Would you take this risk?

[KTP]

I have a company interested in a domain name I own. They have been bugging me through a negotiation platform called domainagents for about a month. I declined offers of $2,000 and $3,000, but they have countered today with $5000.

I know a lot of your are going to say, $5000 for something you paid $10 for? Yes please!

I have had this short 5 letter domain since 2000 and I use it for all of my email. This means I will have to move everything to a new email. This sounds trivial, but think about the possibility that they will be able to grab my old email address and receive any emails I forget to transfer. A lot of sites have the ability to send passwords to a email address, so if I forget to update some old account that I haven't used in years, like menswarehouse for example, they could theoretically get my password and info for that account.

It wasn't worth the trouble at $2000, and $3000 was tempting but I declined several days ago. Today they offer $5000 and I keep thinking....$5000 is real money ....

What do you think I should do?

[bjl584]

Well, I sort of know your finances, and $5000 isn't going to make or break you.

I hear you on not wanting to change your email. It's a royal pain to go through everything and change all of it. But, then again, no one has ever offered me $5000 for my email address.

Personally, I'd probably take the offer. They most likely won't go any higher, and for $5000 I would gladly take a Saturday and sift through all of my online accounts and change my email.

[disneysteve]

Very tough question. I've had the same email address since 1994. I can't imagine the mess it would cause to change it. In my case, I'm willing to bet that it would also cost me money. As you guys know, I do a ton of medical market research surveys, the vast majority of which I learn about through emails. Last year I did surveys for 36 different companies. I don't have the slightest idea how to contact most of them so I could potentially lose touch with them. That would cost me a lot more than $5,000 in the long run. So as tempting as the offer is, I'd probably be forced to pass unless I had some iron-clad way to be sure that all of my emails would be forwarded to my new address.

[KTP]

Thanks for the thoughts. I don't use the site for making money anymore, so that really isn't a huge concern.

Yes, $5,000 is not going to make or break us right now, but I am trying to think ahead.

In 2015 when we early retire, our income is going to go from $250k down to about $42,000 (the estimated income from our investments using a 3% SWR).

I have been trying to live like we only make $42,000 (which is how we have managed to save over $100k a year). Thus I have great respect for $5000 since it is several months living expenses.

I guess I have talked myself into this. With my luck I am going to find out the next big internet hit like twitter is going to use my domain.

[disneysteve]

Thanks for the thoughts. I don't use the site for making money anymore, so that really isn't a huge concern.

Yes, $5,000 is not going to make or break us right now, but I am trying to think ahead.

In 2015 when we early retire, our income is going to go from $250k down to about $42,000 (the estimated income from our investments using a 3% SWR).

I have been trying to live like we only make $42,000 (which is how we have managed to save over $100k a year). Thus I have great respect for $5000 since it is several months living expenses.

I guess I have talked myself into this. With my luck I am going to find out the next big internet hit like twitter is going to use my domain.

In that case, I'd give it more thought. I just can't imagine the hassle of changing my email address after 20 years.

[TheKayla]

I think that depends a lot on who is buying it. Is it a reliable company? Or some random person? Can you strike up a deal to still use your email addresses, even if for a short time? Perhaps you can make it a contractual obligation to set up forwarding to a new email address as well. Plus, even if you're getting newsletters from Men's Warehouse or whatever, how would they get your password? Most websites are set up these days so that they will not send your passwords in an email, but rather send you a new automated one, and many for more secure websites have you enter security questions anyway. If it was scammy in any way, it's not a great way to go about a scam I don't think.

I've sold domain names before and you can set up contracts just like with anything else -- just be sure that it's someone reliable, person or company, so you won't likely have to deal with any contractual discrepancies.

[disneysteve]

even if you're getting newsletters from Men's Warehouse or whatever, how would they get your password?

Plenty of websites have a link to click if you forget your password. You enter the email address linked to the account and they either send you your password or send a temporary password to use to reset yours. I've done that many times.

