Yard Sale Groups to Save for Your Vacation #savingsunday

Week 3 of our ways to save for Family Vacation Savings is about utilizing the online yard sale groups, sites and apps. These groups and sites are a great way to clean out your house of items you don’t use while making extra cash in the process!

My go to when selling off unused stuff in my house is my local Facebook groups because I can meet people when and where it is convenient for my schedule. Facebook has made it easier to upload through their Marketplace. Since Facebook has created the Marketplace, you can upload an item to sell through there and then have it inserted into groups that you are part of, up to 10 groups. In the past, I would have to upload the item to one group and then copy/paste to each of the other groups. It was time-consuming to say the least!

My only complaint about the Facebook Marketplace is that people do not read the description to see that I will only meet people a specific locations and I will not ship the item. At least 2-3 times a week, people will message me asking me to ship the item to me but I don’t have the time to go to the Post Office at the holidays to ship a $5 item.

My most popular items that sell the fastest are kids clothes, accessories and toys. With the price of buying something new so inflated, especially kids and home items, more and more people are buying them used. On average, I bring in an extra $500 a month by selling off items I no longer need or items that people will give me that I don’t need but can use to make the extra money. Some months are a little slower with bringing a few hundred dollars but in August and November/December I can bring in $1000 because people are looking for back to school items and then items that they can re-gift for someone especially when they are still new and I just let the item sit there.

There are other ways to sell your unwanted stuff online like Craigslist and Ebay. I have used both in the past but honestly Craigslist kinda scares me. Ebay has become a long process and has moved into another world from where it started that is focused on reselling new items for more money.

Then you have the apps, which there are plenty, that you can list items for sale. Similar to the Facebook Marketplace, you list your items and then choose when and where to meet someone for the sale. With these apps, I have had the same dealings with people wanting me to ship a $5 item. My other experience has been people who set up meets and then cancel at the last-minute. Very rarely do I deal with that on Facebook. You can check out the apps I can used: Letgo, OfferUp, 5miles and Listia. There are a ton of apps for different phones but those are the most popular.

How many of you have used yard sale groups, sites and apps to save some money?

Our weekly update: Having Thanksgiving and a ton of doctors appointments this week, the week was kind of a bust with trying to save any money. I did some essentials grocery shopping (milk, bread, etc) and save $15. The apps helped me save an extra $12 (free eggs and free bananas coupons for Walmart from coupons.com) to put into my savings apps accounts. We did a little Black Friday shopping but that goes into my separate Christmas funds to be able to continue to pick up gifts as the weeks get closer to Christmas. I didn’t have any yard sale meet ups so no money for that section either. I did receive a few more handmade sales which half goes into our vacation fund so that brought in an extra $35. Total for this week: $50 and overall savings: $259. Slowly but surely getting there!