Practice Good Money Habits With a Yard Sale

A Guide To Yard Sale Success

Summertime...and the livin’ is easy.   

It’s also expensive.  

From funding beach trips to paying for summer camp, we seem to break the bank without breaking a sweat.  

How can we slip into summer without letting our budget slide? 

And how can we make the most of our family's money moments? 

How a yard sale can help teach your child about money

A yard sale gives a huge bang for the buck when it comes to teaching kids about money and making a tidy profit to boot.  How else can you clean out your house, turn clutter into cash AND help your kids learn a number of valuable financial lessons? 

Yard sales do all that and more, and parents can enlist their kids at every step of the process.  

Involve your child at every step!

• Select Items to Sell

  Though easier said than done (anyone else’s kiddos have strange attachments to long-forgotten toys?!), parents and their littles can cull through closets and choose items ready for a second chance. 

• Build Marketing Materials

  Next, kids can get a mini lesson in marketing by promoting the family yard sale around the neighborhood. Whether by making good old fashioned signs or posting information online (all with parental supervision, of course), kiddos can take the reins in spreading the news.

• Set Prices

  Kids can help determine prices of the items for sale and learn the power of promotions by offering discounts or two-for-one deals during the sale.

• Help Sort and Count the Cash

  Kids can handle money from customers - sort bills and coins, give change and count profits. (Our Benji Bank is the perfect cash register for your kiddos to set up shop! 😉)

• Allocate earnings

  After all that hard work, it's only fair that kids opine on what to do with the yard sale profits. Should the family spend, save or give the yard sale funds?

• Reflect on the Process

  Finally, when the last customers have gone, the profits have been counted and the remaining items donated to a worthy cause, take some time as a family to reflect on the process. What went well? What could the family have done better to improve the outcome?

Outside of its obvious nostalgia, a yard sale is a powerful lesson in financial literacy.  It teaches kids to start a project and follow through, to price items to sell, collect and handle money, and spend, save or give profits in keeping with the family’s summer budget.