How to Make Money Fast
Ever look at your bank account and think “shoot, I need a few more bucks by next week!”
Hey, we all come up short sometimes. It’s not the end of the world.
Whether you’re in desperate need of cash for an upcoming bill or just want to earn some quick fun money for this weekend, you’ll have to make money fast.
But where to go? Are there really ways to make money on short notice?
You bet there are. We’ve put together 68 ways you can make money fast down below.
We will admit that some of these methods aren’t instant; however, most of them are so easy to do anyways, that when the money hits your account, it will feel instant.
But we digress. Keep reading to learn several ways you can make money fast.
1.) Survey Sites/Apps
Survey sites and apps spring to everyone’s mind when they think of quick ways to make money online. you can earn points redeemable for cash and gift cards by providing your opinions on certain products and services.
It takes awhile to rack up a good chunk of change, but you can use these survey sites to earn a quick buck whenever you have spare time.
Do this whenever you have free time: riding the bus or in the car (not while you’re driving, of course), waiting in line for something, on the treadmill, or even when you’re bored in front of the TV.
Some of the best survey sites to check out are
Many of them have $5-$10 signup bonuses to kickstart your earnings.
2.) Shopping Rewards Sites/Apps
Ok, you’re not “making” money with shopping rewards, but if you’re going to buy something, shouldn’t you at least get some cashback for it?
We think so.
Rakuten is one of the best-known shopping rewards sites on the net. They have cashback deals with any major retailer you could think of; on top of that, they have a regular rotation of double cashback offers. If you like shopping in-store, they have in-store offers as well.
Shopkick’s another good one. They reward you for shopping in-store and online, scanning barcodes in-store, and even just walking into specific stores.
3.) Swagbucks
Swagbucks does have surveys, but it has so many other earning methods we gave it its own category:
- Online shopping – Shop through Swagbucks and earn rewards
- Watching videos – On all sorts of topics ranging from entertainment to food to animals and more
- Purchasing gift cards – Through Swagbucks
- Playing games – Play free-to-play games and earn points
- Discover deals – Sign up for various offers to earn, usually larger-ticket offers
- Browsing the web – Directly on Swagbucks, or by making Swagbucks your default search engine
Those Discover deals can make you a lot of money fast.
For example, they commonly have offers to sign up as a driver for Postmates or Doordash; these offers pay out the Swagbucks equivalent of between $22 – $75 once you make your first delivery.
That doesn’t even include your first delivery’s earnings and tip, either.
4.) Cash Out Your Credit Card Rewards
Do you have any cashback credit cards? Now’s the time to cash out any rewards you’ve accumulated on these cards.
Unless you’ve been saving them for years (and they don’t expire), this won’t be a huge source of funds. However, this can instantly knock a few bucks off your credit card balance if you need to do so.
Otherwise, you can send the cash straight to your bank account.
5.) Refinance Your Loans to Put Money Back Into Your Pocket
Refinancing your loans and other debt with a personal loan. immediately lowers your interest rate; you’ll be paying less every month, meaning more money back into your pocket.
Except for a few types of federal student loans, you can refinance nearly any debt. How it works is you make note of each debt you’d like to refinance, add their principals, then take out a personal loan from a lender like Upstart or SoFi to pay off each of those debts.
You’re then left with one consolidated debt (another nice side effect of refinancing) with a lower interest rate.
You want to make sure your new interest rate IS lower than the average interest you were paying at the old rates, though. Check out Credible to compare several pre-qualified loan offers so you can spend less time browsing for a good personal loan.
6.) Lower or Cancel Your Subscription Bills
There’s a great chance you fall into one (if not both) of the following categories:
- You pay too much for a subscription service you barely use
OR
- You pay for a service you never use
No matter which camp you fall into, your wallet would benefit from negotiating or canceling your subscriptions.
Digging through online accounts and bank statements to find these is a pain, and that’s before the time spent and headache incurred negotiating with each service provider.
Truebill is a bill negotiating service that will do all of this in exchange for a portion of the money they save you. Let their negotiating experts put more money back into your pocket while you make money fast using other methods on this list.
7.) Negotiate Your Debt
Negotiating your debt sounds scary, but it’s easier than it sounds. It’s much cheaper for card companies to keep you as a customer than to acquire a new one, so they might cut you some slack.
