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CONCORD, NH – No one wants a weasel on them Thanksgiving tablebut swapping turkeys for other animals was once surprisingly common.

Trading turkeys – for wildlife management, not dinner – was a key part of one of North America’s biggest conservation success stories. After dwindling to a few thousand birds in the late 1880s, the wild turkey population has grown to about 7 million birds in 49 states, plus more in Canada and Mexico, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation.

In many cases, restoration relied on trades. The exchange rates varied, but Oklahoma once swapped walleye and prairie chickens for turkeys from Arkansas and Missouri. Colorado traded mountain goats for turkeys from Idaho. The Canadian province of Ontario ended up with 274 turkeys from New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Michigan, Missouri and Iowa in exchange for moose, river otters, and partridge.

“Wildlife biologists don’t suffer from a lack of creativity,” said Pat Dorsey, director of conservation for the National Wild Turkey Federation’s western region.

West Virginia in particular appears to have had an abundance of turkeys to share. In 1969, it sent 26 turkeys to New Hampshire in exchange for 25 fishermen, a member of the weasel family once prized for its pelt. Later trades involved otters and bobwhite quail.

“They were like our currency for all our wildlife that we restored,” said Holly Morris, furbearer and small game project leader at the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “It’s just a way to help out other agencies. We’re all in the same mission.”

Wild turkeys were abundant across the US until the mid-1800s, when the clearing of forestland and unregulated hunting led the population to plummet. Early restoration efforts in the 1940s and 50s involved raising turkeys on farms, but that didn’t work well, Dorsey said.

“Turkeys that had been raised in a pen didn’t do very well in the wild,” she said. “That’s when we started capturing them out of the wild and moving them around to other places to restore their population, and they really took off.”

In New Hampshire, wild turkeys hadn’t been seen for more than 100 years when the state got the West Virginia flock. Although those birds quickly succumbed to a harsh winter, another flock sent from New York in 1975 fared better. With careful management that included moving birds around the state dozens of times over the ensuing decades, the population has grown to roughly 40,000 birds, said Dan Ellingwood, a biologist with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. That’s likely well beyond the expectations at the time of reintroduction, he said.

“Turkeys are incredibly adaptive,” he said. “Winter severity has changed, the landscape has changed, and yet the population really took off.”

Turkeys play an important role in a healthy ecosystem as both predator and prey, he said, and are a popular draw for hunters. But the restoration effort is also important just for the sake of ensuring native species continue to persist, he said.

Dorsey, at the National Wild Turkey Federation agreed, noting that turkey restoration projects also helped states revive their populations of other species.

“A lot of good work gets done on the back of the wild turkey,” she said.

President Donald Trump wants to send $2,000 checks to some Americans. He can’t do it on his own.

He needs Congress to sign off on it.

To actually get checks into mailboxes, both the House and the Senate would need to sign off on the plan. Since Congress controls the power of the purse, the president can’t spend money that hasn’t been approved by the legislature.

Getting anything through Congress is difficult these days, even when the party in power is largely on the same page. Just look at how long it took the GOP to pass the “Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this year.

Stimulus checks, in particular, would be even more difficult: Several Republicans have already said they’re opposed to the idea.

“It’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told BI over the summer.

“I would oppose it,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told BI.

“It’ll never pass,” Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio told reporters months ago. “We have a $37 trillion debt.”

Across the board, Republicans have said that they would prefer to see any revenue raised by tariffs be used to pay down the national debt.

Even if Congress did approve tariff checks, there are other issues.

The Supreme Court may strike down many of Trump’s tariffs, cutting off the revenue that would fund the checks. And sending $2,000 to some Americans could end up driving up inflation in the long run.

“President Trump’s tariffs are resetting global commerce, securing manufacturing investments, and safeguarding our national and economic security — and they’re also raising billions in revenue for the federal government,” a White House official told BI in response to questions about the tariff plan. “The Administration is committed to putting this money to good use for the American people.”

Here’s what would have to happen to get tariff checks out the door

The government has sent out checks to Americans before: It happened three times during the COVID-19 pandemic under both Trump and President Joe Biden.

Each time, Congress signed off on it, either via a government funding bill or an economic stimulus bill like the CARES Act or the American Rescue Plan.

Trump’s proposal is relatively light on details. He has said that it will go to “low and middle income” Americans, but has not laid out particular brackets. He has also said that there will still be significant revenue left over for paying down the debt.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has introduced a version of Trump’s proposal, which would provide at least $600 to Americans making less than a certain income amount per year.

