By: Revanche

Big steps, little steps & the Side Money Tracker!

November 15, 2014

A five minute geeky money chat with J.Money inspired this post. Most of the time, I just take our savings as a routine thing and forget that creative stuff to bring money back in that’s not just job-centered is fun.

Yes, I’m still all about the big wins in money:

• Increasing salary (then increasing it again).
• Building a solid professional reputation that helps catapults you from one serious promotion to another.
• Slashing costs for things like cell phones, cable, internet.

Over 15 years, spanning retail to professional office work, busting my butt on those bullet points resulted in killing off a huge pile of debt and then making savings happen. This is Excellent.

But I absolutely do not scoff at the little money. I’ll take a minute to:

• Ask for a discount.
• At checkout for items that are imperfect.
• Get a refund on a late fee or whatever fee.

That stuff adds up quickly over time if you ignore it which is antithetical to my policy of My Money is My Money. Note: Fees are no longer the absolute devil BUT if I’m going to pay one, it’ll be for something of value like a travel rewards credit card that makes rewards redemption easy and is stellar at handling disputes.

While we are somewhat conscientious about not buying crap we don’t need, over time, you find that “need” was really a “want” or that people gifted you things they thought were needs but were really “eh?” etc.

And so Crap Accumulates. In getting rid of it, mostly I’m happy to donate the little things but we have a lot of bigger things this round, and so PiC took on the job of Craigslisting. Craigslist is where he lives on the internet.

So add to the list, for entertainment’s sake:

• Earning via programs like Swagbucks and CC rewards.
• Craigslisting!

Y’all, that man has been on a ROLL unloading the stuff we unearthed during The Purge (still ongoing).  He does all the work, brings me the cash and I log it in Mint. And now I’ll log it here!

We didn’t set anything like J. Money’s Craigslist Rule (List 1 item for sale on Craiglist every week) since this is more of an EVERYTHING MUST GO approach.

Benefit #1 is the cash coming in, of course.
Benefit #2 is the space it’s clearing up.
Benefit #3 is the demonstration the cost of buying things (new) that you don’t actually need. Resale is not what you’d generally call competitive. Though, probably just to needle me, PiC decided to call it “renting” goods. *scowl*

After setting this page up, I was inspired to add a couple tables of my own.

For those, on a much smaller level, I’m recouping some change by selling little things and earning non-taxable gift card rewards as part of my daily routine.  As much as buying discounted gift cards saves some cash for important things, so does earning gift cards outright for those piddling household things that add up. As much as the masochistic part of me likes to wander through say, Target, and gawk at things I really don’t need, we’re all better off if I spend that time doing something else.

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