Quick update

Just a quick update to say that my daughter's surgery went well and we were able to come home on Wednesday. It was a very long day - she went into the OR at about 12noon and didn't get out of recovery and up to her hospital room until 9pm. But she's doing great and that's the main thing!

I am super excited about my Amazon selling adventure! I went to one book sale and picked up a few books, but my goal now is to qualify for selling in the Toys & Games section for Christmas, then use the proceeds from that to get my PDA scanner and go full swing into selling books.

That's about it - will update again as I get more into the holiday toy selling season!

Heading in a new direction

Well, it's been quite a long time since I've posted to the blog, but I figure I would trying and catch things up and let everyone know what's been going on.

My daughter was unexpectedly hospitalized at the end of July, and that really kind of threw us completely off kilter. I was staying with her, and we were there for about 7 days. She is going to have surgery again on September 20th, but we only hope to be in the hospital for 2 days this time, so that's good.

I've been rethinking my goals for real estate investing, and have come to the conclusion that I am not going to pursue real estate investing until we are on Baby Step 3 (we are big Dave Ramsey fans). This was a tough decision, but I feel that it is the right one for us as a family, especially because of the medical bills that have cropped up due to my daughter's hospitalization. Although we have pretty decent health insurance through my husband's employer, we still have a maximum out of pocket per individual of $3500 per year, and we did not have that much in our flexible spending account to cover the difference.

So, having put real estate investing on hold for now, I then had to figure out how to boost our income on a regular basis. Applying for jobs has not panned out, and now my time is going to be even more limited, as I will be helping my husband's grandfather with taking him to the doctor, dentist, grocery shopping, etc, which I am also currently doing for my mother. So I've decided that I'm going to work on selling books on Amazon using their Fulfillment by Amazon program. The start-up cost is low, and the opportunity to make a consistent monthly income is very good. I hope to get a start on getting ramped up for business before my daughter and I head to the hospital on the 20th.

So that's it for now. I will still update the blog so you can see how I'm doing with my Amazon business. :)

Oh, I almost forgot. Funny story - I received a phone call from someone to whom I sent a probate letter back in January. He said that he's getting ready to put the house in question on the market, but wanted to give me a chance to put in an offer before he does it. I've got to call him back this weekend - should be interesting!

Good news, bad news, good news, bad news...

This was going to be a long post, but I'll spare you the details so you won't get bored. So let's play a game of Good News, Bad News!

Bad News - we didn't have enough money for all of us to go down to Charleston for Ruth's cardiac catheterization procedure on June 16th, so Ruth decided that Dad should be the one to take her.

Good News - Ruth didn't need the cardiac catheterization after all, so she didn't have to spend the night in the hospital!

Bad News - My husband took my mother's car for the Charleston trip, because it had the lowest mileage...on the way back the tread on the front driver's side tire came off and ripped on the wiring harness...so Mom's car is out of commission until everyone has enough money to finish up the repairs.

Good News - at least no one was hurt! And they were about a mile away from their exit on the interstate, so they didn't have to drive too far to get to the gas station.

Bad News - one of our older dogs passed away on the back porch (the day that Ruth and my husband were in Charleston).

Good News - My neighbor has a farm tractor which made burying the dog in the backyard a much easier task.

That pretty much sums it up. Also the recurring theme of not having enough money is getting really, REALLY old. Trying to still work on getting part time employment.

I'm restarting my probate leads mailings this week, so that's good, too.

Oh, and the one lead I had back in February with the gentleman who had his sister's house and his brother's house that he was working on apparently decided to go with a realtor...the sister's house is under contract and the buyer is looking to assign it. He posted the lead on my local REIA's Yahoo group (that's how I found it)...I referred him to a property management company in town, so he called them and they might be interested in buying. He was very appreciative of the lead, so that made me feel good. I'm not upset about losing the lead (I was going to get it under contract for $35k, the buyer has it under contract through the realtor for $25k), but I'm annoyed at myself for not following up and seeing if it was up on Realtor.com (since I don't have MLS access)...it's a learning experience.

Later folks!

Back from hiatus

I guess I put myself on hiatus for almost a month...

It has not been a fun month...lots of juggling going on....and a big, huge cash crunch (when you have to borrow your son's birthday money for gas, that qualifies as a huge cash crunch in my book).

I did call back the one lead from my last post, and he gave me the number of his uncle who lives locally for me to contact so I could get a look at the place. I did not call the uncle, however, because I did not have enough gas in my van (even with borrowing my son's birthday money) to get to where the house is....sigh....so I'm going to call this week, now that I have a full tank of gas, lol, and see what the story is.

Also, if you could please pray for an online friend of mine, I would be so thankful. Her name is Jenn and she has an adopted daughter, Yan, from Hong Kong who has Down Syndrome. She lost just about everything in the flood in Nashville from this past weekend. :( Yan is taking it very hard - "home" was her safe place, her security, and now that it's gone, she is having trouble coping. They were staying at a neighbor's house on higher ground during the flood, as they were not able to drive out of the neighborhood - poor Yan just kept signing "home" (she uses sign language to communicate). I am heartbroken for both of them. :( Please keep them in your thoughts.

