Cape Town - As the festive season – a notoriously expensive time – draws to a close, many of us are breathing a sigh of relief.
We’ve made it, and relatively debt-free… but is this premature?
With our pockets already looking a little worse for wear, many of us are hit with the next big financial challenge: back to school spending.
Back to school expenses can exceed R10 000 per child – yes, you’ve read that correctly. Many parents underestimate the huge outflow of cash that’s involved. There’s the expected cost of stationary, textbooks, uniforms… but what about the daily travel costs, lunches, sports kit and the mandatory back to school haircut?
But you can easily make up some or all of these unwelcome costs by doing nothing other than clearing out some of the previous year’s school stuff and other items lying around no longer needed.
Online classified site Gumtree has put together some classic dust-gathering items that you can sell and given some tips as to how best to do it.
Toys & games
Regardless of the age of your child, one thing is as certain as death and taxes, kids get bored of this year’s toy or game, so why not sell it to someone else who is just getting into it. If you’ve got a young child about to go into pre-school, they’ve probably moved on from their Leapfrog, but by selling it on Gumtree you can make anywhere between R850 to R1 500 and games can add another couple of hundred rand to the mix.
If your pride and joy is a bit older though, heading into junior or high school, chances are sport is taking over their lives and with every growth spurt, comes the necessity to replace their sport kit. What about the old kit that’s maybe only be used for a season or two? Depending on their age and size, a full cricket kit e.g. bat, helmet, pads, gloves, etc. can make you R1 000 up to R2 000 plus. Hockey sticks can pull up to R500, stick bags R150, shin pads R150 and second-hand boots R400-500, and if your child is a goal-keeper you could reap in as much as R12,000 for the full kit.
Books
New and second-hand books are a big category on Gumtree, and can bring in a sizeable helping hand when procuring your kids next batch of textbooks.
It’s fantastic if your kids are hungry readers but it can be an expensive hobby if buying new each time. However, if they are ready popular series, these have high resale value. For example, the currently popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid can fetch up to R550 for a set and the now classic Harry Potter series going for up to R700 for a full set or at R50-100 per hardcover book.
Textbooks for all ages across junior and high school as well as tertiary levels are all available on Gumtree and can contribute a few hundred rand per book the older your kids get and the thicker and more specified the required textbooks become.
Mobile phones
It may seem a bit of an out-of-place consideration when talking back to school but nowadays, many of us have equipped our kids with mobile phones and these essential items maintain arguably the highest resale value of any products sold on Gumtree. Depending on whether you are upgrading your kid’s phone or your own, the previous model is highly sought-after as a second hand option for someone else. If you have a unit that you can sell, check out Gumtree’s mobile phone price checker where you can enter the make and model of your phone to see just how much you could make: http://www.gumtree.co.za/pages/price checker/samsung/.
There is a gold mine of old items lying around your house that your kids and you no longer need that can completely eradicate the drastic back to school expenses if you just get selling on Gumtree, and what’s more, it’s easy.
Download the app or get on the website and if you’re a first-time user, or even an experienced hand looking to pick up a few tips to sell faster or better, check out some seller tips here: http://www.gumtree.co.za/pages/sellers/.
IOL, adapted from a press release.