Now, keep in mind that I said I didn’t spend any money on cards. I did have a very small amount of eBay Bucks that I used to get one card. I picked up a 2014 Allen & Ginter SP of Paul Goldschmidt. I bought it thinking I needed it. Even though I have had the card for roughly a month I haven’t actually opened the envelope until today. Here it is.
When I was browsing eBay trying to determine what I would spend my approximately $3 of eBay Bucks on, this card didn’t look familiar and I knew it was an SP so I pulled the trigger. After opening the envelope today and attempting to file it away, I realized I already had it. Darn. Oh well.
Since I have the cards out I thought I would take a picture of Goldschmidt’s Allen & Ginter cards as a Diamondback. His rookie card from 2011, but Goldschmidt didn’t have an Allen & Ginter card that’s year. He has cards as a Diamondback from 2012-2018.
There are probably a hundred or so parallels and inserts of Goldschmidt in addition to these seven base cards. I only have 17 of those parallels and inserts, so I’ve got plenty of work to do, but I’m glad that I do have all of the base cards.
The reason that I haven’t spent any money on cards for just over two months is because starting January 1st my wife and I started the Dave Ramsey financial plan. If you aren’t familiar with Dave Ramsey and his wealth building plan I will give you a brief overview of his baby steps.
1. Save $1000 as a basic Emergency Fund
2. Pay off all debt other than your home
3. Increase your Emergency Fund to 3-6 months worth of expenses
4. Save 15% of you household income for retirement
5. Save for kids college
6. Pay off your home
7. Live and give like no one else
Baseball cards don’t come into play until step #7 and I’m on step #2 currently. So while I’m still collecting, I will not be purchasing any cards for a while. In fact, I’ve sold some cards and will continue to do that to help me pay off debt and build wealth.
We don’t have a ton of debt other than our home. We actually only owe on a car that has a 0% interest rate. Even so, we had 3 years left of payments. My initial plan was to pay it off in 1 year instead of 3. Once we actually started, we changed our goal to 6 months. Now that we are 2 months in, I am thinking be might be able to pay it off next month. After that is paid off, then we take our $1000 Emergency Fund from $1000 up to around $10,000, which would be roughly 3 months worth of expenses. At that point we start putting 15% away toward retirement and start funding 529 plans for our 3 boys. Anything else extra will go towards paying off our house early. My hope is that all of this is done in about 8 years. This will give me some time to organize my collection.
Okay, so that is my explanation as to why I’ve been quiet on my blog. The plan is to not purchase any new cards for some time, but that doesn’t mean my blog will go dormant.
How about you? What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without spending any money on cards?
