Ka-ching!

Well, this weekend was relatively sedate. I did almost nothing other than play online games and let my brain turn to mush.


Tim, on the other hand, went to the state competition for Magic the Gathering. Out of over 300 participants, he came in 12th (whoo hoo!) and was pretty psyched. We celebrated in my own miserly way by going to a restaurant with an Entertainment Book coupon.


But on to the title of this post: I have finally sold a few items!


I sold a total of $52.50 of stuff. Of that, $40 came from selling the dishes from our wedding. Amazingly, we about broke even on those, since we found them on an amazing clearance sale for 39 cents each.


A little "Texas Hold 'Em Poker Set" also went quickly for $5. I once thought I was going to organize a poker night, so it was a Christmas gift from my mom. It's barely seen use in the 3 years I've had it. It went to a non-profit for animals, which is starting to hold fundraising "Catsino" nights.


And a couple with a 9 month old came and bought a whole bunch of stuffed animals from the baby items. They walked away with a bag of toys. I walked away with $7.50. Everyone was happy.



Meanwhile, when my mom called to cancel the cable internet, they offered her a 6-month price of $22.95. We could get $19.99 by switching it into Tim's name, but there would be the chance we'd be without a connection for a few days. I think it's worth $3 for now to avoid that hassle.


However, I can't officially count those savings until we switch the cell phone into her name. That's on this week's to-do list. For ages now, she's been paying for the internet and I've been paying for the cell phone. It is pretty close to an even trade. Once everything is officially switched, though, that will be $41 more in savings.


So, the current standings on the challenge are:

Save: $41.00 (pending)
Sell: $52.50


That will bring me pretty close to that first $100 for this month. Not bad, given how frugally we already live.


There is still more money to be made/saved, though.

• I plan on listing a still-in-shrink-wrap Buffy Season One DVD on eBay. That could net around $10-15.
• I still haven't gotten around to sorting my books and seeing if I can get some cash for them.
  
• One woman has contacted me about buying ink cartridges (the new printer needs a different type). That would be $7.
• Another woman is interested in a bunch of tulle from the wedding. That would be $15.
  
• I discovered that, for some reason, the changes to our Blockbuster account never went through. So we're still at $34.99, instead of $19.99. And I found out the day that the card was charged for this coming month. Sigh. I should have caught it last month, but oh well. The point is, I'm going to call and do some major complaining.
• I'm still working on Vindale, but since it requires free trial offers and I get overwhelmed easily, I'm only doing two at a time. And I'm relying heavily on my calendar to keep me on my toes.
• I've been working with Cash Crate but so far a bunch of pending earnings have been "pending" for more than a week. I contacted them on Friday to see if this is a normal lag time, if I'm missing some step that gets me verified, or if there's some other reason for this. I certainly don't want to do any more for them until I'm sure my efforts will be reimbursed.
  

At any rate, I will definitely be far below Ramit's $1000 challenge. But as he was so eager to point out, I'm not his target audience. Still, if I can even bring in $200 extra, that would be significant for us at the moment.



So, now's the time I would love some feedback, folks. Is anyone else trying some version of Ramit's challenge? How's it going?


Can you think of some other way I could be paring down or earning more?


Does anyone have any experience with Cash Crate? Is my experience normal? Or a glitch? Or perhaps you want to rant or rave about the program in general?