The Facey Family / Flickr

This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.

If you’re cleaning up your home this spring, don’t just throw things away. Make money from spring cleaning by selling things you no longer need or want. Below you will find my suggestions for where to sell used books, clothes, electronics and much more. I added five suggestions to avoiding a major headache when selling items.

1. Clothes – If your clothes are in good condition try selling them at a local local flea market. This will be time consuming as you’ll have to find a local flea market and wait till an interested party approaches you. If you don’t have time for this, use sites like eBay and Smashion.com.
2. Cell phones – If you have old cell phones lying around, try selling them on NextWorth.com. This website helps you sell, upgrade and/or recycle cell phones, iPods and video games.
3. Electronics – Sell your old laptops, eReaders, MP3 players and calculators on YouRenew.com. The site will give you an estimate of how much you could get to sell your item. My old MP3 player is worth about $25.
4. Books – There are a lot of sites to sell textbooks, but CKYbooks.com also buys fiction and nonfiction books. They pay for the shipping and later sell you a check. Cha-ching!
5. Music instruments – Have old instruments at home you swore you’d learn to play on your own? Guilty. I have a keyboard that I’m not selling because I’m still in denial. But if you are looking to sell old instruments, try MusicGoRound.com. They will look at your equipment and give you an estimate. You will have to bring it in to a store so if you don’t live near one of their stores, call your local instrument store to see if they buy used items.
6. Gold jewelry – Bargain Babe suggest selling your unwanted jewelry at a pawn shop, but you may want to visit a local jewelry store first. Compare offers and maybe even use them to negotiate a better deal.
7. Garage sale – If you live in a high traffic area and have a combination of valuable and everyday items, consider getting rid of everything at once with a garage sale. Whatever does sell, put in a box labeled FREE and post a note on Craigslist with a list of items that are curbside. You’ll be surprised how quickly everything goes! How to run a garage sale part 1 and part 2.

Here are five ways to protect yourself when selling your unwanted items and maximize your sells.

1. Make sure you are selling your items to a reputable company.
2. Try mailing your items instead of having the person pick them up at your place.
3. If they need to pick up heavy items like furniture from your place, make sure to have a friend with you.
4. Make your listings on websites as descriptive as possible and include photos. The more information you give a potential buyer, the more likely you are to sell the items. Buyers like to know why you are selling the item, original purchase price, and condition to start.
5. If you end up donating the items, make sure to ask for a receipt so you can get a tax write off when you do your taxes.

lism / Flickr

This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.

The transition to digital media and cheap sources of music have caused the near extinction of record shops and if you’re out of college you probably have CDs worth a couple of bucks lying around. AbundaTrade.com is a website that lets you trade or sell your CDs, DVDs , books, and video games. You can earn cash, trade in stuff for new electronics like an iPod, or donate your trade-in value to charity. Best of all the site is free to join.

AbundaTrade.com is based in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina and if you don’t have any trade shops in your area, this is a great alternative to barter and swap for things you want or need.  While browsing the site, I saw used CDs as cheap as a buck and as expensive as a new CD. The site is also designed to give you a quick estimate of your items’ value when you input the UPC or ISBN numbers.

Here’s the bad news. You are responsible for the cost of shipping your trade-ins, including any items that are rejected and you request to have them returned. AbundaTrade.com offers free shipping to people trading $50 worth of CDs, DVDs, and video games. They accept items in good physical condition that are in demand.

Through out the site there are customer testimonials about the companies’ great customer service, but a quick search reveals that the best way to reach them is through e-mail. AbundaTrade has a phone number, but the company discloses they rarely answer customer calls.  I don’t know about you, but I prefer to speak to a human when I need to reach customer service instead of speaking to a machine or sending an e-mail.

If you have a lot of CDs and DVDs at home that you no longer use, AbundaTrade is one site that can help you profit from them.

irina slutsky/Flickr

By Mike Barclay of 10CentsWorth.com.

A few weeks back a friend of mine who works for a local radio station approached me. “Would you be interested in passing out a bunch of flyers for an event we’re doing if I got you some concert tickets?” I instantly said yes, seeing as I’m the world’s biggest concert guru. Now I am the proud owner of free tickets to two shows I’ve been hoping to see.

But were they really free?

Technically the tickets were not free. Did I have to pay money for them? I did not. Was there some type of exchange that was beneficial to both parties? Yes there was. We used a medium that most people today don’t really think about, or even understand they may be doing. It’s called bartering.

Bartering is defined as trading goods or services without the exchange of money, according to Dictionary.com. We should all look into it. How much money would we end up saving if we traded services or items around the house for something we did need?

Here are three great sites I’ve found in my swapping frenzy as of late.

Most people use Craigslist for classifieds, but have you ever clicked on the “barter” section in your cities? Craigslist is great if you want to go super general. And it’s always going to be local. If you’re looking for more specific swapping, check out these next two sites.

SwapTree.com – As I mentioned before, I’m a big music fanatic. So when I found SwapTree, I wet myself. It’s all about media: books, DVD’s, CD’s, etc. You can trade your stuff or browse what other people have and make an offer. Needless to say, I’ve had it up on my computer screen for the past week, constantly looking at what I can find.

Zwaggle.com – Zwaggle is strictly for all things tot-sized. Babies, toddlers, you name it, they’ve got something for it. It’s a perfect site for new couples having their first child and for the couple with kids who’ve outgrown everything and want to get rid of the stash.

So the next time you want a new CD, clothes, books, or need something fixed and can offer something in return, remember you don’t always have to use dollars. Look into trading or swapping and see if you can do it without having to touch your wallet.

Woman are better at riding out stock market crashes, while men are more likely to sell during lows, says the Sunday’s New York Times. “There’s been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they’re doing, even when they really don’t know what they’re doing,” said John Ameriks, a Vanguard exec who co-authored the study. (Kind of like how men hate asking for directions…)

Men’s overconfidence led them to trade stocks nearly 50 percent more often than women. “This added trading drove up the men’s costs and lowered their returns,” the story said.

It is interesting that the story and the researchers interpret men’s propensity for selling in a volatile market as overconfidence and not emotional weakness. I bet many people – men and women – who sold stocks as the market fell last year were motivated by fear. Fear that their investments, their retirement, and their future would be dashed if they didn’t do something about it.

The emotional pressure to survive a falling stock market may have been felt greater by men, who carry a societal burden to be breadwinners. That could be a factor in why men mistakenly sold off stocks more often then women. If there’s one thing I’ve heard about being a good investor, it is that you can’t make financial decisions based on emotions and come out ahead.

Men’s overconfidence, however, also led them to take greater risks than women, which can mean bigger returns. Women feel safer with the slow and steady earnings from bonds, apparently.

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It’s unclear how significant these differences are, and the reasons behind it. Nature? Nurture? Or…? Researchers are studying how our emotions effect our finances and are looking at ties between testosterone and risk-taking. In the meantime, I’m holding onto what I’ve got.