Have you considered starting a side hustle thrifting and reselling items? In this episode special guest and life long thrifter, Ruth Fradenburg, we discuss the nitty-gritty of making sales on sites like Poshmark, Ebay and Facebook marketplace. Ruth shares tips on what to look for as well as how to post and price items for resale. Her tales of trials and triumphs in the online marketplace are not just entertaining but are laced with practical tips, like the power of a good photograph and the art of honest product descriptions. Ruth's sparkling insights are not to be missed, so listen to this episode to follow her thrifting escapades and for a dose of inspiration. Subscribe to our podcast for more empowering financial wisdom that speaks directly to you.
Resources:
Links are being provided for information purposes only. The information herein is general and educational in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to change, which can materially impact investment results. Pearl Planning cannot guarantee that the information herein is accurate, complete, or timely. Pearl Planning makes no warranties with regard to such information or results obtained by its use and disclaims any liability arising out of your use of, or any tax position taken in reliance on, such information. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation. Please note, changes in tax laws or regulations may occur at any time and could substantially impact your situation. Pearl Planning financial advisors do not render advice on tax matters. You should discuss any tax matters with the appropriate professional.
Have you considered starting a side hustle thrifting and reselling items? In this episode special guest and life long thrifter, Ruth Fradenburg, we discuss the nitty-gritty of making sales on sites like Poshmark, Ebay and Facebook marketplace. Ruth shares tips on what to look for as well as how to post and price items for resale. Her tales of trials and triumphs in the online marketplace are not just entertaining but are laced with practical tips, like the power of a good photograph and the art of honest product descriptions. Ruth's sparkling insights are not to be missed, so listen to this episode to follow her thrifting escapades and for a dose of inspiration. Subscribe to our podcast for more empowering financial wisdom that speaks directly to you.
Resources:
Links are being provided for information purposes only. The information herein is general and educational in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to change, which can materially impact investment results. Pearl Planning cannot guarantee that the information herein is accurate, complete, or timely. Pearl Planning makes no warranties with regard to such information or results obtained by its use and disclaims any liability arising out of your use of, or any tax position taken in reliance on, such information. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation. Please note, changes in tax laws or regulations may occur at any time and could substantially impact your situation. Pearl Planning financial advisors do not render advice on tax matters. You should discuss any tax matters with the appropriate professional.
Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and founder of Pearl Planning. I'm Melissa Freidenberg, financial advisor. We dive deep into topics like work-life balance, financial planning, personal growth and the intricacies of the sandwich generation. Tune in for money conversations that every woman needs to have. Hello and welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. This is Melissa Freidenberg. This week, our guest is my mother-in-law, ruth Freidenberg.
Speaker 2:Ruth welcome to the podcast. Why thank you for having me? I'm excited.
Speaker 1:Yes. Well, anybody that knows Ruth knows that she won is just a character. We need to have her on the podcast because you're all going to love her. Also, one thing she's known for is thrifting purchasing items, as well as reselling items both from consignment stores, dumpsters, sidewalk sales, estate sales. We love to hit up estate sales here in Girls Point when she's in town, but she also resells them on websites. I think this is something that would be a great side gig for any of our listeners looking to have a side hustle or something fun, and you can earn money from it.
Speaker 2:And also purge.
Speaker 1:Purge or downsize, Downsize. Yes, my husband Ruth's son has always threatened that when she passes he's going to get a big dumpster and just get rid of all her collection of things.
Speaker 2:Yes, and not only your husband, but all my other sons. I have three other sons and they are coming to his mom. You might as well get rid of it now, because when you die, the dumpster is coming up and it's all going in that dumpster. Now some of the things that I have sold should go into a dumpster.
Speaker 1:All right, it's a confession here by Ruth.
Speaker 2:Some of the stuff should go into a dumpster, and some things I do donate, but for the most part it gives me something to keep me busy. Do I make a lot of money? No, could you Not really. It's a hobby and you will get 10.99 from two of the sites that I sell on. I do get 10.99. But as a retiree, if you make under 20,000, you're okay. And I've got to say, without divulging how much I actually take in, I either cover the cost of my goods that I purchased, so that's a wash, and it pays for half of my rental in Florida.
