Consigning Clothes

Admittedly, I'm a clothes horse.  So is my mother-in-law.  Combined, we have passed this trait on to my stepdaughter, who, at 9, is very conscious of how she looks when she leaves the house.  Fortuantely, none of us are caught up in labels.  Unfortunately, it seems that for all of us, more is better, and letting go of something is heart-wrenching.  The three of us all have closets bursting with more clothes than we really need. 

For me, I love buying new clothes.  It's not about how much I can spend...on the contrary, my game is to figure out how much I can get for the least amount of money.  For my birthday last year, my mom gave me $75 and took me to the mall and said, "Get whatever you need."   I squeezed every last penny out of that $75;  my take added up to:

• $20 on a watch (the one thing I really NEEDED)
• $13 Victoria's Secret bra on clearance
• $42 - the rest of it on:  3 shirts, a pair of shorts, a skirt and lip gloss

Point being, while I love getting new things and the feeling of wear said new things out in public, I end up with a lot of unused stuff in my closet.  I used to do a purge once a year and take about four garbage bags of clothes to the thrift store as a tax write-off charitable donation.  (And when I cleaned out the Star's closets, that donation would double.)

Since we've had our spending slow-down and I've been really conscious of money going in and out, I've looked into other avenues for no-longer-used clothing.  A local organization does a huge kids clothing consignment sale twice per year.  I used to shop this for great bargains to add to the Star's closet; now I use it as a way to clean out her closet.  (Although, any closet-cleaning that I do has to be done when she's not around; she has the same outlook I have on clothes that haven't been worn at all: "But I might want to wear that sometime...in the distant, far-off future.")

So far, I've made an average of $30 per consignment sale.  I'm sure my husband would say that's not worth the time it takes me to sort and label all the clothes, but to me, I've got more time than money, and it's $30 I didn't have before the sale started. 

Unfortuantely, I think I'm running out of things to cull out of her closet - this kid is going into fourth grade and has been wearing the same size since the end of her kindergarten year.  Her body shape has changed from short and chubby to tall, long and skinny, but the clothing size remains the same.

For my own clothes, I've started taking them to a new consignment shop in our town.  So far, I haven't had the best of luck.  The first go-round, last fall, I would go into the store and see my stuff on the racks and tagged for sale.  The way this shop works is that if your stuff doesn't sell in three months, they'll call you to come pick it up.  Well, after the three months, I didn't get a phone call, so I assumed they must have sold everything and I'd have some money there.

Not so much.  Apparently, all my stuff disappeared into a black hole - after my first three months of consigning, I didn't have a red cent...nor did I have any of my merchandise!  I've got a bunch of clothes back in the shop for a second go-round now. 

And, amazingly, after 6 weeks, I went in this past weekend and discovered that I'd made some sales and the store had kept track of my money!  Three pieces of clothing had sold and my take-home "profit" was $7.58.  Unfortunately, I went into the store with little Miss Star, the one who loves to shop.  At first she was eyeing up some shoes, but I pulled her away from them - what 9-year old needs clear plastic stillettos?  But then she found an adorable top that she had to have, plus we found a bracelet that would go perfectly with what we were giving my mother-in-law for her birthday. 

So we plunked those two items on the counter and paid out $7.34.  And I made 0.24 for six weeks of consigning.  But I've got a few more items on the racks in there - next time I go to pick up money, I'll leave the kid at home!

Credit Counseling Phase I

Last night, we made our toll-free, mandatory credit counseling phone call.  It was quite underwhelming.  Basically, it was another rehash of our income, expenses, budget and what would get discharged in bankruptcy.

The gal asked what our financial goals were: to be solvent!  We articulated: 1) to be able to pay bills on time with cash on hand, 2) to live a cash-only lifestyle without credit, 3) to be able to save a percentage of our paychecks and 4) to have some money leftover at the end of the week to have a life (or just go out for a fish fry).

Then she began looking at our income/expenses and tried to help us come up with places to save money or reach our goals.  To be honest, everything she said was nothing that we haven't already evaluated or that I haven't already read online.  I can't say there was one big revelation out of the whole experience.

Fortunately, this pleased my husband, who had been pretty apprehensive leading up to the call.  By contrast, it irritated me, because I feel like we just shot $50 down the drain and didn't get anything for it except for the "blessing" to go ahead in our plans.

Signing Our Life Away

All has been quiet in the bankruptcy progression recently, up until a meeting at our laywer's office last Friday.  In just under an hour, we signed a bunch of documents to 1) protect our home and vehicle loans and 2) start the discharge process on the credit card debt.

Our lawyer's legal assistant is so sweet and spent some time talking to us about how this will be a "fresh start" and that there's not the stigma to BK as there has been in the past.  Um, well, there's still a stigma in my mind, and it's making me quite anxious and on the verge of tears lately.

Also, the process is not cheap.  We ended up paying $1,500 up front on Friday.  That's a $299 filing fee and $1201 to the law firm (from whom, apparently, we're getting a discount).  Also, we are required to go through a two part credit counseling session, with each part priced at $50.

So where'd we get essentially $1600 for all this crap?  Borrowed again from the Bank of Mom. 

When I called to make an appointment for the credit counseling yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we could do it over the phone by calling a toll-free number instead of schlepping to an office an hour away.  However, it kind of feels like something this company does just so they can say we're satisfying the requirements - it almost feels like there's not going to be any effort put into it.

Oh, well, I guess we'll see on Thursday night when we call in.

Slow Going

Now that we've pulled the trigger on our BK decision, it seems to be slow going.  We were supposed to have a second appointment with our lawyer yesterday, but I had to reschedule because Mr. Fix-It had a work conflict.  So now we're waiting til July 9.  Mainly, I just want all this worst part to be over so that we can move on to the business of repairing our credit.

Not that money emergencies don't continue to pop up on a near-daily basis around here.  Last weekend, we had some horrible summer thunder-and-wind storms roll through.  We woke up Saturday morning to one of the big trees in our backyard in a horizontal position instead of vertical.  The top branches cracked right off and have now created a bid jungle mess in the backyard. 

Also, as we found out last night when our tree removal friend came to look over the job, one big branch is laying on the roof of the house.  It's already started to buckle the soffit and facia area.  Who knows how damaged the shingles are underneath.

Supposedly this is what homeowner's insurance is for, but our deductible is so bloody high, I just don't even know if making the claim will be worth it.  I'm calling our agent this afternoon, of course, just to see what our best course of action will be.

Oh, and the brakes on my husband's truck are starting to squeal.  He's assuming he's going to need new front brakes sooner rather than later.