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Yes guys. We did it. Right on target with more than a day to spare! I’m sure you already saw the money meter on the right! Well then, here’s my story.

If you remember, last night we needed a whopping $122 to reach our target of $1000. Just after posting that writeup, I called up AT&T to see if there was even a bleak chance of getting my rebate back. And guess what, not only did I get my $100 back, I was also given a $40 rebate for an ongoing promotion. AT&T had given me a free upgrade last month and this rebate was for that free upgrade. Can the deal get any sweeter? Honestly, I wasn’t too confident of even getting the $100 back leave alone the extra 40 bucks as bonus. Only when I started thinking how Read more »

One of the items on my yard sale was a Creative Zen Music Player that I’d bought in 04. The last time I used it was when I was in Montgomery, Alabama and I have been living in Austin since November of 05. So you can pretty much say it was lying around the house just collecting dust over the years. I put it on sale last week for $25, without being too optimistic that it would actually sell for 25 bucks. Well, an hour after I put it on Craigslist, the emails started coming in. I was really surprised to see how many people were interested in this vintage MP3 player. To be honest, I wasn’t quite good with keeping up with all the emails given that I had north of 25 items on sale. Long story short, a gentleman picked it up yesterday. He was so happy with the player that he gave me an extra $10. Pretty cool huh?

Money Scraped = $35
MoneyMeter reads - $843 + $35 = $878
$122 to Target!

This is not going to be one of those long boring posts. A lot of readers have been curious to know how my Money Meter all of a sudden went up overnight. Last week, I had posted about my yard sale (even though I don’t have a yard :D). I was trying to get rid of pretty much all my junk and see if I could make some money off of it. Incidentally, I did end up making a little bit of money.

Since yesterday, I have made a few more sales. Here are the details.

- Floppy Disk Drive - $10
- Digital Answering Machine - $2
- DVD Writer - $15
- External HDD - $55
- 3 CD-RW discs - $5
- Homedics Sound Spa (:D) - $25

bringing up the total to $112 and the money meter to $843 ($731 + $112).

I’m $157 away from my target and I have only 2.5 days left now. I have never valued $157 in my life as much as I’m doing right now, believe me! There are a few more things still on sale that might help me reach the finish line. If I can somehow get a big ticket item out the door (my plasma maybe? :D), I should make it easily. I have a $100 rebate from AT&T that expired in November which they never reissued (inspite of me calling them several times). I’m going to try a few more times in the next 2.5 days and see if it gets approved.

My money experiment is getting more and more exciting as the new year comes close. I have set myself a target of $1000 to scrape before the clock hits midnight of 1/1/2009. I have managed to gather $731 since the experiment started on 11/12/2008. The experiment has been nothing short of a thrill ride and I have enjoyed every moment of it. I had not expected that I’d even come close to saving almost a grand in less than 2 months. If you’re curious to know whether I’m going to end the experiment on 12/31/2008, then to be honest, I’m not sure either. My goal is to hit the $1000 in the next 4 days. If I’m able to reach that goal, then I’d really be inclined to carry over the experiment to the next year. If I don’t reach the goal, then I might be double inclined to continue the experiment for some more time. I might bring in some changes and come up with new ways to save money. My intention behind this experiment has not been to make $1000 in 2 months. I started this experiment to educate myself about managing money the right way. I had been too laid back with my finances the past year or so. As a result, I did face a few setbacks financially. I was very close to being bankrupt. This experiment, nonetheless, has taught me a lot of things and today I can proudly say that I’m in a much better and confident position financially than I was 3 months ago. The other goal of the experiment was to help people out there who have been going through a similar situation. I have been getting emails from my readers regularly telling me how this experiment has motivated them to manage their own finances in a better manner. I’m really honored and humbled by the response.

Coming back to the topic of this post, I still have 4 days left and I’m about $269 away from my goal of $1000. I have a few things lined up for the next 4 days that might help me get through the finish line just in time. The yard sale that I had started last week has had mixed response so far. I wasn’t much surprised because most of the stuff that I was trying to get rid of was pretty much junk that no one else would want to have in their home either. I ended up giving away majority of the stuff to Goodwill last night. However, I did manage to make around $40.

I have a few more inquiries for some of the remaining stuff. I’m looking to make another $50-$75 tomorrow if everything goes according to the plan. I have an expired rebate that I’m looking to get a refund on. But again, I’m not sure if it is worth >$200. Worst case scenario, I’m gonna have to start looking again at some more junk that I might be able to get rid of. Let us see how it all unwinds in the next 4 days. I’m a little nervous but at the same time very excited too. If nothing else, I can proudly say that this experiment taught me to value money like never before. Every penny in the $731 has been a result of a lot of hard work and some smart saving which I feel was the very message behind this experiment.

Looks like I have been nice this year that Santa has decided to bless me with a few goodies. Just when I have been trying so hard to scrape money before the new year arrives, I receive a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate from Chase. I have been advocating the use of this wonderful credit card to everyone I know for a long time now. Chase sends out a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate for every 2500 points accrued. Usually, the card gets you a point for every dollar spent or 1% rebate. However, you end up getting loads of points if you shop at certain retail stores and of course amazon.com, almost as much as 5% in some cases. We get a $25 certificate almost every month even when we don’t put $2500 on this card. That’s a whopping $300 every year! I recommend you apply for this card immediately if you’re on the lookout for a new credit card. From the 35 or so credit cards that I have tried so far, this by far is the one with the best payout.

