Creative Financing

Generally, when I hear those two words I think… someone’s going to be robbing a bank. Well, I’m not planning to rob any banks. It sounds like WAY too much work. However, in planning our trip to Tennessee, we looked for ways to ease the financial burden of a trip to the other side of the country.

We, sadly, are not made of money. Thus, a trip that is decided up on with fairly short notice induces the need for Creative Financing. We are not the kind of people to look for things that we can get away with not paying in order to take the trip, instead we look for ways to increase our income (or at least our savings) briefly. Here are some of the ways we’ve been able to do that.

Keep the Change

Long before Bank of America came up with that program, I was a coin collector. Mind you, I’m no numismatist. I just hate using coins to pay for things, so they fall to the bottom of my purse and then end up in a Jar. And there they collect dust until I get around to rolling them to take into the bank – because let’s face it: CoinStar’s are a rip off. So, this weekend, we pulled out the baggie of rolls and started in on it. Voila, we’ve got 1/5th of our anticipated trip costs in rolled coins. We only have to go to the bank to cash them in now!

Also, fun fact – we got this awesometastic little piggy bank, earl basically won it – it’s one of those ones that counts your coins as you put them in. It’s pretty petite, but we filled it up to the top once and I can assure you that it is able to hold over eighty dollars in coinage.

Subcontracting

From time to time I’m sure everyone’s had two jobs… or maybe I’m one of the unfortunate few. Luckily however, my job can all be done from home while I’m watching Stargate Atlantis. Unluckily, it’s not a steady paycheck – it’s more of a “Whenever it’s needed kind of gig”. And it’s for my actual job, so I don’t have any overhead. I, ladies and gentlemen, cut heat shrink. That’s right. I am handed boxes of 4 foot pieces of heat shrink. I then take my handy-dandy paper cutter – you know, the ones you couldn’t use when you were in middle school because the secretary or librarian was afraid you were going to cut off your fingers and sue the school. Then I chop ‘em down and then bag ‘em and tag ‘em.

It’s not a bad setup, I get paid a dollar a bag. The order that I finished yesterday will cover 2/5ths of the anticipated trip costs.

Selling my Soul to the Devil

Just kidding. I’m saving that for my (several months long) trip through Europe.

Over Time

I am in an annoying position in that I do not get over time. The switched me over to salary a year or two back and all it did was make it so that I don’t get any over time – there was no raise attached to the change. However, Earl is still on a wage based pay scale, so he is more than able to get overtime… and this is why he is my hero. (not because he can get overtime) Earl has taken every Saturday shift he can from now until that trip. It means he’ll be working 6 days a week for a while – and that I’ll be bored out of my skull for four hours on Saturday morning, at least I’ll keep the house clean – but it just goes to prove that he’s amazing and wonderful.