freedom and economic stimuli

Currently listening to Opeth - Still Life

Our city recently had a city-wide yard sale. My hometown used to have yard sales where everyone would go to the same place and set up tables. The city I live in now, however, allowed people to sign up so that their names and addresses would be listed on a map that would be distributed to interested shoppers. We've been piling up unused electronics, DVDs and other items for a while, so we decided to participate in this yard sale.

Before we did the yard sale, I decided to try selling some of my collectible jazz sets through a bulletin board that I frequent. My sale generated a lot of interest, and within a couple days I had grossed over $1500. I still have more things to sell, but I suspect that I'll have to take those things to eBay.

The yard sale didn't go as well as I had hoped, but went better than we thought it would given the weather. The weather had been nice and sunny, and the morning of the yard sale, we dove head-first back into winter with wind, clouds and snow flurries, all of which lasted most of the day--not exactly great yard sale weather. Anyway, the wife ran the sale with a couple friends, since I had to be in school all day. We grossed around $365, which was OK, but not great. We did get rid of a lot of our bulky items, like an old TV, and a TV stand and a computer tower, though. I was very pleased about that.

The following day, feeling inspired to get rid of some more junk, listed about 25 items on eBay and Craiglist. ~20 items have sold, which is great. We've earned another $400-500 from these sales. Having to mail things or have people come over to pick them up is a major hassle, but I'd rather have the cash and get rid of stuff.

In my life, large amounts of cash tend to come my way all at once, and then they're gone. I'm in one of those moments right now, and I can't complain, since I've been wanting to pay down some debt for a while. A couple weeks ago, I sold off a couple hundred shares of my company's stock, which brought in over $8000--very nice. Our government "economic stimulus" tax rebate appeared in my bank account yesterday, which brought in another $1200. I had my annual review on Thursday, and got the highest raise of my career (other than getting promoted, of course), which was nice. I should find out soon what my annual bonus will be, and I'm hoping that that will bring in at least $5000 after taxes.

This is all quite a bit of money. Where is it going, you ask? Well, I've been giving the little lady 20% of all the money made from the yard sale, eBay and Craigslist, as a "thank you" for her help with mailing things, running the yard sale, etc. The rest of it is going toward debt reduction. We don't have serious problems, but we did have balances on a couple credit cards for the first time in a few years. I really dislike that, so I paid those off. Those balances were only there a month or two, but either way, credit card debt sucks due to the extremely high interest rates. Anyway, some of that debt was vacation expenses, some of it was toys, and some of it was necessities. In any case, I've been buying too much stuff lately, so I've resolved to cut way back this year.

It feels good to have gotten rid of all this stuff. Someone who wants it, needs it and/or will use it now has it, and that's great. Everything that sold was just gathering dust. I'm hoping that the extra room we now have won't soon be filled by more stuff. With a couple exceptions, we have pretty much everything we need.

I suspect most other people will use their economic stimulus rebates the same way I did: pay down debt rather than buy more stuff. I know that's not what the government really wants, but when I think about all the things that could be done with the money, debt reduction seems like the best way any of us could go.