I am definitely not an expert in this.  My prices may be too high and/or too low, but I thought I would share so you could get a rough guideline of how to price for a Garage Sale.

All of the following items were grouped together, and I marked the prices on a computer sheet of paper and taped that paper onto the table or box holding the items.

Clothes that were Hanging Up

• Baby Clothes- $1
• Shirts- $1
• Skirts- $1
• Dresses- $2
• Hoodies & Coats- $3

Clothes that were on Tables

• T Shirts-$0.50
• Shorts- $1
• PJ Pants- $1
• Jeans- $2

CDs- $1.50

Used DVDs- $4; New DVDs- $6

Books- 75% off the cover price

Make up- $0.50

Stickers- $0.50

Jewelry- $0.10

Bags/Backpacks- $1

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.  Proverbs 22:7

My heart was never so happy to write a check as it was today.  I have officially written my last and final student loan check for almost $2,700.  Hallelujah!!  Thank you Dave Ramsey and others who gave us motivation and inspiration to book it.

That’s 30,000 we paid off in two years and four months (this doesn’t count how much we’ve paid off of Jonathan’s loans– or how much we paid in interest)!!  Feels really, really good.

I’m sure more expenses are going to creep up (Abby’s recent medical issues, our car issues, etc), now that we’ve attacked a major debt.  But I’m just happy at this moment and look forward to being gazelle intense about Jonathan’s student loan debt now.

At the same time we started knocking out debt, we started weekly tithing to our church and other works.  Before that time, I begrudgingly wrote a check a few times a month to church, and even after we started paying off debt, sometimes it was still hard to write a check to church, knowing that that money could be used to pay off debt or whatever else.  But I got to a point where this verse hit me:

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” - Malachi 3:10

And yes, we’d like things to be better/easier, but they could be a lot worse.  There have been tons of blessings!

So we had a Garage Sale last weekend (July 3-4).  We did it on this day because Jonathan had Friday off as a holiday, and I wanted him to be there without having to ask off work.

Beforehand, I thought that July 4th wouldn’t be a good weekend because people might be traveling, getting ready for the night’s festivities, or spending time with family at home.  I completely forgot that in our city, there is a large parade on Saturday morning.  Oops.  So, we didn’t make that much money on Saturday, but on Friday, we did pretty well.  So, my advice is not to do a Garage Sale on a holiday.

On Friday, Jonathan and I made $180, and on Saturday, we got $100.  With the other family, we brought it around $400, pretty good considering the biggest item up for sale was a bed set for $20.

So, when we add up the books we sold to Hastings ($120) plus the items I’ve sold on Craigslist since the garage sale (just today, I’ve sold $23 worth to 3 different people), Jonathan and I made about $430, which is almost 5 of my student loan payments.  Yea!

So, here are some things we learned . . .

