Blogging Away Debt

A while ago I mentioned that I would try selling some things on eBay, and things are coming together with that.

One half of my office has been turned into an eBay processing center. I bought a huge container that my son has filled with toys that he said he no longer wants. I was going to just take toys when he was at school, but I decided to get him involved in the process and give him an idea of why we are selling things. To my surprise, he filled up that container pretty quickly. I thought he wouldn’t want to part with any of his toys.

I am starting with the toys, since Christmas is coming soon. I do have some clothes we no longer need, but I think I am going to donate those to St. Vincent de Paul. Gosh knows they helped to clothe my son the first few years of his life (they only charge $0.25/per item of children’s clothing!). They also were important when I obtained my first “professional job.” I didn’t have ANY dress clothes, and I was able to get almost a two-week wardrobe for under $25.

What to charge for shipping was always something holding me back from trying to sell on eBay. It seemed complicated. But, thanks to the US Postal Service and eBay joining forces, you can get free boxes for using to ship things, and the postage is a set price. My boxes came in a few weeks ago, and I am very impressed that they were free!

Today is a big cleaning day for us (time to get rid of clutter!), so I have another container set-up for other things to sell. By the end of the month I will be taking pictures of the items and listing them. It’s scary that if my items do not sell I will still have to pay a fee, but I guess that is a chance you take with eBay. I’m sure as time goes on I will learn more about how to have a successful listing.

Do We Still Use Credit Cards?

by Tricia

I remembered what I wanted to say earlier today 🙂

I will probably get a lot of slack for coming clean on this one, since I know there are many fans of a particular get-out-of-debt person out there. He advocates not using credit cards at all. I happen to disagree with that with our situation.

We still use one of our credit cards (with the lowest limit) for the following purchases:

1.) Online. There is NO WAY I am giving my debit card number out online. I like the protection that credit cards offer with unauthorized purchases. I can tell you for a fact that there are more people that have access to your numbers when you purchase something online than you think.

2.) Recurring Purchases (things like hosting fees and subscriptions). Again, there’s no way I am giving out our debit card number. Plus, if I happen to forget when a yearly subscription with be withdrawn, it can be paid on my credit card without worrying that a check will bounce in my checking account (I run it pretty darn low to pay off debt).

I bite my tongue on this blog a lot, because I do get upset at my cards and want to call them evil. But really, they aren’t. In the end, I was the one who abused them. They did not force me to buy things with them to where I couldn’t pay the balance in full every month. I did that all by myself.

That’s just my viewpoint, and everyone is entitiled to theirs. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, when it comes to reducing your debt you have to do what is right for you and your situation. I just thought it was fair to let everyone know that we still technically use our credit cards.

The main thing is that we are now using them like they should be used – we pay the balance in full every month 😉

Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

Ebay – Here I Come!

Do We Still Use Credit Cards?