Friday, November 13, 2009

Living Poor In Palm Coast

It's been quite and adventure.  My financial decline from the days when I had two BMW'S and a Mercedes and a big house and eating at least two meals a day at good restaurants to eating beans and Mahatma brown rice, shopping at Goodwill and Beall's Outlet Center, and selling stuff to supplement the inflation eroded social security checks.

It's the selling stuff that drives me nuts.  First I have to argue with Barbara about why I want to sell off the two blue lamps she is saving in the garage but don't want to sell those five extra fishing poles I might use some time if I ever go fishing again.

I get distracted into one of my anger management techniques.  Should I let it all out and call her a self-absorbed bitch who only thinks about herself and what she wants.  Should I go to my Spiritual Chair and read an article from Sacred Journey The Journal of Fellowship in Prayer or Daily Meditations for Practicing The Course by Karen Kasey?  Or put on my headset and listen to Sandi Patti on my iPhone?

But the how to sell it is the hardest decision.  I have run ads in the PennySaver.  Too much trouble and cost.  I have had garage sales.  Much too much trouble.  I love to go to them but dragging stuff in and out of my dumpster of a garage is too much work, arguing with people about whether its worth twenty five cents  or fifty cents, watching them steal the stuff and drive away, making and putting out signs, running an ad getting rained on, making change, tooo much! 

Fun to attend and discover treasures, awful to hold one.  And my friend just paid a fine $150 for holding too many. City rules you know...you can only have I think two per year.

How to sell our stuff.  Our local paper has become just a flyer in the Daytona rag.  Who wants to clutter their drive with that irrelevant recycleable all week for the 'Palm Coast Biweekly Insert".  And the insert stinks.  Can't do a classified ad there.

CraigsList?  No Palm Coast Craigslist.  Do I advertise in the Daytona Beach Craigslist or the St. Augustine Craigslist?   Nahh.  It's getting smushed by the Pilgrims Progress Victorians, anyway and will soon expire, I think.  Insufficient Business Model.  Revenue dysfunction.  Premature elimination. 

I even took a booth at the St. Augustine Flee Market for a month.  Loved watching and talking with the strange and the proper, the sexy and the scary that paraded past my booth.  Even sold a lot of stuff off my tables.  Got some money.  Liked it.

Subbed for a friend and sold at a booth at the Big Show.  The Daytona Flea market.  That was fun too.  Even got to work a portable Visa Merchant Account machine.  But like a garage sale, it takes a lot of preparation; you have to show up  (big Ugggh) and it runs on weekends.  When you are out of work, this does not matter too much but this is football season.  Forgettabout it!

Find out what you like to do, do it with passion and to perfection.  The money will come  (maybe, you need luck, too).  I am publishing my garage sale.  Writing it.  Putting it out on http://www.palmcoastgaragesale.com/.  Photos, videos, free stuff, junk, treasures, anything I want.  Silent Auctions.  Firm Prices.  Highest Bid until sold.  I got all kinds of fun ideas and Andy, my website pro at http://creativepages.info/ is helping me (at a 'for charitable causes' rate).   

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