Here’s the deal. I purchased a pair of glasses for my daughter a few months ago.  Her vision is such that she can’t see the board in her classroom without them.

She was playing volleyball the other day in gym class.  Although the kids have been instructed to roll the ball to the players on the other side of the net when the ball changes sides, a kid on the other side of the net threw the ball, hitting my daughter square in the face.  She is fine, however, the glasses were not.  The metal that holds one of the nose pads broke off.

The teacher’s response was to make the kid who threw the ball sit out for the rest of the class period and to send my daughter to the nurse.  This did not get written up, per school procedures.  The “substitute” nurse, sent my daughter to the office.  Instead of calling either me or my mom to bring her another pair of glasses, the office sent her back to class.

I spoke to the principal about this yesterday.  She told me she would pass my contact information on to the boy’s parents so I could work out remuneration with them.  Although, according to her, she did speak to the boy’s parents about this, she did not pass my information on to them.

I spoke to the principal today.  She started to back-pedal on the whole issue.  She brought up that it was an accident and that the school could not make them pay for the glasses.  She also said she was waiting on a call back from the district head of PE to find out what the district’s procedures are on these types of issues.  Can you say “pass the buck”?

Fortunately, the principal gave me the name of the person she was waiting on a call from.  I passed that on to my mom, who I knew would follow this up without all of the emotion I’d bring to the situation, considering that the school has really pissed me off with this.

She contacted the district PE director and they had not heard of the incident.  She then spoke with the principal about it.

I have a question for my readers.  If someone accidentally runs into your car, regardless of if they are sorry and it was an accident, who should pay?  An alternative, and possibly more relevant question is, if your kid accidentally hits a ball through your neighbor’s window, who should pay?

It’s not fair that my daughter has to wear her old, and no-so-effective pair of glasses because someone else made a mistake.

Am I in the right on this or should I just drop it and foot the bill for new glasses?

I’ve posted quite a few items on how to save money at the grocery store. I figured I’d round them up for you so you don’t have to go hunting for them.

Buy Generic – Don’t worry.  You’ll find that a lot of the generic items taste just as good as the name-brand items.  In some cases, they are actually the same items, purchased from the brand-name manufacturer and re-branded with the store’s name.  I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that the Schnucks store brand sandwich bread is re-branded Wonder sandwich bread.

Keep track of what you buy – You can do this on paper, but the post describes an application that does a pretty good job.

Eat before you shop – This one should be pretty obvious.

Freeze It – Using your freezer can keep you from wasting food.

Make A List – Don’t just wander the store aimlessly.  Also, organize your list to the layout of the store to save time.

Use Coupons – Don’t throw your cash out with the Sunday paper.

Use cash – You got me.  I didn’t post about this one yet, but what it comes down to is planning to spend a certain amount and using cash only will help you stick to that amount, or rather the thought of the embarassment you will experience if you get to the checkout lane and don’t have enough cash to pay for your purchases.

Have a tip to save money on grocery shopping.  My readers and I would love to find out what it is.  Please leave a comment and share your tip with the world.

1. Coffee - Fortunately, my company gives me coffee for free, however, I can understand how people get into the habit of buying a cup of coffee on the way in to work each day.
2. Cigarettes - This is the same as the coffee.
3. Alcohol - After having the coffee in the morning and the cigarette ever couple of hours, a lot of people have a drink at the bar a few times a week.
4. Bottled Water -  Not only is this one a drain on the wallet; it also pollutes the environment with all of those plastic bottles
5. Manicures - I am definitely against this one.  Buy a $1.00 pair of nail clippers and stop biting your fingernails.
6. Car washes – Although I sometimes get my car washed to make me feel better about driving a car with 145,000 miles on it, this is a big money-waster.
7. Lunches - Eating out for lunch can waste up to $10 a pop.  Do it 5 days a week, and you’ve got almost a tank of gas.
8. Vending machines - Have some self-control people.  So far, everything listed here is an indulgence that can be avoided.
9. Interest charges – How did you rack up such a high credit card bill?  I would think it’s the cigarettes, lunches out, and car washes.
10. Unused memberships – Guess what.  If you smoke and you eat lunch out, along with drinking 5 cups of coffee per day and having drinks after work twice a week, you probably don’t workout much.  Save some money and skip the new years fitness resolution.

