Post Your Wins

[bjl584]

We got our April premium refund from our auto insurance: $41.60. They're going to do the same for May so next month we'll get that same amount again.

Rumors of my insurer doing this but nothing official yet.
Figured I would have received a letter if it were true.

[james.hendrickson]

I got my stimulus funds. I'll consider that a win.

[disneysteve]

We got our April premium refund from our auto insurance: $41.60. They're going to do the same for May so next month we'll get that same amount again.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Won 600 quarters, you can do the math.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

So our spending is exactly the same. We spent on CC. We also paid by check another $2k in yard work in March/April. But when you tease apart our spending it went down in categories like eating out.

$7480 Jan
$5515 Feb
$7186 March
$7039 April

but I know our food is less. I'm going to break that down

[disneysteve]

I mentioned this in another thread but it fits here, too.

Largely thanks to COVID, though not entirely, our spending has been down significantly. Our total credit card spending, which accounts for the bulk of our discretionary spending, came to $3,400 less for the first 4 months of 2020 as compared to the same period in 2019.

I just broke this down by month, because including January and February really doesn't reflect the effect of COVID.

March was down $500 from 2019.
April was down $1,000 from 2019.

So we're spending $1,000/month less due to the shutdown. Wow! Definitely food for thought.

[kork13]

Exactly! It's really making me question things going forward. We've been living just fine the past couple of months. It's not like we've been deprived of anything major. How much of our normal spending really needs to go back to previous levels?

I almost added this in the previous post...but you're exactly right. I know that much of the excess spending stems from 2 sources: (1) I haven't actually tracked our daily spending since we had our first son -- there just wasn't enough time/attention to deal with it; and (2) DW is fairly loose with her spending, and she's not really involved much with our finances, no matter how much I try to bring her in... She's just not interested to worry about it. That also ties into #1. With other stuff going on in our family/marriage (she wants another child, we're somehow going to be moving in ~2 weeks, simmering communication issues that we're slowly trying to work through, etc.), it's just not the hill I'm willing to die on right now, because I know that we can afford the excess & still do just fine.

[disneysteve]

I finally took a look at our credit card statements.... We put 90% of our monthly spending on 2 credit cards, and our spending is off by over $2k/mo (~60%)!

Of course, that also makes me question how much we must be wasting on other random stuff normally....

Exactly! It's really making me question things going forward. We've been living just fine the past couple of months. It's not like we've been deprived of anything major. How much of our normal spending really needs to go back to previous levels?

[kork13]

I finally took a look at our credit card statements.... We put 90% of our monthly spending on 2 credit cards, and our spending is off by over $2k/mo (~60%)! Of course, pretty much the only stuff we've spent money on has been groceries and ~1 meal of takeaway a week, plus our insurance & wicked high utilities. Almost no gas, no shopping except a few small online purchases, no childcare/sitters, and so on. That extra cash buffer in our accounts will definitely be nice as we transition out of our home here & move on to our next adventures.

Of course, that also makes me question how much we must be wasting on other random stuff normally....

[LivingAlmostLarge]

spending less on eating out. Not spending less in general because we've been spending on stuff for the house, the kids, etc. We bought a surface pro for $1100 and $770 HP laptop for kid and me last week. We booked hotels last week for $3k for next year. Bought ski passes for $2k but who knows if any of that will happen. Spending overall I think would be down. It will likely stay down since we just aren't driving that saves us about $200/month and eating out. Seriously I'm buying a lot of food and booze and it's still maybe $1k/month instead of $2-3k.

[disneysteve]

I mentioned this in another thread but it fits here, too.

Largely thanks to COVID, though not entirely, our spending has been down significantly. Our total credit card spending, which accounts for the bulk of our discretionary spending, came to $3,400 less for the first 4 months of 2020 as compared to the same period in 2019.

[kork13]

So this morning I got a surprise notice that my plans for moving from Alaska will have to change (again), so we're no longer going to be able to make the (reportedly incredible) drive from Alaska through Canada back to CONUS, and will have to fly instead due to timelines. Which means that we had to sell one of our cars (the military only pays to ship one car). So we listed it this morning on Facebook Marketplace, and literally within 3 hours, we had 2 competing offers, and a guy had already driven to our place with $14k in cash (just slighly below ask) to buy it. DW and I are in shock that it sold so fast! We'd assumed it would take a week or two, which based on our new accelerated timeline, is why we listed it immediately today once we figured out the new plan.

ETA: More "found" money -- While I was TDY for 7 months, I had rented an apartment. The rental company reached out to me a few minutes ago to finally send back the security deposit. It's only $250, but I'll take it!

[Gailete]

My win for the month currently is this pandemic. My sales have gone through the roof! I have already passed up my highest selling gross amount ever and that was with 10 days to go! Very exciting. I worked so hard for this and while I know that the pandemic is fueling part of it, but back last year I had a lightbulb moment and by following it, my sales have steadily been rising since about July of last year. I had several bills that came due last week before my SS check this week and it was so nice to have sufficient in the checkbook to deal with it and then still have enough money to pay off our smallest credit card bill in full instead of taking another 8-9 months of minimum payments (not that I was doing that) but I had been making monthly payments that would have had it gone in 3 months. Now it is.

Then with such a bunch of sales, I had to order more inventory and got free shipping which is great as that means no tax on the shipping as well. I haven't given them my tax number as last time we checked to become some sort of associate it wouldn't be worth the hassle. All I got was items to replace sold stock and within minutes I got orders that wiped out some of the items that I had left when I was ordering. Oh well. To make money you have to spend it. I think it was about 2 years ago I changed my packaging. It is much cheaper and weighs less so at times I am saving postage. The last time I went to order, I found what I needed selling @ ten packs of 100 for super cheap. I never counted on going through 2 packs or more in ONE month, so this month I am very happy to have sufficient supplies. I even had plenty of Priority Mail packaging that I got extra for Christmas, didn't use them then but am going through a lot now. I have loved this business but it has been a struggle in the midst of health issues to push it past where I have been for a long while, but getting that inspiration has really helped. So my win this month is making at this point around $1400 MORE in gross sales than usual and we still have the rest of the month to sell as well

[disneysteve]

We had a small win last night. I can't give actual dollar amounts. My daughter uses a particular mouth rinse each night. We always buy it at Target or Walmart. Recently we picked up a larger bottle at BJ's. I'm sure the unit price was quite a bit lower so we figured we'd save some money that way. However, we discovered that the big bottle doesn't have the built in pump to measure out the dose that the regular retail bottle has. Yes, she could pour it out into a measuring cup and use it that way, but she's concerned about spilling it and having to clean the cup and all.

So I took her empty retail bottle, cut a small flap in the top of it, inserted a funnel, and refilled it from the bulk bottle. I secured the flap with waterproof tape and the pump vacuum works just fine. So she still gets her built in pump and we get to save the money by buying the stuff in bulk.

[disneysteve]

We're getting a 20% refund from our auto insurance for April and May. That will come to just over $84 that we get back.