Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Building the snowball...

Were trying to find some creative ways to build our snowball since we don't have any debt besides our mortgage. The only way to increase is to either bring in more money, or cut back on lifestyle...

or sell things.

We have already life style cut to accommodate day care so our budget is what it is. Its not gazelle but its how I can keep the hubby on board.

So, we have started our annual purge a little early this year. With the selling groups on facebook and sites like Varage Sale, I've been able to post some items for sell and actually been successful in selling them.

Mind you this is stuff we probably would have tossed out for convenience sake to free up space at the end of the year or take down to good will or the DI trailer at church... so were not getting crazy and selling everything we own, but we are making the effort to selling things.

So far this month i've made $155 with my virtual garage sale. So things don't get overwhelming, I'm only posting 3 items at a time on 4 different sites that I can access on my tablet so I check them when I'm pumping. When something leaves, I pull the next thing out and take pictures while the Little guy is sleeping, price them out and then post them up.

We haven't dumped this money at the debt yet, but we are stashing it in our cash reserves at home... we may use it for a month when we don't have any added snowball to keep motivation up or we will use it to buy things for our little one second hand when something comes up that he needs.

Right now we aren't selling anything baby related incase we have a second or if my sister has any use for them, so its just stuff that survived the last purge that we haven't used.

So what have I sold?
  • 2 crockpots 4 quart ($15) and 2 quart ($5) (we bought a larger one this month so I can do more batch cooking on the weekends)
  • 2 beach folding chairs ($10) SCB hated them because they are too low to the ground.
  • Old camping stove ($20) -- Our real BBQ is so portable we don't need a camping stove).
  • Grain Mill / Wheat Grinder ($60) -- SCB's parents found us a used one out in Utah and gave it to us. Its more efficient and does a larger load which is what we need now that I bake and cook so much more than before. Ours shut off frequently to make sure the motor didn't overheat.
  • 2 queen Bedding Sets ($25 and $20). These were the new ones we bought for our bed... but SCB hates them because they don't breath enough for him so his mom made us a couple quilts that work much better so these were just taking up space in the closet.
We currently have some fishing gear up. If it doesn't sell in a week, i'll drop the price to entice the person who is "watching" the post.... Soon well be adding some folding tables just sitting on our deck and a few other things in the upcoming weeks.

Not sure how much i'll get to do when I go back to work, but for now this is the game plan.

4 comments:

  1. What happened to your husband's custom pen making business? Can he start that up again?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We stopped it when he got his full time job because he didn't have the time for it really... now with the baby its out of the question for the most part until he's much older. We had his parents take his wood turning stuff to their house in Utah for the time being so we could have more storage space...

      when I go back to work he needs to watch him on Saturdays and that's when the craft fair was and he is not good at multi tasking...

      Delete
  2. You're best off putting any extra cash to the mortgage now than in a few months. The interest game is really what you're looking to beat. Have you downloaded an amortization table for your mortgage? Vertex42 offers some of my favorites. You can catch up the records since the refinance using the bank account and then have fun modeling all of the potential pay down strategies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True... but its convincing the husband to let me do it.

      Right now he wants us to keep the cash so we can use it to buy things with that we need (like shelves for outside or a new mattress....)

      Delete