I filed our tax return for 2019 on Sunday. The IRS and our home state where we file have both accepted the returns. My husband's income is exempt in our home state, so we owe nothing and since we didn't have any state withholding taken, there is also no refund.

We are getting a $1,308 refund from Federal. I had several years in the past where we tried to get closer to zero refund or owed, but I have skipped that the last two years because of tax changes and different credits applying for college expenses.

We have decided this refund will be set aside to assist with our youngest daughter's tuition bill. Her junior and senior years are higher tuition because she is an engineering major, so starting in the fall we will have an additional $1000 per semester on top of what we already pay. It is possible that she will get a scholarship that will reduce the costs.

I did run my oldest daughter's taxes through a program and she is getting a $94 refund from Federal and $34 from the state. We have not filed it yet, as I do want to run through it with her so she understands it.

In other money news, we had to buy a Blu Ray player. It sort of sounds archaic to buy one, because we do stream a lot of content, but we do also own DVDs and Blu Ray discs. We have also started renting newer releases for $0.60 from Redbox (after coupon code), which is less expensive than rentals through Amazon, ect. Our old player was cutting off the sound intermittently during playback. We paid $62.99 after a coupon and it's more than I really wanted to pay but we did shop around a bit and this was the one for the right price with the features we wanted.

I redeemed Swagbucks for a $25 Amazon gift card, and American Express rewards for $36.06. I also sold another item on eBay last night that needs to be mailed out.

What will you do with any tax refund you get this year? Save? Pay off debt? Or make an purchase?

I've listed quite a few things on eBay. I've already sold a pair of brand new jeans I never wore when I was that size! The other items may or may not be in demand. I have noticed that it is easy to keep listings up long term, through the Buy It Now option. Eventually someone seems buy many of them. I just have to manage how long I want the items that I no longer want sitting in my closet!

My husband traveled for work in January. His travel payment came through this week. He kept his expenses under the allowed per diem, which made us $122.15. That money will be allocated towards the Big Goal.

By the way our Big Goal is to save $200K towards our next home, possibly four years from now. It's BIG. It may not be realistic, or attainable, but we are moving in that direction. It may be some of the funds will get used for something other than a house. But I didn't want to spend years renting and not making some headway towards a home if that make sense. The effort and the progress is where I am currently focused. It's not necessarily what we do with the money when the time comes. As a saver it may be really hard to part with a large pile of cash, but I also want to keep debt, if any, realistic, too!

Are you decluttering? Are you selling anything to bring in extra funds?

We are paying ourselves back for money we put down on our daughter's car in May 2019. I am putting all sources of extra funds towards that goal. Here's what I found in January:

US Bank $13.00
Chase Rewards $3.82
Amex Rewards $67.30
Utility Rebates (2) $59.91
USAA Rewards $3.12
Pinecone Surveys $3
Ibotta Rewards $22.09
Swagbucks (Paypal) $25
Ebay Sale $5.37
Extra Funds $175

Total $377.61

Prior Payback Balance: $875.75
New Payback Balance: $498.14

I have extra funds that I could just call this done, so it's likely I will just call it done pretty soon. The extra funds listed seem to be an extra payment I added in YNAB to no detriment to the budget...so I'm leaving it. We did a very good job of keeping to a pretty frugal budget this month!

I plan to save an additional $2,020 for the year. I've decided to simply automate this, and add it to the Big Goal total. Prior to making this decision I had already increased our automated savings of $175 each pay period to $200. This works out to an additional $50 per month saved.

In order to make the $2,020 increase for the year, I will change the automatic savings amount to $260. This increases each savings deposit by $85, compared to last year.

$85 x 24 pay periods is $2,040, which meets the goal exceeds it just a little.

I realized I didn't actually change the amount from $175 to the new $200 until the 15th of January. So I am short on both January deposits by $145 total.

I am moving that shortage today to make that the full $520 saved for the month. I will also adjust our automatic transfers as of February 1 to be $260 per pay period.

I have some apprehension in making this increase despite knowing my husbands annual raise was only enough to cover the added insurance premium for our daughter. This means we are forcing ourselves to have less to spend each month by $170 per month.

