The Nitty Gritty

I guess I have a lot of explaining to do 

The big question out there is, "Why haven't you been posting much lately?" Great short question with a not so short answer.

It all started at the end of January just a few days before my birthday. I was having a great day at work and things were finally going alright. Right before the day was over I was called into the head honchos office. Feeling like I'd been doing a great job, I walked in with confidence.  That is, until I saw "them".

Anytime you walk into your masters house and there's more than one person in there that is twice your age, and there is a security officer right outside the door, you're not getting a raise!

In english: I lost my job. Also, we somehow lost the camera cord to post pictures, which we still haven't found. We think we know who the culprit is. She goes by AC. Thanks to a loving Sister, we were able to barrow a camera cord to get some pictures posted!

The last 3 months haven't been a cake walk for us. I'd have to say probably one of the most humbling times in my little family's life. I wish I could say it was all easy, but it wasn't. There's been a lot of praying and faith building exercises.

I don't know why God likes to keep us on our toes literally till the last minute when bills are due. Maybe it's because He just wants to see how much we will trust him?

There are so many stories I could share with you of how God has blessed us within these last 3 months. There honestly hasn't been a day that we've gone without. Every one of our needs have been met.

He has provided jobs on the side for me to do in order to help provide; all the way to God putting us on people's hearts that have blessed us more than we could have ever imagined! I will forever be grateful.

The good news is, I have a new full time job! I'm pretty sure I can say with confidence that I am done with the medical field. Although, I love helping the sick and injured, I love working with my hands and getting dirty more.

All that said, I will be the new Lead Grounds Keeper for one of the local Community Colleges. I'll start at the beginning of May. We're not out of the deep end yet financially. We know God is going to take care of us and provide as long as we are following in His will and are being obedient. 

On a totally different subject: The condition of Dirty Tyson. All the kings horses and all the kings men were able to put him together again...except for a big chunk of his tail feather. I have searched high and low, over and under, in and out and the big chunk of ceramic is just GONE.

So, he may not be completely whole, but he's still just as loyal and will continue to be the Trade Me Out of Debt Mascot, tail feather or not.

I Got Roids...Trade # 1

Polaroids that is

The seed traded for a Polaroid OneStep Close Up Camera 

+

A new box of Polaroid 600 film that has 10 exposures

Do they even make film for Polaroids anymore? After many hours and countless times of being flagged on Craigslist, I was contacted by an old school mate of mine named Ashley that had seen one of my status updates on Facebook. 

I know what some of you are thinking, "How is it fair if you trade with a friend?" Well, I can say I honestly in no way pushed Ashley to trade with me. More than likely she saw the site and felt sorry for me because I am a 28 year old guy at the time of writing this, who is trying to trade a mustard seed. I suppose I should mention that her husband Mark, (the guy in the red shirt) is one of my best buds and he even takes me hunting (which I am no good at). 

We set up a time to meet and the rest was history. I traveled to a far out city in the middle of nowhere called Collinsville (a rural area in Oklahoma) to make the trade. Upon arriving at their home and entering their house without knocking, (we're good friends, we can do stuff like that) I was greeted by two little ones who were eating their oatmeal and were not about to share. 

Since Ashley was busy trying to get the boys ready for bed, Mark took one for the team and posed for the trade. His boy wanted his 5 minutes of fame and snuck in the pic as well.

I wonder what I will trade the Polaroid for?

 Mark suggested I should try to get a cow

Trade Me Out of Debt Goes International!

I just want to say thank you to everyone reading this crazy adventure. We are getting regular readers from all 50 states as well as: Jordan, India, Canada, Spain, Columbia, Russia, Australia, Malaysia, and the Dominican Republic, as well as may more! Spread the word about Trade Me Out of Debt!

If you are new to the Trade Me Out of Debt website I will catch you up quickly; I'm trading up one yellow mustard seed over a 3 year time frame in order to become debt free. Crazy isn't it?

Read "About the Project" and the past post to get a feel for what's going on. 

Don't get too excited about trying to get the seed! It will be officially traded this evening. 

Follow the "Track My Trades" page to see what I've traded up to so far! 

Thanks for reading!

Props to Whole Foods! I've Got my seed!

In order to be able to trade a mustard seed, you have to actually have a mustard seed.

I didn't even know where to find one. My wife suggested I try looking at Whole Foods. 

I called them and sure enough, they had some! I hopped in my beat up Saturn and drove on down.

When I got there, I found the manager and told him about my blog, and my trading project and what I was trying to do with it. He was so excited that he gave me the box of Spicely yellow mustard seeds for free! 

I tried one of the mustard seeds yesterday, and it actually tasted pretty good! My wife and I had no idea, but you can use them for cooking. There are tons of recipes out there on the Spicely website, give some a try (after you trade me something for a mustard seed, that is!)

I promised them a shoutout so here goes: Whole Foods is awesome!

Whole Foods may seem unaffordable to some, but they have a wide variety of organic products (which my wife loves), and plus it just smells so good when you go in there.

It's a very calm environment, and clearly the employees are friendly!

They also do a lot in the community, and they take coupons (which my wife also loves...). So go check out your local Whole Foods today! If you are from Tulsa, meander down to 41st and Peoria and tell them the Mustard Seed Guy sent you!

Mission: Accomplished

Remember the Isuzu Rodeo I spoke of? 