Speaker 1:So nice, that's a good perk there. Now I do know people that do make quite a bit of money if you do it full time and you're not buying stuff and keeping it which I imagine you might be Ruth, I might be doing that. Yes, on some things. Or giving it to your daughter-in-law? Yes or yes? I've got some new. What do they go?
Speaker 2:You've got some new orphers, which is a Swedish crystal, tea lights, basically tea lights and Melissa had one and I noticed she had one, and in my thrifting I found two Sporadically. I found one in a place and then I found another, one in another and orphers crystal if you look it up online one that used to be really expensive I mean, these things were probably about 80 or $90 a piece and I will divulge. You got to divulge. What did you?
Speaker 1:pay for them $2.99. $2.99 cents yes.
Speaker 2:And I might have gotten a 30% discount if I bought it on a Tuesday. So let's just say I paid $2 for them.
Speaker 3:Okay, so was this at Savers.
Speaker 2:Probably at Savers, which is a thrift store. I'm out of the Boston area and Savers is a non-profit thrift store.
Speaker 1:So it's similar to like a Salvation Army, similar to a Salvation.
Speaker 2:Army, correct? There is not a Salvation Army in my area, so Savers is the go-to. And then there's another, I want to say a church thrift store, because those are usually better, because the prices are usually better with those types of stores.
Speaker 1:Still $2.99 for something that's 80 or $90. That's a pretty good. You could make a profit.
Speaker 2:You could make a profit. There's two kind of secrets to it. You really have to. It takes time. You have to look up the item and see. If you go to eBay or whatever, or use Lens, you take a picture of it and Google will show you what it's selling for on eBay. So it may not be selling for a lot or it may be listed at, let's say, $65. But then you have to go into eBay, into what has sold at that price and it may not be selling more than that, so they might be listing at a high price but not selling.
Speaker 2:They might be listing it, but it may be selling. Maybe $20 seems to be a sweet spot for a lot of people on certain things.
Speaker 1:Okay, so your sweet spot of things that you thrift is most likely tableware, crystal glasses, tea cups.
Speaker 2:There's several areas so I do well tea cups. I've gotten very successful. As Melissa knows, I was here in the fall and I found a tea cup for again $299. And I sold it for $65. But not all tea cups will sell for $65.
Speaker 1:So you've got to know your stuff.
Speaker 2:You have to really know and I will tell you, I probably have 25 or 30 tea cups that I've had for the last 10 years that I haven't been able to sell, but I know the ones that sell. So tea cups, some glassware I also ship, but glassware I don't ship and a lot of China, and that's my.
Speaker 1:So when you resell glassware, you sell it through Facebook.
Speaker 2:Marketplace Most of the time. My big place is Facebook Marketplace because people in the area will pick it up. I do not offer the shipping on Facebook Marketplace because I'm not comfortable doing that. I will offer my own shipping and if it's something that is very fragile I'm saying no. I've had one thing break in my history of less seven years of shipping, so, and a question more to ship, but the customer always pays for shipping. I do not pay for shipping. The buyer always pays for shipping. Facebook Marketplace is really good and usually you get $20, $30 on an item. I sell more of my antiques and things that are a little bit more valuable on eBay. I had a collection of a lot of Chinese exportware and Chinese.
Speaker 3:What's exportware.
Speaker 2:It's like Rose, medallion, celadon, so a lot of. China. Oh, glassware, stuff Glassware stuff, china Tablecraft, tablecraft, yes, china Tablecraft, china, my collection and that sells very well on eBay. And then I do Poshmark. I have some what I call hard goods, tableware and Poshmark, but I do much better on Poshmark with the clothing.
Speaker 1:So I have a lot of personal clothes. So clothing that's a whole yes, that's a whole nother Ruth collection that I don't know. I'm working my way to get skinny enough to maybe take some of her clothing We'll see. But shoes, I can't do that because her shoe size is way too small. But she's got the collection of shoes and purses and clothing to die for.
Speaker 2:So shoes, I'm a size eight so and being in business for a long time, I wore the four or five inch heels and expensive shoes. They're harder to sell on Poshmark because if you've got a good pair of Chanel, say, you only want to pay $50 for them, so they're harder to sell, but I do have those up there. Evening bags I used to collect. I used to teach fashion history when I was much younger, and so I have a collection of evening bags. Evening bags are harder to sell, especially if an iPhone doesn't fit in them anymore Interesting, so that's a big thing. So I don't buy any more evening bags, but I probably have 50 or 60 evening bags. They sell varying prices.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that I've gotten into is I like sparkles and sequins, and if many of you like sequins, you know that Alice Olivier's sequin jackets sell for about between $500 and $700, if not more, and so the sequin jackets from the 1980s and the Golden Girls are made better. They're on silk. You just have to look to see if sequins are missing. But those you can usually pick up at a reasonable price and I sell them. But they weigh about four pounds and in Poshmark you can if you ship over five pounds, you have to pay for the shipping.