Still, come to the negotiation table prepared. Sell them on a lower interest rate by informing them of your loyalty, good payment history, improved credit score (if it has increased), and improved income (if it has increased).
8.) Rent Out a Room
Got a spare guest bedroom? Even if you don’t, you could turn a spare room into one and rent it out for some fast money on Airbnb. If you set the right price and sell your room well, you could be covering most or all of your mortgage payment.
For more earnings, consider renting out your whole place when you travel. That could cover some of your travel budget.
Of course, make sure you follow all local laws and if you’re a renter, get it cleared with your landlord.
9.) Rent Out Your Car
Unless you own a special automobile, your car is a depreciating asset that you don’t use often; you may as well rent it out to others for some quick cash.
Companies like Turo have taken the Airbnb P2P rental concept and applied it to cars. On Turo, you get to set your car’s availability and rates. For more money, you can throw in extras like prepaid gas and child seats.
Don’t worry: all sorts of cars do well on Turo, not just sports cars. In fact, their highest-earning car relative to its price is none other than the Jeep Wrangler! SUVs and minivans are other hot vehicles you might not expect.
And yes, Turo offers $1 million in liability coverage; head to their site for more insurance details.
10.) Rent Out Your Driveway
If you live near a beach, sports stadium, or another high-traffic locations, your driveway is prime real estate for making money off people desperate to park. The closer you are to whatever landmark you live by, the more you can charge.
Already doing this? You can get more customers using Pavemint, a new app that operates like Airbnb but for parking.
11.) Rent Out Extra Storage Space
The sharing economy has affected everything, even your empty closet space. On Neighbor, you can rent out extra space in your garage, shed, or closet to others who need convenient and affordable storage space.
Combine renting your storage space with renting your driveway, car, and house, and your largest possessions will pay for themselves.
12.) Rent Out Your Baby Gear
Has your young child grown out of their baby gear? Don’t sell it just yet — instead, rent it out to other families on a site such as BabyQuip.
Traveling families often need extra strollers or car seats, as these items are unwieldy to travel with. Rent them your stuff on BabyQuip and profit.
13.) House Sit
House sitting is an easy way to make money fast. Next time someone in your network travels for business or vacation, ask them if they want someone to watch their house while they’re away.
Look at Craigslist and in local papers to find more prospects.
If you want to expand your hustle further and create a profile on a centralized site, check out Mindahome.com.
Funny enough, you can live rent free in people’s homes via house sitting if you line up enough gigs or land a few steady clients.
14.) Baby Sit
Baby sitting is a bit more serious than house sitting because you’re taking care of a human being. It’s not too hard, though — just follow the parent/guardian instructions and you’ll be golden.
Baby sitters can expect to make about $10 an hour to start, but it’s a flexible job you can pick up whenever you have time.
Plus, you can secure higher paying gigs as you gain experience.
15.) Freelance
Everyone’s got a skill of some sort. You don’t even have to be great at that skill to offer it in a freelance capacity.
Whether it’s writing, graphic design, coding, or marketing, launching a freelancing hustle requires almost $0 in monetary investment and you can land clients as soon as today. Head over to Upwork, make a profile, and start sending proposals to prospective clients.
16.) Sell on Etsy
Etsy is built for the crafty and creative entrepreneur. You can sell anything from jewelry, to knitted items, to custom shirts and more.
Now, starting a shop is free, but Etsy charges you to list your items.
The money won’t come fast with Etsy unless you prepare a large inventory and market yourself. Post about your store regularly on your social media channels; consider making a page or social media account just for your store as well.
17.) Write a Low-Content eBook
We don’t want to recommend writing a full eBook, as those take time to get right. However, a “low-content” eBook such as a notebook or a coloring book takes less time to make without sacrificing profit potential.
All you need is a graphic design program (Canva is free) to create one of these low-content eBooks.
Picking a platform to sell your books on depends on how fast you need the money. Amazon may sell the fastest due to their audience of shoppers, but you get to keep more commissions if you sell these on Etsy or another online store you own.
Whichever way you choose, advertise your books to bring in revenue faster.
18.) Pet Sitting/Walk People’s Dogs
Pet sitting is a lot more flexible than baby sitting; you only have to check on the pet every so often to make sure it isn’t breaking anything, then walk, play with, and/or feed the pet as needed. This allows you to juggle more jobs at the same time.