Each of these has dollar amounts tied to them.  Find out how much you can really save at Bankrate.com.

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I am liquidating my inventory of domain names I am not using.  These domains are all for sale…

I finally decided to check out pet insurance online.  The first site I looked at was, of course, www.petinsurance.com.

Here is a quote from their main page:  A VPI Pet Insurance policy provides reimbursement coverage for your pet’s eligible medical treatments, surgeries, lab fees, X-rays, prescriptions and more, so that you can make optimal healthcare decisions for your pet based on your veterinarian’s recommendation, rather than on the cost of treatment.

You can get a quote and review/modify your policy information online…just like any other insurance policy.  Next thing you know, they will have insurance for … actually, I can’t think of anything.

Check it out.  I am.  I have a cat with hyperthyroidism.  I need to find out if pre-existing conditions are covered.

Some other insurance providers are:

• aspcapetinsurance.com
• purinacare.com

How about imposing a mandatory waiting period on all purchases?  With this approach, you have time to think about what you are about to do, and in some cases, the commitment you are about to make.  Think about it.  Have you ever made a purchase, and after a few days wondered why you ever purchased the item in the first place?  Well, with the waiting period approach, if you wait 2 days, you may end up coming to your senses and averting the purchase.

If the item is something that might be gone if you don’t make the purchase right now, try layaway.  In most cases, you can get your money back without seeing the layaway through.

Just WAIT…

Do you have some broken jewelry that you really don’t wear anymore? if so, that’s money just sitting in the drawer…even though it’s broken.

Dollars4Gold will pay you top dollar for your broken or unwanted jewelry!

Use their postage-prepaid G-Pak to send in your broken or unwanted gold, silver, platinum, palladium and other precious metal jewelry (rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, watches, etc.), coins, estate pieces, flatware and other items and they will send a check out to you for your precious metals within 24 hours of appraising your package.

Why go to a pawn shop or jeweler and get a fraction of what you can get when you deal directly with the refiner? At Dollars4Gold, you are skipping the middle-man.

How to Hold a Successful Garage Sale

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Looking for a great way to get rid of your household clutter and make some extra cash at the same time? A garage sale or yard sale may be just the ticket. Garage sales are easy to plan and manage, and they can turn large, unwieldy old lamps and dishes into smaller, more manageable piles of cash. Depending on how much you have to sell, you could realistically make $1,000 or more in a weekend. Let the selling begin!