That amount would begin phasing out for individuals making more than $75,000, joint filers making more than $150,000, and household heads making more than $112,500.

When high-powered Democratic attorney Kathryn Ruemmler — now the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs — needed to vent about Donald Trump’s rise in politics, she turned to their mutual acquaintance, Jeffrey Epstein.

“Trump is living proof of the adage that it is better to be lucky than smart,” she told Epstein in an email in August 2015, while planning a visit to his Manhattan mansion.

Later, Ruemmler expressed alarm about Trump’s climb in the polls.

“The Trump success is seriously scary,” she wrote in February 2016.

The two chatted frequently about the 2016 presidential election and transition. (In one email, Ruemmler seemed to criticize Trump’s Cabinet picks as “moronic.”) They shared gripes well into Trump’s first term, as well as news articles on everything from Trump’s approach to Big Tech to the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“Trump is truly stupid,” Ruemmler wrote in one 2017 email. “Trump is so gross,” she said a few months earlier.

The emails, released by the House Oversight Committee this week, were exchanged during Trump’s first term in office and before Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs five years ago.

Ruemmler has previously said she regrets her association with Epstein.

“​​The personal emails exclusively occurred before Kathy worked at Goldman Sachs, when Ms. Ruemmler was the global head of the White Collar Defense practice at Latham and Watkins,” Goldman Sachs spokesperson Tony Fratto told Business Insider Thursday. “As we’ve said before, and has been repeatedly reported, Ms. Ruemmler had a professional relationship with Mr. Epstein when she was at Latham & Watkins.”

The newly released emails suggest a deeper relationship between Ruemmler and Epstein than was previously known.

Ruemmler confided in Epstein when a rival law firm tried to poach her, when looking for a New York City apartment, and when she was being vetted for consideration as attorney general of the United States. She also turned to him for minor issues, like what it’s like to fly Emirates, the airline.

“When I go to Dubai on Emirates, do I need to go first or is business class good enough given that I only care about sleeping?” Ruemmler asked Epstein after telling him Apple had hired her for a patent lawsuit.

Epstein said “biz is ok,” but offered her a ride on a friend’s private jet. Ruemmler said she’d stick with the commercial airline.

A legal star feted by Epstein

The exchanges span from 2014, shortly after Ruemmler left her job as White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, until June 2019, a month before Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges. Nothing in the emails, which the House Oversight Committee obtained from Epstein’s estate, suggests Ruemmler had knowledge of the alleged conduct.

At the time, Ruemmler worked at the Big Law firm Latham & Watkins, which had previously said Epstein was never a client of the firm; it did not respond to requests for comment about the latest emails.

Ruemmler was widely viewed as a legal star in the Democratic Party. CEO was floated as a possible Supreme Court pick and had served as a lawyer in Bill Clinton’s White House.

Ruemmler moved to Goldman Sachs in 2020 and now serves as the investment bank’s chief legal officer and general counsel. She serves on Goldman Sachs’ Firmwide Reputational Risk Committee, according to the bank’s website.

Epstein — a financier with connections to titans of finance, science, and global politics — killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting an underage girl for sex.

It is unclear from the emails whether Epstein ever hired Ruemmler as a lawyer. At least three emails from Ruemmler to Epstein were redacted for what was described as “privilege.” A lawyer for the executors of Epstein’s estate, which provided the emails to the House Oversight Committee, did not respond to a request for comment about the redactions.

On several occasions, Epstein looped Ruemmler into email discussions with other prominent attorneys he had personally hired, including Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Martin Weinberg, and Darren Indyke.

Epstein and Ruemmler often emailed each other asking to speak on the phone. He included her in emails with other attorneys about responding to press inquiries about his relationship with Trump and Clinton. Epstein also forwarded to her a plan that the writer Michael Wolff presented to him in 2016 about countering the impending negative press from the James Patterson book “Filthy Rich,” which is about Epstein.

In a January 2019 draft of his will, Epstein named Ruemmler as the backup executor to his estate, according to a copy released by the House Oversight Committee earlier this year. The final edition of the will, completed while Epstein was incarcerated and shortly before his death, replaced her with Boris Nikolic, a former scientific advisor to Bill Gates. Epstein’s estate was ultimately co-executed by his first choice: Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn.

To be or not to be Attorney General

In October 2014, news publications reported that Ruemmler turned down an offer from then-President Barack Obama to serve as the head of the Justice Department, replacing Eric Holder.

