After our daughter was born, we decided to try to live off my husband’s income as much as possible. Most of our “living” related bills are paid by his salary and my salary mainly goes toward groceries, the car payment, and the debts. This made sense for us because I am a contract employee and sometimes have short breaks between assignments. Of course I would end up on an extended break right when we are really focusing on paying off debts. Of course. I am currently going on no work for 3 out of the last 4 weeks. Yes, that makes a major dent in our plans.
While I’m scrambling around changing up my debt snowball spreadsheet and making sure all bases are covered, I’m also trying to think of areas to save more and how to make a few bucks to help offset the loss a bit.
First, I did manage to spend only $36 at the grocery store this weekend and I picked up a “big city” newspaper with better coupons so I can start implementing my Grocery University strategies. I used my store card and my own pantry and fridge to keep the total so low for this week. We bought no meat because our freezer was still full from previous weeks and I worked a menu to fit around that. Hubs also worked late everyday last week so the baby and I made do with leftovers and a bit of mac n cheese. This coming weekend I plan to use coupons and the GU strategies to keep the grocery total low even with the addition of meat and produce.
This weekend I also received a small check from a local consignment sale where I sold my daughter’s outgrown items. This got me thinking what else can we sell that is currently just cluttering up the house? Here are a few I came up with:
- Old electronics, books and DVD’s – we have at least 1 old Kindle a cell phone or two, a hundred or so DVD’s and probably 50ish books we could stand to purge. When doing a quick search online, I found that Amazon will let you trade in these types of items for Amazon gift cards. They even pay shipping! This wouldn’t be an immediate cash in hand type thing but we do use Amazon often and these gift cards would not go to waste. We also have a local used bookstore that takes items for cash or trade in value that I will be looking into.
- Old purses – since I’ve become a mom I usually carry a diaper bag or large satchel type bag for all the mom-on-the-go needs so my purses are in a closet collecting dust. I know I have at least 2 Coach purses that are in ‘like new’ condition that I would not miss. I’m considering listing on eBay or our local Facebook garage sale site.
- Diapers – Ok this may be totally weird to some, but yes used cloth diapers are a commodity. I have a few brands/styles that just didn’t work for us and would be snatched up quickly by someone else. I even have a couple new-in-package that I just don’t like or need. Don’t tell the Hubs this, but I have more than enough diapers in my stash to keep the baby’s bum covered through a wash day… or two. On to lighten the stash a bit!
- Online surveys – I’ve tried Swagbucks with little success. It seems I spent 15 minutes on surveys only to find out I didn’t qualify for said survey. But others I know have had great success mainly using the search function. I recently found InboxDollars and have found this program much easier for me to use with better results. I “made” $9 in a little less than 24 hours just by reading emails and filling in the profile information! You can even print grocery coupons through this site and you earn $0.10 for every coupon you redeem!
Do you know of any other non-traditional money making ideas? I would love to hear them!
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