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Hey Moms and Dads, check this out! There is an awesome annual consignment sale that we found out about that will be going on in the Las Vegas area! This is a really cool event as it gives you the opportunity to buy gently used and quality baby and kids items for super cheap!! PLUS you can sale your baby and children’s items in a high trafficked event to earn top dollar! We are all about saving and earning!
Here’s the information that we found about this event:
Have you started shopping at children’s consignment sales yet? This is a no-brainer penny pincher and money saver. The Pickled Peppers Kids event is coming up in just two weeks, and they are still accepting participants. You’ll definitely want to check it out.
The Pickled Peppers Kids Consignment event has grown from a small children’s consignment event held in someone’s garage, to a huge sale for children’s and baby clothing, furniture, equipment, toys, books, and gear held in a commercial space with 150-200 families participating by selling their items. They’d like to invite you to participate as a consignor, or a volunteer, and you won’t want to miss shopping at this Spring’s consignment sale.
Here’s what they have to say:
“The Spring 2010 event will be held May 3rd-8th, coming up in less than two weeks. It is easy to be a consignor. Register on our consignor page online, check out the list of items we accept, and start entering your tags online. You choose how much to charge for your items, whether you’d like them to go half-price or not on the last day of the event, and whether you’d like to donate unsold items to charity or come pick them up. Drop them off on May 3rd or 4th, and we’ll mail your check for 2/3 of the selling price of your items within about 3 weeks. We will deduct a small $8 fee from your check to help us cover overhead expenses. You’ll be amazed at how much you can make by cleaning out your kids’ closets.
“If you aren’t up for consigning, you can also gain early shopping privileges by volunteering at the sale. If not, you’ll want to be sure to shop early and often, as items sell quickly, and on the last day of the sale, most items are sold at 50% off.
“Check out our web site at pickledpepperskids.com for the location, map, times, and all the details. You can also email us at pickledpepperskids@gmail.com. We are also doing a drawing on facebook this week for some prizes donated by this years’ vendors.”
Here’s just one picture of this sale: It is huge!!
You can see many more pictures on the site!
Don’t forget to enter into their drawings on Facebook and start your deals early;) Also, it was events and sales like this that we started out on our thrifty journey. We will be sharing this at some point in our “deep-in-debt to debt-free series,” so stay tuned!
In the meantime, don’t miss out on this opportunity if you live in or around Las Vegas! Spread the word to your friends so that they can score some incredible deals and/or make a little money too!
thriftycas posted this in Baby, Freebies, Money Making, Samples on April 6th, 2010
Want to get paid for your baby to try diapers and receive FREE diapers? This is a great opportunity for both! Arquest is looking for people (and babies!) to participate in a diaper study. Arquest manufactures store brand diapers and they need testers!
By participating, they will send you FREE diapers to try for a week with a questionnaire. They will then call you about a week later for your opionon! So, you get to keep the diapers and then they will also send you a check for about $10 a month later!
Right now, they are needing size 4 diaper testers!
- Call 1-888-342-7372 and use extension 634 for boys or 646 for girls.
- Leave your information on a voicemail and someone will call you back when there is a study available.
Thanks Bargain Divas!
thriftyal posted this in Amazon, Gift Cards, Money Making on March 6th, 2010
As I always say, you can trust Amazon.com to stay ahead of the curve and to keep coming up with great ideas!! Here’s an idea for any video games/accessories that you have been wish you had never bought or received as a gift. Instead of just allowing them to add to the pile of unwanted items, check this amazing Amazon.com offer to see if you can turn them in for Amazon credit.
The image above explains it all:
- Select the items you wish to trade-in (Amazon.com gives you a very easy way to search)
- You print shipping labels and packing slips to ship them for FREE
- Get an Amazon.com gift card for the value promised upon receipt of your game.
If you don’t have a video gaming system you can still capitalize on this great offer! How?! Well, as we feel the sun starting to warm our face a bit more (in Utah, that’s good news!!) we know we are heading into garage sale season!! We will be getting into this more over the new few weeks, but there are many ways to find money-making ideas at garage sales! Find some of the games that Amazon.com is looking for and you can now use this deal!
More FREE advertising credit on Facebook!
This is a great FREEBIE offer, especially if you are a business owner or have a website to advertise. Get $78 of FREE advertising on Facebook! Go HERE to get started on this great offer! You will need to use the coupon credit code: 8HPY-3RYX-1T70-80YW (more details HERE). It says that this code is good until 6/1/10. Be sure to check your advertising account balance often and to stop it before your $78 of FREE credit runs out if you do not want to continue, it does not stop automatically.
