Meet Crystal! She’s not that attached to stuff, except for her tv, and I am super excited that she plans to pay off her car — one of her motivations for joining this challenge. Good luck Crystal and thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and answer my questions. 😀
Meet Maurine! I really liked the song she chose and she thinks I am crazy for selling my stuff! LOL Yeah it might have been a bit crazy I admit, but guess what? It got me out of debt faster. 😀 She doesn’t suffer from Stuff Attachment Disorder, but she’s keeping her tv too. She really wants to save for her family’s future. Love that!! Thanks Maurine for taking the time. I know you are going to rock it!
Meet Diva in Debt! She’s had to deal with serious lay offs over the years and really wants to get this debt off her back, and admits that not having an emergency fund was a mistake. 😀
You can see Diva in Debt’s submission here.
Meet Jennifer! Jennifer doesn’t have a lot to sell, in fact it looks like she sold some stuff last year, like a motorcycle and a boat. Good job Jennifer!
See Jennifer’s answers in this Google Doc.
Again thank you all for taking the time to put these together! It was nice to get to read your answers and I am looking forward to hearing how much debt you were able to pay off in March! See you next time! Keep up the good work and don’t forget to check out this post, where I get you to ask yourself some hard questions.
P.S. How do you feel about not eating out for an entire month to help you pay off a little more debt in April?
For those of you interested in my weight loss journey, check out some of my favorite posts from Enemy of Fat.
If Plyometrics Had an Ass, I Just Kicked It!
Are You Living, or Just Breathing to Death?
What I’m Learning About the Need for Routine
30 Days of P90X has almost been completed! This Tuesday is Day 30! I plan on sharing measurements and stuff with you and will be posting the results on Enemy of Fat!
I haven’t done a yard sale yet, but I made $116 on ebay this week.
$116 on Ebay rocks and is ultimately better than having a yard sale. You generally get more for stuff on Ebay, then if it doesn’t sell it goes in the yard sale pile. Great job Jennifer!! 😀 Keep the intensity alive!
Us ladies are going to KILL OUR DEBT!!!!
PS I’m down for the April challenge. I have been doing a good job on our family meal plan so that will help our goal of not eating out the month of April. I will be diligent on getting my grocery shopping done (with coupons) the whole month – Better start planning now!
PSS We turned in the recycling and got $20. It went right away to paying the Kohls account. And I found something else I can sell on craigslist.
I wish I could do a better job at menu planning, I know I could save some money if I did. I need to get better at keeping my pantry stocked for meals that I eat a lot so that I have the ingredients on hand. I always seem to run out of stuff because I hate shopping for groceries.
Rock on ladies! Our numbers may be small, but we’re a determined lot! And as always, thanks to Brad.
I actually like to cook but suck at the meal planning. That;s why we eat out so much. I need to do better! I hate knowing that so much money has been wasted on doing something I could avoid by cooking at home. It doesn’t make sense to me yet we continue to do it each month. We need to tighten up and April is going to challenge us too. 😀
I wish there would have been more too but I’m happy that you four ladies have decided to GO FOR IT! I’m very proud of you all! Getting out of debt is hard work and sometimes it’s easy to lose our motivation. We struggled with that too as we paid off our debt. You’re doing the hard but and will get to enjoy the reward. It is such a SWEET feeling!
That was my problem as well the meal planning. I would have my shopping list ready but didn’t have my meals so I wouldn’t go to the store. I tried to get help from the boys but they didn’t help. I found an amazing website that helped a lot. I’ll email you the link, some menu ideas and a mean plan worksheet HA HA that sounds funny but it really helps.
We can all help each other out this month. I don’t have time to really cook during the week so I have some crock pot recipes that are really good and super easy.
Money Momma,
I would like the link for the menu ideas and plan worksheet. Thanks!
In case Money Momma doesn’t see this I will email her about your request. 😀
YEAH!! That’s what I’m talking about! You all will be formally known as the FAB FOUR! 😀 Haha!
I’m going to challenge myself with no eating out in April again to try and start changing some bad habits. We eat out way too much! 🙂
Way to pay on that Kohl’s card too! That’s awesome! Keep plugging away!
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to pay much extra toward debt in March. My personal property taxes are due and I also had to use my emergency fund for a car repair, so I plan on tossing another $100 into my EF to keep it a bit over $1000.
