Post Your Wins

[kork13]

It will surprise nobody, I'm sure, when I say that the USG bureaucracy is a mess... But we finally got a win out of it. For the last couple years, DW has been studying to become a physical therapist. She was formerly active duty military until medically retired in 2019, so we've been using her GI Bill to pay for her schooling. However, she had a period of struggling with her classes, and the school let her pause things while she retook some classes with low grades. Now that she's restarted normal classes in August, we've been trying to get her GI Bill going again.... Finally today she got notification that looks like the VA is finally getting it restarted!

The GI Bill (+ Yellow Ribbon program) not only covers her tuition completely, but also pays out stipends for books/supplies & a monthly housing payment, which we've been using to cover her occasional travel requirements back to the school -- it's a hybrid program out of Philly, mostly online & local clinicals in Idaho, with ~quarterly classes/evaluations in-person at the university. So we should be getting nearly $7k in back payments, plus the monthly amount going forward now.

That money will take alot of pressure off of our budget, since we've been running 2 households plus her schooling for most of the last 1.5 years without it.

This is kinda how I'm feeling right now .... As I mentioned last week, the VA finally got itself sorted out for paying DW's GI Bill stipend. I checked our bank account today, and I did in fact see the ~$7k that I was expecting as back-payments for her GI Bill. However, there are an extra 6 payments, totaling nearly $13k (!!!), that ALSO showed up alongside the expected payments....!!! Based on the amounts, it appears that they're back-payments from 2022 ... but during the last half of 2022, she wasn't technically enrolled in courses or taking credits -- according to the university, she was auditing the courses to earn higher grades in them. So I'm not sure why they would pay the stipend for that period... And they didn't pay any of it for the first 2/3 of 2023...

So I'm a bit bewildered, because all of the paperwork that we've seen thus-far appears to have accurately reflected her enrollments. So I'm not sure how or why, but we've got a bit of "found money" on our hands... Of course, not entirely trusting the USG's pecuniary prowess, I'm gonna just park the excess in savings & see what happens. Maybe they decide they made a mistake & ask for it back, or just stop making future payments until we've "paid back" the excess... Or maybe they do nothing, and our savings stays padded. I dunno.... For the moment, I'm not gonna poke the bear. I've got enough plates spinning, and I have no desire to deal with the VA's astounding bureaucracy.

[disneysteve]

While doing a little cleaning in the garage today, I found an old advertising promotion desktop clock. They go for about $20 or so on ebay. Of course, the battery was dead. I opened it up and sure enough it takes the same battery that I just bought. I popped one in and it works fine.

LOL. I listed the clock on ebay yesterday and it sold today for $21.95. I got the clock for free 20 years ago so all it cost me was about 23 cents for the new battery. That's a win in my book.

[QuarterMillionMan]

While doing a little cleaning in the garage today, I found an old advertising promotion desktop clock. They go for about $20 or so on ebay. Of course, the battery was dead. I opened it up and sure enough it takes the same battery that I just bought. I popped one in and it works fine. So my $1.85 purchase has now revitalized 2 items I can sell on ebay and hopefully get about $35-40 total for both, and I still have 4 batteries left.

There are so many things that require those coin batteries I have assorted sizes. Air tag, watches, car key fob, electricy tester, laptops (not pictured), computer (not pictured), tablets (not pictured), Tazer gun (not pictured), bike lights (not pictured), etc. The Energizer CR2032 are the most common sizes.

[disneysteve]

2. I need some button batteries for an item I want to sell on ebay, so I didn't want to spend a lot for them. I checked Amazon and the best price was $3.89 for 10 (I only need 3). I checked Walmart and Dollar Tree but they were no better. So I looked on ebay. I could get 10 for $1.65 but coming from China. I wanted domestic shipping so paid $1.85 for 8.

While doing a little cleaning in the garage today, I found an old advertising promotion desktop clock. They go for about $20 or so on ebay. Of course, the battery was dead. I opened it up and sure enough it takes the same battery that I just bought. I popped one in and it works fine. So my $1.85 purchase has now revitalized 2 items I can sell on ebay and hopefully get about $35-40 total for both, and I still have 4 batteries left.

[kork13]

It will surprise nobody, I'm sure, when I say that the USG bureaucracy is a mess... But we finally got a win out of it. For the last couple years, DW has been studying to become a physical therapist. She was formerly active duty military until medically retired in 2019, so we've been using her GI Bill to pay for her schooling. However, she had a period of struggling with her classes, and the school let her pause things while she retook some classes with low grades. Now that she's restarted normal classes in August, we've been trying to get her GI Bill going again.... Finally today she got notification that looks like the VA is finally getting it restarted!

The GI Bill (+ Yellow Ribbon program) not only covers her tuition completely, but also pays out stipends for books/supplies & a monthly housing payment, which we've been using to cover her occasional travel requirements back to the school -- it's a hybrid program out of Philly, mostly online & local clinicals in Idaho, with ~quarterly classes/evaluations in-person at the university. So we should be getting nearly $7k in back payments, plus the monthly amount going forward now.

