Blowing Up The Log Jam

I was watching a video clip of Dave Ramsey's Radio show a couple weeks ago. (Did you know you can watch the radio broadcast live on daveramsey.com ? Or clips on youtube here ) The clip I was watching had a caller on the line asking Dave what he could do when he felt like he just couldn't get traction. He was making enough to just pay all the bills and minimum payments. Dave told him something has to give. You need to sell something or increase your income. He compared it to when loggers used to float logs down stream and they would all get so stuck, this is called a log jam. To get the logs moving again the loggers would have to use dynamite to blow up the log jam. Once the log jam was gone everything could keep flowing smoothly down river.


With my probable job loss (the company I work for is being sold) and having to save my income for now, we have our very own log jam. I keep having to pull some out of savings just to keep our payments (our gazelle intense payments) the same. So, I am having a hard time reaching our savings goal, which is 2500 dollars . The reason we chose 2,500 instead of the 1,000 dollars Dave Ramsey recommends is because we want to be prepared for a job loss and a possible big emergency at the same time. Our insurance deductibles for our house and car are both set to 2,500 to save us some money every month in the premium. If an emergency came up where we needed that deductible, we need to make sure we have it safe and sound in the bank. We need to do this as quickly as possible.


So, that is our log jam and here is how we are going to bust it! We are having a yard sale. A huge one. I have asked some friends to come and sell too. The reason I asked friends to come and sell is the more you have out there the more likely people are to stop and shop. I have been going through every nook and cranny of our house and boxing up anything that we no longer use, or barely use . If we barely use an item we can more than likely borrow that item from someone and don't really need to own it. As I have been going through our home I am realizing HOW MUCH STUFF we have. I wish I could go back and kick myself for every item I bought and never used or used once. I have 15 boxes and a couple garbage bags FULL of stuff, ready to be sold! I am pricing everything to move because we are not taking it back into our tiny home. Anything left will be donated. We are hoping to make a couple hundred bucks and blow up the log jam for good! All of the garage sale money should be going into savings. If we do make more than expected I will take a tiny bit out of the profits to do something fun with the family.