Times are tough for Americans. Yeah, yeah, tell us something we don’t know! Food and gasoline prices are at all-time highs. People are just simply tapped out. Earlier this decade, people were accessing the equity in their homes and taking cash out from their credit cards- but now, there’s nothing left to take. Nothing more to tap into. It’s down to bare bones now. So where are Americans going to get a little much needed cash? Well, to Craig’s List of course- and hey, why not? It’s the American way, after all. Craig’s list is sort of the “flea market” to the worldwide online public, offering ways to buy and sell just about anything you could ever want and it’s a wildly popular choice right now for desperate people who need some cash.We’re facing the worst economic times since the 1970’s. This isn’t simply downsizing were talking about here folks, no sir. This is sheer desperation. People are selling things to get money to pay for things like food, prescriptions and, you guessed it…gasoline. Since July, the amount of “for sale” ads at Craig’s List has risen 70%, and in March, the number of listings doubled to more than 15 million over March of last year. Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster said he is amazed at the “desperate tone” in some of the ads. He said that growth is “moving above the usual trend line.” Many of the ads have lines like “please help us” and “need to get some gas money” and one said, ”my mom lost her job, anything you can buy will help us.”
Yes, desperate times certainly do call for desperate measures, indeed. What is really sad to the Gorilla, is that many people are selling precious family heirlooms for gas money and essentials. There is everything from furniture and used cars, to engagement rings and antiques. The list is endless. One woman in Pennsylvania, Christina Hadley, is a 53-year-old registered nurse. She says she used to be a clotheshorse and collector of expensive bags, like Dooney and Bourke. Now, she says she is having a hard time paying the bills since her live-in boyfriend left a few months ago, leaving her to pay all the bills herself. She has put many of the bags up for sale on Craigslist and on other online auction sites to try and get some much needed cash. Piles of unpaid bills forced her to sell more than 80 items including, the handbags. Now she says her home looks “sparse.” “I need the money for essentials — to pay my bills and to eat,” Hadley said.
As sad as this scenario is, it certainly is a wonderful thing to be able to have this “venue” of sorts in which to sell items for cash. It’s like the new pawn shop of the era, but unlike your local pawn shop, which only gets exposed to a small community or city, you can expose your items to the entire world at once. Even in tough times, there are more solutions because of the Internet than ever before..