5 October 2009
I’m proud of my wife
This is not the first time that I’ve been proud of my wife with regards to financial matters, but I really don’t write about it a lot. This week, she made two very wise financial decisions.
Recently, we were at a get-together with friends and a couple of other moms were discussing how they made extra money on the side. They talked about how they would go to garage sales during the summer and thrift stores year long, always being on the lookout for well-priced, name brand children’s items. They would purchase these items, clean them up if necessary, take a picture or two and post the item on Craigslist for up to 3 or 4 times their purchase price. One had made several thousand dollars in a matter of months doing this.
Well, Sarah (my wife) is a professional shopper at thrift stores and garage sales, so she decided to give it a try. She quickly picked up two different items for $15 each. Both were name brand and in demand. On Saturday, we listed each of them on Craigslist and had buyers within the day, one selling for $50 and one selling for $40. Not a bad way to make a quick $60.
Anyone can do this, but there are definitely some required skills/characteristics of a person who can be successful in this business:
- Very flexible schedule (be at garage sales early on the first day and know when thrift stores get new merchandise)
- Know what people are looking for. Brands are important when selling on Craigslist or eBay.
- Know how much things are selling for. You want to make sure that your item will sell for a lot more than you pay.
- It helps to be a haggler, which Sarah is not. She might have been able to get the items for $10 each if she had asked.
A key here is to know your buyers. Often the same people who shop on Craigslist will shop at garage sales as well, so you might wonder why they would pay three times as much online for a used item. That’s just how it is. When a mother is looking for a specific kitchen set that their child loves to play with at church or a friend’s house, they aren’t going to go to a garage sale hoping that they just find that exact item, they will go on Craigslist and search for that model name. Although it costs $40, it’s still a third of the $120 price that it’s selling for at Walmart.
This kind of information gathering takes a lot of time, so this must be something that you enjoy doing. For Sarah, this is an example of following your passions and finding a way to make an income doing it. She already scans the listings on Craigslist daily and goes on discount shopping trips weekly, because she wants to, not because she has to.
The second smart decision that she made will be featured in my next post…
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