Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Recently, I attended an estate sale. You probably know what I'm talking about, but I was driving down the road, saw a sign over on the side of the road that said estate sale at 1, 2, 3, Maple Street. And so being a lover of good deals, I turned my car and I went over to one, two, three, Maple Street, and I walked

around somebody's house. Now, the estate sale meant that everything was being sold. And I was

really impressed with how it was being handled. There was a company there that was clearly

handling the wholesale. There were about four or five wonderful ladies in wearing nice polo shirts

with monot with with embroidery on them, talking about their services. And I walked through

somebody's house. And everything in the house was for sale. It started outside, out in the front

yard. We could see the trailer with the side by side on it.

We could see the large fifth wheel camper, the pickup truck, everything had sales signs on it.

We could walk through the garage and see all the tools and everything had a price tag on it.

Then we walk through the house. And in every room of the house, we find more things.

This was a, I would say, normal middle class house, but it was big. You know, three or four bedrooms in it. And every bedroom had stuff. You know how it is when people go through life and they just accumulate and accumulate. They had dressers here. And there were beds and everything was nice, but you would open up the drawers. And here's a whole drawer full of collections of trinkets and bubbles and things, and everything had a little price tag, $4 on this, $5 on this.

You turn every corner, go through everything in the house, and everything has a price tag on it.

Now, unfortunately for me, as a deal lover, there really wasn't much of anything that I was particularly

interested in. All of the drawers were filled with trinkets, and there was evidence of the

former owners, hobbies, there was a yarn station, and just different things that were there.

And as I reflected on this, I felt a sense of sadness. I think when you go through

somebody's belongings after they're dead, and especially if you're a stranger, you kind of feel a

little strange walking through their house and basically bidding on all their stuff. And I don't like

to be critical of other people's junk. After all, my junk, I'm super attached to, right? I have my junk and it's important

and it's meaningful and I can open up my bags and my boxes and my drawers and I can show you why all

of my junk is valuable and why I want to have it. But if I walk into your house and I open up your

drawers and your bags and your boxes, all I see is junk. And I can quickly dismiss it

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