IN 2016 WE BROUGHT AN OLD SCHOOL BUS TO TURN INTO A MOTOR HOME! WE PLANNED TO CONVERT THE BUS INTO A HOME TO TRAVEL AUSTRALIA WITH OUR TWO CHILDREN. HERES HOW WE MANAGED TO SAVE $2000 IN 2 WEEKS TO PUT DOWN A DEPOSIT ON OUR DREAM.
WE KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO BE A BIG INVESTMENT. INSTEAD OF DIPPING INTO OUR SAVINGS STRAIGHT AWAY WE DECIDED TO CHALLENGE OURSELVES TO FIND THE DEPOSIT WITHIN TWO WEEKS.
For some, this may be an easy thing to do. For a family living on one regular income with a toddler and new born, we were going to have to get creative!
First we raided our loose change jar we had been putting coins in for the last year or so. We bagged up the couple kilos of coin and took it to the bank, this got us off to a good start with $247 going towards our goal! $247 down $1653 to go.
Secondly, I spent the next few days putting some of my artwork for sale on my Instagram. This was something I had been doing as a side business for the last year or so. I asked people to make me an offer & sold to the highest bidder. I sold a wood cut out painting for $150, an A3 watercolour painting for $60 and a mandala painting for a further $80. This total of $290 plus $247 brought our total to $537!
Thirdly, we decided to do a big clear out and sell some of our items from around the house. We used Gumtree.com.au to sell our flat screen TV for $500, a brand new gas bottle, gazebo, a couple easels and a toy car bed which we originally picked up for $30 and sold on for $200! This gave us a total of $810. Obviously, selling your TV is not an option for most people however the size of ours wasn’t going to fit on the bus and we had a desktop computer we were happy to use instead.
Within the first week we collected a total of $1347! We seemed to be going great but quickly running out of ideas.
Last minute, we decided to do another de-clutter for a car boot sale the next morning. We took a full car load of old clothes, books, DVDs and bags of crap. After a 5am wake up and a full 8 hours we only sold $96 worth of stuff. (Minus $10 for a much needed coffee and $15 for lunch) so it wasn’t a great day but every cent helped.
Nathan managed to pick up an extra shift at work for a further $200 during the week leaving us with $382 to find.
We were really reluctant to use Nathan’s birthday money he had been saving but the $300 was going to get us closer to our goal.
Finally we set up a new weekly budget, something we definitely should have done a long time before but this gave us a spare couple hundred each week we would be putting into saving to go towards the build. This allowed us to reach our $2000 goal and put the deposit down on our future home!
Big Little Living 