You see, almost four years ago we bought a house.  We lived in it, fixed it up, and cared for it.  We wanted to make it a special place for our family.  Now here we are selling it and taking a loss.  A big loss.  We actually have to borrow money to sell it.  You may be wondering why I would be borrowing money to sell a house.  Well, it’s been on the market for eight months.  As you can imagine, the upkeep on a home can be very expensive and then add to it rent and utilities in another location, and it leaves us with little money left each month.

For eight months, we have been paying a mortgage, insurance, taxes, and utilities on a house we’re not occupying.  All of this while the housing market is down.  We’ve had people interested in the house, but none that could come up with the money.  The city where the house is located has seen a lot of lay offs.

You may be wondering why I wouldn’t just hang on to the house and wait until the market picks back up.  There are several reasons for this. 

1)  This is the first offer we have received on the house.
2) We don’t know when the market will pick back up again.
3) The financial strain needs to stop.
4) The market where the house is located is far worse than it is here.
5) Houses where we currently live cost a lot more.
6) Interest rates are the lowest they have been in many years.
7) Reasons #5 and #6 equal the reason we can afford to buy a house now.

Let me make this clear:  I hate debt.  This is not the road I want to take, but right now it seems like the only option.  And with rates being the lowest they’ve been in years, we can actually afford to purchase a house here.  The money we’ll save in interest far outweighs the loss on the other home.

I’ve had several people suggest a shortsale on the house, but everything I’ve read about shortsales messes with your credit.  (Shortsales are a better alternative to foreclosure though.) 

Sorry, this is no money saving lesson for today.  This is just a lesson learned and some thrifty struggles, weighing options, and finding the best way to get through it.  I’m hoping things are financially well your way.

images (c) Karen Weideman

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

 

My beautiful home has been on the market for over two months and only two people have come to look at it!  :sigh:  This really stinks!  In the meantime, I’m stuck making payments for the house, insurance (which went up $70), taxes, and utilities.  This really, really stinks!

What’s even worse is that we finally found the house we want.  In all of our married life we have never found a house that we want more.  We found a totally remodeled 1920s farmhouse.  It is big and beautiful!  It has a big deck and a nice fenced in area for the kids to play in.  It has 4 bedrooms, an office, an eat in kitchen, dining room, and huge closets which would make a great hide out area for the kids.

We’re just praying about it.  All I can do is to leave it in God’s hands.  Sometimes that’s hard to do though, huh?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

1)  Go through closets, dressers, toys, cupboards, cabinets, bookcases, etc before the yard sale.  Take out items that you no longer want and add them to your yard sale pile.  It’s good to do this at least once a year.  You may want to wait until spring when you’re doing your spring cleaning.

2)  Find a decluttering buddy.  I don’t know about you, but it is easier for me to get rid of things when I have some moral support.  It helps to have someone that can honestly say, “That doesn’t look good on you.  That’s out of style.  You haven’t used that in years.”  Sometimes a little nudge is all we need.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a decluttering buddy.   

3)  Price as you go.  As you find things in your home that you want to add to your yard sale, go ahead and take the few seconds to put a price on it.  This will save a lot of time and aggravation on yard sale day. 

3)  Spread the word.  I’m having a moving sale soon and I’ve already begun telling friends, people from church, and others about the sale.  I have people saying, “email me and let me know when it will be”. 

4)  If possible, post signs.  We like to use the fluorescent poster board and thick black permanent markers for our signs.  We have found that we do better with signs than with advertising.  People stop by and say that they saw our signs.

5)  Put your signs up the day before the sale so that people see them on their way home from work. Then they’ll think, “I’m going there tomorrow.” Otherwise, they might not be out and about the day of the sale.

6)  Let friends and neighbors be a part.  You can advertise the yard sale as a multi-family yard sale.  This will let customers know that there will be more things and a bigger selection to choose from.  Participants can also share in the advertising expenses.

7)  Put a price on everything.  Some people will walk away rather than asking the prices for things.  Even if the item is 25 cents, you need a price on it.  All those 25 cent items add up.

8)  To save time, buy the premade price stickers.  You can purchase these in the office supply departments at most stores.  Recently, I even saw these in Dollar Tree.

9)  If you’re selling an expensive item, take the time to print a copy of what the item cost new.  I’m doing this with toys that were expensive.  This helps the person to see that they are getting a good deal.

10)  Advertise your yard sale, garage sale, or moving sale on Craigslist.  It’s free!!!!  Specify what you will be selling.  I sold $120 to someone on Craigslist before the sale just by listing a moving sale ad. 

11)  Get up early the day of the sale.  If your sale starts at 7 am, you may consider getting up at 5 am.  This will allow you time to get everything organized and set out before customers begin to arrive.  Some early morning commuters may even see you outside and stop on their way to work.

12)  Specify if you don’t want “early birds”.  Some people are pretty serious about shopping yard sales.  They’ll come out as early as you’ll let them.   

13)  Look through purses, wallets, pant pockets, coat pockets, etc to make sure there is no money or credit cards.  Someone once told me they paid $1 for a purse that had $10 inside.