Steps

1. Gather items for sale. Go through those boxes in the attic, shed or garage and select items you can sell. Then walk from room to room in your home, identifying things you no longer need. Most of us have trouble parting with things, even if we never use them: if you haven’t used something for over a year, it’s a good sign you won’t miss it!
2. Inventory each item on a sheet of paper as you identify it for sale. A lot of people skip this step, but it can make your sale go a lot smoother. Price tags have a strange way of getting lost at garage sales, and it’s hard to come up with a fair price on the spot, especially if you’ve got other people asking you questions or if you’re working a multi-family sale. An inventory list solves this problem. Keep in mind, you don’t need to inventory everything: if you’ve got a box of books that are all 25 cents each, inventorying each of them is a waste of time.
3. Review your completed inventory sheet and assign a price to each item. If you really just want to get rid of an old knick-knack, price it accordingly. For items that are more valuable, a general rule is to price at 1/4 of what you paid or less. Obviously, you may want to make exceptions for some things, such as those that are nearly new or valuable antiques. Remember, though, garage sale shoppers are looking for bargains, and if you don’t want to have to pack everything back in your house at the end of the day, you’ve got to give people the low prices they’re looking for. Some people won’t pay over 10% of the retail price when they go garage-saling.
4. Attach a clearly written price label to each item. Using brightly colored labels will make it easier for your customers to find the price and will save you time on the day of the sale. You can purchase adhesive labels, or you can use a “sticker gun.” If you have a lot of similar items that are all the same price (e.g. books), don’t bother pricing them individually. Put them all in one box and label the box. If you don’t have sticker labels, you can also use small pieces of masking tape.
5. Check with your city or homeowner’s association and obtain a permit if one is required. Many cities place restrictions details such as placement of signage, hours of operation, frequency & etc. It’s better to take the time to do your research and pay the $5-$20 for a permit than risk losing more money than you made in fines.
6. Set a date and place for your sale. A two-day garage sale is usually perfect, and summer weekends—-especially Fridays and Saturdays—-are the best times. Check your weather forecast and try to avoid rain, and be careful about scheduling your sale during special events and holidays, as many potential customers will have something better to do. Also, avoid holding a sale when there is road construction occurring on the main route to your sale location. If you’re just having a single-family sale, your location is pretty much set, but if you’re having a multi-family or charity sale, be sure to pick a spot that is large enough for everybody’s wares, and choose a location that is easy to find and to get to, preferably close to, but not necessarily on, a major thoroughfare.
7. Advertise your sale. Your local paper probably offers a deal for garage sales. For a Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday sale, you only need to advertise on Thursday, Friday, and possibly Saturday, but you’ll want to make sure to get your ad in to the paper before the deadline, which could be several days in advance. You should also advertise in free weekly community shopping papers, such as Pennysavers or Thrifty Nickels, and on community bulletin boards in grocery stores and laundromats. Don’t overlook the internet, either: a good, free place to start if you’re in a metropolitan area is on Craigslist (check the external links below). Be sure to include the basics—days and times of the sale and the address (and directions or landmarks if it’s hard to find)-—and list specific items you have for sale, particularly big-ticket items or antiques. You can also look into posting your sale for free at Salenook.com, which caters to garage sales with Google Maps integration. If you choose to advertise your sale, one possible drawback is that occasionally people will show up before the sale (sometimes in the wee hours) to try to get the pick of the best items.
8. Tidy up your yard and/or garage. You’d clean up your house if you were trying to sell it, right? Garage sale customers are more likely to buy (and to buy at higher prices) if it looks like the merchandise came from a good home with owners that care for their things. They’re also more likely to feel comfortable stopping and browsing if your sale space is attractive and clean.
9. Make signs the day before the sale. You can buy signs or you can make your own out of posterboard or cardboard. Children need a lot of guidance if they will be making the signs. Plain, bold colors, simple lettering, and sturdy posting hardware are essential. Remember that the sign should be perfectly legible to people driving by, and may have to stand up to wind, rain, or heat if you post it a few days early. Give the date and time of the sale, the location and–if you have room–list some items for sale.
