YARD SALE!!!

As a kid it was a common thing to be driving around town on a Saturday doing the usual errands when from the drivers seat my father would yell "Yard Sale!!!" and jerk the wheel following that cardboard and marker sign. Even now, as I have my own family I can't seem to pass a quality cardboard sign without proclaiming triumphantly "Yard Sale!!!"

For those of you who follow Dave Ramsey you know that one of his tricks to getting out of debt is to get your "Debt Snowball" rolling is to go through the house and sell what you can at a family yard sale. I have understood the potential with this idea but really haven't utilized the concept in my own financial strategy until recently. For the past year Sarah and I have had our focus on saving money and while we have sold a couple of large ticket items to help us reach our goal we really haven't used the "yard sale" principle.

Recently though we have met our saving goal and have turned our focus toward knocking out our last non-mortgage debt, a credit card with Wells Fargo. As part of our plan to knock out this debt we have decided to start selling things on KSL to help us in our goal. I have been amazed at how successful it has been. Last month we paid more than $500 towards the card all from selling stuff and this month we have already sold $800 worth of stuff and am hoping to reach $1000 before making the payment towards the card. It feels incredible to be taking such huge chunks out of a looming credit card debt.

One other place that we have seen the Yard Sale principle be successful is with my wife's family. Sarah's family takes an annual comping trip each summer which when you add up the food, the campsites, paper goods and any other activities can come out to be a hefty amount for a large group. So we decided that we would have a combined family yard sale to accomplish 2 purposes 1 - To pay for the family camp out and 2- to help us all declutter our closets and garages. It was very successful.

My concern with this concept was "what do you do when you run out of stuff to sell or don't really have anything in the first place." My answer to that question is to just start looking around you. There are people giving stuff or throwing stuff away all the time! I can't really tell you where to go looking but I can tell you that if you start looking you will find STUFF! You will be amazed at what has value to other people and if you end up with something that is really worthless you can always just throw it away or give it away to some one else!

Let the online classifieds be your main tool. It is so easy to snap a picture and post an ad and then let it sit. I used to get worried if something I listed for sale didn't sell in a day or two but my experience has been to just try to price it right and then let it sit and I may get that one person who wants it calling me a month later.