[cardtrick]

I would hang on to it, but that's just a personal preference and not because of the possibility of exposed passwords. I look at them as investments. If you do decide to sell to them, how about PMing me the domain name? I will consider beating their price. : )

[corn18]

I'd counter at $10k and see what they say. Then sell it for $5k. But I have swapped emails many times. Kinda cleans out the garbage, so to speak. But it takes a few months to do properly. I set up the new email account and then go through my old email inbox and change what I can over. Then as new emails come in, if they go to the old email and I want them to go to the new email, I make the switch. Eventually, everything that I want moved over is moved over and the junk just keeps going to the old (or eventually cancelled) email address.

My new most favorite thing is alias emails. I have a domain of tomhole.com which has an email account that accepts anything@tomhole.com emails. So, when someone or something asks for an email and I am suspicious, I just use homedepot@tomhole.com or sears@tomhole.com or whomever@tomhole.com. Something that indicates who was asking for my email. All that comes into my general IMAP account and I can easily tell who has sold my email address because I get a viagra email from sears@tomhole.com "we won't sell your email to anyone". Yeah, right.

Tom

[bigdaddybus]

I'd counter at $10k and see what they say. Then sell it for $5k. But I have swapped emails many times. Kinda cleans out the garbage, so to speak. But it takes a few months to do properly. I set up the new email account and then go through my old email inbox and change what I can over. Then as new emails come in, if they go to the old email and I want them to go to the new email, I make the switch. Eventually, everything that I want moved over is moved over and the junk just keeps going to the old (or eventually cancelled) email address.

My new most favorite thing is alias emails. I have a domain of tomhole.com which has an email account that accepts anything@tomhole.com emails. So, when someone or something asks for an email and I am suspicious, I just use homedepot@tomhole.com or sears@tomhole.com or whomever@tomhole.com. Something that indicates who was asking for my email. All that comes into my general IMAP account and I can easily tell who has sold my email address because I get a viagra email from sears@tomhole.com "we won't sell your email to anyone". Yeah, right.

Tom

[Nika]

I would do it.

You can re-set your email with all your financial institutions. Those are primary. Then with stores you use frequently. Actually, don't delete all your emails in bulk when you are cleaning accounts. Go from the top (most recent). Say there is a Pottery barn email. Than go to pottery barn, change email. Than search for pottery barn and delete all those. And the same with all the rest of them, until you have none left.

If you have not used a store in several years, your credit card is likely to be expired anyway.
And if it is not, than on a very low chance that they care enough to search, know what store you shopped in, and can re-set your password and your cc is still valid... your liability is very limited with unauthorized cc purchases.

As long as you have taken care of all financial institutions (retirement accounts and all) you are pretty safe. You can use your financial net worth statements or tax forms to make sure you have not forgotten anything.

If you have access to your credit report, you can consult that list to make sure there are no open credit cards/loan accounts you don't remember.

If you spend 10 hours doing that, that's $500 an hour, which is worth the trouble.

[TheKayla]

Plenty of websites have a link to click if you forget your password. You enter the email address linked to the account and they either send you your password or send a temporary password to use to reset yours. I've done that many times.

Yes I know, what I'm saying is though that websites these days don't tend to send you your password -- its incredibly bad practice, so particularly large store websites won't do that. (I'm a web developer) They'll send you a link to reset where you go to a page that has further security. Even if they access your account for a website like that, they don't have access to your general password that you use regularly -- all they have now is access to a store website and the password they just made up.

[KTP]

Thank you for the input everyone. I am working on transferring emails to a new gmail account right now. I have all the investment accounts done, credit cards, insurance, utilities, ebay, paypal, amazon.

Now I am on the secondary stuff. Agilent, Texas Instruments, MyAnalog, Digikey

After that is the tertiary stuff. Newsgroups, some websites.

Then there is the garbage. Papa Johns Pizza, Radio Shack, Golf warehouse

Seriously...golf warehouse? Do I really need to get those emails? It was like 2 years ago that I bought dad some Titlist balls for his birthday...sigh

[creditcardfree]

In the meantime, might as well unsubscribe from some of those emails from Golfwarehouse!

[KTP]

Well that went pretty easy. Sold the domain and got them to forward my emails for a year (although I changed almost everything (except golf warehouse lol).

I used the $5,000 to buy 160 shares of Pfizer stock (a little company in the drug business). They pay a pretty decent dividend of 3.3%.

Thanks for the advice and encouragement. Now if I can just motivate myself to get rid of the other 9,000 items to simply our life.