Recession 101- #2- Need cash now? Here are 35 ways to LEGALLY put money in your pocket TODAY
No need to build a meth lab, sell your children to a slave trader, or put Granny out on the corner to turn tricks, here are a bunch of LEGIT ways to raise some cash TODAY
The suitcase full of money, as seen in about a thousand different thriller movies in the last 60 years. That’s what you’re hoping for right now, isn’t it? I can’t help you find this suitcase. But I do have a lot of ideas of how to legally come up with some cash today. #publicdomainphoto
One of the biggest things that happens to people in recessions is that people get into a cash crunch. Someone gets laid off, or their hours get cut at work, a small business goes through a slump, and the cash coming in drops. Or maybe the car breaks down, the kids needs school clothes, a bill you’ve been putting off goes to collection, and you have to pay for something you weren’t expecting… now. There are a thousand different scenarios where people need to come up with some amount of money real quick.
If you Google the typical frantic search phrases, like “need cash now, need cash today, need money now, need money today, need cash fast, or need money fast,” most of the first page of search results are links to places to get short term, really high interest loans. In most cases, one of those loans will probably put people into an even worse position in the next few months. Yet there are a whole bunch of legitimate ways to come up with money, today, to deal with the crisis. It’s a long list, so I’ll get right into it, starting with smaller amounts of money first, then moving up to bigger ideas.
(One) Cash in a jar of change you’ve been adding to over time.
(Two) Cash in recyclables like aluminum cans, or plastic and glass bottles.
(Three) Sell an old cell phone to a friend, local phone dealer, or one of those machines that give you cash for old phones.
(Four) Cash in scrap metals that you may have laying around to a scrap dealer, like copper, scrap aluminum, steel, maybe even an old washing machine or refrigerator. This one makes may work out for construction workers, handyman types, and, of course, tweekers.
(Five) Call up a friend who’s always wanted some item you have and sell it to them. Get cash for your old Bell Moto 4 motorcycle helmet, those tall, sexy boots from your “slutty phase,” or maybe that vintage Scooby-Doo lunchbox your BFF has always wanted. Hit them up and sell that one item to them.
(Six) Pawn a musical instrument, quality bicycles, power tools, electronics, or guns at a pawn shop. For those not aware, to “pawn” something means getting a short term loan on the item, with that item as collateral. Usually they loan about 10% of the item’s current sale value. If you don’t pay the loan and interest back, usually in 2 to 3 months, they sell the item to get their money back.
(Seven) Sell a musical instrument, quality bicycles, power tools, electronics, or guns at a pawn shop. They pay a lot less than the item’s current value, so it’s usually better to pawn items if you ever want them back. But pawn shops pay cash on the spot, as you’ve probably seen in the TV shows.
(Eight) Donate plasma. This means giving close to a liter of the white part of your blood. Yeah, your blood. You need to be hydrated, have a good iron level, and usually get to the plasma center really early in the morning to donate plasma. I’ve done this. If you have recent tattoos, or have been to jail, prison, or a foreign country in recent months, you’ll get denied. It’s a lot like giving blood to the Red Cross, but you walk out with cash. They usually want you to come in twice that week, and you make money each time, a bit more for the second visit.
If you’re a reasonably normal human, you have a bunch of unused stuff lying around your house or apartment. Some of that stuff is worth money to other humans. There are a whole bunch of places and ways to sell these items, often getting cash the same day, if the price is good. Here are several of the most possible options.
(Nine) Sell used clothes to a second hand clothing store locally.
(Ten) Sell used clothes to an online used clothing dealer.
(Eleven) Sell jeans to a second hand clothing store or jeans dealer. Yes, this is still a thing, I just checked.
(Twelve) Sell jeans to an online jeans dealer. Search “Sell used jeans” online for multiple options.
(Thirteen) Sell something on TikTok live.
(Fourteen) Sell something on Craigslist. Craigslist may not be cool the the younger generations now, but it’s still going, there are still buyers and sellers there.
(Fifteen) Sell something on OfferUp.
(Sixteen) Sell Something on Facebook Marketplace.