And you get to hang out with animals without having to care for your own full-time, which is a great work perk.
Combine your pet sitting services with house sitting services and your earnings and client base will only go up.
Looking for a central site for easier client acquisition? Sign up for Rover.
19.) Sell Your Old Gift Cards
Gift cards are nice to get for birthdays and holidays, but you’re restricted to a gift card’s specific retailer. You can’t use a Walmart gift card on Amazon.
You’d rather have money, right? You can sell those gift cards on Cardpool for cash.
They pay slightly under the full price, but money you can spend is better than a gift card that’s left to gather dust in a box.
20.) Sell or Pawn Items to a Pawn Shop
Pawning items involves taking a loan from a pawn shop and putting down your pawned item as collateral. If you fail to pay back the loan, you lose possession of the item; no interest or credit damage.
If you don’t want to pawn the item, you can just sell it instead.
You can get a better price if you’re prepared to negotiate. If you need the cash quick, though, a small discount is worth the fast sale.
21.) Get a Signup Bonus Credit Card Before a Large Purchase
Many cards reward you with these bonuses after spending a specific amount in a specific time period. For example, a card may pay you $150 if you spend $1,000 within 90 days.
If you have to make a large purchase soon, you may as well get some cash out of it by purchasing with one of these cards.
Just make sure you can pay off the balance.
Tip: Prioritize pre-qualified offers you receive in the mail; you have a higher chance of being approved for these.
22.) Help Businesses Improve Their Websites
If you’re sick of slow and poorly-designed websites, you’ll be glad to hear that several companies will hire you to test websites.
UserTesting is a leader in this market. They hire normal people to review their clients websites for speed and intuitive design. Testers can earn $10 per 20 minute test, but when you get better at testing, you can shave a few minutes off each test and boost your hourly rate.
To apply to become a UserTesting website tester, you have to complete a short demo test. You’ll also need a laptop with a microphone.
Getting approved for UserTesting takes a few days, but once you’re accepted, you can immediately start completing tests to earn money.
Other places that pay you to review websites include:
23.) Tutor Students Online
Did you do well in a certain school subject? Want to make money fast without leaving your house?
Sign up as a tutor on an online education website. You’ll get to help students get better grades from the comfort of your room.
Check out Chegg. Tutors earn $20 per hour and get to work as much as they want, whenever they want. Approval takes a few days at the most, then you can start earning for tutoring students right away.
24.) Teach English Online
Our global economy in which English is the “language of business” has spawned plenty of online English teaching opportunities. One site that provides such opportunities is VIPKid.
VIPKid requires you to have a bachelor’s degree, but it doesn’t need to be education-related.
You don’t need a teaching certification, either; however, you do need a year of teaching experience in some capacity.
The longest portion of the process is the interview and approval process. After that, you can earn up to $22 per hour from your house.
Read our full VIPKid review to learn more.
25.) Photography
Those stock photography sites are a good place to build a passive income stream from stock photos, but that income stream takes a while to build.
You’ll earn money with your photography faster by booking clients for photoshoots. Events such as weddings, graduations, senior pictures, and birthdays are your best bet for paying photography work.
Of course, you’ll need a camera and other standard photographer equipment.
While you’re at it, though, you can snag some stock photos on the side and slowly build a portfolio of passive income-generating stock photography.
26.) Complete Odd Jobs
There are probably people in your area who would love a helping hand with chores and odd jobs. Whether they need to move something heavy, grab an item from the store, or clean their house, they’ll probably pay you to do it instead.
Check out Craigslist and similar classified sites to find these odd jobs.
Also, sign up for TaskRabbit. It works a lot like a food delivery service, but for any task. Businesses and individuals post all manner of tasks on there, so you’ll never get bored when you’re hustling to make quick cash.
27.) Set Up Simple Websites
Businesses need websites to survive in the modern market. Many of them simply don’t have the time or know-how to do it, though, even with a simple site building software program like WordPress.
Which is where you come in. Build them a website!
You don’t need to be a tech whiz, either. All you need to know is how to build a website using WordPress. As long as it looks nice and is helpful to customers, small businesses will be happy to pay you.
You can help individuals, too. If someone’s launching a blog, they might be looking for some help setting up the site. Why not help them out for pay?
28.) Guest Post on Your Favorite Blogs
If you follow certain blogs religiously and know their subject matter well, consider contributing guest posts to their blog.