1. Gather Your Items: We throw items in boxes year round in tubs marked Garage Sale.  At least start by getting stuff together about a week or so before the garage sale.  Go through your closets, keepsakes and garage sale tubs, items in your shed, and drawers, and start pricing items.  Have a designated place for garage sale items.  We kept them in the South West and North East corners of our garage.  Price the items before you put them in your designated garage sale area to save you time.
2. Schedule: Plan the garage sale for the first weekend of the month.  Many people are more prone to shop then because most of them just got paid.  If you live in an area where it rains a lot (NOT here), check your 10 day forecast and plan accordingly before you start advertising.
3. Get a Block Party Sale: I meant to do this, but I forgot.  I had planned to go by all the houses on our block to tell them we were planning on having a garage sale, to see if they wanted to participate.  That should bring more traffic.
4. Start Early: For us, this meant 7:30 am.  On Saturday morning, around 7:15, there was a lady walking onto our driveway before we even moved out the items.
5. Advertising: We advertised on Craigslist.  We also put up 6-8 signs around the neighborhood on busy streets.  We wrote Garage SALE, then our address, then the dates, then the times, and then *free cookie with every purchase.  Check around in your city to see if they have local advertising papers, like we have the Thrifty Nickle.
6. Borrow items: We didn’t have many tables, and we ended up needing nine.  We borrowed these from our church.
7. Pricing: Try to leave sentimental feelings aside and price things by what you’d be willing to pay for them.  I’ll do another post about our pricing amounts.
8. Set up the day before: The night before the sale, we backed our cars out of the garage and set up tables.  We organized our items onto the tables but didn’t try to make them perfect.  We also hung up two curtain rods from our awning.  So that way, in the morning, we just carried the tables out into the driveway– no set up time (except for straightening up the tables and hanging up clothes).
9. Organization: Place items together on tables that are like each other.  We had an entertainment table: games, cds, dvds.  Two clothing tables, which shoes underneath.  A girly table: makeup, bathroom items, lotion, etc.  A decor table: picture frames, etc.  An electronics table: computer stuff.  Etc.  Labeling each table with a sign helps draw people’s attention.
10. Start with Enough Change for your customers: Run to the bank if you need to get rolls of coins or bills.  We made sure to have one twenty dollar bill, two tens, six fives, twenty ones, and one roll each of quarters, dimes, nickles, and pennies.
11. Store your Money: Keep the money with you in a fanny pack if you must– you never know who might try to steal it while you’re not sitting at your table.  Some other options are an apron with several pockets, or you can use an Expanding File, which is what we did.
12. Consider a Gimmick: Our main one was to offer a free cookie with every purchase, and everyone loved that.  I spent about an hour making them the day before.  I made 97, and we had about 25 left over.  If it were a night sale, we thought about having the grill out to make hot dogs (yuck) for customers.  You could also sale pop-ice or cold drinks.
13. Greet Customers: I’d walk up to customers when they got on our property and would say, “Good morning.  How are you? . . . We’re giving away a free homemade peanut butter cookie with every purchase.  Let us know if you have any questions or need help finding certain items. . . .  We also have cold drinks available if you get thirsty.”  Then, I’d go sit down and wait for the questions, etc.
14. After the Sale: I took pictures of all the items on the tables.  Since then, I have (and still need to) put the pictures on Craigslist to sell.  Just today, I’ve sold baby clothes, blankets, books, and a headboard.

Any other good ideas?

This is an updated version of a post from 10/2/08.  Please forgive my laziness.  I am getting ready for a garage sale– one of the ways we scrounge up money to pay off debt.  This is actually our first garage sale as a married couple.  Cross your fingers!

I’ll write other posts on steps that help us get out of debt, but today, I’m gonna quickly introduce y’all to Dave Ramsey. He has written over 14 books about getting out of debt; we recommend The Total Money Makeover. He’s the host of The Dave Ramsey Show, which is on the radio and on Fox Business Network on TV.

Every radio show starts w/ him saying, “Debt is dumb. Cash is king. And the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.” Amen to that!

On his Radio Show and I guess on the TV show (I’ve never seen the TV show cause we don’t have cable . . . because we’re getting out of debt), Dave takes calls from people asking financial questions. Also, he gives opportunities for those who have recently become debt free to call in and give their “I’m Debt Free” yell. Here’s an example of that:

Jonathan and I are trying to “live like no one else [by not taking loans/using credit cards], so later, [we] can live like no one else [relaxed and debt free].” The only loans we had/have (except for the house) were/are college loans.

Before Abigail came along, we had paid off my first school loan of $15,000 in less than four months.  As of today, we have paid off $28,000.  I only have $2,700 left on my second school loan!  Then, we have to work on Jonathan’s school loans.

So, we still have more to go, and it’s a slower process now that we have Abby, but we’re looking forward to the day where we can give our “Freedom Call” to Dave.

**Click here to enter the YoBaby Giveaway.**

Jonathan and I are gearing up for a Garage Sale.  We started thinking of how we could get more money than we would at a Garage Sale for selling certain items.

I’m not sure if this got me more money than it would’ve from a Garage Sale, but I took some of Abigail’s clothes to Once Upon a Child.  I do this every few months.  The last time, I got $16+ dollars.

Then, I thought about books.  So, I started calling used book stores to see if they would buy the books.  A lot of them would only take them for store credit (trade) in return.  So, I thought about selling books on Amazon or something like that, but decided it’d be too much work for not a lot of money.  Then, I thought of Hastings.

So, we took a bunch of books and DVDs to Hastings in a big tub.  They bought 32 books and offered us $110 in store credit OR $75 in cash.  We took the cash!  Just one trip, no shipping costs, no conditions, just cash back!

I took some brand new DVDs in shrink wrap, and they only offered $2 for them.  So, I didn’t sell them to Hastings because I hope I can get more at the Garage Sale.

The next day, as we were sorting through other boxes for the garage sale, we found more books.  So, we took them to Hastings.  Not sure how many they took this time, but they gave us $47.

