All in all, we made about $100 on our garage sale this weekend.  I’m a bit disappointed, but considering that 90% of the stuff we sold was priced at $0.50 or less, we got rid of a bunch of stuff, which means we have to haul less stuff to the Goodwill and Salvation Army.

It probably wasn’t worth the time to do a garage sale, and I’m convinced that it’s all in what you sell, but making an extra $100 in a weekend isn’t too bad.

We made more money on Friday than we did on Saturday, which was …

Our neighborhood garage sale started today, and for a Friday the turnout wasn’t bad.  We had about 60 people stop by, and ended up bringing in about $60.

Even better, though, is that we’re that much closer to getting rid of all the stuff we’ve been stockpiling in our extra bedroom for the last year.

We should see a little better traffic tomorrow due to the weekend, and by Sunday all our old stuff should be gone.  If it doesn’t disappear, it’ll find a new home at the Salvation Army!

We just got a postcard in the mail listing the dates of the annual neighborhood garage sale.  Usually, I don’t get too excited about this kind of stuff, but this year I’m going to make out like a bandit, guaranteed.

At last years sale, we sold about $200 worth of our stuff.  It doesn’t sound like much, but it also doesn’t include the huge deduction we were able to account for on last years taxes by donating all the stuff we didn’t sell.   All told, we had what amounted to $500 in deductions, just from the charitable donations in stuff we …

I pulled the latest issue of Comcast Cable Finance Monthly out of the mail box today, only to find out that the rates have gone up; enough to put us over the century mark ($100) for the month.

One of the problems I have is that with the basic cable tier, we have about 80 channels.  If you’re the type of person who watches TV for a living, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  However my wife and I don’t watch much television, and we probably watch 14 of those 80 available channels.  Of those 14 we watch, 7 of them are local broadcast network feeds, the same stations you can still get with a set of rabbit ears for free.  So all in all, we utilize less than 10% of the stations that are made available to us, yet we pay $50 per month for that “luxury”.

The real problem is that Comcast, outside of satellite providers, has absolutely no competition in our area.  None.  So they can charge what ever they think their customers will pay. 

I finally picked up the phone and went on an economic rampage.  I’m no longer willing to pay for a product we hardly use.  I politely shelled out my angst to the customer service representative, and suggested he find a way to lower our bill or they would lose me as a customer.  It’s funny how those magic words have such a dramatic effect: …lose me as a customer.

I’m still on my “save gas” kick now that gas prices are going back up.  After scrounging through the internet last night, I found a way to significantly cut back on fuel usage.  Unfortunately, it only works for diesel powered cars and trucks.

Instead of filling up with regular diesel, throw some French Fry grease in the tank too!  According to GreaseCar.com, you can use vegetable oil in your fuel system along with regular diesel.  In addition, using vegetable oil reduces emissions by 30%.

Since I don’t have a diesel car, I can’t vouch for this one, but if anyone out …

I did a stupid thing the last time my wife and I went to the movies: I bought water.

It didn’t seem stupid at the time. I wanted something to drink, but I didn’t want caffeine or a lot of sugar, so water made sense.  I asked the guy behind the concession stand counter for an ice water, and he offered me a bottle instead.  Surely it must be cheaper than buying a Coke? 

With gas prices on the rise I started thinking about my driving habits, and how I can get a little further down the road on a little less gas.

I’m not a big speeder.  Five mph over the limit is about as fast as I’ll go.  But I started thinking about the value of going faster. I even broke the analysis down a single mile per hour.  How much time do I save for each mile per hour over the limit, and how much more does each mile per hour cost me?

The results are quite interesting…