Some of the most intense discussions between Epstein and Ruemmler took place in the weeks leading up to it the public announcement that Holder would step downeven Ruemmler considered whether to take his job. Epstein compared the indecision to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Ruemmler said she had recently found a high-rent apartment in New York. And she was unsure she would secure enough votes to be confirmed in the US Senate.

“I signed the lease in my name for a year, so I think I’m pretty stuck,” she told Epstein. “It is $11,000 a month and Latham reimburses $8,000 a month.”

Days before The White House’s public announcement about Holder stepping down, Ruemmler confided in Epstein that she wanted to lead the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.

“I think I should do it,” she wrote.

At another point in the discussion, Epstein advised Ruemmler to “talk to the boss” about taking the job.

“Agreed, but I need to be prepared to say yes before I talk to him,” Ruemmler responded.

In the same conversation, Epstein offered to introduce her to powerful people in his network, including Leon Black, Woody Allen, Peter Thiel, Larry Summers, and Nikolic.

Earlier, in 2016, Ruemmler had sought other career advice from Epstein. She forwarded emails from a recruiter with Hogan Lovells, another big law firm, seeking to hire her.

Epstein suggested she push for more details about compensation.

“ask him for a financial proposal,” he wrote. “Subject to mutually acceptable conditions.”

Some of the emails are cryptic. On one occasion, Epstein asked, “how did Musk call go?”

“Well, I think, but not because of me,” Ruemmler responded. “The existential crisis thing is not a PMS or menopausal pose.”

In a July 2018 email, Ruemmler sent a context-free message to Epstein about Trump.

“Your boy should distance himself from Trump. Quick,” she wrote.

The economy’s not in a recession, but the job market sure feels like we’re recovering from one.

The labor market’s lack of movement, dubbed a “Great Freeze,” is becoming reminiscent of job availability following the 2008 financial crisiswrites BI’s Madison Hoff.

The hiring rate in August was just 3.2%, a big drop off from the 4.6% rate in late 2021 as the economy was reopening. The last time hiring was consistently that low was in the early 2010s when the job market was still recovering from the Great Recession.

The silver lining is that unemployment has remained relatively low, especially compared to the recovery from the Great Recession. But the unique setup of having both a low hiring rate AND unemployment still presents a few problems.

First, it means people are staying put, or “job hugging.” It’s reminiscent of the current housing market, where homeowners who might want to sell their current home are refusing to do so because they’re locked into an ultra-low rate. (Must be nice!)

There are also the youngsters to consider. For those of us with a job, the Great Freeze is manageable, albeit annoying. But many recent college grads don’t have that same benefit, and this spring will bring a whole new crop looking to enter the workforce.

Finally, there are the broader implications of what enables a low-hiring, low-unemployment environment to even exist. For some companies, the promise of AI efficiencies could be giving them pause about staffing up.

If you’re hoping to get some sympathy from the higher-ups, think again. CEOs are the one group that isn’t holding onto jobswrites BI’s Tim Paradis.

It’s not all bad news.

Some hiring is still taking place. And if anyone knows who is on the hunt for workers, it’s recruiters.

Lucky for you, we’ve done some of the legwork. With the help of Plant-A Insights, BI compiled a list of the top 750 recruiting firms in the US.

These recruiters cover a wide range of industries. The list was compiled using a survey of approximately 22,000 professionals who evaluated these firms on several key factors. (If you’re really interested in the methodology, we break it all down.)

Still, maybe you’re just burned out from the corporate life (or not even looking to get started in it). One of the benefits of the 2008 financial crisis was the innovation it inspired in some people. There’s no better motivation to start your own business than having no other options.

And, love it or hate it, AI has made it easier to spin up an idea that previously would have required more work.

If you’re going to go it alone, BI’s Kathleen Elkins has some good insight. She spoke to several successful entrepreneurs and business owners about how to get their idea off the ground.

“Where is home?”

If someone had asked me that question five years ago, I would have paused.

I was born in Florida, but spent my adolescent years in Singapore. Then, I returned to the US for college before moving to Mozambique, Venezuela, Australia, Sudan, Thailand, the US againPoland, and Ukraine.

The first time I moved to a new place was when I was 13 years old. I remember feeling uncertain: All I’d known was Florida’s climate, American cuisine, and weekends spent waterskiing at the lake.

Singapore was a massive adjustment. Suddenly, I was living on an island with high-rise buildings, a modern public transit system, and a myriad of cultures, languages, food, and religious beliefs — and I loved it.