Throwing an extra $100 in the Emergency Fund is never a bad idea! As you pay those property taxes consider starting a sinking fund. Figure out the due date of the next payment and divide it by the number of months until it is due. Save that every month and it will ease the burden the next time it’s due. I promise you it will be a relief and you will be glad you did it. That’s how we pay our auto insurance every six months. 😀
We will rock Money Momma! I went thru all of my stuff and ended up donating over 100 items. So using the turbotax donation estimator will help me claim a nice chunk of change on next year’s taxes! Going cold turkey on going out to eat next month will be tough because of a couple of birthdays. So I will limit myself to only once a week which leaves me with 4 outings for the whole month of April. So I will pick my outings wisely. I may keep that one up for the whole year!
Good luck ladies!!
Nice plan Crystal I love it! I love how you were able to compromise with yourself in order to be realistic, but still hardcore enough to where you will save some money! Good luck, and as I said in prior comments, I will be participating along with you all — THE FAB FOUR! 😀
Oh no… the April challenge will be SO difficult for me. I have to admit this is where much of my disposable money goes. I just get lazy and don’t plan a lunch or plan it and just want something else. This will be tough. Also, I’ve made $41 on the items I sold so far on Ebay. But I have more to list and I’m going to work on that this weekend.
Do like Crystal and compromise. Limit yourself to 1 meal a week or something similar. Make it challenging though. Remember it’s only for one month and in the grand scope of things anyone can do anything for 30 days. 🙂 Compare those 30 days to the grand scope of your life. 30 days isn’t really that much considering. We all need a good challenge from time to time. You may surprise yourself! 😀
I’m cheering for you in your corner and I know you can do it. 😀
Here is the website: It is the perfect name….Quit Eating Out…she has a Saturday Swap and other blogs post their dinner ideas.
http://quiteatingout.blogspot.com/
You can click on the other websites that give more ideas.
Below is my meal plan (Looks better in my WORD format but this gives you an idea). I see what we have going on that day and plan around that. Monday and Tuesday my husband works at night so it is just me and the kids so I can plan something easy. Wednesday can be a harder meal to cook and Thursday is usually a crock pot dish. I hope this helps.
Here is what I have planned for next week so far.
Meal Plan
Date Going On Day/Meal What’s on the Table
3/26 Baseball 6:00 Saturday Dinner: Baked Ziti
3/27 Sunday Breakfast: …..
3/27 Sunday Lunch: Tomato-Basil Soup
3/27 Sunday Dinner: Chicken Pot Pie
3/28 Monday:
3/29 Dr Appt 5:45 Tuesday: Del Taco – Taco Tuesday
3/30 Wednesday: Spaghetti
3/31 Baseball 5:30 Thursday:
4/1 Friday:
4/2 Saturday Breakfast: …..
4/2 Saturday Lunch:
Brad! I totally goofed on trying to sell stuff on ebay. I put in the wrong email address for my paypal account and totally underestimated on shipping costs. LOL I will totally be sticking to just donating everything in the future. So far I have lost money on sales. It was a fun adventure tho!
Crystal,
You can go to the post office website to get shipping prices. I use the flat rate boxes for heavier items and usually the economy shipping for lighter stuff. I just sold a bronze statue on ebay that weighed almost 8 lbs, but with the flat rate shipping I only paid $10.95. The clerk said it would have cost me $40 to send it without the flat rate box.
the flat rate shipping option is great! 😀
Forgot to mention that you don’t have to pay for the boxes until you ship something, so I always keep a variety of sizes on hand.
Hey Crystal, sorry for the delay in responding to you. Jennifer is right, that is what Alana did when she first started doing it. There is a learning curve to selling on eBay but once you get the hang of everything you flash through it like a pro. I’m sorry to hear you lost money though. That definitely bites!
it’s ok! I am happy for the learning experience. I’m looking forward to April’s challenge!
You know what, I just thought about this and am kicking myself for not sharing it with you earlier. I wrote this post when we started to figure out Ebay. Selling on Ebay is as Easy as 1-2-3!
Hopefully you won’t disregard Ebay all together because you can learn the process and make a lot of money doing it. My wife likes it because she LOVES shopping and this is her way of fulfilling that shopping urge without actually buying stuff we don’t need. She buys it to sell, which ends up being a completely different high. It becomes a challenge to see how much you will get for your $1.00 purchases. My wife has bought things for as little as $.50 and sold them for $65, but this take some practice and some research. The capability to search the web before you make a purchase has been essential for my wife. Luckily we have the web on our phones which has made this process MUCH easier. (She used to call me and ask me to look something up to see how it was selling.)
I don’t want this experience to discourage you from opening a door that can help you earn extra money. Trust me, we lost a few bucks at first too. We learned from it and got better and you will too. 😀