As you know, I’ve been selling everything we own on Facebook Marketplace. Okay, not everything, but we’ve certainly sold a decent amount of stuff. Today, I thought I would share some tips on successfully selling on this online platform. Try to detach emotionally from your belongings. This was probably the hardest part of selling my…
Saving money on meals
Around the time we had our second child, we started noticing our money tightening up. I was busy at work and Christy was busy at home. One thing that seems to happen for a lot of people when life gets hectic and they are short on time is, they start spending more money on meals….
Vacation savings account for a large family
Do you prioritize saving for vacations? In years past, we never specifically set aside money for trips. Recent events have made me reconsider how we once operated. We managed to make $845 by selling things in our crawlspace. From the beginning, I wanted to spend the money we earned on the kids. In my mind,…
Buying a “new car” and when to walk away
Christy and I have never owned a new car. The cars we did have, until 2013, averaged around 5-7 years old when we bought them. We aren’t really car people, so buying something new and fancy never really registered in our minds as something we needed. I always bought clunkers. My very first car was…
De-cluttering our home and letting go of the past
After we started selling our belongings on Facebook Marketplace, I became obsessed with de-cluttering the crawlspace. For days on end, I rummaged around in there reorganizing and getting rid of our belongings. I became so fixated on clearing out the space, it was hard to focus on anything else – like my children or my…
My wallet has contracted COVID-19
There’s just no getting away from COVID-19. Unfortunately, it has caused a great loss of life and even more panic. I’d like to say I’m immune to the panic, but our grocery bills are telling another story. As a cost savings measure, we only go grocery shopping when I get paid, which is the 15th…
Quarantine projects around the house
For the better part of the last 3 months, John and I have been in quarantine. We’ve done a few small projects around the house, but we finally decided to address our crawlspace. We have EVERYTHING stuffed into this tiny space – from baby clothes to furniture. The whole process started when we were switching…
Retirement: Do you want to be Retired or Re-TIRED?
Retirement is one area that we have fallen short. As Christy mentioned in our story, when the stock market took a plunge in 2008 we stopped contributing to my work 401k. Although that was a mistake because we lost 10 years of growth during a great market run, it wasn’t a total loss because the…
Fixer Upper Tips for a Debt Free Renovation
We purchased our fixer upper home in January of 2006. We weren’t looking for a renovation project. It was simply the best house we could afford at that time. Honestly, we had no idea how much work the house would end up requiring. The previous homeowners had neglected the space for years. The floors were…
They work hard for the money. So hard for it honey.
When I was a kid, I did work hard for the money I earned. Not really. I was the youngest of six, so we had a lot of waste. Do you remember those little metal garbage cans they had back then? They didn’t hold a whole lot, so we had 5 of them. In my…