I think if it gets pulled out each pay period we just won't see it and will not have it to spend. At least that is the hope. Worse case scenario, I have over saved and can use the money if needed. I'm just going on some faith that the money will be there.

I'm not kidding, but seconds after I typed that I was going on faith, I received a notification on my phone that I sold a book on eBay. I'm taking that as a sign that we definitely should do this extra savings. The money we need will be there when we need it.

Are you saving more in 2020? How are you making it happen? Or if you have debt, are you paying more towards your debt?

Note to self, added $125 for January shortage, since additional $20 would actually put over goal. Transfers set up as $260 twice per month beginning February 1.

I have not been good at focusing on much of anything lately, including getting a blog post together. So this is all just random.

I paid our youngest daughter's tuition and housing bill. I had saved $500 a month for the last five months to pay the tuition out of pocket. I used her ESA to pay $5700 to pay for room and board. No loans for her yet!

Our oldest daughter's tuition and housing bill is at about $9,294. She is only taking six credits to finish up this May with her two degrees. I have $6,170 in our account towards that and I believe her loan and a couple small scholarships total $3471. So we will have nearly $300 left. I will likely give this to her at graduation to put towards the loans. No point in doing it earlier, as the loans are subsidized interest.

We got a utility refund for being under the average. That was $27.30. This program is likely going away at least in the short term while they do a military housing wide evaluation, due to complaints. I can see the next refund will be larger at $32.11 and appears to be pending now. I save this money towards our Big Goal.

I redeemed credit card rewards recently. Amex $67.30 and Chase Freedom $3.82, and US Bank $13.00. It all adds up!

I earned an Amazon gift card ($25) from Swagbucks since January 1. I earned $506 in gift cards in 2019. Many of which I think I failed to count towards our Big Goal.

I have kept my eye out of for some Christmas cards on clearance and finally found a box of 14 cards by Papyrus for 90% off. I paid just $1.89 at the local exchange store. This is the only Christmas item I was in need of.

This weekend I went to Dollar Tree and bought 9 cards for $6. 8 were 2 for $1. The valentine card my husband picked out for me was $1. This is a win, as he probably would have ended up elsewhere for a card and paid $7! I also bought some of those foil containers with a lid for food. I put a meal in the set of three for a neighbor who is recovering from surgery. Great deal so they won't have to worry about returning dishes.

I did decide to keep YNAB for now. It is a time saver as far as reconciling accounts, and helps me keep good records of our spending and savings. That will be charged to our account today for $75.59. I have looked at other options but will say they don't quite add up to what YNAB can do.

I think I mentioned this once but my husband raise for the year (not the likely upcoming promotion), is going to end up covering our oldest daughters insurance premium. It sort of doesn't feel like a raise when you don't feel like you get to decide what to do with it. But in reality I'm grateful the money came at the right time for the additional expense and didn't have reduce our savings.

It's going to be a busy year. Lots of travel for my husband. Our oldest daughter will graduate in May (with unknown plans after). Will she move elsewhere? What job will she get? She just seems very focused on finishing up. We will travel to her town for graduation. I just made a hotel reservation and probably am lucky I found something at a reasonable price at this late date!

Our youngest has talked about study abroad for this summer, but I'm insistent that any classes she does take must count for her major or minor. So far, we may be striking out. While the experience would be great, it doesn't make sense to pay for a class that doesn't count.

My parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary just after Christmas this year. They have talked about wanting to take a trip with my family and my sisters family on a trip. We have said we will definitely go, but we have no idea where or what the trip may cost.

That potential trip has me wanting to sock away more money in 2020! I mentioned before the year end that some are looking to save $2,020 and I'm thinking of adding that to my savings plans to help with this trip. Hopefully in my next blog post I can try to have it flushed out where I will find this money! I think I just have to make it happen like a bill ($2,020/24 pay periods is $84.17 or $168.34 a month).

Thanks for listening to my brain dump! I didn't even mention taxes...I will save that for another time, too.

