A Totally True Story of How I Found $58.21 lying around my Apartment

One of my goals is to be completely debt free. I want to pay off all my student loans as soon as humanly possible and by any means necessary. Recently I was challenged to think out of the box for new ways to make additional money to pay off my debt. To be clear it's not that any of these ways of generating income are new but they are new to me. As I listened intently to the advice I thought about the options available to me. First I considered getting a part-time job but immediately remembered how packed my schedule is with my current workload and my church commitments. I'm not sure where I would find an additional 20 hours a week to work another job, let alone the strength to keep up with that. Next I had the bright idea to host a garage sale but that was quickly dismissed since my husband and I live in an apartment and we don't have a garage or a front yard for that matter. Finally it dawned on me after 15 minutes of pondering that I live in the digital era and instead of selling items in person I can always sell online. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner ladies and gentlemen. It may take a while but I do catch on eventually.

Looking around I spotted my overcrowded bookcase that was dying to be purged. So I set out to eliminate my clutter while contributing to my debt destruction fund. I recently downloaded an app called BookScout that allows you to search for books by the ISBN number or the Author, Title, etc. and it retrieves the current list price from several online sites including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This app allowed me to scan my entire bookshelf (mostly the books I was willing to part with) and determine the going rate for these soon to be recycled treasures.

I'll admit BookScout did overestimate my projected earnings but after listing 6 books on Amazon my projected profits are $58.21. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. It only took a couple hours to sort the books and post online. The longest part was researching how to create an Amazon Seller's Account and writing this blog post. Some books were not worth selling online as I would spend more money shipping the item than earning a profit from the sale. For those books I am going to experiment with selling on Facebook via the garage sale groups. I recently watched a YouTube video from Tai and Talaat of the His and Her Money Show sharing how they made over $300 selling items in these types Facebook groups. Side Note: Tai and Talaat are an awesome husband and wife team that attack debt with a smile. I'm loving all their YouTube videos and podcasts encouraging everyone to declare that it's #hustleseason and get rid of that debt.

If you are in debt I encourage you to make a plan and take action to create additional income to help get out of debt faster. $50 may not seem like a lot of money but an extra $50 payment on my Student Loans can go a long way. I won't get into the specifics but google "Student Loan Calculator" and plug in your numbers and take a long hard look at how long it will take you to pay off our debt if you continue to pay the minimum payment. The amount of interest you'll pay over time is ridiculous. It's really sad that most people don't even realize majority of their monthly payment for their student loan is primarily going to the interest and not the principal. Anyway that's a blog post for another day. I hope you guys enjoyed the post. Please leave me a comment with some ways you make extra money. Also I'm curious if anyone else is in debt destruction mode as well. Leave me a comment below and thanks for reading!