Preparation for life on the road - raise money by selling your stuff
How to raise (travel) money by selling your belongings
Raising funds to travel the world can be quite an adventure in itself - and how do you go about getting rid of all that stuff you've accumulate during your short life here on earth. We're going to take time in this blog post to break down how we have managed to appropriately sell (almost all) our belongings and begin saving a large chunk of money for our travels. I wouldn't just tell you to donate all your stuff because there are ways and different strategies to make money out of what you may think is just junk.
FLEA MARKETS, CANCUN, Mexico image by frankieboyphotography.com
Emily and I have used so many different techniques to prepare ourselves for leaving the country.
From selling furniture on craigslist to exchanging clothes on PoshMark - there are tons of ways to sell your used belongings instead of giving everything away. Below are some strategies we used:
High Rockies Craigslist (one exists in your area)
Poshmark (an alternative way to sell used clothing, shoes, and can trade with other users)
We even resort to the good old' garage sale to start getting through our belongings - yard sales work as long as you get the word out that your going to be doing a moving sale (contact your local newspaper, maybe post a generic ad on craigslist 'Moving Sale on xx/xx'). We had ourselves on a consistent routine of donating one or two garbage bags of clothing, old bedding, etc - about every 2 weeks to really get thru the majority of our bulk clothing / stuff. Soon I will donate all of my kitchen items and kitchen utensils - items that really don't carry a ton of value I've had them since college. Posh Mark is an online clothing trade site Emily has been using to efficiently sell her gently used clothing that still has value - she can either accept money for the clothing items (which is then deposit into her account), trade for items or use the credits to purchase apparel items for our trip around the world. Donating bags full of gently used items feels great knowing someone could really use them - it's also very important to retain value and earn money from selling things to put towards travel funds, gear purchases and other expenses when preparing to leave. Moving and preparing to pack all your belongings away can sometimes become more expensive then it seems - so take a look at the grand picture and decide where to place your efforts when it comes to selling used goods (old electronics, gently used furniture, your car, etc).
I've had awesome success with craiglist - I've sold an old GoPro, mountain bike, rooftop carrier, various camera gear and we used CL for our recent yard sale. Be careful when using CL to avoid scams/potential theft - make sure to only accept cash for items, never checks. I prefer meeting CL buyers in busy, public locations like a grocery store parking (avoid going to people's homes) set a price before hand, agree that the buyer must bring cash or your not interested in the deal whatsoever. Remember safety first, most people that use CL are very genuine, and I have yet to have anything go wrong during a CL sale - aside from buyers attempting to renegotiate a price at time of sale. These are just a few of the techniques we have used to sell our stuff to begin raising and saving money for long term world travel - we also encourage donating your gently used items please always consider that someone else in the world may need those items collecting dust under your bed. Thanks for reading, have any tips for us on selling used goods? Leave them in our comments section below!
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