That money will take alot of pressure off of our budget, since we've been running 2 households plus her schooling for most of the last 1.5 years without it.

[james.hendrickson]

Found a penny on the way back from the local coffee shop this morning. its a very small win, but a win.

[disneysteve]

1. I happened to be in Atlantic City today. As I've said before, we don't gamble much anymore but when in Rome.... I put $20 in a slot machine and a bit later walked away with $40.20.

2. I need some button batteries for an item I want to sell on ebay, so I didn't want to spend a lot for them. I checked Amazon and the best price was $3.89 for 10 (I only need 3). I checked Walmart and Dollar Tree but they were no better. So I looked on ebay. I could get 10 for $1.65 but coming from China. I wanted domestic shipping so paid $1.85 for 8.

[disneysteve]

How did you acquire the Constitutional silvers coins (ie, 90% silver coins and 40% silver coins).

I'm old, LOL. Silver coins were still in production when I was younger. Even after they stopped making them, they remained in wide circulation for years. Back then, silver wasn't anything special. It wasn't until the late 70s and early 80s that the value of silver started going up and people started paying attention. I remember going to a coin shop with my dad and selling some of our pocket change. I thought it was the coolest thing ever that they were paying us 3 or 4 times face value for coins we had just gotten in change at the diner that morning.

I held onto a bunch of silver coins that never got sold until just recently. The same goes for all of the Eisenhower dollars, the wheat pennies, the 1943 steel pennies, and assorted other things. Only now as I'm working to declutter did I finally sit down and sort through everything and start trying to unload it all. I sold the silver coins. I sold the 1976 Eisenhowers yesterday. I listed 26 more Eisenhowers last night and listed a lot of 1943 pennies last week.

[QuarterMillionMan]

How did you acquire the Constitutional silvers coins (ie, 90% silver coins and 40% silver coins). Did you happen to just check the dates on the coins when you received change from a purchase. Or did someone hand it down to you. Some people on Youtube conduct "coin roll hunting," where they buy coins from the bank and hope to find silver coins among the clad ordinary coins. In all my years I've only found one 1964 quarter in my pocket which is 90% silver. I had also found a 1943 war nickel which I thought was 35% silver all these years until recently I learned it is not 35% silver because it doesn't have a mint mark above the Monticello on the reverse side of the coin. Only coins with a mint mark is 35% silver.

[disneysteve]

As a kid and teen, I saved/hoarded coins. Pennies, half dollars, silver dollars, actual silver coins, etc. I was into money from a very early age. Anyway, all these years later, I still have some of the "special" coins I saved way back when, but in my ongoing efforts to declutter, it was time to start letting go of them.

A few weeks ago, I found a buyer online for a bunch of silver coins I had. I sold $4.90 face value of coins for $65. Since it was a direct sale, there were no ebay fees to pay.

Last week, I listed a dozen Bicentennial Eisenhower dollars on ebay and sold them today for $20.00. My profit on paper was just over $6 but really since these coins have been packed away for decades, it's all profit in my mind.

I have some more coins I'll be listing for sale shortly and I listed a lot of 1943 steel pennies the other day but no buyer for those yet.

[ua_guy]

Lose/win. Our furnace died. Having been to this rodeo in other homes we've owned, we did a diagnostic test and narrowed the issue to the operation of the draft inducer. First we replaced the capacitor for $14, as they can go bad. No dice. Sadly, the next part on the list was the inducer motor itself, which is only serviceable as an assembly. $311 which included shipping. It arrived, we installed it, and the furnace works like new again! So, we spent some money but escaped a service call plus markup and install of the part. We also saved 3 days on our heating bill this month

[james.hendrickson]

My win for today -woke up this morning and saw that my Phillip Morris dividend had hit my account. Not bad at all.

[james.hendrickson]

Just harvested a big bumper crop of beautiful pumpkins, approx. 400 total. Several of the really big ones were hundred pounders, 30"+ diameter.
Gave nearly all of them away to family and friends that wanted them for kids, grandkids, etc. Still have about 50 in the wagon I need to find homes for.

Can you post a photo?

[Fishindude77]

Just harvested a big bumper crop of beautiful pumpkins, approx. 400 total. Several of the really big ones were hundred pounders, 30"+ diameter.
Gave nearly all of them away to family and friends that wanted them for kids, grandkids, etc. Still have about 50 in the wagon I need to find homes for.

[scfr]

A couple weeks ago we went to a concert by an amazing musician at a small local concert venue. For the 2 of us, we paid $48 total, $46 for the tickets and $2 for parking. The concert was awesome, the acoustics were great, the musician was really in to it, and the intimate setting allowed the audience and musician to interact with each other. We really got our money's worth, and got to support a lesser-known deserving artist. (The same day several of my colleagues drove about 3 hours each way to see Beyonce. While I don't have anything against stadium concerts or Beyonce, I no longer have any desire to pay a small fortune to be one of 57K in a massive venue full of screaming fans.)