My move to Singapore set in motion a desire to explore new places. I sought out a career as a US diplomat that allowed me to travel to, live in, and learn about other countries. I met my husband, also a US diplomat, on my first day of work.

After 10 years, I resigned to become a stay-at-home mom, but our family continued to move around the world as my husband received new assignments.

Through nearly three decades of travel, I began to understand myself better. With each move, I embraced the philosophy that the only constant in life is change — and I thrived when exploring new places.

When we moved to Rhode Island, I finally saw myself staying in one place for good

Then, in 2018, my husband got an assignment that brought us to coastal Rhode Island. We were quickly embraced by our neighbors, from the lobster fisherman down the street to the parents from the local elementary school.

Almost instantly, they made us feel like a part of the community by inviting us into their homes, filling us in on the local festivals and best-kept secret spots, and encouraging us to join neighborhood sports teams and activities.

During what was our shortest assignment to any place, ever, I discovered that many of the attributes I had come to love about other cultures existed here.

I witnessed the same care for the environment and appreciation for work-life balance that I found in Australia, and the connection to the outdoors and full realization of the seasons that I loved in Poland.

There was an unassuming sense of peace and beauty that reminded me of Mozambique. Our neighbors’ warm, inviting attitude reminded me of the people I met in Thailand.

For the first time, it occurred to me that this could be a place where I’d be happy to stay.

I’ve found a sense of belonging that solidified Rhode Island as my forever home

After leaving Rhode Island in 2019, we spent the next three years in Washington, DC, and Ukraine.

Every summer, though, we returned to Rhode Island to visit friends and create summer traditions: savoring a cup of frozen lemonade on the beach, taking a nature walk at Sachuest Point, and learning new tricks at sailing camp.

In 2022, we jumped on the opportunity to return to Rhode Island for a three-year assignment. Moving back here felt like coming home.

The best thing about our town is the strong sense of community. Adults and children are welcomed into the community band and theater, nonprofits teach people about the local marine environment, and residents organize Hallmark-like holiday celebrations every year.

The town bakeries and bars are immensely valuable community gathering spots that support local artists and students by championing their work.

Residents volunteer to coach youth sports, assist at the food pantry, beautify the island’s public spaces, safeguard our historical sites, and so much more.

So many people here take on a role greater than themselves to make this place extraordinary, creating a sense of community and belonging. It was the final puzzle piece of “home” that I didn’t know was missing.

No one place has it all figured out, but Jamestown, Rhode Island, comes pretty close. We bought a home here in 2023, and although we have a couple of overseas adventures left, we know this will be our final destination.

It took me 40 years to find my “home.” If I had found it earlier, though, would I have appreciated it as much? Would I have understood why its special nature suited me so well?

Decades of travel and living abroad have culminated in a feeling of comfort, ease, and belonging in Jamestown, and finally an answer to the question, “Where is home?”

ChatGPT just added a group chat feature, which is intriguing and slightly confusing. You add your friends to a new chat inside the app, and then as you and the real humans chat away, the AI ​​chatbot can weigh in as needed.

Like I said, intriguing. The idea of ​​moving your group chat with friends to something that lives inside ChatGPT is, well, somewhat headache-inducing, if only from a privacy and security standpoint. I won’t even touch on the freakiness of moving our social lives into an AI chatbot app — I’ll let you ponder the implications of that all on your own.

I can imagine there is some usefulness, though. In the demo video created by OpenAI about the feature, a group chat is shown where friends are trying to decide where to meet for dinner, and it provides several restaurant recommendations.

(Side note: “Trying to decide what restaurant to pick” is a human conundrum use case that seems like every tech company has attempted at various points to solve. There are, indeed, many potential technical solutions here, although, in my experience, the only true fix is ​​having one extremely forceful person in the group who goes ahead and picks a place for everyone.)

Anyway, I had to test out this new group chat feature.

I tried inviting some friends to three separate group chats with ChatGPT. Now, of course, I was testing it out for the first time, so we were doing the standard “let’s play with a new AI tool” schtick. In one chat, we pretended to have an argument and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to get ChatGPT to take sides; we accused ChatGPT of hurting our feelings. Our immediate impulse to try to torture a chatbot as a sort of game reminded me of a famous tweet about killing ET with hammers.

In another chat, we tried to talk normally, but ChatGPT kept butting in. One weird thing is that ChatGPT replies to almost everything people write unless it’s explicitly addressing the other person (“Hey Peter…”).

