Friday, September 15, 2006

Frugal Fridays-Yard Sale Cash



I love going to yard sales and I often find many useful items and gifts, as well as occasionally finding a few items to sell on Ebay.

As we all know, even shopping at yard sales costs money. And money is often scarce, right? But the great thing is that you can get so much for so little at yard sales. I have found that the only way to have some spending money for yard saling season is to save my change. We use the envelope system for our budgeting and at the end of each month, I carefully empty all the change into my yard sale change purses(one for quarters, one for nickels and dimes, and the heavy one is loaded with pennies-graduated size cosmetic bags that fit into each other; there is even room for dollar bills, but we don't usually have very many of those left!LOL!!!)

When we leave the house on Saturday morning to go treasure-hunting, I grab my change purse and my money is all right there. This also helps us to keep our spending in check and to choose our purchases carefully. Having a change purse helps to keep me in good favor with the sellers as I am not making a 50 cent purchase and asking them to give me change for a $20 dollar bill at 8 am. Having my change handy also immediately identifies me as an avid yard saler.:-) I have stopped using pennies for more than 10 or 25 cent purchases, much to the relief of my husband, who thinks pennies are made to be rolled, not counted out into dollar increments while he waits, embarrassed!!:-)

I will sometimes dip into another budget category to buy a bigger ticket item, such as a Christmas gift or piece of furniture that we have had on our list to buy. But otherwise, keeping my change for yard sales has really worked for us!

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! Be sure to check out Biblical Womanhood for more Frugal Friday tips!

3 comments:

Mrs.Garcia said...

Mary Ann, I loved this frugal tip.
Thank you so much for posting the frugal tip on Yard Sale Cash.

Crystal Paine said...

I just went yard-saling with a friend for the first time in a long time today and I've decided this is definitely something I need to do more of since I got such excellent deals. However, I was thinking that I need to come up with a system in order to have cash to spend. This was a great tip!

Thanks for participating in our second Frugal Friday!

Crystal
http://www.BiblicalWomanhood.com

Anonymous said...

I love garage saling (in NZ we call is a garage sale) and should go more often. Excellent idea - I think I'll get a little purse and put my dollars towards this!

Thanks, Wilma