Hello again, we are the Oleson’s! After getting the budget on track and working together to make it work, it has been a lot easier than we expected. Now it hurts to spend money. But neither of us feels guilty over spending money for items that we need (and the occasional items we don’t) because we have budgeted for it. We did have another eye-opening experience last weekend due to our garage sale. Two major events occurred at approximately the same time: the garage sale and a birthday/coming home party. I recently had a birthday and we decided combine my birthday and a new job that I do not have to travel anymore into one celebration. The city garage sale happened to be on the same day. So we had to face the mound of junk and stuff in the basement….

After sorting, cleaning, pricing a lot of “junk” Friday night/very early Saturday morning, we opened the garage door at 7am promptly in 40 degree weather and waited for our first customer. While we were huddled together under a blanket with a space heater we discussed what was happening. The idea was twofold: get rid of a bunch of stuff we didn’t use and to pay for all the food we needed for the party with the money from the garage sale. As we waited and were not overwhelmed with customers, we lamented about how much money we had spent for things that were sitting on the tables and how much money we were asking for them. Purses purchased for $75+ had a price tag of $5. $19.95 DVDs priced at $3. The list goes on. As the day dragged on and the items slowly disappeared we realized two more things. We would never impulsively buy “stuff” again that would warrant a garage sale and we would not make enough money to cover the party.

On a positive note, the party was a really good time and we were able to give the leftover items to friends that actually needed some of the stuff we were selling. We did make enough money to cover about half the cost of the party, and since we happened to have a bunch of free time since not very many people came to the garage sale, I did the math. For the time spent cleaning/sorting/labeling/selling, we made approx $2.13 per hour for the both of us. So, it will be many years before we have another garage sale and instead of a garage sale, we will donate the unwanted items for a tax deduction.