Garage Sale

Penni manning the store. Funny story a truck load of hummmmmm undocumented females pulled up and were like locust to honey. The granny of the group jumpped on Nichole's old bike and I said to myself easy granny you are no spring chicken. Two minutes later, you guessed it, granny was lying on her rump in our driveway after falling off the bike. We dusted granny off and sent her on her way. They all walked away with there hands full of stuff so when they left and after we stopped laughing I asked Penni how much we made and she said $3. WOW!! I saw about $100 in cake decorating crap get carried off. Any thought - people would come up and immediately go for what was in the garage and we had to keep telling them nothing in the garage is for sale. I guess that while I was gone a truckload of men pulled up and they all ran into the garage and Penni and to escort them out of the garage and point them towards the crap.

Girls look at the camera not at the boys riding by on their bikes. Good girl Zoe!!

For those of you that live far away let me give you a little background – since I got my new job we have been forced to be on a budget. What has made it hard has been that I have never been on a budget. Penni can’t believe that I am an accountant, but it is what it is. I keep explaining to her that just because I like numbers, doesn’t mean that I don’t like to spend money. Some of the best spenders I know are accountants. One quick story – the first day we are on the budget and Penni commits me to stick to it – I am rolling around in bed and I rip the sheets. So now I have a big hole in my side of the bed. Currently we only have one set of sheets because (as Penni reminded me I ripped the other set of sheets a couple of months ago). Normally I would just go get some sheets but now we have to pay for things in cash and have the money before we go get them so I am stuck with the holy sheets. So a couple of nights ago I slide (ok jump) into bed and I am quickly reminded of the lack of sheets in our house. I say to Penni that for the last number of years Christmas has come around and I have a real hard time coming up with things that I want for Christmas. I told her not this year. Penni says oh you want some gift certificates to some of our favorite restaurants and I said no but I know what you want for Christmas. I want some stinking sheets and we had a good laugh.

Anyway we should have been on a budget a long time ago and I guess it is good that we are getting more financially responsible. We have been trying to teach the kids to be more grateful and I didn’t realize that I needed to learn that lesson. So this weekend we had a community garage sale. I have never done a garage sale because –again - I have never been on a budget and needed the extra cash. So we cleaned out all our crap and woke up at 6 on a Saturday morning to sell it people who wanted to buy our crap (and yes those people do exist). The night before Penni came up with the idea for the girls to sale cinnamon rolls to make some money – again we all need extra cash. Kristine was all over that so she made some signs and we got everything ready for the next morning.

So Saturday morning rolls around and we get up to setup. We get our signs up and set up a stand on the main street in our subdivision. $2.00 for a cinnamon roll and a glass of milk. I felt that it was going to be great or a dud. So all three girls are sitting at the table and I bring over the rolls and then head back to the house to get something and I look back and there is Zoe and Kristine just looking at the warm rolls and I yell to them not to eat them. Every time I came back to check on them they asked if they could eat one. I finally gave in. In the end we had two pity purchases (a lady stopped and bought one because Kristine had a great smile and a lady in our ward bought one) and two neighbor girls came over to buy a couple but they only had 25 cents so Nichole said sorry its two dollars. Kristine just wanted to give them to them anyway but Nichole said no. So Kristine came home to get $3.50 of her own money to get the girls two rolls.

Later as I was cleaning up with Nichole I thought that this would be a great business lesson. Nichole said that she made $8 and I said no you didn’t. I explained you had $8 in revenue, your cost of goods sold was $10 ($2 for the milk and $8 for the rolls), then you have to pay rent on the table and chairs to me at $2, marketing expense for the signs $3, the paper plates and cups were not free they were $3. So in the end I told her that you probably have a net income loss of about $10. That the bank is going to want it’s money because you probably had to personally guarantee it. First they will call you and ask when you can make payment and then they will send you certified letters. Finally Nichole said “whatever dad”. Then my friend pulled up and we were picking up and we had four rolls left. I told Nichole that I was not done yet. She hadn’t learned about comps. She said what is that and I said that is when you give stuff away for free. Needless to say she is not big fan of comps.