We are paying ourselves back for money we put down on our daughter's car in May. I am putting all sources of extra funds towards that goal. Here's what I found in December:

US Bank $13.00
Chase Rewards $13.77
Amex Rewards $57.06
Extra travel funds $58.40
USAA Rewards $9.14
USAA Subscriber Disbursement $193.20
Under Christmas Budget $17.75
Pinecone Surveys $6
Swagbucks (Paypal) $25
Ebay Sale $5.34
Discover reward $0.34
FB Sale $25

Total $424.00

Prior Payback Balance: $$1,299.75
New Payback Balance: $875.75

At one time I thought we could get this paid back by the end of the year, but it seems we had expenses I hadn't accounted for. But it feels great to get this under $1000! I feel really motivated to get this paid back as soon as possible.

Over a week ago, my husband's unit has a family Christmas party. I won a small cast iron pan with a cookie mix in it. It makes probably a four or five inch cookie. Not something I would ever buy, but I decided to give it to our youngest daughter with her Christmas check ($40). She does like to bake and I thought it would disguise and help me wrap the check! Worse case scenario I donate it.

My husband also won a $25 Target gift card from filling out a survey for our property management. A nice surprise! Wish I had known earlier, as I already bought my other daughter a $25 Target gift card! It's all good though, they will all get used.

Very small winnings, but winnings nonetheless!

In other small money news, I did redeem rewards on our Chase Freedom card for $13.77. I also sold a book on eBay that I need to mail out tomorrow. Probably made $5 on that. Less stuff more money!

Our girls arrive home on Saturday for their holiday break! We are looking forward to it.

We are paying ourselves back for money we put down on our daughter's car in May. I am putting all sources of extra funds towards that goal. Here's what I found in November:

US Bank $13.00
Chase Rewards $1.80
Amex Rewards $55.26
Electric Rebates $82.99
Extra travel funds $105.34
USAA Reward $1.62
Total $260.01

Prior Payback Balance: $1,559.76
New Payback Balance: $1,299.75

At one time I thought we could get this paid back by the end of the year, but it seems we had expenses I hadn't accounted for. But I feel confident we can get this paid back by the end of next year...hopefully much sooner!

I also haven't felt as compelled to write here, although I don't think it is directly related to the recent hack. I'm starting to focus on other areas rather than financial as the year comes to a close.

I have had a couple small eBay sales, with the one yesterday resulting in me under charging for shipping. I must not have weighed correctly or at all. I still made a couple dollars, but it was a bit disappointing as I had accepted a lower offer. All is good though, less things in my home!

There was a capital credit for $8.99 that we received from an electric company from two homes ago. Glad I updated our address so we could receive it.

Our electric bill has been under the average so sometime in the next month we will get a refund of $60+. It's been a few months since we received on, and I can't remember how long it takes the money to arrive.

Our insurance for all of the three cars we own plus the outrageous renter's insurance for this location is going to be charged to our card at the beginning of November. The charge is over $2,600. Luckily I had $1900 already saved, but I think I had not adjusted quick enough when we added our daughter's car in May. I add more, but I'm still a bit short, but will get it all adjusted and paid by the credit card due date. It just feels like so much money it makes me sick and is probably one of the top two reasons, I'm ready to move as soon as possible. And yes, I have done some checking on lower rates to no avail. There are a few other places to check, but I don't feel hopeful so I keep putting it off.

So that is what is going on from a financial sense. Keep moving forward right?!

Well, it seems the site may be up, but posts only updated through mid April 2019. I haven't looked around much to see what is missing.

I had about given up! Some of us have been connecting by email and Facebook to figure out a new plan. More work to do to figure out where our rendezvous point is if the site goes down permanently.

I had made a financial blog on Blogger quite a while back, called Our Money Blog. I put some posts up that may have even been duplicates from here. But over time I stopped. Today, I posted a revival post.

I'm just going to send you

there for an update on our interest, big goal and down payment repayment goals...check out how I was able to recreate the starting points without this blog available to help!

I have few final snowflakes to report for 2018. A full tally coming soon!

$100 Christmas gift from my parents
$24.81 Ibotta proceeds
$1.89 Starbucks (Amex reward offer)
$5.00 Hulu (Amex reward offer)
$2.91 Verizon (Amex reward offer)

It's been a good year for snowflakes (extra money)...all have been added to our Big Goal. More about that on the sidebar and an update soon.

