Why Buy Used?

Our "new" couch

One of the biggest lessons we've learned since changing careers was how to save money.  At first we made a lot of mistakes being used to a bigger income.  Over time I finally figured out that it's just not possible to spend more than you earn. We paid off our debt 5 years ago and didn't want to go back into credit.  Since everything had to be paid with cash, it was either we have it or we don't.  

We've been waiting and waiting to get a couch that would fit our family.  Our old way would be to go to a furniture store and just put one on credit, bring it home, and make payments.  That's how we got our tables.  By the way, those are the worst tables every that we bought at Mor Furniture.  I'm embarrassed to even tell you what we paid.

Girls in their "new" outfits

We always went to the mall to buy our clothes before and it didn't bother me one bit to drop $40 on one shirt.  Now that makes me cringe.  I've been keeping a list of clothes that are needed in the house and waiting for a half off day at a local thrift store.  So I took my list and headed over with the kids.  We stick to the list to save money and not bring stuff home we don't need.  First we headed to the shoe rack.  Another lady was standing there staring at the shoes.  I just grabbed all the ones that looked new, had my kids try them on and threw them in the cart.  By the time we were finished with that section I had emptied half the rack.  No joke, only the used looking ones were left and that poor lady was still standing there trying to decide on one. :)  We had one cart completely full of just shoes.  

Ivy needed just shirts and tights so we headed there. She has lots of skirts but they needed tights to make them more modest.  Then she needed shirts.  We grabbed about 2 weeks worth of new looking tights and shirts and headed out of that section.  Kyle needed only regular shirts and Chaz and Ryan needed dress shirts.  They also needed belts.  As soon as our list was fulfilled we headed out.

Just as we were heading out we saw the couch we'd been looking for.  It's hard being patient sometimes but patience paid off!  We wanted a couch where we could easily wipe stuff off, was dark, and could fit our whole family.  This was perfect.  We grabbed it for $100!  Before, we would had no problem putting a couple $1000 on credit to get something like this.  Oh, the lessons we learn.  If only we knew this stuff back when we could've bought used and saved the difference.  Now it's out of survival but then we could've saved the difference.  

I think people assume that buying used means you dress poorly and it's real obvious.  Well, it can be obvious if we're not picky of course.  lol.  There has been times where I walked into a used store and could only find one thing that met something on my list and looked new.  Also, there has been times we walked out with nothing.

Lessons learned the hard way I guess but better late than never, right?  :)