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Make Extra Money with Yard Sales

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Having a yard sale is the perfect way to get rid of things you don’t use and turn them into cash. Although the prospect of conducting a yard sale may seem a little daunting, it’s actually easier than you might think. The first caveat of a good yard sale is to have good quality merchandise. The second is that it needs to be priced attractively, and the third is that the merchandise should be displayed in a neat and orderly fashion.

Pick your items carefully

Clean out your basement, attic, garage and closets; keep items that are gently used but still serviceable as sellable items. Take items you don’t think you can sell to Goodwill or simply turn them into rags, work clothes, etc. Remember, if you wouldn’t want to wear it, someone else won’t want to buy it. Similarly, if an electrical appliance is past its useful life, it probably won’t bring much money unless someone has the exact appliance and needs parts.

Common sense pricing

When pricing your items, keep in mind that people are looking for bargains at yard sales so they don’t want to pay store prices. A good guideline is to not price an item at more than 40% of retail price. Since anything that doesn’t sell will have to be stored again, you want to sell as much of it as possible, so use your prices as guidelines, not hard and fast rules. When negotiating a price, ask yourself whether you would rather have the cash or continue to store the unused item.

In addition, all merchandise for sale should be clearly marked with the price. Items can be priced individually or they can be grouped on a rack or table by price. Pricing items individually may take a little extra time but it prevents buyers from swapping items on adjacent tables or racks. Consider getting an old pricing gun to make this less time consuming… I would look on eBay, or go to my local grocery store and ask if I can buy one from them.

Clean and organized

Another consideration is that the merchandise should be neat and clean. Even though clothing may be out of style, people may still buy it as long as the item is clean and in reasonably good condition. A clean and unwrinkled shirt, for example, will bring a higher price than a similar shirt that is wadded up on a table and soiled. Additionally, tools that have been cleaned up and are not covered with dirt, oil and grease will be more likely to sell, as is furniture that has been dusted and polished.

Having a multi-family yard sale is an excellent way to attract more sales since prospective buyers will have more merchandise from which to select. Also, this reduces the advertising effort and expense because more families are sharing the work and the cost.

Advertising = cash

Advertise the yard sale on local street corners near the location of the sale and use heavy-duty, weatherproof poster board and waterproof, permanent marker. When making the signs, be sure to include the address, the date(s) and time, and that it is a multi-family sale. Use large, bold lettering to ensure that passers by can easily read the sign; stand thirty feet away from the finished sign and see if you can read it easily. If not, make another sign.

Posting on Craigslist and in the classified section of the local newspaper are excellent ways to attract more customers. Remember, the better your marketing efforts, the more people you’ll have to sell to.

Keep change on hand

Be sure to have plenty of cash on hand for making change. Dollar bills, quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies will be the method of exchange for your yard sale so make sure there are ample funds for making change. Some type of cash drawer will be necessary, whether it is a locking box or an old register, because you don’t want to see any of your hard-earned cash walking or blowing away.

Be patient

Be prepared for shoppers to arrive at least a couple of hours ahead of time for the day you have your yard sale. Many people make a day of yard-sale shopping and start very early in the morning; they may well arrive before the posted times.

Enjoy the interaction at your garage sale and look forward to the extra cash you’ll have in your wallet at the end of the day!

Find Work You Love

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Is it really possible to love your job? Despite what you may hear from your friends and co-workers, I know it’s possible. It just takes some time and understanding of who you are. The real key to successfully navigating a debt free adventure  is to find work for which you are passionate, engaged, and aligned.

By many accounts, too many of us have not achieved this goal. A 2010 Conference Board study showed only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their job. It’s clear too many of us are not happy in an important area of our lives, and it impacts our behavior in other ways.

While I advocate self-employment as the best way to find work you enjoy, not everyone agrees with me. In my recent article on working on your business, a reader commented that self-employment is not a suitable option for everyone. As much as I advocate working for yourself and having full control over your life and money, I do agree with this reader. For a variety of reasons, self-employment is not for everyone. If job satisfaction is so important, how can you achieve this goal? Consider two important factors as you are looking for meaningful and fulfilling work.

Passion and Purpose

Think of a time where you did not sense time passing. You were totally involved with what you were doing, and your focus was only on what you were doing. You suddenly look at your watch or cell phone and ask, “Where did the time go?” I’m guessing the event in your mind wasn’t your job. If I’m right, then you understand a lot of what affects us in our jobs. Few of us have the passion for our work that we have in other areas of our lives. I’m not saying that work has to be the primary focus of our lives. I continue to believe that we work to live and that we should fit our work into our lives. However, this does not mean work should be something we dread.

