Delivery Charges, Massages & Other Ways to Earn Cash at Yard Sales

Sell food, set up a massage chair or display crafts. There's more to garage sales than second-hand merchandise, according to Kathryn Vercillo, of the Money Saving Blog. In this guest post, she offers suggestions about making extra money at yard sales.

Making Extra Cash at the Yard Sale

The most efficient yard sales are those that allow you to make easy cash with some bonus sales. In addition to selling your junk, you might offer the following items for sale:

• Beverages. It’s cheap to make lemonade or iced tea and people will be happy to pay you for a glass on a hot day.

• Snacks. You may consider buying some snacks in bulk and selling them for a markup during your sale.

• Crafts and artwork. If you’re crafty or artsy, then you may want to make some items for the sale. I know one artist who threw a bunch of her old Polaroids in a box and listed them for $1 each; a surprisingly large number of people bought some of these on a whim at her yard sale.

• Delivery charge. If you have large items available for sale then you may let people know that you’d be happy to deliver the item to them at the end of the day for a small fee.

• On-site services. Are there any services that you can provide to people who are at your place? For example, massage therapists may set up a chair and offer 15-minute massages for a fee.

• Future services. If you operate any type of business or provide any services, then make your brochures and business cards available during the sale. You just never know who might see them and want work from you down the line.

--written by Kathryn Vercillo of the Money Saving Blog, which was named one of the Top 20 British personal finance blogs earlier this year.

Related articles:

How to sell crafts
How to make lemonade
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Sharon is the author of the Frugal Duchess: How to Live Well and Save Money -- a coming of age memoir about money -- and a contributing writer in Wise Bread's 10,0001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget.

Kiplinger's: 37 Things to Do With $1,000

"Invest in stocks, yourself, your home, or your community." Those are a few of the 37 things to do with an extra $1,000, according to the October issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. Here are a few ideas with a link to the full article:

"Get In on a Great Fund. Few outstanding funds let you in for under $1,000—but at $250, Hodges Fund (HDPMX) is a steal. The annualized return for the past five years is 16%; for the past ten years, 8%. Compare that with Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which returned 8% and 3%. For $1,000, enter the Harbor Bond Fund (HABDX), which delivers a half percentage point to a full percentage point more than the typical bond fund or bond index.

Prep for Success. Hire a career coach to help you focus your professional goals—which could take you and your salary to the next level. But not every coach has extensive experience, so look for a professional with former clients who can attest to the coach’s effectiveness.

Stock a Stellar Cellar. Buy 60 bottles of the world’s finest wines—from chardonnays to cabernet sauvignons. At $22 a bottle, Rupert & Rothschild Classique 2005 is silky and beautifully balanced. From high-altitude vineyards in Argentina, Catena Chardonnay 2006 is priced at $18 a bottle, well below the cost of comparable California wines.

Pull the Plug. Cut your electric bill with a solar attic fan, which exhausts hot air that raises your cooling costs. Install solar-powered outdoor lamps to light your path, without lightening your wallet.

Have a Heart. Bring relief to the poor in developing countries with a Mercy Kit through Mercy Corps, an Oregon-based charity. Purchase a Children’s Food Kit or Playground Kit to help communities in need. "

Here's the full article—containing all 37 ideas.

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Here's how to buy my new book:

@ Amazon.com
@ Barnes & Noble
@ Borders
@ Target.com

Flipping Toys: Kids Make Money By Shopping & Selling

A little while ago, No Limits Ladies featured a piece about flipping cars. Other people have flipped houses. I've been thinking about flipping clothes. Here's my plan: Shop in the clearance racks of high-end clothes stores, buy up items for pennies on the dollar; sell clothes on eBay or in consignment stores.

Teens and Tweens are taking the same approach to toys & video games. The New York Times has written this piece about "Barons Before Bedtime," which features how kids are making money in the New Economy. It's a simple strategy: Buy up new stuff in budget bins and resell the items online. Makes more than cents to me!

