I got a job!!

Woo Hoo!!  I will start an almost full-time job next Monday!!  I have high hopes that I will be able to pay the bills with the amount of money they will pay me for my new job.  It will start at $8.75 per hour, but will increase after 90 days of probation.  I won't be working my part-time job in the Summer so I will have to make sure that I put some cash aside to use for July and August. 

I am not going to report my new job to the utilities discounters until it reaches their maximum annual income figure.  I am going to continue my thrifty ways into this new period of my life, because I can't afford not to.

I will still be posting more of my ideas to gather cash and spend less.

I am thanking the "powers that be" that I have a local job where I will be able to walk (saving gas) and interact daily with my community.

Selling some books ...

I recently attempted to sell some of my myriad books at the local swap meet, but met with little success.  I was even told by someone that I was charging too much, that she could get the same books at the Goodwill for only $1.  I felt like telling her to go buy them there, then!!  At the swap meet I actually had more people ask if the bookcase was for sale than check out the books on it ...

I also tried to sell some of the books at a garage sale, where I had a bit more luck.  At the garage sale (because it was windy) I left the books on the ground in a bin with their spines facing up.  Don't know if this was the reason I had more success or not.  Sorry for the bad pic, that was a crazy windy day and I think I couldn't focus because I was going to blow over!!

I have tried to sell books on eBay, with limited success.  The best way to sell on eBay is to have a "lot" of similar books so that the shipping seems lower to the bidder.  I got rid of most my decorating and crafts books this way several years ago.  But, I still had some left that I ended up donating to Goodwill (perhaps that lady from the swap meet found them!!)  I have several random books up for sale on a free online storefront (BluJay.com), but they have sat there for 2 years now. I will try some of the better books from my group on eBay this week again to see how they sell.

So, when I heard about an online site (Cash4Books.net) where I could enter my ISBN numbers and they would tell me if they would buy my book, I was excited.  Surely with all my books there would be several that they would buy!!  NOT!!  I searched over 30 ISBNs, including a couple of audio books, and only TWO books came up indicating that they would buy them.  Of course they offered me more than I would probably get at a garage sale, so I went through the motions.  They offer free shipping (Media Mail), that is a great thing because I wouldn't have been able to  afford to ship the books to them for the amount they were offering me.

The two books they purchased were newer books with the ISBN-13 only, so I figured that was why they were interested in these two.  However, I tried some others with ISBN-13s and they didn't want those either.  So, I was able to get $4.58 for two books (one SciFi reprint and a book about Egyptology).  I will mail off the box tomorrow (with their paid shipping label), and they will send me some money via PayPal (they offered the option of a check or PayPal).  I hope all will go smoothly, but they could always reject the books once they have them, or pay less for them than quoted.  I will let you know when I have my $4.58 in my PayPal account!!