. Most of of are owner- operators. We arenāt property managers and we arenāt professional investors. Nothing wrong with that, nothing against you, it just doesnāt relate to us so we skim over those posts.
So to repeat, Iām not trying to insult you, Iām trying to answer the question that served as a title for this topic.
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Poppy is only a few years in and will no doubt learn more as time goes on. She can easily increase her income and reduce her work time (by far) if she develops her marketing methods and so on.
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Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it.
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Oh my gosh can I relate! My stress
level has gone down a bit since we (I) started hosting three months ago, but this continues to be a source of friction between us. I have to have my phone on the table when we are having dinner out, or in my lap in the movie theater, etc. I used to turn my phone ringer off at night before I started this business, but I havenāt since 3 July, and ever since we received a call about the smoke alarms going off at 5:50 AM from one of our guests, I havenāt dared to turn it off again. You would think heād understand that this is a business that requires being available to your customers 24/7. 
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How can you turn your phone of when you are rated on the quickness of your responses?
Coming into our floral festival I will get queries at 2 in the morning which I will respond to - because i feel I have to. My husband refers to these as āMr Pingā and he needs my attention!
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I donāt respond to the phone from dinner time through until breakfast time 
I leave my phone in the kitchen when I go to bed. Iām a host, not a 24 hour machine.
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This is another case of depends on the listing. Even though I have IB I have many last minute guests and even people inquiring from on the road, or already in town. When my calendar is open my phone is on. Right now Iām booked for the next month except for Saturdays so I can have my phone off a lot more.
It definitely does and thereās such a huge variety. I rarely get last minute guests as weāre a āfly-toā destination. People plan their vacations here well in advance. Sometimes I find when I get up that thereās been a message waiting for me on Airbnb since three oāclock in the morning or some such hour. But invariably the message is from an instant book guest from Europe. Any moderately intelligent guest (some would say thatās a contradiction!) knows that thereās a time difference between Florida and Europe.
Incidentally, to dispel another pretty famous Airbnb myth, I have bookings in both apartments through until April next year. (Not completely full, there are a few gap days) and conventional wisdom says ā you should increase your prices if youāre booked more than a month in advanceā. Not so. I say it so often, I know, but people donāt buy on price and many people are very happy to pay decent prices and book well in advance.
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