So, if you wanna sell to Hastings, call before you go, to make sure someone is there to look through and price your books.  Also, take your Drivers License, and be prepared to get your thumb printed (they said Police come by each week and check the records to make sure you didn’t steal the dvds/books/cds).

Our Hastings would not take the small sized paper back novels.  But other than that, they took back most everything.  I think the most I got for a book was $6 (Hardback Twilight books).  I think the least was $1.  So, it’s more than you would get from a Garage Sale; we’re happy with the $120 cash.

I have been meaning to write about this, but I had kept forgetting.  Sorry.  I hope it’s not too short notice.  I also apologize for not writing more about Dave Ramsey lately.

Anyway, tomorrow, Thursday, April 23 at 7 pm Central, there will be a Town Hall for Hope meeting, hosted live by Dave Ramsey.  The event is free!  For the first half hour, Dave will

offer straight talk about the economy, recession, foreclosures, and more. He’ll carefully explain where we’ve come from, where we are now, and what we should be doing with our money during this time. Then, Dave will spend an hour answering your questions live!

Click here to find a venue.  My church is hosting it, and I’ll be there!  Will you?

With Google Docs, you can share your work online. You simply upload a file to GDocs (or create the file within GDocs), and you can edit that document (Word), spreadsheet (Excel), or presentation (Powerpoint) whenever you want from multiple computers. Also, you can let others have access to those documents. So, they can edit the doc, and you see the changes immediately. But the documents are still stored securely; not everyone can see them– just the people you choose to have access (if you choose for others to have access). And yes, it’s totally free.

Maybe you have a prayer group, and whenever you have a prayer request, you have to call 15 different women– which is sort of time consuming. But next week, the members might have forgotten what that prayer request was. Enter GDocs. Julie can create a GDoc that has a list of her prayer requests, and she can share that list w/ all 15 women. Susan can open up that GDoc and add her request to the list. So can Amy.

Or lets say you’re a college student who has a computer in your dorm, but you don’t have a printer. Been there. You’re constantly going to the campus computer lab to print your document. But you either have to email it to yourself (which might not work if the file is too big) or put it onto a jump drive (which might take too long). Enter GDocs. You can now upload your Powerpoint onto your computer, go to the computer lab, open GDocs, and print your Powerpoint.

Jonathan and I use GDocs for our budget. I do most of the receipt entering at home, but sometimes if Jonathan gets gas on the way to work, he can open GDocs on his work computer and edit our budget from there.

Maybe this video will help clear up any confusion:

At the beginning of every month, Jonathan and I have a Budget Meeting. We go over every “Fund” and discuss what things we anticipate happening in the month to alter the previous month’s budget. For example, we know we might want to add a few bucks to the Atmos Gas Fund since it’s getting colder (yuck!). And Abby will need new wipes next month, so that Fund will go up by $14. Gas is going down (hallelujah!), so we might lower the amount there.

If you know a little about Excel, it’s easy to add formulas to calculate Total Spent, Actual Spent, etc. If you don’t know much about formulas, just go to the “Help” menu. Or, if you’re not into doing a budget on the computer, you can always do the math on paper. Notice at the bottom of the Budget, we know how much we anticipate spending each month. Some other items at the bottom are blackened out to protect the innocent.

We have two spreadsheets when we calculate our Budget. The first page is the one you see above. The second page, below, is our Ledger where I enter in ALL our receipts (even the $0.35 for water; keep record of everything!).

This is all done by formulas, also, to where the items on Ledger Sheet are automatically entered into the correct spots onto the Budget Sheet.

The idea is that as the month goes on, we know where we stand financially. If we’re getting close to spending all our Eating Out money, then we know we need to plan to eat at home.

Our goal is to spend a lot less money than we make every month. Theoretically, by squeezing our budget, we grow our bank account and then use the excess money to pay off my student loan.

Not sure how much to budget? Dave recommends these amounts:

• Charitable gifts: 10-15%
• Housing: 25-35%
• Utilities: 5-10%
• Food: 5-15%
• Transportation: 10-15%
• Clothing: 2-7%
• Medical: 5-10%
• Personal 5-10%
• Recreation: 5-10%
• Debts: 5-10%

We actually do this Budget on Google Docs. Haven’t used them? Well, stay tuned for next week’s Technology Thursday, and we’ll tackle Google Docs.