It's now in my driveway!! (well was... It went byebye)

All it took was my little sisters' totaled Oldsmobile, my bicycle and the Wii (I don't think the wife was very happy about me trading the Wii) In less than a week, I went from a police/fire scanner radio, to a freaking awesome 4x4 that we affectionately call "The Silver Bullet" Why you might ask? Because there are 2 bullet holes in the side of it! For real, we found a 9 mil. bullet inside the door!

I didn't ask questions, I just said thank you and proceeded home with no tag hoping that I would not get pulled over by the popo and having to explain why there were bullet holes in my car and that I did not have a tag or insurance.

 The story behind the car went like this 

This dude that was moving from North Carolina to attend college at TU had been driving all day and it was getting late so he decided to stop at a hole in the wall motel in Birmingham Alabama. As usual, places like this have some pretty shady people walking around.

Well, one of them approached the kid, some words were exchanged and next thing you know a couple of rounds were popped off. The kid took off, driving the rest of the way to TU that night.

Okay, I made all that up

 I had a moment of creativity and ran with it. The real story was, the young chap was coming from NC, and when he got to TU, somehow his battery had come loose and was resting against the engine and caught the thing on fire!

I'm not sure where the bullets came into play. Either someone was a bad shot or they are good at cleaning blood up. Being a poor college boy, he did not know what to do!   So what did he do? He had some mechanic fix it up. Long story short, the car traveled all the way to Porter, Oklahoma! Wasn't that the town they condemned because the mines were causing the town to cave in? No, wait that was Picher.

It doesn't matter, either place you go you're going to get lost, stopped by the town cop and arrested because your town football team beat theirs last week and they just don't like you. So the old country Porter boy has some mad car skills and totally fixed this 4x4 up! For the most part at least. I traded the kid the goods and went on my way. It runs great, looks great and beats driving my Saturn which I am 4 times too big to be driving. My little sister said I looked like Mr. Incredible driving the family car. It has some minor stuff to fix.

I actually ended up giving it to a friend because he needed a car. He did a little work on my van and then we called it all good in the hood.

I wish it all ended that easy

For some reason I keep trying to fix things

 I don't know how to fix

Can you see the left side of the window?

It's pretty rough. My finger went right down the side of that.

I wonder if it's because I wasn't wearing gloves?

Or that I did't have anywhere close to the right tools?

Lets be Frank

Let the trading begin!

I spent today rummaging through the the storage shed, garage, attic, and the closets trying to find something to kick off my project and all I ended up with was a hurt back from all the junk I was tripping over.

I am starting to think I am a hoarder! 

 I have collected a lot of junk over the years. Just as my wife! For example, why do I still have those little pieces of sheet rock that I someday might use, or the inch of 2x4 from my last disaster. I wanted something cool to be my first trade. I wanted to be like the red paperclip guy.

I decided to take one last look in the storage shed...

I knew I had something cool, but what? Then it hit me, no not an idea, but the freaking shovel I left sitting out. As I was tripping (more like "falling with style") I noticed something up on a shelf, it was all my old records that I was holding onto because someday I just might have another HiFi. So here it is for my first trade, I will be letting go of my all time favorite singer Mr. Frank Sinatra.

My project has changed, so keep reading more posts! Frank failed me. I really tried, I promise.

 (The case is for Only the Lonley, but the record is actually Point of No Return)

p.s. I know that trading Frank is the right thing to do, I just saw a sign No, seriously. My wife made me turn on the tv to get ready for her Wednesday night shows (Modern Family- if you don't watch it, you're an idiot....according to the wife). Anyway, I just turned on the tv and it was on PBS...wouldn't you know a documentary about Frank Sinatra is on! Sign? I think so.


Update: As of 4-27-12 I still have these records. I never was able to trade them, not sure why. Anyway, since I started the new project, which you will read about if you continue to read...I never really tried to do anymore with the records.

Diving Into The Unknown

 I know there are programs out there to help you get  in control and get out of debt but... 

 I want to try something different. I want to trade items, starting with something small, and working my way up to something big enough that I could sell to pay off our debt at the end of this project. I guess you could call this some what of a bigger better game?

My goal: I want to see if it is possible to get rid of all our debt, which is around $95,000 or so in roughly 3 years through consecutively trading up items. This includes our credit card debt and stupid financing mistakes, school loans, and our house.

It seems crazy but anything is possible if you set your mind to it. As a family, we are getting our life back in order and regularly working on a plan to eliminate our debt for good. Life just happened (cars broke down, people got sick, death, unexpected, jobs lost, etc..). I can't count the number of times that we had a large savings built up of at least 3 months living expenses or more and then without warning we would get hit with something that wiped our whole savings out! Then, back to back to back, additional things would happen digging us deeper in a whole.

I know others have tried the so called "Craigslist trading up game," but this is different...


This applies to everyone of us. There are not many people these days that are blessed to be debt free. Some out there were born into very wealthy families, others to not so wealthy. Some out there had everything stripped away from them and at one point had the so called "perfect life".

 Life is dealt differently to each person. Some go along never having anything happen to them and then there are those others...Where it seems to never stop raining. This is my story...I was born into a very wealthy family, and through a series of events, everything we ever had was stripped away. I know there are others out there have tried these "trading up" projects, but mine is different. Mine is unique, and I feel many others out there can relate.


Thanks for checking out my project and I hope that you enjoy the journey with me. 


Who knows where this project will take us, or the type of people we will meet. I am excited to dive into the unknown and experience an unique project, that from my knowledge has never been done like this before. However you happened across this site, I would love to have you as one of my followers.