An EBay Triumph! March 30, 2009

Though I wasn’t very impressed with my initial eBay experience, I decided to give it another shot.  I had a name-brand brand-new blazer and another almost new blazer that are too big for me due to my weight loss that I wanted to sell.  I’m happy to report that this time, I had a much more favorable experience.

I think a large part of my frustration the first time I used eBay was due to getting my account set up and learning the ropes.  Now that have it all ready to go, and have gotten the shipping down to a science, I didn’t waste as much time and energy posting my items.  Also, this time I made sure to list them at a price I was comfortable with (as last time most of my items didn’t get bid up any higher).  To my surprise, both items sold, one for $3.50 more than my initial listing, and one for $10 more than my list price!   

I think it also helped that I had gained some positive feedback from my previous seller experience, and that made buyers more comfortable bidding on my items. Now that I’m working again, I’m a bit more limited on my time to sell on-line, but I think I will continue to try to raise some debt-reduction money on eBay from time to time.

March Debt Summary March 29, 2009

Debt at start of blog (July 2008): $51,497.33

Debt at end of March 2009: $30,918.57

Difference: $20,578.76

Current Breakdown:

Car loan (at 5.75%): $8,115.08

Grad School Loan (at 6.55%): $7,871.72

Undergrad Loan (at 3.125%): $14,931.77

I sold a cd on Amazon, which gave me an additional $4.79 toward the grad school loan.  Upromise also put an extra $30.84 toward my undergraduate loan this month.  (Upromise credits my undergraduate loan once a quarter as long as I have a balance of $25+). 

March was a slow month for debt reduction, but I start getting paid in April for my new job, and I’m hoping to be able to begin contributing an extra $1000 a month towards the debt once we are back to 2 incomes.

Taking your clothes to a tailor — A cheaper alternative to shopping! March 21, 2009

Last year I lost 25 pounds through weight watchers.  Though I am thrilled with my weight loss, and the fact that I’ve managed to keep 20 of those pounds off, I now have a bunch of clothes that I love that I can no longer wear.

In particular, I have 3 pairs of dress pants from the Limited that I really like that I wore to work all the time.  I was going to sell them on EBay and then buy new pants, but after thinking about it, I realized that I would probably make less than $10 per pair.  Since replacement pants from the Limited cost $60-$70, (even on sale, you are lucky if you can pay less than $40 per pair) I decided this was a bad plan.  Instead, I took my pants to tailor, who took them in for $12 per pair.  So, for just $36, I now have 3 “new” pairs of dress pants!

It’s OFFICIAL! I got the job offer! March 20, 2009

Yesterday the phone rang and they offered me the job I’d been waiting for! Hurray!

I am so excited to be making $ again!

Waiting for the phone to ring . . . March 19, 2009

So I finally got a job, sort of.  I interviewed a week ago last Friday, they were supposed to notify me last week and instead told me the process was taking longer than expected.  On Monday I got a call from HR stating that I was the final candidate but that I needed a criminal background check before they could make the offer.  (I work in higher education, so this wasn’t shocking — generally when working with students these things are required).  So now I’m waiting for the background check to go through. 

I’m excited to have this job, I first heard about it in September, but due to some state funding issues it’s taken a while for the position to get posted, etc.  However, it seems so anticlimactic.  I am the final candidate (yay!) but I still have nothing in writing and haven’t been made an offer, so I can’t officially say, “I have a job!” or make plans for my new salary (cause I don’t know exactly what it will be, yet.)

Part of why this is so frustrating is that while I was waiting for this position to finally be available, I interviewed and got a job offer from another company.  The job paid more, and was a great opportunity to learn some new skills in an entirely new field.  However, it was a horrible commute (54 miles each way) and looked ridiculously boring, so I hesitated on whether or not to accept the position. Finally, I decided to accept it, since I was tired of waiting for the job I really wanted (it’s been 6 months with no job, folks).  Of course the day after I do this, I get a call to interview for the job I’d prefer.

Ultimately and after much drama, indecision, and panic, I ended up declining the job that was 54 miles away.  Unfortunately I had to make this decision before I had an actual offer from the higher education job.  It was a bit risky, but I new I had an excellent shot at the higher ed job, and I knew deep down that I would not be happy at the job with the long commute.  I’m happy with my decision, and ultimately since I go the job I wanted, it all worked out. However, with no definite start date in sight, I feel like the waiting will never end!  I just want to go to work!

I’m sure I’m just being melodramatic.  They will probably call me in a couple days, and I will most likely be able to start next week.  I’m just sick of the waiting!

Why I didn’t have a garage sale March 18, 2009

So I was supposed to have a garage sale on March 7th.  My whole complex was going to have one, it was supposed to draw a lot of people and be very profitable. After my EBay experience, I had decided that I should just garage sale stuff, rather than sell it on-line, as it would take less effort/time and yield similar to higher profits.  Well, I now think I was wrong. 

As the garage sale date approached, I gathered up a bunch of stuff around the house, and started counting up how much it would all be worth — in my head I had approximately $200 worth of stuff to sell.  Then I began to think about what I would need for the sale itself:

1. Tables — I have none.  So, I asked around and found several friends who were willing to lend theirs. Problem partially solved, though I would still need to buy a card table (more expenses).

2. Change — How do I get enough ones/fives/tens, etc for the sale?  I would ordinarily say, “just go to a bank!”  But I don’t have a physical bank — I do all of my banking on-line!  Therefore I would either have to start hoarding ones and fives a couple months in advance or withdraw a bunch of money and pay a fee to get some financial institution to make change for me. 

3.  What to do with the profits?  I wanted to put the profit from this sale towards my debt.  Unfortunately, the online banking issue again comes into play.  I have no way to redeposit the cash I took out to use for change or to deposit my profits into my bank account — with everything in cash, my guess is the money would just get spent, and quickly.

4. I need a box to keep the money in — preferably a lock box of some sort — another expense.

5. I needed some way to hang up clothing.  My parents always hung a pole between 2 stepladders. I have neither pole nor ladders, nor space to store the ladders. Every other solution I came up with to this problem involved spending more money.

6. Most of the stuff that really sells at garage sales is furniture, housewares, and children’s stuff.  I have mostly books, music and adult-sized clothing — none of which are big money makers.  I have no children’s stuff or furniture, and very few housewares to sell.

The more I thought about it, the less profit I realized Iwas going to make and the more time and energy I realized I was going to have to spend.  So, ultimately I decided it wasn’t worth all the time/money/labor to make maybe $50 at the end of the day.

My sister is supposedly having a sale later this spring — since she already has tables, a cash box, a local bank from which she can get change, a way to hang clothing, etc.  I think I will just wait and take it down to her house to sell.  In the mean time, I put a few more things up on EBay, which in retrospect now seems like a pretty reasonable way to make some $.