Speaker 1:So there's extra shipping involved with the sparkles. Yes, now's a good time to plug. What is your Instagram handle? People want to see some of your sparkles and collectibles.
Speaker 2:So I'm known as AbleGlamour, underscore RF for Instagram.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:My Poshmark is Table Glamour but at G-L-A-M-O-U-R I also do Facebook Table Glamour or Ruth Freidenberg you can look me up that way. But to give you an idea of my inventory, I mean I've made mistakes but my inventory probably on Facebook, is roughly close to 1,000 items. Poshmark I have probably 1,200 items, but I have 7,000 followers on Poshmark. Okay, ebay I'm low. I don't have a lot of items. If I have 25 items up on eBay, that's a lot.
Speaker 1:Now talk again. Which are the websites that do send a 1099 at the end?
Speaker 2:of the year. So the 1099 websites are Poshmark and eBay will both send you 1099s. Facebook expects you, if you're selling on Facebook, to manage your own sales. So keep an Excel spreadsheet with the items that I purchase, what I paid for them and then, when I sell them, I put what my profit is on that item. You need to track what you have on Facebook yourself, mark it off as sold and what the profit is on it, what I sold it for and what my profit is. I'm not as diligent on that as I should be, but let's talk about profits.
Speaker 1:You said there's a learning curve. You figured out kind of how much you can mark up stuff. So when you look online and you see what other things are selling, for what is your average markup from what you buy?
Speaker 2:something in that really depends If I'm looking at so versus the markup. Let's talk about what I purchase. I like to keep my jackets purchasing and my sequenced stuff at $10. So I don't buy anything more than $10 because I know if I'm gonna sell it. Oh, Poshmark, by the way, takes 20% of your sale.
Speaker 1:Okay, most thrift stores take like 40%. I feel it right If you do a consignment shop.
Speaker 2:A consignment shop takes 40% of your sale. So I don't do. I don't sell something in a consignment shop. But so you're asking what do I sell them for? So if I buy it at 10, poshmark takes 20% off the top. So I have to think of that. So I try to. If I buy it for 10, I try to make it sounds low but I try to make as much as I can. But $10 may be all I'm gonna make on that $20 item. And you're not paying for shipping on Poshmark and I'm not paying for shipping. No, I always have. This takes time to get into this. You can discount the item on certain days. That Poshmark will say if you discount the item, you can offer pay for some of the shipping and we'll pay for some of the shipping. I don't normally do that. I don't like paying for shipping. That's against my principles.
Speaker 2:And it's easier to figure out your profit. If you're not including it and but I do I will tell you all my boxes I get, I order them from the post office site and they're free. That's why the post office is probably not doing so. I get free boxes from the post office and I have a printer so I print my labels. So I'm paying, but I am actually paying for as my paper and I'm paying for my tape to tape the label on the box. So yeah, I mean it keeps me busy.
Speaker 2:There'll be days where you don't sell anything and I have people say, oh, I put five things up on Poshmark and I haven't gotten a hit yet. I said, well, I have a thousand items on Poshmark and this week I sold nothing. So to get me patient, you have to be patient. There's millions of items on Poshmark, millions of items at different prices. You can also look on Poshmark to see if you have an item and you can do a search and see if that item is being sold on Poshmark, the size and what is going for. So you need to do research and I think that's what takes the biggest amount of time is your research on your item before you put it up for sale.
Speaker 1:Now, if someone's listening and they're thinking about getting started, what would be like recommendation for the first couple sales, like maybe they're listing five items, maybe they're listing things they already have so that it doesn't really matter it's not a huge, you know rather than buying?
Speaker 2:inventory right. So basically, if I, if it's something I have and I put it up there, it's basically I want to move it out. Okay, to make a recommendation is what to put up there that sells. If you are on Poshmark and you get a Poshmark site, they will tell you what's trending and what is selling and then you go and look and see what the price points are. If you're putting up a pair of shoes and the heels are nicked and and, and the picture that you took is not good, you're not going to sell them. Okay.
