Garage Sale Success!

It has been too long since I posted.  Someone asked me for my blog URL this week and I am a bit embarrassed with how few posts I have made.  Time to talk about our preparation for the big move instead of just our times in Ecuador.  Keep in mind that if you move overseas from the US, whichever state you last had residency in is the one that you will pay income taxes in while you are overseas.  We live in California and do not want to pay state income taxes here while we are residents of Ecuador.  Instead, we will be moving to South Dakota early in 2013 to establish residency in a state with no state income taxes.  Why South Dakota?  Because we are both crazy and thought South Dakota in January sounded like paradise!  Actually, we are both originally from Minnesota so it will be a short drive to visit our relatives & friends while spending time living in South Dakota.

In preparation for the move, we are slowly downsizing.  Last weekend, we had a hugely successful garage sale.  One of our neighbors also had one on the same day so all of the signs that Scott made said “Garage Sales” which seemed to draw a lot more people than if it had been singular.  Having been avid campers when our daughter was growing up, we had a ton of camping equipment to sell.  Also sold a bunch of Christmas decorations and kitchen items that we no longer need and would certainly not have made the cut for our move.  Tuesday night, we even had a guy stop by and ask if the 10 man tent was still available (it was!) and bought it.  Our neighbor used to sell golf clubs for a living and had tons of unused clubs.  That explains why our used, mismatched clubs did not sell 🙂

Beginning of the day:

End of the day:

One of the keys to success was pricing everything to sell.  We had very few people even try to negotiate.  A couple of times, we were asked things like “are these (very used) golf shoes really only $1?”  In the end, we made more than $900 and the most expensive thing we sold was $30.  It was an incredibly busy day and well worth it.

We plan to sell my Infiniti G35x and keep Scott’s Toyota Tundra.  It will make a lot more sense to have a pickup in the snow and ice than a luxury car.  We are planning to come back out to California in the spring to sell the house since that is a better time to sell than over the holidays.

I am most likely going to leave work sometime before the end of this year and Scott just before we leave for South Dakota.  After I leave, I will be working on getting rid of more of our stuff & going through the mountain of paperwork in our home office.  We both spent more than 7 years working from home years ago and have more paper than should be allowed in a home.

Scott and I are getting so excited about this major life change that we will be embarking on soon!  We faithfully read South of Zero every day and discuss the blog topics as we learn from them.  I highly recommend that anyone considering a similar move do the same.  I would also recommend joining the Facebook group Ecuador Expats even though I am unable to since I still work at FB and do not want my managers to know of my plans just yet (unless they find this blog…).  Scott has joined the group and finds it useful.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to buy a 2006 Infiniti G35x, let me know 🙂

Until next time,
Emily