Happy New Year, Saving Advice bloggers and readers!

Today was payday!

I paid off all the credit card balances, which is my usual routine twice per month. I also balanced categories in YNAB back to zero and then added in money to flush those categories out for the rest of the month spending. I'm guessing with our girls home visiting for the next three weeks to a month we will be spending more on groceries, dinner and likely some paid activities, although I'm hoping for free!

I finally received my $3 Pinecone Research payment. I had to send an email and the next day I had my payment. Apparently they were having some issues with their normal process.

I redeemed $7.44 in Chase Freedom rewards. These went into our Big Goal Fund! I will do a wrap up of our progress at year end.

We also received an extra payment for housing for our oldest daughter's Post 911/GI Bill benefits this semester. Apparently, they have been underpaying us all semester. I'm actually glad I didn't know until it was corrected. That amount to cover underpayment since August was $286.17.

I received an email from FNBO Direct where we have one of our money market accounts. That account will now be paying 2.15%. I'll take it but I probably need to move some money in there into a CD with a higher rate. I think Beawealthywarrior posted on one of my blogs that PenFed has some good rates. I will look there soon!

I'm always grateful for the money that flows into our lives, as well as the ability to let money flow out for our needs and wants. All of life is a balance that way.

We pay off our credit cards in full every month and never pay interest on a revolving balance. We use them for as many transactions as we can. In fact, we are now able to pay our rent with a credit card, most likely will use our Southwest Airlines credit card to accumulate points for flights.

We redeemed rewards from the following cards this past month.

US Bank $8.31
Chase Freedom $14.70
American Express $50.61
Discover $8.37
Total $81.99

Our credit card rewards are almost as good as the amount of interest we earn on our savings.

I guess some people on YouTube are doing a Sell Your Stuff Stuff September. I didn't know about it until today, but we sure have been selling things. Only two small things since my last report. I sold a computer box and some Box Tops for Education on eBay. Those net proceeds came to $24.92.

I also redeemed some American Express rewards in the amount of $59.85. I'm sure a result of all that summer spending. Wow!

I'm hoping to sell some more furniture items this week and weekend. I know people in our state are still suffering from the effects of the storm, so it's hard to know if there will be people buying.

My oldest daughter has a four year scholarship worth $14K per year, along with a $500 Honor's Scholarship. She also had another scholarship her freshman year (worth $1-2K). These have helped tremendously the first two years since we pay out of state tuition. This year, her third year, the Post 911 GI Bill has paid the difference after scholarships, along with a book and housing stipend. We have paid very little out of pocket this year. I need to do an update on that here soon.

We have been notified she is receiving an art scholarship next year worth $1500. This will be divided in half, so worth $750 per semester. This is most significant for the spring semester, as she will not have Post 911 GI Bill benefits to use, thus everything after scholarships is ours to pay.

We expect our daughter will be going an extra semester (Fall 2019) because she is a double major. That semester will be the most expensive, or possibly the least expensive. Scholarships will have run out (unless awarded a new one), thus the entire out of state tuition will be on our shoulders. She has been averaging 17 credit hours a semester, so the cost could be almost $20K. We do not have the money now and expect her college funds to be depleted by then. We are starting to think it would be in the best interest to move more of my husband's Post 911 GI Bill benefits to our oldest daughter just in time for her final semester. And then that benefit covers the entire tuition!

Our youngest daughter will be receiving in state tuition. Yes, her college is in another state. Her tuition after scholarships is $3500 PER YEAR for the first two years, for 12 credits or more. The remaining two years will be higher as an engineering student, around $1500 per year, or $4500 TOTAL per year. Again, this is not including housing. Honestly, we can totally cover tuition out of pocket for her even in those higher cost years.

Our thinking now is to move more of the GI Bill benefits to our oldest daughter because the benefit to us financially is much higher.

At any rate, just excited our daughter was awarded a scholarship! Part of it will benefit our us directly, the other benefits the US taxpayer...paying less out of the GI Bill funds to the university.

In other news, received $10 Diamond Class Action settlement. Apparently enough leftover funds from several years ago to make another payout! I also sold a book on eBay last night, so few extra dollars there.