That's about all for now....going to work on a plan now that I have some cash flow and see about more probate mailings.

So I'm minding my own business.... :)

Life in the fast lane has been pretty slow lately....last week was Spring Break, so not much was going on...I took the kids to the park on Thursday and was minding my own business (and on hold as I was calling in to the local talk radio station) when I saw I was getting another call...well, I didn't recognize the number, plus I knew I was one of the next callers for the show, so I didn't take the call and let it go to voice mail.

I was quite surprised to find out that it was a call from one of my probate mailings from back in January....very pleasant and polite....a nice surprise!

I've realized that tomorrow is Thursday and I haven't called him back. Yikes! Not a good thing. To be honest, I have a hard time finding any sort of quiet to make phone calls - either a child is trying to talk to me, or a dog is barking or a cat is meowing....so I guess what I will do is go sit in my car in the driveway tomorrow and return this gentleman's phone call and see what's up.

Also as an aside, nothing from the realtor on Facebook (the one who is part of my local REIA Women's group)....perhaps she forgot....I guess I'll send her another message and hopefully she'll respond.

Where do we go now?

Hello folks!

The title of this blog post comes from the lyrics of a GNR tune. I actually went to see GNR with Metallica way back when...betcha didn't think I was into groups like that, huh? LOL

Anyway, here's what's going on with me and the direction I sense I'm supposed to be going on.

First, I remembered an article I read in a Billy Graham magazine called Decision. One of the key themes of the article was "Do the task at hand". It's been almost 10 years since I first read that article and that phrase has been with me since...but it just started to sink in, in regards to my present situation.

For me to "do the task at hand", it involves cleaning and organizing the house. There is no sense of peace in this house right now - it's all topsy turvy, scattered, haphazard....so that needs to change once and for all.

Second, the other topic is tithing. This is a huge leap of faith for us right now, with our budget being so tight, but it is the right thing to do, for us. So starting with the next paycheck, we will be giving 10% of our gross paycheck to our church for church missions.

Third, I've started the baby steps for getting back into the REI game....I've emailed an agent from our local REIA Women's group to see if she, or if she knows someone, who has MLS access for my county so I can look at the sold listings and get an idea of what's going on in the area.

And as an aside, do you remember that I emailed the agent who sold us our house about working with me? Remember how I speculated that he would probably take us off his mailing list? Well, I'm pretty sure he did because I haven't received A THING from him since I emailed him. So much for "I'm never to busy for your referrals..." (a sticker he would put on the back of every envelope). HA!

Anyway, I guess that's it for now. Hope the weather is great where you are! I think Spring has definitely come to the Great State of SC. :)

Long time, no blogging...

Well, I'm sorry to be MIA these past couple of weeks....I have been doing my best in being silent and trying to listen to the Lord, and I feel as if I am tuning in much better to His direction. More on this in a little bit...

On a more personal level, my mom officially moved in to her new apartment this past weekend. It has been a wonder to witness God's hand in all of this - from the apartment manager not giving up on contacting me, even when I thought it was a lost cause because Mom didn't qualify income-wise, to our having our tax refund and DH's bonus in hand to cover her rental deposit and moving costs, it really has been the perfect storm of circumstances for all of this to fall into place.

There is a lot to do for Mom to get her settled in. She managed to pack up nearly all of her belongings herself at the ripe young age of 75 (!!) these past couple of weeks, so I will be more than happy going over there on a daily basis to at least help her unpack. Plus I need to help her get set up with new medical doctors, a new bank, getting her car registered and tags transferred, etc., so I figure I'll be pretty busy for at least the next 2 weeks or even more. Mom has her own car, but really doesn't like to drive, so I told her I would be happy to take her grocery shopping and to the doctor, and do all the long distance driving for her on a regular basis for stuff that's not in town (like her Dr. specialists).

As for my sense of direction, I'm getting a good sense that the best thing to do right now for me to get a steady income coming in is to offer bookkeeping services for local real estate investors. The startup costs are pretty low - basically just getting a copy of Quickbooks and a good guide for Quickbooks for real estate investors (like John Hyre's KISS bookkeeping system), and I can advertise on the local REIA's Yahoo group page. The best thing is that in a worst case scenario, if I absolutely do not get any clients, I can always use Quickbooks myself, and there are no other ongoing costs.

The other avenue which I'm still not settled on is the probate marketing....not sure if I should pursue the leads myself or offer them for sale to other investors....so I guess I'm going to fine tune my listening skills to get a better handle on how to proceed with that.

Anyway, the next challenge is coming up with the extra money for getting the Quickbooks and John Hyre's guide. I guess I'm going to have to fine tune the budget and see what I can come up with.

Will update as more develops. :)