10. Hang your signs the day before the sale in places where they will be noticed by many a passersby. Make all your signage distinctive in some way, and make them all the same. This will be especially important if there are a lot of other sales that particular weekend. If you live near a major road, hang the signs on telephone poles or street signs at an intersection on that road (intersections with stop signs or traffic signals are particularly good). Draw arrows on the signs pointing the way to your sale. It’s a good idea to first check your municipality’s or homeowners association’s rules regarding signs so you don’t run afoul of the local authorities. If you live in an out-of-the-way area, be sure to construct a “path” with your signs that is easy to follow. Post one sign at each corner where a shopper should turn. People might not be able to read your sign very well, so one missing sign could lose your customers.
11. Make sure you have enough table space. While customers do see and buy items that are on the ground, it’s important to have enough tables to display small items to protect them and to ensure that people can easily inspect them. You can use tables and bookshelves from your house or you can rent folding tables if you don’t have enough.
12. Get plenty of change and petty cash. Unless you’ve got a lot of change at home, chances are you’ll need to visit the bank the day before the sale to get some rolls of quarters and plenty of dollar bills. You’re going to be making change for a lot of customers, so be sure to have a fanny pack to organize your money.
13. Set up the morning of the sale. Get up early so you’ll have plenty of time to arrange your vending area. Seasoned garage sale customers often arrive before the posted times to get a first crack at the premium merchandise, and these customers come ready to buy. Make sure you have everything ready an hour or two before your advertised start time.
14. Keep your display visually attractive. Many potential customers will drive by first, and you want to make your sale look intriguing and well-organized so that they stop. Place premium items (nearly-new merchandise, antiques, large tools, etc.) close to the street. Arrange your tables so items are neatly displayed with enough room between items to allow people to comfortably inspect them. Instead of folding clothes on tables, hang them from a clothesline strung from trees or from your garage ceiling near the door. Hanging clothes are easier to look through, and you won’t have to worry about refolding them on the table.
15. Be an active seller. Running a garage sale is a lot like working at a retail establishment, so bring out the salesman (or saleswoman) in you. Greet your customers with a friendly smile as they arrive. You want people to feel comfortable at your sale, so greet them as you would if you were a business owner. Tout your wares proudly. Offer package deals (if a person buys a blender, for example, why shouldn’t they buy those margarita glasses as well?), and reward big buyers with bulk discounts. Don’t just hope things sell themselves.
16. As your sale progresses, things will unavoidably get disheveled and disorganized (possibly even broken). If you want to sell as much as possible, you should try to keep things looking nice. Keep all books with spines showing. Keep all clothes on hangers. You might need to refold clothes or linens frequently. Keep all the brightly-colored, newest-looking things in front of your yard, and on the tops of all the piles.
17. Negotiate with hagglers. Even though your prices are clearly marked, some people will try to haggle. Play along; haggling can be a fun experience, and you’ll likely make a lot more sales if you’re willing to reward these bargain hunters. Don’t be afraid to decline an offer, but consider all offers. After all, you’re trying to get rid of this stuff. Be sure not to drop your price early in the day. A successful rebuttal to a haggler would be ‘I can’t drop the price before 10 am, we just got started’. If you’ve done the previous steps, you should have plenty of traffic that will pay full price.
18. Offer last-minute deals. If you’ve still got things left over during the final scheduled hours of your sale, go ahead and slash prices. Offer buy-one-get-one deals or bulk discounts. Do everything you can to make the sale, especially if you plan on throwing away or giving away the items anyway.
19. Hold a free garage sale after the sale. Once you’re done selling, place an ad on www.craigslist.org or your local freecycle.org and advertise the remaining stuff for free. You can leave it right out in the yard and stay inside counting your money while people come pick stuff up. Don’t throw potentially useful items away, and don’t take unwanted clutter back into your house just because it didn’t sell.
20. Take down your signs after the sale, right at closing time. Be a good neighbor and community member! Nobody likes to show up at a garage sale after it’s already closed, and nobody likes to see old, faded, sagging signs taped to poles, either.
21. Ask your friends to participate, Even though you have alot by now, close friends may be wanting to sell at least 2-3 large items and/or clothing at your sale. You have organized it, now reap the rewards! Make sure they have done inventory to avoid hassle later on. Haggling on friends’ items should only be done with their permission. “It’s not mine, so I have to stick with that price for you and the other buyers” is a positive line if somebody is not willing to compromise on their bargain.