Also, see the Facebook Advertising F.A.Q. to help answer any questions you may have regarding Facebook advertising and Facebook advertising coupon codes.
I love these types of offers for FREE advertising! Great way for bloggers to advertise too 
Thank you reader Melissa for the tip on this!
thriftycas posted this in Family, Finance, Home Life, Money Making on January 16th, 2010
Here is a guest post from reader Lynda and her family on how they have made an extra $1,500 – $7,000 (and stayed in shape!) a year gross the last 5-years delivering phone books to homes and businesses 2-4 times a year! Each time they participate in a round of deliveries, it is about 2-4 weeks. In our research, many companies pay between .18-.35 each phone book you deliver!
Do you want a fun, healthy, way to make money and involve the whole family? We discovered that delivering phonebooks is a great way to earn some extra cash for your family.
We have been doing this for the past five years and have had a blast with it because we can work together as a family and running the phonebooks to homes and businesses is a great way to get exercise!
There are several different phonebook companies (just look at the stack you have!) and all you need to do is look on the inside of the phonebook to get the name and number of the company and contact them. They are always looking for responsible people to deliver. You usually get paid per book delivered and can request (if available) the areas you want to deliver.
Happy phonebook delivering!
Lynda
Thanks Lynda and Family for the family money making idea!
 I wanted to share another money making idea with you from our “Thrifty Family” to yours.
First, we have a number of ways that we try to make extra money on the side for our family vacations and fun stuff. It is a fun goal to work towards something like this and to work at it as a family and then to enjoy the fruit of our labors as a family!
Our next goal is to make enough for our next family vacation – we have budgeted $2,000 for the six of us for all expenses for the vacation!
 So to help us get to this goal, one thing that we have done for several years now is to purchase items used and then, fix, wash, clean (in rare cases not have to do anything to it) and then turn around and sale if for a profit. I am going to focus this post on large items!
A good thing to watch for is large items that could have a potential high retail selling value, that you are able to find “cheap,” or something that is in higher demand at the time. The best places for you to “shop” for these items are at garage, yard, estate, rummage sales. Items in this type of selling environments are typically a lot lower than buying on ebay or classifieds, etc. People just want to get rid of their “junk” and are usually very willing to negotiate prices that are already marked low. Also, you can typically get better prices at these types of environments as most people just pull the stuff out of storage, etc. and do not take the time to fix, clean or “spruce up” the item. This gives you the opportunity to buy it cheap – and with a bit of leg work, have a great resell item!
As an example, we hit a garage sale recently and spotted the big Little Tykes doll house for sale. When we saw it, you could tell it was a high value item, but it looked like it was in poor shape. These doll houses are plastic and very durable – when we found it, it was dirty and had been covered in marker and crayon!! We were able to pick this doll house up for $5! We were not sure of the retail value of this item at the time, but knew that with clean-up, we could definitely make our $5 back!
We brought it home – our girls first reaction was AWESOME – but we explained that this was an item to resell, not to keep. We then got to work and scrubbed this doll house down! Our girls took the Mr. Clean magic erasers to the marker and crayon and we were able to get all of the markings off!!! We then rinsed it with the hose outside and let it dry! Whala! A very nice, nearly new looking doll house! All it needed was a good cleaning, it was in perfect condition otherwise!
We then researched how much we should put this doll house up for sale for. The internet is a great resource for this – immediately we discovered that this house retails for $139.99! If a used item is in great condition, we usually plan to list it for about 40% of the retail cost, and hope to get about 30% after negotiations. You should verify this by trying to find other local classifieds or even Ebay, Craig’s List to see what others have listed an item for too to make sure you are not way over or way under! So, our plan was to list it for $50 and plan to drop to $40 if we needed to! As a funny side note – our daughter said “so if we sell this house, we can then go on our trip?!?” My response was, “no,” this is only $50 towards our goal, we need a total of $2,000! She then said, “well let’s just sell it for $2,000 then!” 