I sort of felt like a money magnet yesterday!

I've added some more cash to our Big Goal. Our plan is to add $108 per pay period. I keep forgetting when I do our budget in YNAB, so then I have to go back in and make adjustments for it to work! This is money from my husband's raise this year. We also save last year's raise. So we are still living on 2016 income!

I think I will switch this to an automatic savings transfer, then I can have automatically set up to record in YNAB as well. I can't let this money disappear into our spending!

I made an eBay sale last night. Net proceeds about $11 on something we no longer need or use. It had been listed for awhile, but I was okay waiting for the right person to come along.

I redeemed $22.99 from our Chase Freedom account. Cash will be deposited into our bank account in the next day or so.

Happy to have cash flowing in and the ability to save it.

I guess it was January when I last made a point of using things up. I was doing an Uber Frugal Month with spending and using things we already had on hand was part of making that work.

I had some diced butternut squash in the fridge that I didn't even get to then! It's almost April! Late this morning, I threw the squash in a saucepan with garlic, onion, ginger and carrots to saute' for several minutes. Oh yes, there was salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes. I added some chicken broth (made from bouillon) and simmered for another ten minutes. And then in the end added a cup of milk (I was going to use coconut milk, but it had gone bad, oops!). Finally, blended it with my immersion blender.

My food stores are still pretty limited from the Uber Frugal month. To me this means we are buying only what we will actually eat and use! Far less food waste or extra money spent.

I know it's a holiday weekend for many and could mean more spending on groceries, but be sure to check your pantry before you go shopping. Maybe you already have ingredients you need, or possibly you have something on hand that could be used instead of something you think you need to buy.

Yesterday, I listed six new items to eBay. These were items we found this month to let go. These were ones that may have a chance of selling for a few dollars. I'm hoping for some quick sales!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend! Stay frugal out there.

I cashed out my Ibotta account last night. The funds were immediately transferred to my PayPal account. Just this morning I moved those funds to savings, not sure why I waited! I was able to cash out $41.38.

I also had proceeds from an item I sold on eBay yesterday as well, so I transferred those to savings. In total I added $49.56 to our Big Goal funds.

It does take awhile for Ibotta coupon savings to add up and you need a $20 balance to withdraw, but I find it easier than cutting or printing coupons. If you are interested in saving this way, you can sign up under me

here.

I received a check in the mail from my claim with Blue Buffalo. Amount of the check is $114.09. It could have been up to $200, but they had lots of claimants. I'm happy either way!

Yesterday, I redeemed Swagbucks for $50 cash through PayPal. I received that money in my PayPal account.

I will add this extra money to our Big Goal!

It's been a good money day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am so grateful to live here in the United States that affords me and my family to pursue the life we want to live. I'm also grateful to Saving Advice as a place to talk about my life and share in yours.

I wanted to clue you into a coupon on Amazon.com. It's worth $5 off $20 worth of book sold by Amazon.com. The code is GIFTBOOK17 and is good through November 26th.

I had $47 worth of books in my cart this morning. I added the coupon code and $40 worth of Amazon.com gift cards (earned from Swagbucks and MyPoints) and paid $5.93 after taxes were added in. And these will be shipped free with my Amazon Prime membership.

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled Thanksgiving!!

I sold some Box Tops for Education on eBay today. I will net about $7 for some scraps of paper and cardboard. Easy money really.

We received our electric bill this week and finally it dropped significantly. I'm sure primarily due to cooler weather and having one heating and air unit completely off for a week. It was off because the compressor was bad, thus no point in using it. It has now been replaced. The drop was $80!! I'll make a point to put that money towards our Big Goal.

We went grocery shopping today for our Thanksgiving meal. Our meal itself actually isn't too fancy. I'm making Pot Pies, mashed potatoes (daughter's request), a salad and pumpkin pie. Even that sounds like too much food! I did however buy many of the ingredients we need for our holiday baking. And my husband has a meal at work this week he is contributing to. He bought rolls and I'm making cookies for him to take. We also bought some meat on clearance, coffee filters, and cat filter. We spent $200. I need to see how many Ibotta rebates I may qualify for...for a few more snowflakes.