Tips

• Add more interest to your sale by offering craft items, home baked goods,or beverages. These will attract lookers, but don’t expect to sell much. Most garage-salers are very serious about getting only bargains.
• Have an electrical outlet or extension cord available so that people can test electric products. You’ll get a better price if people can verify that something actually works, and if something doesn’t work, you shouldn’t try to sell it as if it did.
• Have empty boxes and cardboard trays available for shoppers to use as a “shopping basket” if their hands are full.
• People will buy just about anything. While there are certain hot sellers (children’s toys, old tools, books, antiques, and simple kitchen items, for example) don’t be afraid to try to sell things you can’t imagine anyone buying. Remember the quote: “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”
• Ask your neighbors to contribute their items or have a multi-family sale. Customers are more likely to stop at a bigger sale. If you mix items in a multi-family sale, color code your price tags or otherwise clearly mark the items so that your cashier will know who should get the money for each item.
• Make sure merchandise is fairly clean and not broken so that it could injure someone. As mentioned, however, you might be surprised how many people will buy broken hardware items, old, kinked hoses, old doors, and other seemingly undesirable items.
• Spread the word through your local neighborhood grapevine.
• Use a sturdy material for your garage sale signs, like a couple of layers of posterboard or corrugated cardboard, so that wind won’t bend them. Use a light-colored background and large dark letters at least a few inches high, so that people casually driving by the sign can read it at a glance. Do not put writing smaller than about 2″ high on a sign. If you are staking them into the ground, make sure they are placed firmly enough that a little wind won’t knock them over. A fallen sign can keep anyone from finding your house and sale.
• Helium balloons are an inexpensive way to draw attention to your sale. Hang them on your tables or at the end of your street.
• Remember, you’re out to get rid of your stuff, not make a huge profit. No one is going to buy an overpriced item—-they don’t care what you paid for it! Price your merchandise to sell and you’ll make money.
• When you are pricing, look at each item with critical eyes, and ask yourself what you would want to pay for it, if you wanted to buy it. Coming up with an amount you would like to get for each item isn’t realistic. The item is only worth what someone would really pay for it. That is what the word “worth” means. If you want to sell it on ebay, then sell it on ebay, but don’t expect to get ebay (or craigslist) prices at a garage sale. It’s not going to happen, unless the purchaser happens to be a close friend.
• Consider a ‘back-yard’ sale. Since folks can’t see all your stuff, it will pull in a lot of the ‘drive-byers’ who will only take a few moments to examine your wares from the street. It also prevents having to haul everything in and out when you are having a two day sale.
• Check with local charities and missions. Some will pick up items that you don’t sell and put them (or proceeds from their sale) to good use. This is even easier than a post-sale “free sale”.

Warnings

• If your sale is out in the yard, be prepared to move your merchandise into a garage or sheltered area in case of rain. Items on tables may be covered with tarps if you don’t want to cart them all in.
• Keep an eye on your customers. A garage sale brings all kinds of people, including shoplifters. As long as people know you’re watching, you probably won’t run into much trouble, but if somebody does steal a small item, it’s probably not worth confronting them. If you suspect somebody has stolen something valuable, confront them tactfully, and call police if necessary, but do not detain them.
• Always have several people at the sale – it’s important for personal security.
• Remember that each customer that visits your sale is your guest, and you have certain legal and financial obligations to your guests if they get hurt on your property. Reduce your liability exposure by tidying up your yard and garage and taking precautions to prevent injuries, especially to children. Place sharp or potentially dangerous objects out of kids’ reach.
• Watch your cashbox. Anybody can come up to it and steal the money you made, so make sure someone is attending it at all times. Try not to keep more than $20 or so in it at a time. That way, if somebody does steal it, they’re not getting too much. Better yet, don’t use a cash box. Someone could steal all of your money, or even try to buy your cashbox! Use a fanny pack instead, and keep large bills (50′s and 100′s) in your home if possible. A good fanny pack has two pockets, and you can keep the bills in the large compartment, and the coins in the smaller compartment.
• If someone really needs to go to the bathroom, make sure someone in your family (or you) takes the person there and waits until they get out so that they don’t steal anything while inside the house. In general, you do not have to let anyone into your house, even to use the restroom, but you might consider making exceptions for small children or the elderly.
• Telephone poles and street signs are usually “no bills” zoned and you can get into trouble by posting signs on them. In general, posting signs on someone else’s property without their permission is illegal and if discovered, will not be kindly viewed. Plus, they know where you live now.
• Sometimes, shoppers try to get items for free with the following ploy: They bring you a small, one-dollar item, and hand you a $100 bill to pay for it. What they expect is that this instant drain of all your change will make you throw up your hands in frustration, and exclaim, “Oh, just take it!” You can make the choice to give them the item, ask them to go get change, or have extra change ready for this possibility.