Speaker 1:You can have good pictures.
Speaker 2:You've got to have good pictures. The item has to be in good condition. If there's flaws in the item, you have to photograph the flaws and If you're selling clothes, so if I'm selling a jacket, I take the measurement of the sleeve, I take the measurement of the length of the jacket and I do Pit to pit because people will ask that and so I make sure I do that. If there's anything like a sequin missing on a jacket, I photograph that and I photograph the label. So that's what takes the most time to do. Time consuming yeah, it is very time-consuming. It's that if you're sitting home and not doing much, you know, and you've got a closet full of stuff you want to get rid of yeah, no, and I mean I know people that do it for other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even Alexa in our office, she people give her a bag of clothes and she will sell them on posh park because she's got it down to a science.
Speaker 2:I don't do it for anybody else, although people. The woman that I know on one of the islands. She gave me a designer and it's got a jacket, leather jacket, great-looking leather jacket that she probably paid a thousand dollars or more for it and she's what can you get for it? I said I'll be lucky if I get two hundred and fifty dollars. Now I've had it up there since September and I've gotten no likes on it, you know, and it's a standard, beautiful jacket and I have a pair of white that's on eBay and I have a pair of white. She gave me a pair of white leather Ralph Lauren black label pants that are gorgeous, perfect condition, and I put those up for 200. They were probably, you know, a thousand. Nothing, so you're not. You know, you think that you're gonna get something on it and it's like a bust.
Speaker 1:What was your biggest? Let's do best and worst. So what was like the best item You've ever thrifted or found and then sold for markup?
Speaker 2:So it's basically things that I pay, actually paid for. So the tea cups are the big thing, these certain type of tea cup which I have found and discovered that I'll pay. They've gone up in price in the thrift stores that I'll pay a dollar ninety nine but I go on.
Speaker 1:You're not. You're not gonna say because you're worried that our listeners are gonna go buy them up.
Speaker 2:No, just no. They're hard to find and People, some people, are starting to get into the tea cup business. I will tell you that I bought one in Florida and I paid $50 for it and I figured, oh, I can sell it for sixty five or seventy five. And I got it home and I didn't look close enough at it and the handle was repaired. So that was your biggest bus, that was my bus. I sold, I finally sold. The saucer was good and they're signed. I sell the tool woman for twenty five and she said that's fine because I collected and they'll be in the shelf. So she got a good deal.
Speaker 2:My, if I own something. So I think I told you the day I was given a, a print and you are research the print and it was signed by the artist, framed and it's a good poster size, I would say, and I was given to me, so no price associated with it. And I looked it up online and the galleries were selling it for thirty five hundred dollars. After I finished looking at online, I said, okay, I'll put up for twenty five hundred. I'm in Boston, this is a print that is not an easy sell, okay, and I finally kept looking at it. I wasn't getting hits, nothing I had on facebook, because it's something I would ship, because it's a frame with glass. And I had a gentleman say what. They ask you what's your best offer? And so I said, well, twenty three hundred. He says well, that's still high seventeen hundred. Then he went away. He says I have to save my pennies. He went away, came back a couple weeks ago. He says all, he lived in Maine. He said I'll drive me to halfway, thousand dollars cash.
Speaker 2:And at that point I said, fine, I'll take it and you got this item for free and I got the item for free and it was thousand dollars, it was cash. I met him on, I negotiated I'm not going halfway, I'll meet you at this location in the shopping center, cuz I have no idea who the guy was, what met him in the shopping center and I'm getting me thousand dollars in cash. I gave him the print and we're done. So. That's probably my best, my best one.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know I'm in the tea cup.
Speaker 2:That was the handle was busted. My dinner worst. That could probably been my worst, although I probably am looking at stuff in the attic and saying, okay, I gotta get rid of some of this stuff and just donate it. I carry inventory over, so a lot of people don't do that. I carry inventory or ever friend to the dozen song three weeks she donates it. I don't do that cuz I'm selling stuff that's probably three years that I've had up for three or four years.
Speaker 1:I'm finally selling it and things come in and out of style, like the sequence. When you started doing sequence I thought you were crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this year, while I still think you're crazy.
