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A few weeks ago, I told you about our family’s latest BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) of saving $10,000.

This wasn’t exactly a goal we chose…rather one our old house thrust upon us. (Thanks, whoever didn’t install the windows correctly and caused all of our foundation to rot away.)

sigh

Well, after weeks of ignoring the blog again (sorry about that), I figured I owed you an update.

So here we go…

An Update On Our Big $10,000 Savings Goal

I’ll be completely honest with you. This situation sucks.

When you buy an older home, you know that somewhere along the way you’re probably going to have a major repair or two.

(But to be perfectly honest, I know of people who bought brand new homes that had immediate foundation issues, so I’m not sure any homeowner is immune to these kind of problems.)

Still, I didn’t anticipate having to completely rebuild the foundation of our home.

And to have this happen now, when the price of everything has skyrocketed (seriously, if you can pump a full tank of gas without having a tear come to your eye, tell me your secrets) is especially hard.

It’s not all bad…we finally got our countertops installed!

I have spent a lot of time weighing my options. Should I go back to work? Is that even an option with the kids all in different schools, some still at home? Is there any way to save money in this economy?

So far I don’t have any super clear answers. But I have been doing what I can to at least save up as much cash as I can towards this repair.

It’s discouraging to know that even if we manage to save the entire $10,000, it will only be a down payment on the repair and not nearly enough to cover the entire cost.

I’m writing all of this mainly to let you know that when you’re in a hard situation like this, you are not alone. You are not a failure.

Sometimes life just hands us hard things and all we can do, is all we can do.

What’s Working So Far

Reselling

Lately, most of my time has been spent reselling things.

It takes quite a bit of time to find items, figure out if I can sell them, buy them, take pictures of them, get them loaded on the internets, and then deal with selling them.

At first, I was doing pretty ok reselling.

But then the price of gas went through the roof, and people seemed to quit buying things.

(And honestly, I’m happy that they’re making good choices with their money. I just wish the timing wasn’t so awful!)

Remember the story of Gideon in the Bible? When God pulls the army back to nearly no one so it’s clear that He is the one who gained the victory? I’m hoping that’s what He’s doing in my life now.

Anyway! I’ve been able to make about $530 in reselling since late January/early February.

Definitely nothing to sneeze at. I think I have to adjust to the idea that it’s not meant to be a steady income, but will have its ups and downs.

New Savings

Hubby’s work made some moves that will save us about $100 per month in taxes. Of course we added that to the fund!

We also decided to save the money we’d normally send on student loans, since they are still being deferred right now. This is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul, but eventually some of these kids will start moving out and it will be easier to pay off Hubby’s student loan. sigh

And, it turns out that I’d missed a tax credit for 2020. I filed an amended return in April last year, but we just now got the refund!

That’s ok, it was another $400 for our savings. Woohoo!

How Many $100s Have We Crossed Out?

Between all of these savings, we’ve managed to cross out 16 boxes so far! That’s not too bad of a start.

(Want to print your own $100 – 100x chart? That’s as easy as clicking here!)

We aren’t out of ideas yet. In the next month, we should be able to cross off several more $100s using some other outside the box methods.

Plus it’s tax time, so maybe people will buy more of the fantastic stuff I have for sale! 😉

How Are You Doing?

Times are crazy! Even if you don’t have a major home repair to make, I bet you’re feeling the pinch at the gas pump and grocery store.

Let us know how things are going. What creative ways have you found to make things work? What just isn’t working no matter how hard you try?

I get it! We’ll get through it. <3