A Month Of Savings – 07/11/2008
I always thought that if you can get something for free, the only better deal than that is the one where you get paid to take something of value away. Well, I didn’t get paid, but I did strike gold today on Freecycle.
I am a member of the Freecycle group in St. Louis, MO. I was watching the posts today, and a post entitled “OFFER: Power lawn mower, 63130″. When I contacted the person, they told me “Yard Machine power mower with 4 horse power engine, about 8 years old. Won’t start. Needs work.” I decided to take it because I was the first person to respond, I know someone who works on mowers, and I need a mower.
When I got it, it looked like it had been kept up. On the way home, I purchased an air filter, a spark plug, a blade sharpener attachment for my drill, and some 30 weight oil. I started working on it at 5:34pm. By 5:57pm, I was done and it started on the first pull. Check out the video:
A new mower like this would normally run around $150. A used one in good condition would, by my guess, be about $60-$80. The mower was free and I spent $15.70 (w/tax) on the tune-up parts. My net gain was between $44.30-$64.30.
I could turn around and sell the mower for $80, but I need one so I’m keeping it. This experience has made me think that I could probably do this again and get another mower to sell.
Thanks for such an important articles about shopping. This is a very needed info about shopping sites.
Check out http://www.freecycle.org.
The mower is still running. It even saved me money on yard waste removal because it did not come with a bag. Since I was not collecting the yard waste, I canceled the service.