Charitable donations, Tax deductions! What do you with your stuff if you can’t move it. Part 1

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I enjoyed the comment made by Jennie about getting rid of stuff that cost more to ship than it is to just buy new. That was one of my mistakes as well! I moved into this fabulous apartment that is a lot smaller than what I was staying at in minneapolis and had a lot of extra furniture and other stuff. So the question is what do you do with all that stuff that you have lying around that you just don’t feel like throwing away?

Well…there are a few options:

1. Give it away to your friends in the current location that you are at (highly suggest this option as it is the most convenient)
2. give it away or sell it on craigslist - another easy option
3. put it out by the curb and people will take it away.
4. There are sites out there that you can post to give stuff away too such as www.freecycle.org which i think is a pretty neat site!
5. if you have books that you want to sell. I found that www.half.com is a great site because you set the price and its not like ebay where your stuff is only online for a limited time…it sells at some point, you just don’t know how long it will take. I had stuff on sale for months but it worked out in the end. Another growing website for used books is www.alibris.com - there are over 60 million used, new, and out of print books for sale there and there is a lot of traffic at that site. The key to selling your stuff though is to price it lower than everyone else. If you are like me, you as a consumer will buy the cheapest item on any list, plus think of it this way, if you didn’t sell it for a buck, it would have gone to the trash anyway!
6. donate your stuff to charity. Please remember in this situation….YOU CANNOT GET A TAX DEDUCTION FOR DONATIONS UNLESS YOU ITEMIZE YOUR TAX RETURN. This is not an “above the line tax deduction” so for people who take the standard deduction on your tax return, it won’t do you any good but for folks who do itemize it will save you some chunk of change on next years return for stuff you would have chucked out in the end anyway. A way to get around this hurdle for folks who do not itemize is to donate your thinks under your parents name and have them take the tax deduction. You could figure out how you want to split the return with them at some point. For me, I’m just giving them the tax deduction since i won’t be itemizing.

Tomorrow, I’ll go into more detail about where to donate your things and how to figure it all out for your next years taxes. Yes it is never too early to think about taxes!

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