With 0 experience, you could earn $20-$30 for a guest post. Do a few of those, and you’re up a few hundred.
Most blogs will have a contact form of some sort you can use to reach out to the blogger. If the blog is larger, they might have a formal page for submitting guest posts. Make sure to follow any rules the blog has for submitting guest posts!
29.) Review Music and Fashion
Think you’re a music or fashion snob? Slicethepie wants your opinions on unreleased tunes and fashion items.
That’s right: you get paid to influence future music and clothing. You might even help propel the next hit musician to stardom.
30.) Refer Leads to Businesses
You’ve heard of affiliate marketing as an easy, low-cost online business model, but did you know there’s a real-world equivalent?
Customers are expensive and time-intensive to acquire. Many local businesses will pay you good money if you provide them with leads, sometimes a few hundred per lead.
Businesses that are likely to pay you for leads include:
- Realtors
- Painting companies
- Roofing companies
And many other blue-collar types of businesses.
Your earnings depend on your network and your sales skills. If you know a lot of people and are great at selling them on a service you enjoyed using, you can easily make a grand or two extra per month.
Even better: become a contracted door-to-door salesperson for a local business. Target homes that could use their services: for example, strike a deal with a roofing company, then visit homes with poor-looking roofs.
A few referrals could be $1,000 or more in your pocket.
31.) Deliver Flyers for Businesses
Even in our digital age, paper flyers work for local businesses. Chances are some of these businesses will hire you to deliver flyers to residents in the area.
Let’s say you charge $0.15 per delivered flyer. You reach 40 homes in an hour after work each day, and 120 on the weekends. Assuming only 1 person per home, you’d be pocketing another $33.6 per week.
Not a lot, but it’s fast; also, remember that most homes will have more than one person. You could earn an extra $100 per week.
This gig gets you outdoors and moving around as well, great for fitting in some daily exercise while getting paid.
32.) Request Overtime at Work
If you’re already giving your company 40 hours a week, overtime is the last thing you want to think about.
However, in a money crunch, time and a half can bolster your next paycheck significantly.
Think about this: if you make $30 per hour, 5 hours of overtime a week is another $225 (before taxes and benefits) on your paycheck.
Do that for an entire month, and you have an extra $900 to play with.
33.) Pick Up a Second Job
Can’t get overtime at your current job? Pick up a second job on nights and weekends.
Try to find a job you enjoy; since you will be working two jobs at once, this will help prevent you from burning out.
You might even discover a new hobby or passion!
What’s great about second jobs is the flexibility. Most of these positions will be shift work, so you can build your second job schedule around the rest of your life.
Then when you don’t need the job anymore, it’s much easier to leave.
If you’re willing to give up some weekend nights, bartending is a second job that will earn you a lot of money fast. It won’t come from your wage, but the tips. Good bartenders at more popular or expensive venues can earn a few hundred a night in tips alone!
34.) Sell Your Plasma
Blood plasma is used to treat burn victims, as well as to create treatments for a variety of rare disease.
And so, your plasma is in high demand among plasma donation companies.
Your first time donating will take a bit longer, as you have to take care of some paperwork. After that, each donation will last a bit longer than an hour from the time you arrive until the time you leave.
Donating plasma could earn you anywhere between $20 and $50 per donation, so you could be taking home up to $100 per week.
35.) Repair Broken Electronic Screens
Everyone knows someone that dropped their phone or smacked it against something and cracked the screen.
Repairing the broken iPhone, Android, and tablet screens can pay well: it’s not too difficult to learn, yet most device owners don’t want to risk fixing their own screens for fear of breaking something.
Given how fragile these screens are, you’ll have a steady stream of work whenever you want it.
With this skill, you won’t have to spend money to have someone else fix your screen either!
But how much can you earn and how fast will you earn it?
Out-of-warranty screen repairs can cost $100 or more for most Android and iPhone devices. Charge $50 – $70 instead; your cheap prices will bring in a lot of clients fast, but you only need 20 of them at most to earn $1,000. Not unrealistic for this to happen in a week.
36.) Perform a Musical Talent a Public Place
Whether you’re a dancer, singer, or your play an instrument, performing your musical talent on the street — also known as busking — pays a lot better than you might think.
