Now, I am confident that any expensive emergency is going to be able to wait the week for you to cash out a portion (and not a cent more) of your investments to cover it. Right? No hospital on this planet is going to refuse to stuff your jutting bone back into place until seeing cash first. This is why I ignore the common advice to keep a big savings account; also, the piddly interest is insulting. Money is constantly losing its value: why the hell would you keep it around and not put it to work? Also, unless your jar of change has a specific goal like gas money or one month of health insurance at the end of the year, it's also uselessly taking up space. You can usually avoid the ~10% fee at Coinstars by getting a gift card for the local store or Amazon, which hopefully has something you need. However, whether it's unplanned dental work, a minor car accident, or Nintendo selling its limited edition mini classic system and their deliberate BS underproduction is causing the street price to quadruple, sometimes you need more money than you have that month, but not enough to disturb your investments.
There is a lot of advice on how to make money quick that depends on luck, unpossessed skills, or illegal activities. I offer two suggestions that can get you money within a month: Amazon Flex and Unclaimed Property.
Amazon Flex is when you deliver items for the retailer, using your own car. After you download their app and consent to a background check, you're good to go within a day. This won't work for every major city in the US, but Amazon is expanding rapidly, and this will work for Seattle and Everett. I wrote a separate article about my first experience Flexing.
My advice for Flex? Phone charger and extra battery. Also, your initial package loading is important. Next time, I will make quadrants where the passenger seat is 1st - 50th street, the rear passenger is 51st - 100th street, trunk is large packages, and so on. However, you'll have a different breakdown every day: maybe it makes sense to organize them by zip code. Lastly, get a help phone number from the attendees because the app either doesn't provide it, or only provides it while your delivery route is open. All in all, I can recommend Amazon Flex as some great extra income that pays weekly. Uber customer service failed me when I got an error after signing up that 3 emails later, they still couldn't solve for me. Door Dash wanted me to complete registration in a city 30 miles away, so that's why I can't personally promote those other options.
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| The first celebrity name I could think of. Sorry if I exposed anyone... |
Unclaimed Property (via the WA State Dept of Revenue - search for your own state) is old bills and rebates that never made it to you because you moved or fudged the address. You enter your name, create an account, and upload some documents that prove you were at the previous address. Old driver's license, utility bills, old bank statements and tax documents are the most common types. For me, the addresses were so old that I had to use the comments section to appeal to them for having no proof I lived there. I'll let you know how it goes, but I should have a claim for ~$150 processing.
Think of these suggestions as the monthly equivalent to lifting the sofa cushions or raiding your car's ash tray (does anyone smoke anymore?) and scrounging for pizza.
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