WhereYouAreNow

A popular trend of our current culture is the idea that you can have whatever you want and you can have it right now. This is most widely seen through the use of credit cards; don’t wait until you have the cash, just slide the card and pay the bill at the end of the month. If you can keep track of all the sliding your card does this could work, but it’s still a stupid idea. Borrowing money is risky business, especially when the lender is in it to make money. When you don’t see the cash leaving your wallet or checking account, you tend to spend more than what you have and in a very short time span. This will put you into a jam at the end of the month and the following month when you have interest to pay off on the previous month’s balance. So next time you want to buy that new phone, or any item that will require more cash than what you currently have, why not wait it out? Save up the CASH and use that instead of your credit card. This leads me to eBay, oh wonderful eBay.

I have been selling items on eBay since late 2004. I was a senior in high school and was looking for creative ways to have some extra cash laying around. I found eBay and signed up for a seller’s account immediately and listed my very first item: a DVD burner. I bought it for $90 and it sold for $60 after using it for about 6 months; not bad. I looked around some more, putting for sale signs on everything in my bedroom and imagining my eBay account bustling with the activity of items being sold and shipped out the door. I sold old computer games, Game Boy games, my friend’s cell phone (I charged 20%), movies, books, and even socks from Tommy Hilfiger. That’s right, socks. I was making cash online by selling socks on eBay. A friend of mine worked at a Tommy Hilfiger outlet and could get the socks (ties, gloves, basically any male accessory) at almost 60% off the retail price. I’d list them on eBay for a killer sale price and take 25% of the highest bid. I made a template and and could list a pair of socks in under one minute. I eventually sold to a local bidder which in the end got me a job at a local eBay consignment shop. For the next two years I sold other people’s stuff and made money doing it.

I have since moved on from that company but have kept my eBay account active. I still sell for people who need me to and I charge around 20% of the sale price. Most of what I sell though is my own personal items, old gadgets that have since become outdated and replaced by the latest and greatest. I use this money to reach a savings goal or to raise enough cash to buy something I have had my eyes on for a while.

Instead of putting our budget at risk and/or going into debt over the latest gadget I want to get my hands on, I look for things to sell on eBay in order to raise the CASH. This way I avoid using credit and I am still able to meet our monthly budget needs. This is something that you can do to, and very easily. Setting up an eBay account is very simple, listing items is as easy as taking a picture or two and writing a good description, and then shipping the item out to the winning bidder. You get paid through PayPal (the best way to get paid online) and you deposit the funds into your checking account (free of charge) and put that money towards your purchase (or savings goal).

We actually used eBay last winter to pay some bills. The apartment we live in has electric heat, on the baseboards and with no thermostat. This method of heating was foreign to both of us, so at first we didn’t think twice about how high we had the heat, we were just trying to be comfortable. Well, as the months went on and the weather grew colder, we noticed our electric bill start to jump up. One month it jumped so much that I knew we wouldn’t have enough that month to meet our budget. I refused to borrow from family or friends and I refused to not pay the bills that month. So what did I do? I looked around at all of our (*my) stuff and figured out what would sell on eBay for enough money so that I could pay our bills. I listed three items: a Nokia 770 internet tablet, a Microsoft Sidewinder joy stick, and a Motorola MPX 200 cell phone: total after eBay and PayPal fees was $300.00. Collective sigh of relief. This amount was just enough for us to meet our needs that month, and we, obviously, learned to turn the heat down from then on.

So, what is my point? Get creative about saving money and especially creative when making purchases that are more out of want than need. This will not only *save* you money in the future, but you will begin to rely on using cash to make purchases rather than using a credit card. Look around your house/bedroom/apartment for things that you don’t need anymore and that could possibly earn some money for you on eBay.