Blogging Away Debt

How to Sell Stuff Without Having a Garage Sale

Jessica left a comment on the post about our sale:

I was wondering, besides garage sales, where do you go to sell your stuff? We still live in an apartment, and are not able to have a garage sale. So, I am always on the lookout to sell more stuff.

Here are a few places that I know of. Feel free to add more suggestions for Jessica in the comments!

1.) Craigslist.org. Craigslist has grown leaps and bounds as a great place to buy and sell stuff. If you live near a major city, chances are good you have an active Craigslist community in your area. It is free to list your stuff for sale. One word of caution – keep sales local! According to Craigslist, that will prevent most of the scams on the site.

2.) Ebay.com. I haven’t used eBay, but it’s on the back of my mind. I do have some things that would sell well. If you have something collectible or highly desirable, you might be able to make more money from it by selling on eBay.

3.) Local paper. Our local paper runs deals every now and then where they have a special to list items for sale. Otherwise it’s a little pricey unless you have something big to sell.

4.) Flyers. Some stores by us have community boards where you can tack up flyers. Take a picture of your item, make a flyer with your number (with easy tear-off ones interested people can take with them) and post them.

5.) Amazon.com. A few readers here have had success with selling books through Amazon.com. I’ve never done it though.

6.) Ask family/friends/coworkers. It’s funny how a potential seller may be right in front of your nose. I’d personally never ask someone if something they owned was for sale, but if they mentioned that they were going to be selling something I’d definitely pipe up if I wanted it!

If you have more ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments 🙂

Note to Self – Don’t Hide the Credit Cards So Well You Can’t Find Them When You Need Them

by Tricia

Our 0% offer for our credit card debt is expiring this month. I have been wondering about what we should do. Should I get a new card with a 0% offer? Should we transfer the balance to an existing card with a better interest rate? Should we live with the interest and just pay it?

As it turns out, the answer was right in front of me but I didn’t see it. I checked all of our cards for balance transfer offers, or so I thought. There was one that I forgot about so I looked into their offers. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the 0% balance transfer offer in front of my eyes. There was our answer. Woohoo!

I started the process of the balance transfer and hit a roadblock. I needed the card number from the company I was transferring from. I checked my usual credit card hiding spot. It wasn’t there. I checked other places I have hid them. Not there either. I hid our unused cards so well I couldn’t find them. Of course, I started wondering if I hid them in a piece of furniture that we recently sold.

Then, it hit me. I should check one more place. There they were. Whew. So I logged in last night and completed the transfer.

There is a balance transfer fee of $240. I’m not thrilled about that, but the finance charges would run close to $100/month if we kept our debt on the current card. Since it’s unlikely that we will be able to pay off our debt in a few months, the fee is worth it to have our debt at 0% until mid next year.

As for our cards, I put them back where I found them. It’s a pretty good hiding spot. But I should remember next time where they are LOL 🙂