In a minor burst of doing something I should have done a year ago, I placed two items on Craigslist this past week. Nothing major (a Tonka toy and a grinding machine). The toy took up space, and really wasn't that great, and the grinder was now a duplicate, as I inherited a bigger one. The nice part is while I got a total of $11 for the pair, I paid $8 for them at yard sales 2-3 years ago. I really love getting money to temporarily own items. I really need to list more items for sale (hint to myself).

=== Other thoughts in my life ===

Yard sales were abysmal today - only bought two sweaters for my grandmother. Thankfully my pickups the past two weeks were above average.

Shoulder therapy is coming along. While not perfect, I barely ever think about babying the shoulder any more, it feels so good. Of course right after therapy it feels awful, but that goes away in a few hours.

Oh, lets not get into the stock market. I suppose it will be good in the long run that prices dropped so much now, but it doesn't make me feel better in the short term. This is why day trading wouldn't appeal to me.

Oh, and finally, I'm one month closer to my true independence day - the day I don't have a mortgage and even the oh-so-minor concern that "a job loss could cause me problems" will be gone. (BTW, its currently scheduled for July 2012) While barely having enough in CDs and savings to match what I owe on the mortgage, I really don't have the "just what mortgage worry are you talking about?" feeling yet. By the end of this year I think it will start to kick in though.

It was a year (or maybe two) ago I wrote how going to yard sales can give a very interesting view on how some people fritted away money left and right on erm... c!&p, and now don't have money for basic needs like utilities, or even housing. Of course this was while I was visiting with relatives living "in the countryside" as I like to call it.

Quite possibly (make that probably) in the past year I have come across people moving out of the area I live in due to financial issues as well. But yesterday I came across one, that while they didn't say it directly, must have blown some serious wads of cash, and now had nothing but bills to show for it. It was late in the morning, so I probably missed some interesting items, but lets see - what did they have?
* Padded chair with speakers built in
* Some really expensive looking furniture
* Brand new wrought iron curtain rods and unopned very nice curtains (these are what I bought and installed in my kitchen)
* Some type of mini electric arcade (like you would find at Brookstone - are they still in business?)
* Fancy glassware
* Nice dresses
* Lots more high end bric-a-brac.
* Nice jukebox
* And last but not least - *TWO* cars sitting on the front lawn for sale. Both very high end cars, one some type of sports car, the other I think was a new BMW of some type. New fancy rims, new tires, nice and shiny. They wanted $35,000 for each one. Whew!

And the house, for this area anyway, would probably sell for $750,000 now (make that well over a million a year or two ago).

While I was looking someone that was helping this woman sell things commented "Well its not like you're going to have room for these things when you move into your condo." Yikes. While condos can be extra nice around here, most of them are just glorified apartments. Just keep the money spent on the junk I saw (and buy one reasonable used car instead of the two there) and I swear you would have enough money to pay a couple *YEARS* of mortgage payments, even on a house that size. I guess they thought the good times would never end. She even talked like she was well educated, but obviously some common sense was seriously lacking.