The next step is to take pictures and list it. We recommend finding the FREE ways to list items as it cuts into your profit margin otherwise. Craig’s list is a FREE national classifieds and is a very popular site to use! Also, check with your local newpaper – our newspaper has a FREE classified ads section for items that are under $100. Finally, local T.V. stations also have FREE local classifieds, so check those sites. If you can list it in all the different FREE resources in your area, you are increasing the traffic and the ability to be more rigid on your price if you have more people interested. Just use the same listing for all to cut down time! It is not reasonable to sell an item like this on a site like Ebay, just due to the size for shipping purposes. I know that there are listings for local areas on Ebay, however, save the extra money and go with the FREE local classified resources instead! We will talk about Ebay in a future post!
Then, wait for the emails and calls to roll in! We listed the doll house and it sold the next day and for the full price we wanted!
Here is the picture of the final “cleaned up” house and the ad as an example! (we had a couple of pictures – the more pictures – the better!)
 CLASSIC LITTLE TIKES DOLL HOUSE
“This is the classic Little Tikes Doll House. This house is pink with a blue roof and in good condition. It is made of sturdy plastic and has 2 stories, each level high enough for a Barbie size doll. It is 38.5″T x 37″W x 24.25″D. Very nice size and good quality! This doll house retails for $139.99. Please call or email with questions!”
There you go! Here is a great way to make money on the side on large items! More money making ideas to come!
*Have you bought a large item for cheap – made improvements to it and resold for a profit? We want to know your ideas and experience – let us know!
thriftycas posted this in Coupons, Finance, Freebies, Money Making on December 29th, 2009
This is a great FREEBIE offer, especially if you are a business owner or have a website to advertise. Get $50 of FREE advertising on Facebook! Go HERE to get started on this great offer! You will need to use the coupon credit code: 66KT-39T1-F56K-5N9N (more details HERE).
thriftyal posted this in Freebies, Money Making, Techie on November 2nd, 2009
The other night I was part of a meeting with seven other persons on the call. I dialed in and found out later that the whole thing was FREE! Now, I’m not sure if you’ve priced conferencing services. Let’s just say that its not a cheap option nor something you would use flippantly.
But, if you are a small business and need to host a conference call, FREE is an amazing price! Or, if you would like to get the family on the line for the upcoming holidays, FREE is an amazing price.
The quality was great, it was reliable, and there is no hidden cost. Once you register you receive a reservation-less conference call number and access code that can be used at any time for up to 96 participants!! The phone number is long distance, but cheaper toll free services can be found on the link below as well.
Small businesses (even hobby enthusiasts!!), this is your opportunity to use a great service for a perfect price.
thriftycas posted this in Money Making, On-Line on October 28th, 2009
 A couple of days ago, I was invited and emailed 3 times in one day from 3 different people/friends about this new website that just launched called www.blastoffnetwork.com. I was totally and completely uninterested and thought it was some sort of scam or weird MLM type of thing with products I wouldn’t care about. Both Thrifty Al and Thrifty Cas do not like to be a part of those types of things, and so I just blew it off. Then I received an email from Pizza Hut as I signed up a while ago to get special offers and coupons from them, well they were advertising that they have now joined the Blastoff Network. They said the same things that my other emails said – “It’s Free to join, earn money back when you shop at retailers on-line, and earn money from your friends when they shop.” I then thought that I would check it out – it is terrible that I had to wait until a reputable company emailed me instead of some acquaintances!
Anyway, I checked it out and it is very easy to sign-up, all you have to do it click on the merchants logo in the blastoff mall and it will take you directly to that merchant’s site and you start on-line shopping. Under each logo, it tells you how much % you will get back for your shopping.
You also invite friends to be a part of your network and then you get paid and small percent of their shopping too! The idea is MLMish, but it is free, we all on-line shop and there are seemingly hundreds of merchants to shop from, that I already am shopping from anyway, so I might as well be making a little back and my friends making a little from my shopping too!
How you get paid is that Blastoff Network will cut checks on the 15th of each month. They will write the checks and mail them to each member. You do have to hit $20 before you will get a check – but sounds legit and since many, many, reputable companies are attached to it and even email about it – it looks pretty awesome!
Build a huge network and make a lot – to start with the Blastoff Network, click HERE. Invite friends to join and then just make sure that every time you on-line shop, you go to the Blastoff Network site and click on the link for that merchant to get your money back credit.!
As I learn more, I will post more about it! But, this seems to be a more profitable and rewarding way to earn cash back than using my own banks rewards, or ebates, etc. the payout seems to be comparable or better, plus the cut you an actual check to use on anything!
Have fun shopping, saving and earning at the same time!
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