Dear Reader, it’s been a minute since I wrote a Wee We Wins blog post. Well, actually, it’s been a little longer than a minute. Like 1.67 million more minutes. Oops.
In these Wee We Wins pots, which I use an unapologetic excuse to engage in 12-year-old-boy humor I highlight ways we’ve increased the spread between income and expenses—whether by making or saving money—that on their own don’t amount to much, but in the aggregate still don’t do. Oh, who am I kidding. I just like an excuse to engage in juvenile humor. Je ne regret rien!
Our latest wee we win came from the sale of a sofa. Actually, it’s likely to turn out to be a triple wee we win. Or a wee we win, a not-so-wee we win, and a not-at-all-wee we win. I’ll explain later.
Couching spaces, hidden value
When we moved from the Midwest to the Mountain West, we sold our living room couch. Reason being that it’d have necessitated our having to engage a second truck to move all our stuff. The moving cost monies were already high. An extra truck would’ve increased those monies. Bigly. Me no likey.
So, we needed to buy a couch once on the ground in our new place. In selling our sofa before the move, I discovered that quality second-hand couches for far less than the original purchase price are a dime a dozen. Armed with this happy knowledge, I aimed to get a used couch.
As our new place was smallish and we weren’t sure if we’d want to stay there or move in not too long a time, I sought a not-too-expensive good-enough sofa. Long story short, I got a couch at an amazing price. The sofa wasn’t going to win any beauty or design awards. But it was nice enough and fit our place well.
Within a year, we moved houses. The sofa came with and settled in our finished basement, a decent-sized space that serves as our family/living room. The couch didn’t at all look out-of-place small, but a larger sofa would give us more seating area and fill the space better.
Seat out of luck
In time, The Missus admitted to me that she found the couch uncomfortable. Also, Thing One (The Elder) and Thing Two (The Younger) never liked it at all and rarely came down to the basement space. That was highly unfortunate because it’s where I and The Missus spend a ton of time when home.
Last year, The Missus’ grumblings about the sofa reached a fever pitch and in almost no uncertain terms she yelled at me told me that we needed to get a new sofa.
Not wanting a divorce Understanding her feelings, I slow walked capitulated. In time, we found a great replacement. It was many multiples more expensive than the old couch, and objectively pretty pricey. But it’s awesome, and we got it for a steal.
Then I had to sell the old sofa.
Here’s the locked-in wee we win: I sold the sofa for 3+ times the purchase price. Because the couch cost a pittance for us to begin with, that didn’t translate into baller dollars. But it did something that brought a broad grin to my face. Namely, it meant that the amortized cost of the sofa to us was a positive number.
Pocket (the) change
A while back, My Money Wizard (MMW) wrote an excellent post in which he contended that if you buy something and ultimately sell it on a secondary market, you’ve in essence rented the item for a total cost less than what you initially paid. And the “purchase price” isn’t necessarily a purchase price. That is, if you buy an item for $100 and sell it five years later for $50, you essentially rented the item at a cost of $10/year. Also, as the item was already secondhand when you bought it, if you were savvy, you had a great item at a low price from the get go.
The $100 purchase price matters only in that that’s what you had to pony up to get the couch in the first place. Ultimately, your out-of-pocket expense was just $50.
MMW provided examples of his selling items for less than he bought them for, or for the same amount. All good. But in my case, I sold my sofa for more than I initially paid. Put another way, I got paid to rent the couch. Can’t beat that!
Triple winny
What’s more, like I mentioned, the purchase price for the replacement sofa that we bought was what I believe to be an absolute steal. If I wanted to sell it today, I’m confident that I could, and for at least double (maybe far more) what we paid for it.
Now, we’re in fact not gonna sell now. I mean, the couch is awesome and fits really well in our space. But it’s nice to know that we’ll likely get paid yet again for “renting” our couch. That’s the not-so-wee we win.
But the real value of the new couch goes far beyond all this. For one thing, The Missus loves it. Both the look of it and that she’s comfortable on it. She spends far more time on it than she did on the old couch. Winner.
Thing Two also likes it. He rarely would voluntarily come down to the basement when we had the old sofa. But in the scant time we’ve had the new couch, he’s voluntarily come down a few times. Winner, winner.
Thing One is away at college now. But I’m betting that when she comes home, she, too, is going to like the sofa and voluntarily come down to the basement because of it. Winner, winner, winner???
This (The Family spending (more) quality time together), of course, is the not-at-all-wee we win. And it completes a trifecta. And it’s the reason we saved, and I FIREd in the first place. I have to remind myself of that far too often. I’m a work in progress.
And in the end . . .
A significant reason for the new sofa’s popularity with The Family is that it’s more comfortable than the old couch. But just as important, unlike the old couch, the new one is a sectional and has much more seating space. Compared to the old sofa, it feels like that space goes on and on and on . . .
Oh man, so glad I watched that last link!!
Congrats on your newfound joy, as well as your high ROI sale.
I’m with you on the humor; yesterday I was thinking of a title that had the word ‘duty’ in it. I’m still laughing like the idiot I am 🙃
In reading your blog, I noticed that we have a lot of similarities as to style and sense of humor. I think it’s one of the reasons I liked your blog so much ;-).
Fwiw, I almost used this video instead, which I think is funnier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tk2uG4oB3Q. But it didn’t fit as well with the text that I hyperlinked.
“I used to have a family.” 😆 Yep, they’re both Sofa King great.
😄