Here's a snippet from the article:

"ONE of Bradley Ziegler’s favorite days is the day after Christmas, when the bargain bins at Toys “R” Us and Wal-Mart are filled with marked-down DVDs and GameCube games. As he has done for the past two years, Bradley will pick up an armful of $3.99 games and movies and then auction them for up to 10 times that on eBay to regular customers from Kentucky to Cyprus." --source: New York Times

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The Frugal Duchess Boutique
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$10K Challenge: Joining Free Money Finance's Hunt for Side Income

I thought about writing about how the world of child stars (modeling & dancing) has knocked at my door with promises of large contracts for my children's childhood. (No deal! Child stars like Britney Spears and others scare me.) It would have been an entertaining post, but totally TMI (too much info).

Instead, I read Free Money Finance's post about hunting for an additional $10,000 in side income and I found my topic. His post is excellent, with a fixed number and a concrete plan.

Building a larger emergency fund has been on my mind this week and I've written a few posts on the subject. But my plans have lacked two things: 1) a specific number and 2) a definitive strategy.

Free Money Finance, on the other hand, crunches the numbers and calculates how many articles @ $400 each he has to write to hit his target. His post also includes links to other helpful and insight articles.

I think a goal becomes more real if you name the target. To say I want to enhance my three to six-month emergency fund lacks the emotional authority of this statement:

I want to add $10,000 to my emergency fund over the next 12 months.

In Winning by Jack Welch (with Suzy Welch), the Former CEO of GE, makes that same point about goal-setting. Spend time, Welch says, setting real-time, real-money goals.

Therefore, I will join Free Money Finance's $10K challenge with the following plan:

1) I will learn how to drive and turn my efforts into a story that I will sell to a national women's magazine. (One has already approached me. The catch: I have to drive first.) My sale Target: $500 to $2,000. I will also try to work on more magazine assignments.

2. I will broker my content through a national chain of family-friendly print magazines. They pay --I recall--less than $40 per story, but the chain accepts recycled material. It's a self-syndication plan. If only 10 magazines from that large chain pick up one of my stories, that's a few hundred dollars with minimal effort on my part.

I will find the link to that site and post it within a week. I'm annoyed with myself for losing the info.

3. Package myself as a speaker? I could register at one of the national speaking bureaus. Featured speakers at conventions and other corporate gatherings make a few grand per appearance. Maybe I can earn a few hundred by talking to smaller groups.

So that's my list. Thanks to Free Money Finance for creating the challenge.
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The Frugal Duchess Boutique
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Splitting the Penny: Many Savings Targets; Too Few Arrows

I recently spoke to a teacher and he used the term "Splitting the Penny," to describe his strategy for taking care of day-to-day family expenses, while trying to save for long-term goals. (He manages to tuck a way a bit each month for retirement and other long-range goals.)

Here are the targets & there aren't enough arrows to hit some of these goals.
*emergency funds
*retirement accounts
*college funds
*short-term funds for vacations, gifts, holidays, etc


Spitting the Penny is a difficult dance for many families, especially those earning low salaries or living paycheck to paycheck, (P2P), a status that surprisingly includes some families with six-figure incomes. Getting out of the P2P circuit is tricky.

My goal is to aggressively increase the size of my Emergency Fund. Most experts recommend a target of three to six months of your salary/or expenses. I've been brainstorming for painless and/or practical methods to beef up my emergency fund. My ideas are below and please send an email: Sharonhr@bellsouth.net or leave a comment with your ideas.

Emergency Funds Sources:
(some apply to myself and others like #7 are just random ideas I'm tossing out.)

1. extra income or second job
2. birthday and holiday checks
3. tax returns
4. sell unused portions of gift cards
5. sell excellent, but unwanted clothing items in consignment stores.
6. hold garage sales.
7. cut cable bills (skip tv or watch shows on the Internet for free).
8. Sell your extra car like Sally from Georgia. Redirect car payments into savings.


Similar tips are available in The new book: Help! I Can't Pay My Bills by Sally Herigstad, a contributing writer on MSN Money.
I also like these money saving ideas from the Stubborn Capitalist.
Binary Dollar also has a helpful list of 5 Random Money Saving Ideas.

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The Frugal Duchess Boutique
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Driving for Dollars: $400/Month for Making Your Car a Billboard

The advertising world wants to rent space on your car. That's the word from the latest issue of Woman's World, a weekly magazine.

There are companies that are willing to pay you for attaching advertisements to your car. Drivers can earn up to $400 a month from advertising income, which could cover your car payment and then some.


Here are the companies that are looking for car space:

www.ad-wraps.com or ww.adsmartoutdoor.com.

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The Frugal Duchess Boutique
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