Money scraped = $50.

My money-scraping saga continues. I have 7 more days to go to reach my $1000 goal. Freecreditreport.com was one of the services that were on my to-cancel list for a long, long time now and thanks to my sheer laziness, I hadn’t done it sooner. This was one of those things that you sign up through an introductory offer and are entitled to a no-questions-asked cancellation within 30 days, but if you fail to cancel, then you are automatically enrolled for the rest of your life. I happened to request a free credit report sometime in June 07 and had ‘accidentally’ signed up for this service. This was draining $12.95 from my account every month for the last 18 months. What service did I get in return? A number that you got to see every month which went up and down randomly. I would rather look at my weigh scale every month instead.

Money spent for the last year and half on this stupid service = $233!
Money scraped this month by canceling this stupid service = $12.95!
Peace of mind from not having to think about this stupid service = Priceless.

Image courtesy: Refinance.net

If you have been following my money experiment, then you might relate to this post This is all the junk that I have not used in years but have stowed away thinking it will be of use some day. That some day never came! So time to get rid of all the junk.

My money meter (right hand side menu) reads $668 right now and my target is $1000. So, we have 8 days and $332 to go. Can it be done? I don’t know! There is no harm in trying. If you want to help me out, check my sale out above:D

Update : 12/24/2008
These are the sales I have made so far.
- Sony DVD Player - $25
- Wireless LAN Card - $5
- USB Wireless Receiver - $10

Update : 12/29/2008
- Floppy Disk Drive - $10
- Digital Answering Machine - $2
- DVD Writer - $15
- External HDD - $55
- 3 CD-RW discs - $5
- Homedics Sound Spa (:D) - $25

Update: 12/30/2008
- Creative Zen MP3 Player - $35

Recently, I got an email from my HR dept about a site called www.workingadvantage.com . It is a site that gives employees of a (subscribed) company discounts, incentives and deals on day to day things like food, travel, groceries etc. While browsing through their offers, I stumbled upon an offer by www.restaurant.com. Restaurant.com has a program called ‘Dinner-of-the-month’. The way it works is you buy a bunch of restaurant gift certificates at a discounted price and use one certificate every month at one of the restaurants featured on their site. They email one $25 certificate to you every month. You can sign up for 3, 6 or 12 month plans. Normally, these certificates go for $10 each. I paid $6 for a 3 month plan, which was effectively buying 3 $25 certificates for six bucks or $2 per pop. Not too bad a deal huh? Now you must be thinking how could that be possible. I was kinda skeptical too while signing up. Then I said, hell even if it doesn’t work, all I’d be losing was $6. So I sign up and in the next hour or so, I see a certificate in my inbox. Now we wanted to see what restaurants were on their list. And to my surprise, there were 100s of restaurants in Austin. After an hour of deliberation, we zeroed in on Clay Pit. I took a printout of the certificate and that same evening, we were on our way to the restaurant. We were a little concerned about the fineprint and sure enough there was a fineprint. We had to spend a minimum of $50 on food before we could redeem the certificate. Now Clay pit is a ‘contemporary’ Indian restaurant. What that means is it is pretty expensive compared to most Indian restaurants in Austin. Having said that, I must admit it is by far our most favorite one too. Long story short, we ended up with a bill of $75 that night. But came out happily paying only $50.

Money Scraped $25-$2 = $23

If you’ve not read my earlier posts on the money experiment, you can do so here. I have been trying to get rid of my enormous debt while also coming up with new ideas to scrape money wherever I can. I hadn’t blogged about the experiment for a while now owing to these reasons. At the same time, I felt it would be wrong on my part to just discontinue this experiment midway. Today I’m here to just give you a status update of sorts.

It’s been almost a month now since the experiment began and here is where we stand.

Total debt outstanding as of today - 16500 out of which credit card debt would be 6000 and mortgage 10500. If we remember, we had started off with a whopping 9445 in CC debt and 14000 in mortgage. All in all, we have paid off about 40percent of the balance. I did cheat a little and used some of my emergency fund to pay off part of the balance. It just didn’t make sense to keep cash on hand and have high interest rate balances to pay. The coming months are going to be a lot tougher though with very little cash in hand. However, my plan is to get it all over with by March. What better gift can one give his wife on his 2nd wedding anniversary than a life without debt

This evening, I bid adieu to my Nintendo Wii. It happened to be another one of my category B items. I was never a big video-gamer and this happened to be one of those impulsive ‘you-gotta-have-it-since-most-your-friends-have-it-too’ buys. Also, Wii demands a lot of physical activity and the lazy bum that I’m, this was an absolute no-brainer to me :D. Then I also got my PS3 a few days later, which pretty much made the Wii redundant. I put it on Craigslist and within an hour, it was gone. There are quite a few more things that I’d love to get rid of. I shall keep posting about them regularly

Money made - $240. Time to get the money-meter rolling