Speaker 1:You can be crazy, but sequence are in. I'm wearing sequence tonight for well. We're recording this on christmas eve day route this year, visiting for the week for christmas, so I think we're all gonna be wearing sparkles tonight and I brought a dress for jackey that I so yeah you know, you were good, you waited and they're coming into style.
Speaker 2:Now you can sell some sparkle so I can see a trend coming and I'll hop on that trend and it'll take a while before the trend takes off. So that's, I have to be patient. I use that now. That's another thing. I do a lot with them in some cases, you know, people say are you worried about pick up at the house? There's some things that I do get concerned about, and I do that if you pay me in advance and they put it outside my front door in a bag and let you pick it up that way. That's one.
Speaker 1:Why is that all the safest way to trans out? Does that? Is that help, posh mark?
Speaker 2:no, posh mark is a direct payment through posh mark. So posh mark, you get paid, I get paid part. Well, somebody buys on posh mark. Once it's delivered and accepted, the money goes into my account, my posh mark account and then so if you never ship it.
Speaker 2:they don't charge the person, correct. But then I'll get a bad rating because customer number received, because the customer can rate your item no-transcript. So I mean I still have a five star rating and you have to ship with Poshmark within three days. So Poshmark has their own money system. Ebay manages the money as well. So those two accounts nothing. The one that I use Venmo for most frequently is my Facebook account. I do not use the Facebook pay app, I use Venmo, and if it's not Venmo, people are paying me cash. I do not accept checks.
Speaker 1:So when somebody or what's the other one where people scam people like Cash App or something.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure what the other one is. What I find that the scamming is. If somebody says oh, my phone doesn't work really well, here's my phone number, call me, etc. I ignore those because to me those are more of a scam. If you're looking on the line and you can't purchase online and do that, I don't want to deal with you. And those are usually scams. Have you ever gotten scammed? Not on Wood Know. Okay, no, I have no pickups and no shows. That's a different story. Oh, that's a huge.
Speaker 2:Facebook marketplace thing, that's a big thing where? So I have a brand new shed in my backyard and everything is in bins and they're labeled Cheekup bins, so they're all labeled. So when somebody says they're interested, I'll go okay, when are you going to pick it up? If they say I'll pick it up tomorrow, I'll say all right, in the morning I will give you my address. I do not give the address out until the morning of pickup. So the morning of pickup I'll say okay, are you still coming? What is your estimated time of arrival? If I don't, if it's crickets, I don't hear anything, they don't get anything. But they'll still tell me and then I'll send out my address and that's usually the transaction. So if it's Some people will pay cash and some people, but the majority of people are paying Venmo, and if I think the person is a little sketchy, like I, will meet them at a shopping center parking lot, so I won't have them come to my house. So it's.
Speaker 2:I've been doing this for about seven years now. You were doing it before. It was cool, yeah, and I was doing tableskates before anybody knew what the word was. So it's been keeping me busy. I'm trying not to buy inventory, because I have enough inventory to get rid of.
Speaker 1:You heard that here first folks. We'll see if we get through the week without buying inventory, so to speak. Well, this is great. I'm going to have you help me set up a Poshmark. I hope that everybody listening had a very lovely holiday with their family, and this was a way of combining both the need for an episode to air the day after Christmas and also spending time with Ruth. We might do some research. Yes, we try. None of the thrift stores are open today, on Christmas Eve day, but we are going to do some research before she flies back to Boston and I'll report back, because I personally am interested in doing this just to get rid of some stuff, as I went down a few sizes. I have a lot of nice stuff that I never want to wear again, so I need to get rid of it. So this is a good timing for myself, and hopefully our listeners found it interesting as well.
Speaker 2:I will add one more thing. If you're going to sell your own stuff, I have a mannequin, so I put it on a mannequin. The better part is to have a model put it on and then I cut my face off. So that's usually when people want to see it on somebody. So thank you, melissa, it's been fun.
Speaker 1:This is fun. Thank you, ruth Radenberg, and I will link her Instagram and Poshmark on the show notes, so if you're interested in some sparkles or teacups, you can reach out and find her.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. If you found value in our conversations, please take a moment to like, follow and subscribe wherever you're tuning in from. It helps us continue to bring these valuable insights every week. Head over to women'smoneywisdomcom. There you'll find tools, tips and a supportive community to help you gain financial confidence.