Today...

Happy Sunday everybody!

At home today working on my art and getting ready to list some new pieces on ebay. I have 5 pieces ending today and will be listing a few more tonight for next week.

Art auctions ending today

As part of my "escape my silly job" campaign, I have started a few new ebay IDs to sell some of the more mundane items I have around the house. One for just random items and one for the holiday items I make. At first I'll probably have to buy a few things in order to get some feedback. People don't like to buy things from newbies. So that's my latest strategy to replace my silly job income. I'm working on a few other ideas, but they'll take more time to set up.

My intent is to try and highlight the different things you can do to escape your own silly job and follow your dreams. I'll keep you updated on what's working for me and what's not worth the time involved.

Friday I made a list of all our expenses and what we could do to cut back. One goal I have is to pay off my car in the next few months. That will free up about $300 a month between car payment and downgrading to liability only insurance. Our car is at the point where if something happens they'll just total it out. So there's not much point in full coverage anymore.

We also looked at a couple of our bills, like cable, and talked about what we "need" versus what we want. Currently, our cable/internet bill is about $220 a month. I know...everybody gasps and shakes their heads when they hear that number. But we really don't have any other entertainment expense. We don't go out so we bring the entertainment to us. But we also don't really need the movie channels. Another part of our entertainment expenses is Netflix. We have the $35 dollar plan which gives us 3 dvds at a time. But we almost exclusively use the streaming feature. So we're going to downgrade to the $9 a month plan. This still allows us 1 dvd if we want and all the streaming rights. The trick here is to cut back on spending without having to give up the things that are important to you.

After all of our budget cuts we will be saving $617 a month, or $7404 a year. That takes our income requirement down to $305 a week from $460 a week. Think about that...$305 a week. Between Eric and I, if we can't figure out how to generate $300 a week, we're in big trouble. My plan is to work no more than 2 days a week at a "job". All other income will be generated by working for ourselves. That's the plan anyway. :-)

Ok, I've rambled on long enough. It's time for me to get back to work. Have a great day everybody. Maybe take a bit of time today to make a list of how you could trim some fat from the family budget. You'll be surprised by how much you can do without, without really changing how you live.