FINANCES: My first eBay item!
I don’t know why it’s so exciting, but I just listed my first eBay item! It’s not much, but it’s a start. It’s a Daily Devotional book. It’s large print, which I think people would like. If you want to see it, the link is below.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=130246459826
I’m thinking about listing more items, and I have even thought about starting a little mini eBay business on the side. Any ideas as to what I should sell? A few I had in mind was jewelry (ones I make myself), accordion or piano songs on a CD (a little cheesy but done myself as well), or stuff like that. Any ideas would be appreciated though!
FINANCES: A House?
I really wanted to put an exclamation mark instead of a question mark in the title of this post, but I can’t. I just don’t know yet. I talked to the bank the other day, and they right away got me talking to a broker and a mortgage specialist and all these people. And in situations like that, normally I would feel really pressured and put off by the way they just jumped right to it. But in this case, the faster the better.
I want a house.
I really, really, want a house.
I love living with Ky’s parents. I really and truly do. But as any couple might want, we want a place of our own. A place that is just ours and nobody else’s. Ours. As it stands right now, we couldn’t really afford much. But I’m going to be working full time now (with the exception of hopefully a trip out to New Mexico in August and school in September). If we can even get a loan, all we could probably afford is going to be no more than $125,000 at the very most. That’s almost pushing it. But all the good houses that we want, like in Arvada, are at least that much. We might have to settle for something somewhere else for now.
Either way, I’m still excited at the prospect of having a house. I mean, I want to work some and save some money before having a baby, but if we could at least have a house, it would make me feel so much better about having one. I don’t want to be living in an apartment with a baby, and although Mark and Margie’s place is the second best place to have a baby, our own house would, of course, be the very best. So if anybody has any tips or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them! No opinions, like we shouldn’t get one now or anything like that, ecause we are already looking and haven’t made our final decision yet. But if you have any suggestions that would make it easier to get one or some financial tips on how to maximize our search or the like, definitely let us know!
FINANCES: PayPal
Okay. This has been a big stress for me lately so I’m going to tell you all about it.
To begin this story, we must go back to December of 2007 when I decided to get Ky a guitar for Christmas. So, I go to Guitar Center online and find a good beginner, fairly inexpensive one for him. I order it through PayPal. All seems well.
About two weeks later, just a few days before Christmas, I check to see what the order status is. PayPal has accepted the payment and the guitar says it was shipped. Wait, shipped? I look at the shipping confirmation number through FedEx or whoever they sent it through. It says it was shipped to some place in Kansas. I don’t know how that happened, but I call Guitar Center.
After explaining the problem to at least three people, I finally talk to the person who can help me. And after explaining the situation once again, he puts me on hold with that annoying hold radio that most places have now. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t so loud. Fifteen minutes goes by and the man finally comes back on the phone. He explains to me that the guitar was supposed to be delivered to me but was sent back to the warehouse for some reason and was shipped to some other guy in Kansas.
He apologizes profusely and says that he will give me the same guitar for almost half the price, but it won’t be delivered until the beginning of January. Although I’m a little upset that it’ll be coming after Christmas, I figure that Ky won’t care when it comes, especially if I got it for less. So I go ahead and tell him to send me another one and refund the other money. Well, I try to give him my PayPal information again to pay for it, but I can’t since I don’t have an actual card with them. I have to give him my bank card number. That’s fine, I had the money. But I asked him when my money with PayPal would be refunded. He says within thirty days, usually less.
Thirty-seven days go by and still no refund has come. It’s now getting into February. I call Guitar Center once again and say that I still haven’t been refunded the money. They apologize once again and say they will take care of it right away. March comes and the credit finally shows up. I think everything is peachy.
But no.
It is now July and PayPal has been sending me bills saying that I owe them over $140! I checked my online statement numerous times and it says I have a $0 balance. Weird. So I ignore them (which was my first mistake). Well, for the past month, I’ve had debt collectors calling me (which I had no idea that’s who it was until someone actually picked up the phone; we didn’t know the number so we just assumed it was telemarketers). I talked to them on Thursday, and the annoying, won’t-let-us-get-a-word-in-edgewise lady kept insisting that I give her my bank information so that I can get them off my back. I tell them that I would never give my information out over the phone to someone who was calling me asking for money and information. She keeps insisting that it’s legitimate. Ky talks to her. He kind of gives it to her without actually giving it to her. Basically, he tells her how it is without being a jackass. Something Ky’s very good at doing. I haven’t got much of a spine, so I’m glad he’s around for this stuff.
We finally give her $10 to leave us alone for the month but on a credit card. That way, I can dispute any extra charges with the credit card company. So Ky goes to work and we kind of forget about it for the time being
But Ky wants to get it sorted out and he refuses to pay any money that we don’t actually owe due to the error of Guitar Center or PayPal or whoever. So when he got home on Friday, he was on the phone for an hour or so with PayPal trying to tell them the situation and get things reversed. He finally did, I believe. I think he said that PayPal would reverse all the extra charges for the error that they and/or Guitar Center had made.
But here’s the kicker: the whole problem, besides Guitar Center taking two months to refund the money, was that when PayPal originally charged me for the guitar, they charged me $219.19 or something like that. But when Guitar Center gave me my money back, PayPal only refunded $216.81 approx. I guess that the original $219 was just an estimate and the $216 was the actual price. PayPal’s fault, not Guitar Center’s. That’s what Ky said that the lady said, anyway.
So, although nobody will probably read this, to make a long story short…I’ve been a little stressed this week.