(Seventeen) Sell women’s clothes, accessories, and home decor items, on PoshMark.
(Eighteen) Sell something on NextDoor.
(Nineteen) Sell something on Instagram to local friends. Yeah, Instagram. Stop trying to be a baller and actually sell some of your junk to friends in your area.
(Twenty) Take back clothing, electronics, or other items to the store you bought them from, if you still have the receipts. This is why you save physical receipts in a box, kids. Once we get a little farther into the recession, this will make more sense.
I’m old, 58 in fact, so I still love Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, particularly because pretty everyone hates Craigslist now. But there are several other apps and platforms where you can sell used personal items, often the same day. Search online or on phone if, for some reason, none of these above work out.
(Twenty-one) Sell old CD’s, DVD’s, maybe even old VHS videos to a local shop, if there’s one in your area. There are still some indie record shops in some places, at least four or more here in the L.A./Orange County, California area, that I know of.
(Twenty-two) Sell collectibles to a local shop or dealer. Star Wars toys, comic books, sports cards, those creepy dolls, Pokemon or similar cards, anything you collect that some other people also collect.
(Twenty-three) Pawn gold or silver coins or bullion at a pawn shop. Again, “pawning” means getting a short term loan, with the items as collateral.
(Twenty-four) Pawn collectible (aka numismatic) coins at a pawn shop.
(Twenty-five) Pawn jewelry at a pawn shop.
(Twenty-six) Sell gold or silver coins or bullion at a pawn shop, gold dealer, coin shop, or jewelry shop.
(Twenty-seven) Sell collectible coins to a coin shop or pawn shop.
(Twenty-eight) Sell jewelry to a jewelry shop, pawn shop, or gold dealer.
Now let’s leave the real world, and head into the digital world of crypto and other investments…
(Twenty-nine) Sell collectible NFT’s for a cheap price on OpenSea or similar platform, then cash out the crypto you sold them for, back into dollars or other fiat currency. Remember, you owe capital gains tax on this sale, if you made money.
(Thirty) Sell one or more cryptos that you own, then cash out into dollars or other currency. Again, you owe capital gains tax on these sales, if you made money, so keep records of it all.
(Thirty-one) Sell one or more stocks you own, cash out. Again, capital gains tax will need to be paid on profits made.
(Thirty-two) Cash out a life insurance policy that you have (call your agent to learn how this is done).
(Thirty-three) Sell a junk car to a local junk car buyer, or a service like Carvana. Search “sell junk car” to find a dealer or service near you that does this.
So… there are 33 ways to legally come up with some cash today, and none of them include personal, unsecured loans with ultra high interest rates, like those advertised when you search online for “Need cash now,” or a similar term. Pawn shops do have relatively high interest rates, but these are generally small loans that a relatively easy to pay back in two or three months. They are not the unsecured loans, payday loans, and other predatory loans with interest rates from maybe 18% to 35% or more. My mom once got a short term loan online that had an annualized interest rate of over 1,100%. Really, 1,100% per year in interest, if it wasn’t paid back within a few weeks. You DO NOT want to get stuck in those super-high interest rate loans, where you pay back several times what you borrowed over time. That said, here are two more ideas to raise cash today that are loans, but more sensible loans if you have good credit, if none of these other ideas above will work for you.
(Thirty-four) Tap into a line of credit at your bank.
(Thirty-five) Get a personal loan, secured or unsecured, at your personal bank.
There you go, 35 legal and legitimate ways to come up with some money, today. And none of these involve a stripper pole, unless you happen to have a portable stripper pole in the garage, and you can sell it on LetGo. You can laugh, but one guy I used to drive when I was a taxi driver had a stripper pole built into his living room. It’s a weird world.
I hope this list not only helped solve your current crisis, but also helped open your mind to a lot more possible options as we all work through this coming recession. I’ll have a lot more posts in this series about living in and surviving recessions, so stay tuned to my Substack for more ideas.
There are no paid links in this post.
Recession 101- Post #3- “Finding the lifestyle that will get you through this recession”
Recession 101- Post #1- The beginning of this series
