BIRTH MONTH!!!!!

BIRTH MONTH!!!!!! We finally made it to August!! We are expecting our second little guy to arrive any day now, and we could not be more ready. Although I don't think it's really sunk in that when this pregnancy is finally over I will have a second baby to take care of haha! But ready or not, he should be here in less than two weeks! August is my birthday month as well, and we had a really good time celebrating! Birthdays are one area we decided would definitely be worth it to scale back on to put more of that money toward debt. To be honest, I didn't even realize the difference. Tom and I had a great dinner together, and he bought me the perfect gift - a book on creating a successful eBay business - and Madi and I bought fun notebook journals together and had a coffee date. My family came over for take-out dinner at my house, and we had a really good time just hanging out and eating cake and ice cream. I got some birthday cash from my parents and grandma, so I picked up a couple of nice little clothing items on (you guessed it) eBay for next summer. Very low key and fun and relaxing.  It might have been my favorite birthday yet.

We took a weekend "babymoon" Dave Ramsey style. Free babysitter (thank you grandparents), free hotel room (points from Tom's job, booyah) and entertainment that will make us money (a full day of thrifting for the "bay"). I'm sure there might come a time in our lives that we will splurge on big trips and birthday parties, but I'm really enjoying being creative and simple with our celebrations. It really helps me to focus on what I'm actually celebrating.

My eBay project is ramping up nicely! I just hit a little over $3k in my 31-day trailing sales, so that's a huge milestone for me! So exciting! I have been using every bit of my profit to beef up my inventory for my "shopping maternity leave" and invest in some equipment (lighting kit, inventory storage), but I expect to be able to take some money out next month, so that is my next goal! I'm really excited to see what kind of damage I can do to our car loan balance with this project.

My eBay business is taking over my room! This is my photo wall and lighting kit! 

All of my listed inventory and the tip of my "death pile" iceberg. 

My new best friend - a handheld steamer! Much easier on dress clothes than an iron! 

Money money money!!!! 

It's important for me in this journey to keep circling back to the "why". I have the type of personality that wants to go big or go home, so I tend to stress out easily if I'm not hitting my goals (which lbh are probably a little high) or making the progress I want to be making as fast as I want to be making it. I have to make myself step back like at least every day if not multiple times a day and say "why are you doing this". I want to be debt free so that we can honor God in the finances he's given us and so that we can set our kids and family up to succeed financially and so that we can use our money to bless others rather than being a slave to our paychecks. When I focus on that, I am able to view this journey in a bigger picture and take a deep breath and rest knowing that we are doing what we can do and that every dollar matters. If one month looks better than another month or it seems to be taking longer to pay off debt, we still have a roof over our head and food on our table and healthy happy babies and a beautiful marriage and we are taking steps in the right direction. The rest will fall into place.

It's really good accountability for me to have this blog, so thank you so much for reading! I am really excited about some side hustle opportunities coming up this fall, so here's to hoping for big debt payoff numbers to report in the next few months!!

xoxo,

Maxie