Quick Nitty Gritty: Everything Must Go

I've decided this blog will feature two types of posts: big picture posts and quick nitty gritty posts.

Big Picture Posts are similar to the first ones I posted, a 10,000 foot view of the battle against materialism, debt, and pride.

Quick Nitty Gritty is just that--very brief weekly updates on what I'm doing in the here and now to get out of debt. These are not polished, revised, or anything. They are more notes than anything else!

Quick Nitty Gritty: Everything Must Go!

• Canceled my spotify premium account (saves me $10 per month)

• By buying groceries at Costco instead of eating out every meal and cutting energy drinks from my diet, I've only spent ~$240 or so on food this month (down from the $600 I spent in December) and I still have a ton of food left.

• Canceled my iPad's cellular plan (saves me $30 per month)

• Liquidating a lot of my stuff in order to beef up my cash reserves ASAP. I hate to see it go, but I'm not messing around any more.
• Sold two monsters sacks for $300 altogether
• I have some interest in my Kimber 1911 for $600
• I have two inquiries on my iPad3 for $320 - if they don't fan out, I'll put it on eBay and eat the fees (9% final value plus whatever they charge for insertion)
• Once my car is sold, I'll try and sell my parking spot, I should be able to get a couple hundred for it.
• Listing a bunch of video games on eBay for some extra chump change and to boost my seller rating so I can make more on future liquidation efforts (like the iPad, if it comes to that)
• Thinking about selling my Bulova, I heard that luxury watches lose a ton of value off retail, so I'm not sure if it will be worth it. Will need to investigate further.

• Prepping to sell my car, which will save me $305/mnth on the car payment, ~$200 a month on maintenance, and knock my gas bill down by ~40% since my replacement vehicle will have roughly double the MPG and won't need premium fuel. Waiting for the title to get transferred to the Provo Branch of America First before listing in order to streamline the transaction (see below)

• Have been approached by a couple people who are willing to pay me a little extra money to do some work for them. Will keep deets on the DL out of respect for the privacy of the people/companies involved (but thank you guys, I really appreciate it).

• Experimenting with different budgeting software. I hate mint's budgeting system for 9 million reasons, doing a trial of YNAB, I like it so far.

• Established a basic strategy for my approach to getting out of debt, pretty much ripped it from Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover
• Stop using credit cards, pay for everything with cash
• Budget like a madman, eliminate unnecessary expenses to free up as much of my income as possible - it's the biggest tool I have for paying down debt.
• Look for options to increase my income
• Build an "emergency fund" of $1,000 cash - for unexpected expenses.
• Pay off credit cards using the debt snowball approach of focusing on the smallest balance first, make minimum payments on the others until the smallest one is paid off, then focus on the next smallest one
• For me, this means knocking out my Citi VISA balance ($2,045.64) first, then my AMEX balance ($8,950.68). I want to get this done by the time I graduate next spring but I really don't know if it's possible! I need to crunch the numbers.
• Pay off student loans using the debt snowball approach.

• Just about ready to list my car for sale. KBB and Nada put it at being worth between 25 and 27 grand. I'll be listing it for 27, I'll offer the snow tires for an extra 500 if they want. My payoff amount is $17,460.55, a thousand less than I thought it would be. Score! Hoping to walk away with at least $7,500 in cash.
• On Monday I had the summer tires put back on -- the massive improvement on grip and performance will make a big difference on the test drive. The kind of guys looking at my car will be looking for these sorts of things
• Today I got it washed so it looks good. Decided to forego doing a full detail job because honestly I don't have the cash to burn and the hassle of coordinating rides while it's in the shop is a pain.
• Today I called America First Credit Union where I have my loan to get the payoff total and procedure for getting the title. Turns out the title is in Ogden, it'll be in their Provo branch by friday. When someone is ready to buy, I just take their cash into the branch office and they'll pay off the loan, release the lien on the title, and get me the remainder as a cashier's check
• Need to figure out how I'm going to get around once I do sell it - will need to bum rides off roommates or borrow someone's car or rent (yikes) until I can purchase a replacement vehicle.
• Decided my replacement car will depend on how much I clear on the transaction. I'm leaning towards an older Mazda3. 
• Depending on what my cash situation is at that point, I might go with a higher mileage vehicle so I can carry some of the cash into my tuition and emergency funds, taking into account that doing so will carry a higher risk of maintenance issues. Will worry more about this once I sell the car.

• Paying for tuition in cash is going to be a bear! I have 3 semesters left, tuition will be around $1,600 per semester (I'm going part time) plus books, I'm budgeting $250 or so for those, so $1,850 per semester. I have to constantly be putting cash towards tuition each month to keep up with this rate, something like $475/mnth or so? That's going to seriously hinder my ability to pay down my debts for a while, but the only alternative is even more debt - no thanks.

• Switched as many of my online recurring subscriptions as I could think of from my credit cards to my debit card.
• Will keep an eye on my credit card statements for any I missed and switch them to the debit card as they arise.

• Turns out there's a ton of people reading this blog from my workplace, school, and social circles. I didn't expect such a strong reaction. Really appreciate the support.