Saving Pennies or Dollars? Garage and Yard Sales

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Naomi said, Garage Sales – it takes a day to set up; we usually purchase lunch that day because we’re busy (day before and day of) adn can’t make lunch…and usually gross about $150 – 200.

I’ve found that garage and yard sales can vary greatly in their success level depending on a wide variety of factors.

The amount of promotion If you promote your yard sale with signs and flyers, you’re going to get a lot more traffic. The more you promote it, the more traffic you’ll get. Savings tip: I tend to try to schedule yard sales in conjunction with my neighbors so that we can promote our yard sales together. Our town has a regular “city wide yard sale,” so we’ll schedule things in conjunction with that.

The weather on the day of the event If the weather is beautiful, you’ll see more traffic. I’ve actually postponed yard sales because of forecasted bad weather (since I do much of my promotion during the week before the yard sale).

Meal preparation What I often do is prep all of our meals two days in advance of the yard sale. I’ll make food so that it’s easy to pull out of the fridge and eat at the table. Often, we’ll just have sandwiches for lunch the day of the sale, eating while the sale is going on. If you find yourself ordering food, you’re going to reduce the profits from the sale.

Quality of items If you have good stuff to sell, you’re going to make more money than if you’re selling retreads from previous sales. People go to yard sales to find bargains on stuff they actually want. If all you’re offering is well-picked-over stuff, you’re not going to make a lot of money.

What I usually do is give away what’s left at the end of a yard or garage sale. I’ll take the remnants to Goodwill and other stores and give them whatever they’ll take. If there are still items left, I’ll often trash them, as they have little value (I didn’t want them, my customers didn’t want them, and Goodwill didn’t want them). This ensures that the next yard sale I have will be all new items, not retreads that didn’t sell before. This drastically increases the percentage of sales I’ll make.

I also make sure the items are as clean and presentable as possible.

Quantity of items The more you have, the more you’ll sell. Of course, there’s a caveat along with that…

Organization of items If you throw everything out there in a mish-mash and it’s hard to find all of the items or find similar items, you’re going to have a hard time making the sale. This means using your space effectively so similar items are near each other and as many items as possible are easily accessible.

All of these factors play a role in garage/yard sale success. The fewer of these things that you successfully pull off, the less you’ll sell at your yard sale and the less you’ll earn per hour of time invested.

The last yard sale I ran, I netted about $600 after expenses. I estimate that 30 hours of work went into the yard sale, giving me a return of about $20 per hour. (Of course, I was selling off items that I already owned.)

A poorly managed garage or yard sale earns pennies for the hours you invest. A well managed garage or yard sale earns dollars.

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Parking Garage Math: Where Two Minutes Equals One Hour

Where do two minutes equal an hour? A parking garage, of course. Everyone knows this, but what about when another customer delays you and pushes you past the one-hour mark? Nathan tells Consumerist that while the customer ahead of him in line argued with the garage attendant, his own time in the garage passed one hour, and the attendant insisted that Nathan pay for the full two hours.

He wrote the following letter to the owner of the garage (who has now promised a refund):

I recently had an issue at a parking garage where, while waiting in line to pay, another patron in front of me was arguing with the attendant for well over 5 minutes, causing me to go over the one hour mark by about a minute or 2, resulting in me having to pay twice the one hour rate. I argued with the attendant for a while but he was pretty firm and even suggested that I was in line for much less time than I knew I was, effectively calling me a liar. Also, strangely, a police officer came over and ordered me to pay the attendant (which seems a little funny, but maybe he was just trying to keep the peace).

Anyway, here's the letter I wrote:

I recently had a small issue at one of your parking garages in San Francisco involving the time that I was leaving the garage. From the receipt scan that I attached, you can see that I entered the garage at exactly 3:33 PM and left at 4:39 PM. While this would put me in the $6 bracket, I was in line to pay for my parking time at 4:30 and expected to pay $3 for one hour of parking. Although I was second in line to pay at 4:30 PM, the person in front of me had lost his ticket and was arguing with the parking attendant for well over 5 minutes, at which point, I had to back up, allow this other customer to back up out of the way, and then move forward to pay for my parking. By this time, I was told I had to pay $6 for 2 hours of parking. Add another few minutes during which I was arguing with the attendant and at the end, I left the lot at 4:39 PM, which actually means I was probably only in the lot until 4:34 or 4:35, a mere 1 or 2 minutes past the 1 hour mark.

I understand that waiting in line to pay can be considered time spent in the garage and is chargeable. However, I was forced to wait an unusually long amount of time to pay for my parking and as a result, ended up having to pay twice what I should have because another patron had lost his ticket. I believe this is unfair for me to have to suffer for another person's mistake. Furthermore, the attendant attempted to lie to me by saying I had gotten in line only 2 minutes ago, which is impossible considering that I was already in line when they were arguing AND I had to back up to allow this other patron to move out of the way.

To remedy this, I would respectfully request $3 be mailed to my address or if you have vouchers available for parking, I would also accept a $3 voucher to park in lots owned by your company. I realize this is a very small amount of money to argue over, but to me the principle of the matter is what's important especially since the attendant basically called me a liar and was completely unreasonable over just 1 or 2 minutes of extra time, time which would not have been lost had the person in front of me not lost his ticket and decided to argue about it for over 5 minutes.

Thanks for reading and I hope we can come to some kind of resolution over this small matter.

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