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.

[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.)

[ua_guy]

I've been cutting my own hair for 21 years, that's 1092 weeks, and if I cut my hair roughly every 4 weeks on average, that's 273 haircuts. If each haircut cost $25, that's $6825 I haven't spent.

Well, OK, subtract the two pairs of trimmers I've had over the same period and a couple of replacement blades. We'll call that expense a total of $250 on the high side, so we'll net the savings at about $6500 for a round number.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Well, at least you're getting out of the house. The average American watches TV three hours a day and doesn't exercise.

It didn't occur to me as a win but since you pointed it out as a win, this is my daily routine; 100 sit ups (ie, 25, 25, 25, 25), 50 squats, 1 mile jog around my neighborhood, weights, burpies, etc. Every morning for breakfast a cup of milk, an avocado or banana, coffee. For lunch (when WFH 3x/week) a kale smoothie w/frozen blueberries/strawberries. Dinner meat w/veggies and rice or potatoes. A 90 yr old once gave me 3 sold tips or advice for longevity; 1) move your body well, 2) feed your body well, 3) rest your body well. Words of wisdom.

[james.hendrickson]

Not a win for me but I thought about you James twice in 2 days picking up what I thought were nickels. Yesterday in my parking lot a shiny looking nickel thing caught my eye so I went to pick it up only to find it was a 2032 coin battery. Today while jogging around my neighborhood again what looked like a nickel was another 2032 coin battery. Both I tossed in the bushes so no one else gets head faked anymore.

Well, at least you're getting out of the house. The average American watches TV three hours a day and doesn't exercise.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Not a win for me but I thought about you James twice in 2 days picking up what I thought were nickels. Yesterday in my parking lot a shiny looking nickel thing caught my eye so I went to pick it up only to find it was a 2032 coin battery. Today while jogging around my neighborhood again what looked like a nickel was another 2032 coin battery. Both I tossed in the bushes so no one else gets head faked anymore.