A testimony from Jessica
My family and I live in a great house on the edge of town. Now that my kids are getting older, we decided that we should start biking more into town. The only problem was that no one but my husband had a bike!
We started looking on Craigslist to find a tag-a-long bike for my son (age 5) and a bike and trailer for myself and my daughters (age 3 and 1 1/2).
We were quite surprised to find a double tag-a-long that my two oldest could ride for $225. We also were able to find a good deal on a bike ($125), helmet (new from Craigslist, $25) and a trailer ($25).
All of this took some time to wait for just the right items since we live in a small town and didn’t want to add the cost of gas to our purchase.
In order to be able to afford the $400 cost of our new bikes I worked hard to sell things that I was able to clean out of our house.
It took several months and some deep closet digging, but I did it! I learned a few things along the way that made the process successful.
Facebook Sale group
I got hooked up with a local sale group on Facebook, and this is where I had the most success. Living in a small town, it was great to be able to sell things locally. I also discovered that people would be willing to buy one or two shirts from me since they didn’t have to travel far to pick them up. Selling things $1 or $2 at a time takes a while, but it still helped.
Craigslist
Craigslist worked better for larger items that didn’t have much of a market in my small town. I would usually list items first on Facebook and if they didn’t sell within a day or two put them on Craigslist.
Word of mouth
I sold a couple of larger items to friends that I knew were looking for them. I am able to sell some of the clothes my daughter outgrows to my sister.
Jessica is a stay-at-home mom of three young kids (5, 3, 1) and wife to an amazing husband!
Have you saved up and paid cash for something — large or small? Submit your story for possible publication here.
This is completely coincidental, but some folks thought you were me because we share the same name, and our kids (4, 2 1/2, and 9 months) are close in age! We only have one car, so we have discussed fixing up my husband’s old mountain bike so that it’s ride-able again. Thanks for sharing your story!
I love the tag-along bike, I have never seen one! 🙂
what a great story, brings a smile to my face, thanks.
I agree that Craigs is awesome for bikes! Our family of four now owns all nice, quality bikes thanks to Craigs. We live right by a great riding park so it was worth the investment. For my bike, I put a want-ad on Craigs, and figured there was someone who bought a nice bike who regretted it. Turns out I was right. I got a $500 Cruiser by Giant for $115. Then I found a men’s GIANT mountain bike from a Grandpa who bought it to ride with his grandson…only to have the grandson grow out of it quickly…it was barely used with lots of extra features like lights and odometers….$500 bike for $125. Now I just found my sons their first nice mountain bikes, both were $260 retail, barely rode by two brothers who lived in the country with no place to ride. Both bikes, $125. What blessings. If you are patient, you can find great bikes. We have four like-new bike-shop bikes for $365 total.
How did you find your local facebook sale group? I would love to find one for my area, but have not had success.
Agreed! I would love to find this out as my local twins club cancelled their fall sale and I have a ton of stuff I desperately need to sell to clean up my horrible clutter problem. Anyone have a good tip on this one? TIA :).
I stumbled upon it when a friend mentioned it to me. I would suggest asking around. You can also try searching for your town/area name with the words “buy sell trade” or “for sale” or some similar combination after.