Two months ago, my grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. A mutual friend and I were catching up on old times, and she described her job and how passionate she was about what she did. I walked away from that conversation thinking how blessed she was to find work she enjoyed so much.

Your job must also serve a purpose in your life. My friend Jonathan Pool describes how what you do must fit your core purpose. This purpose has nothing to do with your job, but what you do must satisfy why you exist and how you want to best serve the world. My core purpose is to educate and inspire others to transform their ideas into plans of action. There are many ways I can do this, both inside and outside of work. Think about what makes you come alive and how you can turn that into work that matters to you.

Engagement and alignment

I just finished a great book called “We” by Rudy Karsan and Kevin Kruse. My biggest takeaway from the book was how you must be engaged in your work AND how your work must align with your passions and purpose. If you are not fully engaged in what you do, you will not bring your best self to what you do. If you think of your work as a paycheck or working for “the man”, you will not fully engage and what you’re doing. Your job performance and pay will likely demonstrate this lack of engagement.

What may be even more important than engagement is how your work aligns with your values, purpose, and ideal work environment. “We” has a companion website full of free information, and one free tool is a survey designed to identify your ideal workplace type. I took the assessment, and it identified my ideal workplace as a “revolutionary” workplace where freedom and creativity are highly valued. Unfortunately, many of my past jobs have been in companies that were anything but revolutionary. I worked for companies that valued order, structure, and conformity. I now know why I did not like working in those environments. The work environments were completely misaligned with how I enjoy working.

Finding work you love is a challenge. We all have unique gifts and life visions. The goal is to find the work that allows you to bring your best self every day. I look at my sister with envy, because she has found that work as a high school teacher. I could not picture her doing anything different, and she loves what she does. It is no wonder that she is also an outstanding teacher who is well respected by her administrators and community. We all need to find the passion and purpose to find work where we can become fully engaged and align our work with the rest of our lives.

How to Save Hundreds of Dollars Every Year

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With costs of just about everything rising, we need to find more creative ways to save or make extra money. I have created a list of a few different ways that I have used to save.

Matt’s note: the best way I have found to save money every month is to formulate a budget and stick to it. I use YNAB software to budget and save, the one time investment pays for itself month in and month out.

1. Using coupons

This first thing is something that I have really enjoyed doing over the past six months. Using coupons is a great way to save a bunch of money each month or year. When I first got into using coupons I did a lot of research online. I was able to find deals on quite a bunch of stuff. A tip I learned with using coupons is that if the sale is good enough then make sure you get enough of the product to last you for a while. Currently I have a stockpile of household items that will last me for years and I literally spent pennies on the dollar on each item. An example of would be some body wash that had a coupon for $3 off, and by watching store sales I was able to find it marked down to $3 which made it free, I just paid sales tax. I have done that with multiple items including toothpaste, laundry soap, dryer sheets, ect.

It doesn’t take countless hours each week sorting through coupons and reading online ads to be able to save with coupons. I probably only spend one hour each week finding deals. To date I have easily saved over $1000 on items by using coupons. I suggest just give it a try and you might be surprised.

2. Cutting cable

Another great way to save some money each month is by cutting additional services from your cable package. When our cable bill went up a couple years ago, I called and asked them if there was anything I could do to lower my bill. I ended up getting a price break which is saving me close to $30 a month. That is a $360 savings each year. That amount would really make a dent in your debt if you are trying to pay it off. Of course if you really want to save a lot you could drop your cable completely. Or go for the cheaper option of Netflix for around $9 a month. I believe either option is fine and would benefit you greatly.

3. Pilot light

This is something that may only make a small change in the amount of money that you save but every little bit helps. During the summer I will shut off the pilot light on my furnace so it does not run all summer long for no reason. That typically saves me $10 per month. Like I said its a small saving but everything adds up in the end.

4. Garage sale

This is not really a way to save money but it is definitely a great way to make some extra money if you are trying to fill up an emergency fund or pay off debts. When my wife and I first started getting ourselves on a plan we decided to have a garage sale and we pretty much sold about everything that we owned. I sold musical instruments, a collection and we had tons of baby clothes. We made just about $700 at our garage sale. Now maybe you have some extra stuff that you want to sell but don’t quite have enough for a garage sale. Ebay is a great place to sell off some of your extra stuff. Anything you get rid off and make a few bucks will help.

This is just a small list of things you can do to save money and I am sure there are hundreds more that anyone could do. You just need to be creative and find the things that work in your life to save money. It can be done.

Ryan Brewer writes about sound money management because he knows how back being in debt sucks! Him and his wife Dawn fought through debt to emerge victorious and wrote a book about their journey called If Stupid Was Illegal.