My birthday was Friday and I received a check from my parents for $100. I added it to our Big Goal also.

Snowflakes add up!

My husband told me today that we will be getting about $105 from his recent travel reimbursement. This was the trip where he bought some friends dinner to the tune of $140. That meal isn't specifically being reimbursed, of course, but it will offset that expense a bit. I didn't think he was getting anything extra.

Our college daughter was home for spring break last week, so we did a little clothes shopping, went out to eat a couple times, and celebrated her birthday with cake from a bakery. And now the funds left that we budgeted through the end of the month are getting slim.

I did jump ahead in the budget a bit and bought tickets for my husband, daughter and I to see a local Sherlock Holmes play in early April. Those three tickets were $55 total. And we will be seeing Beauty and the Beast in the theater this coming weekend. This much more than we usually spend on entertainment in a short period of time. But thankful that we can afford to do so when we find something that is of interest for all of us.

I listed four CDs on eBay today in a lot. Not sure if they will sell or not. I think I may have listed them for sale in the past, but I don't have a record of it on my account any longer. So if I did it was more than two months ago. I figured I would try one more time.

I've been doing pretty good at accumulating Swagbucks, but I'm going to need to spend my time getting my garden planted soon. I'm going to do zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, lettuce, snow peas, onions, cucumber and strawberries. I'm going to do the strawberries in a pot on our screened in porch to keep the birds away! I'm not real optimistic about them, but my younger daughter insists since she didn't like them when she was younger and didn't get to eat any!

Oh, I thought I'd ask those of you world travelers what you think about exchanging currency before a trip? How much of the total expected costs would you want to have in the foreign currency? 20%? 50%? The teacher leading the trip can exchange for a lower fee at her bank. We know some cash is likely a good idea. She would need pounds for the two days in London, and euros for the remaining ten or eleven days. She also has a no foreign transaction fee debit card that she will likely use as well. I think we may also add her as an authorized user on one of our credit cards, as an extra back up option.

Scroll down two posts if you missed the post were I linked to some free debt pay off and saving charts.

My daughter signed up for two online summer school classes. Remember she's a non resident student. And her scholarship helps a lot during the fall and spring semesters, but will not be applied during the summer. In order to graduate with two majors in 4.5 years she needs to take summer classes. Those two classes will cost $3,470. I was expecting this but didn't put a lot of planning thought into it. But now I am!

She still has cash in her Educational Savings account. My current plan is to the money in that account but only for half. The other half ($1,735) I hope to cash flow. I have until June 12 to come up with those funds. Three months! This is $578.33 per month. I'm going to attempt $300 each pay period.

It is really hard to save 'extra' for my long term goal while paying tuition, but I am going to remember that we will have the GI Bill benefits starting this fall. And it covers the full tuition cost, $1000 towards books AND nearly all of the housing costs. I just figured out the housing costs and our actual out of pocket costs will amount to $2208. That is far less than we have been paying. We do have to pay the full amount upfront and then we are reimbursed monthly. Luckily we have the cash and this will work out just fine.

I added two more items to eBay this morning, and I have four more that I hope to add as soon as possible. These won't amount to a lot of cash, but each dollar counts. These items are easy to mail, too.

It's just my daughter and I here at home this week. I went grocery shopping for just the two of us and spent $52. I'm very excited about that number! The truth is we just eat a bit simpler without my husband. One night we are at an event at school where we will be served pizza. I will be giving a donation to a scholarship fund with a chance to win some prizes, so not exactly free, but a good cause to donate to.

My net proceeds from selling 11 items on eBay recently came to $145.33. Not bad for stuff we aren't using! This could probably be considered the first money for my new BIG goal.

Flute lesson was cancelled last week because the teacher got ill. Luckily she was able to tell us before we made the full trip all the way over there. Turns out she won't be available to teach this coming week either, so I have a $50 credit that will be applied next month.

I'm working on getting more Swagbucks. I have an item to buy from Amazon that is just under $12, so I'm aiming for a $15 gift card. This item is reusable and will save me about $60 a year by using it. So now I'm realizing I need to see what else I could replace to save. Another option would be to eliminate something I use because it is unnecessary. I have one idea, but I need to try it for awhile to know for sure. That would probably save me $40 per year.