14)  Put attractive items in clear view.  A lot of people are looking for furniture, so it would be wise to put the furniture where drivers can see it from the road.

15)  Don’t pick a holiday weekend to have your sale.  I remember we did this one time and we made less than $100.  It was such a waste of our time.

16)  Don’t have continual yard sales.  You’ve seen people before who seem to be always having a yard sale.  It gets old and then people don’t drop by their sale anymore.  Plus, it’s tacky and your neighbors will be really annoyed.

17)  Have change.  It’s hard to determine how much change you’ll need and what kind of bills to get.  It seems as though first thing in the morning you’ll have customer after customer with $20 bills.  It’s really frustrating.

18)  Guard your money.  Unfortunately, sometimes theives show up at yard sales.  Usually every hour or so, I take my wad of cash out of my pocket or fanny pack (lol) and put it inside my house.

19)  Have bags available for your customer’s purchases.  I can’t stand plastic bags and I don’t understand it, but some people do like anything they purchase to be put into a bag.  It’s a courtesy. 

20)  Be friendly.  Greet each person or group that comes to your sell. 

21)  Group like items together.  All of the Christmas items should be together in one area, the kitchen stuff in another area, baby clothes in another, and so on.

22)  Sell miscellaneous items together.  If you’re like us, you have a bunch of half empty spray cans sitting in your garage.  We wondered who would buy them, but then we decided to put them all into a box and sell them all together in a lot.  This helps to sell those odd items. 

23)  Get some baggies and rubber bands.  The baggies and rubber bands will help to secure like items together or keep you from losing the pieces.  Come sell day, it will be hard to make sure your customers get all the parts that go with their items. 

24)  Have an extra person around to help out.  For me, this would be my husband.  This insures that you’ll get potty breaks and be able to eat.  It also helps so that you can talk to customers while someone else collects money or answers questions.

25)  Check with your local government or homeowner’s association to see if there are any restrictions.  Some areas require you to have a yard sale permit.  Yep, just another way to make money.  

26)  When the yard sale is over, clean up your area and take down your signs.  Don’t you just hate seeing signs that are several weeks old or searching for a yard sale that was probably last week?

27)  Advertise.  This could be in your local paper or in a free online ad.  Regardless of where you decide, you’ll need help letting the public know of the sale.

28)  Check your yard and make sure it’s safe.  Wrap up garden hoses, fill any holes, and tape down extension cords or cables.  You don’t want you visitors tripping and getting hurt.

29)  Have a strategy in place for what you’ll do with the leftover items.  Will you put them back in your house for another yard sale later in the summer?  Will you give them to charity?  Have a plan in place.

30)  Get someone to watch the kids.  I can’t tell you the number of yard sales I’ve been to where the person’s children were out in the yard digging through their old stuff and getting upset that mom was getting rid of it.  If you can’t get a sitter, then you need to have some discussions with your children before the day.  Perhaps they could even help decide what they would like to sell.

Do you have any tips to add to this list?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

We have all this stuff sitting around my house – clothes the kids have outgrown, toys they no longer play with, things we no longer use.  Yard sales are a ton of work and sometimes bear little reward for their labors.  I do take a lot of clothes and toys to the consignment store, but you have to split your earnings.  Sometimes I want to get more for certain items and consigning the things doesn’t seem like a good idea.  So, what do you do with all your stuff? 

Trust me, I’m all for helping someone and an organization.  I just donated a bunch of stuff that was left from our last yard sale.  Sometimes it’s nice to try to get a little money out of your stuff before you donate the extras. 

After being incredibly annoyed with back breaking yard sales and ridiculous Ebay fees, I decided to try the Iwanna.  It’s a classifieds paper that’s distributed in our area.  Most things are free to list in their paper.  Local stores sell the paper for $1.

So far, this week I’ve made $235 from selling my stuff!  I sold my old Filter Queen vacuum cleaner to a lady that wanted one for her daughter.  One item I listed was my daughter’s Dora house and accessories that she no longer plays with.  The lady that contacted me about the Dora house was also interested in my daughter’s other toys that we no longer need.  I ended up selling her $105 worth of stuff.  I was so excited to sell the stuff and she was thrilled to get the items at a good used price.  Now . . . if I could just sell that pink jacuzzi.  lol

People are looking for Christmas gifts and now seems like a good time to sell your stuff.   What do you think?  Are you considering selling some of your stuff?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Craigslist has become a very popular classified website.  Several years ago Ebay bought 25% of Craigslist.  For a while, they didn’t do anything with it and just let it sit there as an investment.  But now, Ebay is going into competition with a company they partially own by launching Kijiji.com.

Now we have two free online sources for selling things.  Looks like the two companies will be competiting for our business, which is good for us. 

I confess . . . I have a huge pile of boxes in my house with yard sale stuff in them.  I need to get busy and list this stuff on one of these sites so that I can make some money. 

Source:  Clark Howard

Post from: Thrifty Mommy