PocketCoinage

It’s been a couple of months since my last posting and the storm has passed.  The threat of potential layoffs has gone.  However, that doesn’t mean that I’m letting my guard down.

Over the past two months, I’ve been working on personal and career development.  This meant turning off the television and reading a book or two!  I have not watched the news during this time – at all.  I cannot change what’s going on down in Washington.  I cannot change what’s happening around the world.  What I can change is myself.  It feels so much better having control over something and watching that change happen!

Part of this change is knocking down my student loans down by almost $2,000.  Now I am down to $7,900!  I was able to bring it down by selling U.S. Savings Bonds, items on Amazon, and sacrificing.  If all goes well with my tax return, this loan might be paid off by the summer!

With Spring right around the corner, I started to grow my pepper, tomato, and annual seeds on the sun porch.  This year brings many variates of tomato plants and a new greenhouse!  I look forward to writing more about my seedlings and the progress of this year’s garden.

It’s been almost two months since my last posting and I’m sure many of you are wondering where I’ve been.

Well, I’ve been killing my student loan debt.  Just this past week I paid off one of my loans and have two more to go.  If you look in the right-hand column of my blog, you will see my countdown.  The $700 is what I calculated the average monthly payment to be.  However, in the last two months alone, I’ve been putting my payments into overdrive.

I’ve been sacrificing by cutting back my lifestyle, selling things, and budgeting to become debt free sooner.  Guess what?  It’s working! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  In the past three months alone I was able to allocate almost $4,000 towards my loans!  The feeling is incredible.  Before I got fired up, I was on course to pay them all off in 4.5 years.  I never thought I would pay my student loans off in a year or less.  Now I’m on target for Summer/Fall of 2011!

The key is staying motivated, having a plan, and staying focused on one goal; not a few.  I think that was my main problem.  Now with the one goal in the crosshairs, I can take it on!

If you are like most former college students, there’s probably a few old text books sitting around and collecting dust.  For some reason I had a strange attachment to these books; even though they sat inside a storage tote down in the basement for well over a year.  I decided to take action and put them all on the shelf, inventory them, and see what each would sell for.

I started this project with one goal in mind: to sell items I no longer use, or need, in order to speed up my debt payoff.  There was also the fact I was collecting too much stuff.

Initially I started my search at bigwords.com to compare book buyback prices.  I wanted to get money for my books as soon as possible, but I noticed that many of the buyback stores had a minimum buyback amount.  This was a problem since many stores did not want all my books.

Then I noticed that if I gave it a little time and effort, I could possibly sell my books for more money through the Amazon Marketplace.  Sure enough this was the best choice.  Within three days, I had two books sell.  They brought in roughly $50, which is a quarter of my monthly loan payment.  That extra $50, before tax, will be going towards the principal.

I chose Amazon to sell because of their large presence on the Internet.  Their commission was also reasonable: $0.99 and a percentage of the sale.  Anytime I look up a product, Amazon is my first choice and they are usually the least expensive.  The ability to list something and have it sell within hours can give you a big leg up when trying to get out of debt.

Have you ever sold back your textbooks?  What service did you use and why?