I did a little online research and found that we could likely move on post in Summer 2018 (assuming availability) to an 2 bedroom apartment. The cost would be $1250, and include ALL utilities, cable, internet and trash. I figured that would save us nearly $910 a month or $10,920. And actually would save us even more as my husband would be blocks from work, so could probably walk. I would be driving less without a child at home. I sure like the possibility of saving some serious cash! Not sure what my husband would think of an apartment, nor do I know that we would still be living in the area next summer.

Good news! My husband actually was reimbursed for providing coffee to the Generals in the office last week. It's done on a donation basis. He scored $15 in cash for providing the coffee, creamer and sugar.

I've also sold four items on eBay since Sunday. I have one that has not paid yet. This always seems to happen when I accept a Best Offer. I'm almost to the point of not offering that, but I do like to make sales! This was just agree to last night, so the buyer isn't really late in making payment at this point. I would just like my money, so I can ship the items out!

I've been decluttering lately at our home. If you stopped by, you might think I barely have anything compared to the average American, but yet there is still stuff we don't use. I have been showing a bag of decluttering on my blog

Your Organized Friend for the last week and there is more to come.

The decluttering has produced several items worth trying to sell. I'm not sure that they all will sell, but if I could get some money for most of them I would be happy. I have three items in the $40-30 range, and two items listed in the $8-10 range. I have one more item I'm washing first and hope to list it later tonight for at least $40.

I also came upon a few movies that might be worth listing, but I will need to find appropriate packaging for them first.

In other news, we had my van in for repair late last week. I had a situation where I went to pick up my daughter from school and went to start the van again and it wouldn't turn over at all. I was able to start it an hour later without a jump start. The repair shop eventually recreated the issue. It was the alternator that was bad, which then caused the battery to go out prematurely. We did get a free replacement battery as it was still under warranty. With military discounts an alternator with a three year warranty and labor cost us $530. We do have the cash to pay it for which I am thankful. I also feel much better knowing that I won't have a problem starting my van again in the future!

I've sold a few more items on eBay. I netted less than $15, but that is money in and stuff out, so I'm happy. I have eight more items listed. I'm not sure they will all sell, but if they end without interest, then they will get donated.

I haven't had a Pinecone survey lately. Although, I know I've done some of the household questions. I decided to log on to their website. I found I had $3 that I could cash in. Nice surprise!

I'm transferring more money from our money market account to Navy Federal Credit Union. We had a certificate mature and they now have an offer of 2% for 20 months, up to $20,000. I decided that 2% is better than .95%, so I'm going to maximize the amount we can invest.

My daughter did get marching band changed to zero credit. The other one credit needs to stay as it is. She has 13 credits officially, we will pay about $3300 out of pocket, after scholarships for the tuition and fees. Total for books and supplies will be known shortly. She has to order a specific dress for choir, not sure yet on it's cost.

I sold another item on eBay. Net profit $6.74. Less stuff, more money! I will put this in savings.

I've been motivated by my daughter going back to school to sell some things, just to help offset costs. In no way does it cover the cost, but every little bit helps!

I need to get on the ball and get more listed. Tuition and housing are due September 12. I have yet to calculate total bill, but I'm thinking at least $9K for the semester.

I sold two Wii games on eBay this week. After shipping and fees I netted $8.99. For now I'm leaving that money in my Paypal account. I feel like lately my snowflakes just get consumed into our spending. I probably need to be transferring them to our savings account.

Of course, I like all snowflakes...even if they melt once in awhile.

I sold a book and Box Tops for Education on eBay yesterday...and net another $14! The net total is about $187. Not too shabby.

I still have two items listed. I'm not sure if they will sell. One seems like it should, so I'm not quite sure what it hasn't. I may need to change it in some way to guarantee a sale.

I have earned enough to get a $5 Amazon gift card through Bing rewards. I haven't redeemed them yet. I'm getting closer to earning another $25 gift card or cash from Swagbucks, also. These seem to be my monthly averages on these.

I sure do like the small amounts of money that come in! Let it snow. Let it snow!!