YARD SALE!!!

As a kid it was a common thing to be driving around town on a Saturday doing the usual errands when from the drivers seat my father would yell "Yard Sale!!!" and jerk the wheel following that cardboard and marker sign. Even now, as I have my own family I can't seem to pass a quality cardboard sign without proclaiming triumphantly "Yard Sale!!!"

For those of you who follow Dave Ramsey you know that one of his tricks to getting out of debt is to get your "Debt Snowball" rolling is to go through the house and sell what you can at a family yard sale. I have understood the potential with this idea but really haven't utilized the concept in my own financial strategy until recently. For the past year Sarah and I have had our focus on saving money and while we have sold a couple of large ticket items to help us reach our goal we really haven't used the "yard sale" principle.

Recently though we have met our saving goal and have turned our focus toward knocking out our last non-mortgage debt, a credit card with Wells Fargo. As part of our plan to knock out this debt we have decided to start selling things on KSL to help us in our goal. I have been amazed at how successful it has been. Last month we paid more than $500 towards the card all from selling stuff and this month we have already sold $800 worth of stuff and am hoping to reach $1000 before making the payment towards the card. It feels incredible to be taking such huge chunks out of a looming credit card debt.

One other place that we have seen the Yard Sale principle be successful is with my wife's family. Sarah's family takes an annual comping trip each summer which when you add up the food, the campsites, paper goods and any other activities can come out to be a hefty amount for a large group. So we decided that we would have a combined family yard sale to accomplish 2 purposes 1 - To pay for the family camp out and 2- to help us all declutter our closets and garages. It was very successful.

My concern with this concept was "what do you do when you run out of stuff to sell or don't really have anything in the first place." My answer to that question is to just start looking around you. There are people giving stuff or throwing stuff away all the time! I can't really tell you where to go looking but I can tell you that if you start looking you will find STUFF! You will be amazed at what has value to other people and if you end up with something that is really worthless you can always just throw it away or give it away to some one else!

Let the online classifieds be your main tool. It is so easy to snap a picture and post an ad and then let it sit. I used to get worried if something I listed for sale didn't sell in a day or two but my experience has been to just try to price it right and then let it sit and I may get that one person who wants it calling me a month later.

The Greatest Secret / The Law of attraction

A few years ago I was given a copy of an audio recording of a speech given in 1956 by a man named Earl Nightingale. In this speech titled "The Strangest Secret" Mr. Nightingale lays out what he believes is the secret to wealth, prosperity, happiness and success and that secret is that "We become what we think about all day long." He said that in order to be successful we must picture in our minds what it is that we want or that we want to become and then act as if the thing we picture is real or will become real, and not want a hundred incompatible things at the same time.


More recently there has been a similar release of "The Secret" which is unaffiliated with the ideas of Earl Nightingale but have commonalities. "The Secret" teaches the power of the "Law of Attraction" which simply summarized says that we can draw things, people, and events into our lives simply by using imagery or imagining those things in our minds that we desire.

And here's my take on it all - there is with out question in my mind some real and unseen power in the practical application of these principles. The way it is taught in "The Secret" is a little extreme to me because it claims that every detail of our lives is a result of our thoughts and to me that is a bit over the top. However, the idea of seeing in our minds what we want and picturing ourselves having what we desire and feeling as though we already have it has some power in it. I personally tend to lean more towards the way it is taught by Mr. Nightingale in how he says we must only act as if the thing is real or will become real and it will be real.

As I have experienced the power of this secret I have come to describe it a little differently. I call it the "decide moment." I have been fortunate and blessed in my life to have many wonderful experiences, know great people, and have some fun things. Some of them I attribute to hard work, others to coincidence, and others to blessings from God. But there are other things that I fully and honestly believe came to me because of the power of The Secret and for each of those things I can attach to it a moment in which I "decided" that I was going to have, do, or become something. Then, with out any real effort on my part these things find their way to me.

For example I used to drive a 1968 Ford f-250 that I love and still have today, but one night while trying to maneuver that beast which I had loved for so long I said out loud with gratitude in my voice for what I had that I was ready for a new truck. I can remember almost every detail about the moment because it stands out to me as my "decide moment" that I was ready for a change. In my mind I had a picture of the truck that I wanted and it wasn't a week later that I got a phone call from my brother who had seen an incredible deal on the exact truck that I had pictured in my mind. I bought the truck and to this day have never heard of or seen a deal on a truck as good as I got that day.

The same principle was true recently when I got a call from a friend who called and said he had a dune buggy that he wanted me to buy. He had no idea that just the week before Sarah and I had decided that we were going to buy a buggy this year so that we could off road as a family with our little Zoey. I got the rail and made money in the process. This principle has also worked for me in setting and achieving goals that when I made them I thought that they sounded absurdly impossible yet time and time again Sarah and I have reached those goals and even over shot them.

Dave Ramsey, the talk show host of the most listened to personal finance radio show, often comments on how once we have decided to get out of debt or have made goals for ourselves that there is power in making that decision and that God may even step in and push the process along faster than we ever thought possible.

Call it what you want but for me its the power of decision. Decide to get out of debt, decide to save money, decide to buy your first home, decide to become a the person you want to be, decide to loose weight, decide to solve some problem, decide to change your situation. To me the decide moment is when I emotionally commit to the idea of something that I want even if I can't see the road of how I am going to get there. I just decide that it is going to be a part of my life and then I prepare myself to receive it when it comes.

There is real power in it that I can not explain and I hope that you can find it for yourself and use it in your life. I highly recommend listening to "The Strangest Secret" by Earl Nightingale.