I have been looking forward to the Financial Bloggers Conference ever since attending last years’ conference, but I have decided not to attend. Given my current financial situation, the conference is a luxury that I can’t afford. Between the conference ticket, gas, parking, and a possible hotel room the conference would cost several hundred dollars. There would be some irony in going into credit card debt to attend a financial blogger’s conference. I’d like to have my van paid off and some money saved by the end of the year and attending the conference would be a serious setback to those goals.

I could just get a refund of my FinCon ticket, but I’d like to let somebody else use it. If you are interested in buying my FinCon ticket, leave a comment or email me. I’m selling the ticket for the price I paid for it, $111.75, which is a good discount to the current price of $149. It looks like the transfer process should be pretty easy.

For all of those who are attending FinCon, I hope you have a good time and I’ll see you next year.

You have probably seen tons of advertisements from place offering to buy your gold the past few years since the price of gold has skyrocketed. These ads made me wonder how much I could get for a couple of small gold rings I had, but I never did anything about it because I doubted the rings were worth much. The other day I saw an ad with a coupon offering $10 for getting your gold evaluated whether they buy your gold or not. Since the store was close to my gym I figured it would be worth walking over and getting my rings evaluated.

The cash for gold place I went to was a jewelry store. When I went in I was directed to a desk to get my gold evaluated. The jeweler first tested my gold with a magnet too make sure it wasn’t just gold plate. The rings passed that test, which I wasn’t sure that they would. He then looked at the rings with a loupe and found that they were marked 10 karat. That is the lowest grade of gold there is, but at least the rings weren’t just gold plated. He then rubbed the rings on a stone and put a drop of solution on the stone which confirmed the rings were 10 karat gold.

The jeweler then weighed the rings on his scale. Unfortunately, they were very small and lightweight rings and only weighed 2 grams together. I was offered $20 for the rings plus the $10 bonus for the coupon and I accepted. It seemed like a pretty good deal since I wasn’t going to be using the rings anyway.

I later did the math and it was a fair offer. At first glance it didn’t seem like a good deal. After factoring in that there are 31.1 grams in a troy ounce and 10 karat gold is only 41% pure, the price I received for my gold was fair. I probably should have done the math before selling the gold since I couldn’t have done much after selling it if I didn’t get a good deal. Since it was such a small amount I wasn’t too concerned.

It seems that selling any gold you have laying around can be a pretty good deal. Especially if you have a coupon. Has anyone else tried selling gold?

A couple of months ago I found a free book on Amazon on the subject of how to make money selling things on Amazon.  Overall, I didn’t find the book very impressive, but it did have some interesting information.  One of the things I found interesting was the author’s suggestion that you could buy products on clearance deals at your local retail stores and resell them for a profit on Amazon or eBay.  That seemed unlikely to me, but I made a note to check the clearance deals next time I was in a retail store.

My first check of clearance deals was at a Walmart and they had lots of stuff on clearance.  Most of the stuff didn’t look like it would sell for much.  I did spot a Mint floor cleaner that had been marked down from $198 to $75.  It looked to be in new condition.  A quick check on my phone showed the floor cleaners were selling for over $150 on eBay.  That seemed like a good profit to me so I went ahead and bought it.  I figured if it didn’t work or didn’t sell I could just return it.

The floor cleaner ended up selling for just over $150 on eBay.  After fees I made about $50 in profit. I was a little worried that there would be a problem with the cleaner. The cleaner worked fine though, and I received positive feedback from the buyer. It was a pretty good profit for maybe an hour’s worth of work.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find another deal anywhere near as good as that one.  Maybe some stores have more stuff marked down low enough that you can resell them for a profit, but I haven’t found them.  If you are in a store with a clearance section it might be worth taking a look though. It is one more way of possibly making a little extra money.