Related wikiHows

• How to Have a Great Yard Sale (for Teens) and Make Easy Money
• How to Reorganize Your Life
• How to Make Yardsale Flyers
• How to Improve Your Sales
• How to Clean Small Marble Objects
• How to Remove Clutter From Your Home

Sources and Citations

• Garage Sales Australia Australia’s Biggest Garage Sale Website.
• Garage Sales Tracker Increase your yard sale visibility, advertise with garage sale tracker.
• Salenook.com Advertise your sale and continue the sale online if you choose
• ZipGarage.com Post garage sale ads with annotated photos, RSS feeds, area maps, and chat
• GarageSaleHunter.com Post garage sale ads, get tips
• Craigslist.org Advertise your sale for free, and use the free section to give away the leftovers
• http://www.yardsalequeen.com – Free tips on having a successful yardsale and tips on being a smart yardsale or garage sale shopper. Yardsale stories, yardsale message board and much more.
• http://www.yardsaleAD.com – FREE, Easy to use, List your yard sale, Map listing, Custom portfolio to save your finds, Search by any criteria, – Categories, Dates, Times, Description, and Radius from your home.

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Hold a Successful Garage Sale. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Do you like candy…or do you turn to candy to help you through the part of the afternoon when your body thinks you should be taking a nap? I do, which leads me to todays money saving tip.

Always look for the product in the candy machine that got stuck and buy that one. You get 2 for the price of 1.

Check out this WikiHow for more details on how to free a stuck item from a vending machine.

I am talking about your wireless router.  A lot of you probably have one of these little devices in your home and you might even rely on it for working from home.  Does it work?  Do you always get a good signal?

If you are not getting a good signal 100% of the time, the problem may not be the router.  You may just need to modify the router to make sure signals are sent and received more efficiently.  Before I go on, let me tell you that this tip will cost you less than .02 to implement.

It involves you constructing a small dish from cardboard and aluminum foil that, once attached to the antenna on your router, will allow you to adjust the direction of the signal to optimal efficiency.

An article on freeantennas.com describes the process and even shows you an example.  Check it out, try it, and let me know how it turns out.

Pay on your mortgage. Are you wondering how that is going to turn that $600 check into $2200 (actually $2307.97)? If you have a great rate on your mortgage, let’s say 5%, assuming you have 27 years left to pay, your savings would be $2307.97. In order to do this, you will need to write a check to your mortgage company and indicate that the money you are paying should go entirely towards principal.

To calculate what you will save based on the specifics of your mortgage, do the following:

1. Get a calculator
2. Type in your mortgage interest rate in decimal form and divide it by 12. If you have a 5% rate, the decimal representation of that is .05. For an 8.25% rate, the decimal representation is .0825. Divide that by 12.
3. Add 1
4. That number should be taken to the power of the number of months left to pay on the mortgage multiplied by 12. An example is 1.0825^27*12 (27 years left * 12 to get months).
5. Multiply this number by the amount of your stimulus check.
6. The result is the amount of money you will save if you apply your stimulus check to the principal on your mortgage.

x = decimal of interest rate y = number of months left to pay on mortgage z = amount of stimulus check

(((x/12) + 1)^y*12)*z = savings

This post is more about getting a little money back out of those dusty old things sitting around the house. Take a look. See that bike you haven’t ridden in 10 years. There’s money in that bike. Also, that snow thrower you can’t get started. It may not be worth anything to you, but there might be someone out there will to pay $50 for it. Kinetic Energy is potential energy stored in an object, like a rubber band or a baseball. Kinetic Kash is defined as the money trapped in all of the old things that one will never use again.

I’m not the only one talking about garage sales. Check out this post over on Not Made Of Money. This will give you all of the information you need in order to have a successful garage sale.