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A year ago, I revealed that our family had just added on to our home, only to find out that we had major damage that had to be repaired on the old part of our home.

Because we had just scraped up a bunch of money to pay for as much of our home addition in cash as possible, we didn’t have extra money lying around.

And…well, I think you’ve probably noticed the economy. That money we had been saving from paychecks is now instead funneled into the gas tank, grocery stores, and heat bills.

So we had to come up with a new way to pull together some cash to pay for this repair.

And it’s high time I give you an update!

How We Saved $10,000 For Home Repairs

If you missed the original post, you’ll want to check it out. It includes a free chart to help you save $10,000 in some creative ways. Click here to get it!

If you’re wondering if we were able to save up that $10,000…well, today I wrote a check to pay our contractor for the finished work on our house.

So yes, we saved it up. But not the way I thought it would work.

The Original Savings Plan

Originally, I was afraid that we would need to come up with the cash for this repair in three months time.

As it turns out, it took our contractor several more months to fit us into his busy schedule.

And that was fine by us! It gave us more time to save more cash.

In fact, it took us from March until September to save up the $10,000 we needed for this repair.

You’ll be surprised (not!) to learn that the bill came in higher than expected because our house is always full of fun surprises.

So I’m glad we anticipated that and were able to continue saving even beyond the three months we originally planned.

But How Did We Save the Money?

All of our extra money was already being swallowed by gas, groceries, and the rising cost of everything right now, so there was no way to #yearofno the money this time.

(What’s the #yearofno? It’s the method we used to pay off over $20,000 in credit card debt a few years ago. More on that here.)

Instead, we did a few things that, frankly, I hope we don’t regret later.

First, we froze all of our retirement contributions.

Instead, we funneled all of that money right into the savings account with every paycheck.

Yeah, that’s several months of retirement savings we’ll never get back. But luckily we’ve been saving since our early 20s. And the stock market hasn’t exactly been through the roof this year, anyway.

If I had to choose between several months of no retirement savings and 5 years of extra mortgage payments in an uncertain economy…well, I chose to sacrifice retirement.

And that’s not all.

Student loan payments are on a freeze right now, if you can’t or don’t want to pay them. I had been making those payments anyway, hoping to get ahead.

Knowing we were in a pinch, I decided to skip those payments and instead saved up that money, too.

But even that wasn’t going to be enough.

Selling on eBay

Found this in a drawer full of junk. One man’s trash…

Long, long ago I was a seller of things on eBay.

It wasn’t a bad job. Finding things to sell was fun, and it was a good way to make money while still keeping my stay at home mom gig.

But like anything else, selling on eBay has its downfalls.

Dealing with scammers isn’t fun. And having cardboard boxes in every nook and cranny of our house is frustrating.

So several years ago, I quit and moved on to other things.

When I had to rack my brain about ways to bring in some extra cash, selling on eBay popped back into my mind.

Getting back into the swing of selling was easier than I had expected.

I was able to make about $3,300 of the $10,000 we needed from selling items on eBay.

It’s true, many people make more than that selling on eBay. I just did what I could do with the time and space I have.

Some people go on exotic vacations. We just rebuy our house over and over.

That’s How We Saved Up $10,000 In Seven Months

While I did wind up saving in $100 chunks like I had initially planned, I’ll be very honest and say that most of it came from robbing Peter to pay Paul.

If I had it to do again, I might try to find ways to ramp up my eBay selling even more.

If you’re looking for more creative ways to save up this kind of money, learn how we paid off over $20,000 in credit card debt in 2 years on one income here.

And find out more about how we saved up to pay a portion of our home addition in cash right here.

To be perfectly honest, this economy has had me very nervous and I just didn’t feel like I could save in those same ways this time. I know my longer readers might find this post disappointing, and honestly when I see it laid out this way, I’m a bit disappointed, too!

But fear not, I have not changed my stripes. 😉 This year my goal is to collect as many no spend days as possible. This should help us get back to our creative, frugal, less spending roots.

So if you’re looking for more of that stuff, stay tuned. And in the meantime, check out the entire 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week series for lots and lots (and lots) of frugal, creative savings ideas.