This, as you can imagine, is pretty annoying. ChatGPT tends to be long-winded compared to a typical human. It answers in paragraphs and bullet points, with lots of throat-clearing and hedging, taking up inches and inches of screen per answer. This is fine when it’s just you and ChatGPT, but somehow reading ChatGPT’s replies to someone else is intolerable.

As for the restaurant use case, I suppose it needs a little work. I asked him for a restaurant in NYC, and he suggested Gramercy Tavern, which is very famous, expensive, and hard to get a table at. But, surah.

It was, however, helpful when I tried doing a “normal” chat with my colleagues Peter and Pranav. Pranav talked about weekend plans for a hike, and I asked ChatGPT to make him an itinerary. It gave him helpful advice (screenshot his parking pass because there was spotty cell service — good tip!).

None of these were particularly amazing or unique uses for ChatGPT, just one-on-one, and they weren’t particularly thrilling in a group chat, either.

I won’t be taking my group chats to ChatGPT

I don’t imagine I’ll switch my group chats to the ChatGPT app anytime soon. But I can see some other great potential uses for it as a multi-user version of ChatGPT. Think of a group study session, or coworkers writing code together, or preparing meeting notes, or the myriad of other things people use ChatGPT for — now just with another person able to do it, too.

I don’t think my personal group chats need an AI assistant at the moment (maybe yours do? I don’t know your weird life!), but the ability to work with another person inside the same ChatGPT chat seems productive and appealing.

Like with any new AI product, figuring out “what will people use this for?” is a bit of a guess, and there’s a huge range and lots of unexpected uses. I’m curious to see what happens here — email me to tell me if you have fun uses for this with your friends: [email protected]. I want to hear!

Morgan Freeman, 88, says he has no plans to retire just yet.

Speaking to AARP in an interview published on Tuesday, the actor spoke about his desire to keep acting and how he’s approaching aging with purpose.

“There is a saying about old age — ‘Keep moving’ — and what Clint Eastwood, 95, says: ‘Don’t let the old man in,’” Freeman told AARP. “The way to do that is to keep getting up in the morning, keep working out in the gym, keep taking your vitamins, keep taking your prescribed meds, and keep moving. Keep moving. That is the secret to it all.”

True to that philosophy, Freeman continues to take on new projects. He is set to return to the silver screen in the upcoming film “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” which premieres on November 14.

Even as he approaches 90, Freeman hopes to continue pursuing his hobbies.

“Will I still be playing golf? That’s the question,” he said.

In an interview with The Guardian published Monday, Freeman said retirement does cross his mind now and then, but never for long.

“Sometimes the idea of ​​retirement would float past me but, as soon as my agent says there’s a job, or somebody wants you, or they’ve made an offer, the whole thing just boils back into where it was yesterday: how much you’re going to pay, where we’re gonna be?” Freeman said.

He added that although his passion isn’t quite what it used to be, it hasn’t completely gone out.

“The appetite is still there. I will concede that it’s dimmed a little. But not enough to make a serious difference,” Freeman said.

He joins a growing list of high-profile figures who see no reason to stop doing what they love just because of their age.

In a May 2024 interview with James Corden, Kris Jenner — who is now 70 — said she has no plans to retire, citing her mother’s example as motivation.

“Because my mom retired when she was 82 and she talks about her job every single day when we’re together, and she will say to me, ‘Oh, my job kept me young, and with purpose, and with joy,’” Jenner said.

In August, Wall Street veteran Burt Malkiel, 92, told Business Insider that he still spends “a fair amount of time each day working” despite his age.

“I’m sure that the rest of us will probably feel much better by working longer, and the economy will be stronger,” Malkiel said.

A few weeks ago, something terrible happened. I arrived at the gym and realized I’d forgotten my headphones.

I was tempted to throw my car into reverse, tear out of the parking garage, and zip back home to get them (or just throw in the towel on the workout entirely that day). But I trudged in, resigned to the fact that I’d have to listen to the gym’s often terrible soundtrack and go without my trusty amp-up playlist.

Not wearing headphones led to a pleasant interaction

At one point, I was resting on a hip thrust machine, letting my mind wander without auditory stimuli beaming directly into my brain — kind of nice, actually — when a woman called, “Hey, do you have a second?” and asked for advice on using the belt squat machine. I was happy to help, and we chatted for a bit before exchanging friendly goodbyes. If I see her there again, I know I’ll say hello and chat with her again. Later, I realized: Maybe my no-headphones gym day led to making a new friend.

