Never Have a Garage Sale

First, let me clarify that attending garage sales is very Kittellian indeed. But the effort of setting up a garage sale is a grotesque waste of time. If you’ve ever spent the better part of a weekend doing this, and find yourself holding a few hundred dollars in the end, you know what I mean. Oh yeah, and you just worked the weekend you would have otherwise had off.

Reasons garage sales suck:

• Two words: EARLY BIRDS!
• No one ever thinks your stuff is as valuable as you think it is.
• To bring you back down to reality, people use tactics like “look, here’s a stain”, or “there’s a little tear in the back”, or “this tie-dyed jean jacket has the wrong spelling for ‘AWSOME’”.
• Some friend catches wind of your sale, and they want to throw some stuff in with their own colored price tags (with lofty expectations), so you can keep track of how much to pay them. But they’re too busy to work the sale.
• You lose a friend.
• Foreigners who conjure their haggling powers to turn your carport into a Turkish bazaar.
• Finding out first-hand that your neighbors’ kids are assholes as they rummage through your “crap”.
• Constantly telling people that the stuff behind the “Police Line Don’t Cross” ribbon is not for sale.
• After the sale, you have a mountain of odd change, most of which came from the festering cracks of decomposing vinyl interiors of cars with names ending in "Royale"
• Did I mention you lose a weekend?

So what is the Kittellian alternative? DONATE THAT CRAP! Most people are amazed at how much their stuff is worth when they consider the donated value of their belongings. Besides, after any normal garage sale, you’re going to make a trip to the Goodwill anyway. But after hosting a garage sale, you’re pissed off, and simply don’t have the energy to document your donations for the year-end tax filing.

Here’s a quick (well, not so quick) shakedown of why donating makes more sense than selling stuff at a garage sale. To start, let’s figure how much your federal tax rate is. For most of you reading this, that will be 25%. When you donate items, you’re offsetting the income that you have to pay taxes on.

If income = $100,000 / Taxes = $25,000

If you donate $10,000 worth of items, you only have to pay taxes on $90,000

If income = $90,000 / Taxes = $22,500

25,000 - 22,500 =2,500

In this example, 2,500 is the cash you’ll get back when you file your return (assuming you paid your taxes exactly as you should’ve during the year). 2,500 just so happens to be 25% of the value of the items you donated.

25% becomes the rule of thumb for determining whether or not you should sell an item at a garage sale, or donate it. Or ask yourself: “Can I make 25% (at a garage sale) of what the IRS agrees is the 100% donated value?"

I love the Intuit (makers of TurboTax) product: It’s Deductible. It’s a seamless (and free) application with TurboTax for itemizing your deductions during tax season. In this tool you’ll quickly find that your stuff is worth A LOT. For example, below you can see the donated value of books:

TEXTBOOKS ARE WORTH 9 BUCKS? Good luck at netting $2.25 at a garage sale for that 1985 Astronomy 101 textbook with your attempt at the Van Halen logo on the foreword by Stephen Hawking. The value is based on Condition… Not Relevance. But lucky for you, the solar system hasn’t had much of a change since then. Well, we did lose Pluto, and VH lost David Lee Roth… So maybe it’s worth 8 bucks.

You’ll quickly find that our Federal Government's opinion of self-worth is generously handed down through their opinion of your old unwanted stuff. Remember that jean jacket? It’s worth 16 dollars to your donated bottom-line. You can either try to get 4 bucks for it at a garage sale (best of luck), or write-in the item as "vintage" and assign your own estimated value… But be sure to back it up with your own research on eBay, or see what similar items are selling for at vintage clothing retailers and take a picture of the price tag... Or just claim the 16 bucks already.

OK, now how to CYA (Cover Your Ass) in the event of an audit. All I do is lay all the stuff on a table in a way so everything is visible, and I take pictures. If I have 15 t-shirts to donate, I’ll fold them neatly and stack them up and place a paper with a giant “15” on the top of the stack. Then I box the junk. Then I take a picture of my loot being unloaded at Goodwill. I mean, you’re going to Goodwill, might as well embrace it. During tax time, I look at the pictures on my computer and enter the items into It’s Deductible. Just don't forget to get a signed receipt. Many non-profits will even come through your neighborhood to pick up your stuff... But they're a little more picky, and might refuse your halogen dorm lamp.

I regularly rack up donations well north of $2000 with this method. And I would NEVER be able to make 500 dollars (25% of 2000) at a garage sale, as that would require me to sell all my items.

In closing, there are a few times having a garage sale makes sense:

• Selling baby/kids items. Many of these clothes have never been worn. And in most cases, people got the clothes from a friend, or from a shower. And new parents, or parents-to-be, are irrational people and will often pay a higher-than-average price to outfit their children. (As a parent, I’m qualified to make this statement). WARNING: Be prepared for your children to take a sudden interest in toys previously ignored, and their heart-ache as they witness the death march of their happy meal toys in the cool-aid stained mouths of random toddlers.
• Selling lots of specialty items at one sale: like bike parts, camera equipment or movie collectibles. The IRS doesn’t care about your Dura-Ace derailleur, or your Shrek standy. But fanatical hobbyists and collectors do. They’ll be looking to get a fair price, but not under 25% of what it’s worth. And what you don’t sell at this garage sale, you just post on eBay, or Craigslist.
• Selling building materials, or other sundries like a 16 foot long 2x4 that non-profits have very little use for. Most often, these items are too much of an effort to haul away, so sucker someone else to do it for you. Dudes love these sales, if for no other reason to stand shoulder to shoulder with other dudes to brag about all the stuff they're never going to do with the materials they'll soon be selling at their own houses.