Cash In, Under Your Roof

Home is where the heart is. It’s also where you can find some hearty cash. From your unwanted clothes to dated jewelry, books collecting dust in your attic and toys - your junk, as they say, is someone else’s treasure.

In return, you could make $500 and up just by opening your eyes to what’s taking up space in your house. It’s a fast and easy way to help pay down your bills next month or buy a few fall fashion must-haves.

Financial expert for TLC's Real Life. Real Simple. Farnoosh Torabi was here to explain her five money-saving tips. Her show airs Fridays at 8pm.

For more information, visit www.realsimplereallife.com.

MONEY-SAVING TIPS AFTER THE VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP...

1. Your Overflowing Closet
For resale shops in your area, log onto The National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops website www.narts.org.

2. Make $100 From Old Bling
1. Take the current market price of gold per ounce (available at kitco.com and monex.com) and divide it by 20 to give you the pennyweight or dwt, a measure used to weigh precious metals.
2. Then multiply that number by the gold purity. A 24K piece is almost entirely pure gold, so in that case you multiply by 100% or 1.00. An 18 karat ring, though, is 75% pure gold or .75. The higher the purity, the higher the value of that gold piece.
3. Find the actual weight of the piece in pennyweights. You can buy a scale or you can do this at a jewelry store. You covert grams into pennyweight by multiplying by .64
4. Finally, multiply those three numbers: the pennyweight, the gold purity and the actual weight of the piece.
5. To sell it, you can either attend a gold party in your neighborhood (visit mygoldparty.com) or go to a local gold buyer or liquidator and cut a deal there.

3. Your Dusty Bookshelves
You can get about $10 to $12 a stack.
To get a sense of what certain books might resell for check out aggregate search sites like www.addall.com, www.aeb.com and www.bookfinder.com

4. Old Toy Chest
Sell items online on website like www.ebay.com

5. Couch Cushions
America could be $10 billion richer ($90 per household) if it simply cashed in all the loose coinage lying around, according to Coinstar, which operates coin machines in more than 15,000 supermarkets worldwide.