I’ve long been an advocate for the gym as a place to make friends. I wrote an article in 2024 about how group fitness classes, in particular (which I taught for several years), are especially conducive to friendship-making because they foster the proximity, frequency, and shared interest necessary to connect with others. From teaching and attending classes myself, I’ve established new friendships that persist to this day.

But when I go to the open floor plan gym by myself, things are obviously a lot less social. I move through my lifting routine with my big, clunky headphones firmly planted over my ears. As a typically extroverted person, this isn’t always meant to be a “leave me alone” move (I’ve also written that I think it’s OK to flirt with people in the gym, with caveats!); it’s just become a habit, and blasting music of my choice really does help me during my sessions.

The issue, though, is that headphones-on is pretty universally regarded as a ‘do not approach’ sign, and I wonder if the woman who asked me for help would have felt as comfortable doing so if I had my ears blocked by my Bose headphones. I know I’d feel less disruptive, even subconsciously, to talk to someone if I didn’t have to make the “Can I bother you to take your headphones off?” gesture first.

I wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed to have even the smallest friendly interaction with someone because we’re all locked into our own worlds on the gym floor. I ended up feeling glad that I’d forgotten my headphones that day. It was a minor inconvenience that turned into a pleasant benefit.

I won’t always go headphone-free, but now, I’ll find a happy medium

I’m not suggesting that anyone should go totally headphones-free if they don’t want to (I won’t), and I understand that for many people, the gym is a place to focus on movement and decompress from days filled with perhaps too many person-to-person interactions at work and elsewhere.

For me, though, someone who works from home as a writer and spends inordinate hours alone, small interactions with other people keep me feeling happy and human. From now on, I’ll probably go headphones-on during my sets and pop them off in between. I want gyms to feel like friendlier places, and maybe this is a simple start.

Friday is coming and I’m itching to go out for a night on the town with my husband. Luckily, my next porch pickup is scheduled to arrive soon, so I’ll be adding a few more dollars to my wallet.

With everyone’s budget stretched thin, it seems that more people are turning to Facebook for a deal. This works out well for me and gives me an extra incentive to tidy up my house.

Selling items as cheap as $5 adds up and has meant sending some substantial extra money into my pocket over the years. These days, I like to set this cash aside to have on hand when the weekend comes around and my husband and I need a little break from our five kids.

My tiny side hustle funds our date nights

That t-shirt I ordered online that didn’t fit right, that I can no longer return? I can get $7 for that. Some weird vase I got at a garage sale years ago and no longer use? Someone will probably pay me $5 for that. And they do.

By the weekend, I might have made $50 to $60 by selling items that I no longer need or want. One week, I unloaded two bins of kids’ clothes and made $125.

If I girl math my way through it, this extra cash means that I only have to really consider the cost of dinner and drinks, or an activity, rather than all that plus a sitter. So, date nights are more affordable and more likely to happen regularly.

I always have items to sell

I’ve been doing this for about 10 years, and I still haven’t run out of things that I want to trade for a few dollars.

Once I realized how lucrative this side hustle could be, I established a “sell bin” near my front door, where I stash things that are on my nerves, unnecessary, outgrown, or otherwise need to leave my house ASAP. For me, this makes selling a little more mindless and a lot less stressful.

I’ve learned a lot through years of selling

If you want items to sell quickly — and I do — I’ve learned that you have to price them correctly. Many people overprice items on Facebook Marketplace, but I’ve found that pricing them very low — usually at just 10 to 30% of their original price — helps me move more volume.

Dropping prices can also attract more buyers to your item, as Facebook highlights when a seller reduces the price of items posted through Facebook Marketplace. Everyone loves getting a deal, and I’m usually happy to negotiate as well.

Another strategy I’ve seen work well, and have tried myself, is thinking way, way ahead when selling things like kids’ clothes. For example, if I’ve finished with my summer clothes, I put them in a box labeled “sell these summer clothes in spring of 2026” and then stash them in my basement until next year. Nobody wants to buy your old summer items when it’s November.

I prioritize safety when selling

I usually have buyers come to my home, where I have a security camera by my door. If I agree to meet a buyer in person for a sale, I try to bring someone with me and meet in a very public place, such as the parking lot of a grocery store.

While I sometimes post my items on Facebook Marketplace, I’ve found that I can sell just as many items by posting in smaller, more targeted groups. I belong to a handful of local mom groups on Facebook, so I often sell there and end up knowing some of the people I’m selling to, rather than frequently dealing with strangers.

I work from home, so it’s easy for me to be available for multiple pickups a week. However, I try to do mostly porch pickups for convenience.