If you’re comfortable with crowds and you don’t get stage fright, bring along your instrument case or a hat to collect money, and get to playing. Start your hat off with a few coins and dollar bills of your own though, so people know to donate money in there.
Double check your local laws, though — you don’t want to be hit with a fine or end up in jail!
37.) Play Local Musical Gigs
The musically talented should also consider booking some gigs at local businesses like bars, coffee shops, libraries, and community centers.
Be on the lookout for flyers and online ads advertising gigs or competitions, too — these take out half of your gig prospecting work.
If you experienced success busking, this is the next logical step in making some fast money from your musical talents.
38.) Work as a Session Musician
Still on the topic of musical instruments: if you’re talented at several instruments, try to find work as a session musicians in either a band or an orchestra. As a session musician, you’re essentially a “gun for hire”; you play what they tell you to play, so all the creative work is done for you.
Good session musicians can take home $100 or more in a single day of recording. Get to it!
39.) Provide Lawn Care Services
Lawn care is a classic starter business model for several reasons: it’s easy to start, it has a lot of money-making potential, and the money comes in fast.
Start by asking your neighbors if they’d like any help taking care of their lawn. Hop on Craigslist and post an ad to expand your prospective client pool.
If you find yourself enjoying your lawn care business, consider scaling by hiring employees. Who knows, you could eventually quit your 9-5.
Now, you will need your own equipment to get started. If you can’t afford to buy your own, see if family or friends would be willing to lend you some.
Tip: Keep your lawn care business running in the winter by offering snow removal services to your clients.
40.) Participate in Clinical Trials
If you’re willing to give your body to science, you can make up to a few hundred dollars quickly by participating in clinical trials.
Make sure you meet the requirements for any clinical study you apply for, though.
Check out Clinicaltrials.gov to find clinical trials in your area.
41.) Stage Houses for Sale
Houses have to be staged before they’re sold so they can look as attractive as possible to interested buyers. If you have an eye for good interior design, you can earn from $500 to a few thousand staging houses on the side.
Reach out to real estate agents and offer your services.
42.) Drop a Vice
Cigarettes and alcohol are expensive when you add them up. A pack of cigarettes runs about $6.28 on average, and 2-3 beers costs about the same.
If you smoke a pack a day or drink 3 beers per day, cutting those out can put about $44 back in your pocket each week.
It’s not exactly “making” money, but it’s pretty good cash for ceasing an activity instead of starting an activity.
43.) Take Care of Your Recycling
If those aluminum cans and bottles are piling up, bag them and bring them to a recycling facility. You can bring several other types of scrap metals, as well.
Before heading to a recycling center, check payouts for various centers in your area to maximize your earnings. Check out iScrap — it’s an app that shows what recyclers in your area are paying for your scrap metal.
Some states have “bottle bills” that require retailers to pay out a legally-determined deposit amount for aluminum cans. Residents in these states can recover a good chunk of change by bringing their recycling into most supermarkets and returning their recycling.
In Michigan, for example, each aluminum can/other qualifying drink container earns you a $0.10 deposit.
44.) Give Private Lessons
Skilled in an instrument? Earn some cash fast by teaching others how to play it. See if anyone in your network has a child that is learning an instrument, and offer them private lessons.
Teaching others how to perform a skill tends to make you better at that skill, too, which is a nice bonus.
45.) Teach Continuing Education
No matter the industry, white-collar professionals have to keep up on developments in their industry. Many attend continuing education classes to keep up on these developments and advance their careers.
You don’t need to have formal credentials to teach continuing education classes, but having a degree or relevant certifications certainly will help you land a position.
46.) Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a platform Amazon created to crowd source work for companies. Companies on Mechanical Turk will hire you to perform several micro gigs such as:
- Data entry
- Proofreading
- Short review writing
- Surveys
- Summarizing information
Given that these are micro gigs, the pay is low. But the money comes quickly, and the variety of tasks makes it easy to find new interesting micro gigs.
47.) Give Walking Tours of Your City
Take pride in your town? Have a deep knowledge of its history, culture, and attractions? Giving walking tours of your city, especially if you live somewhere historic or desirable, can be lucrative. You’ll do best if you have a knack for storytelling and keeping a crowd entertained.
On top of the money, giving walking tours gets you plenty of exercise. It’s quite fun, too.
48.) Become a Mock Juror
Mock juries provide lawyers the opportunity to practice their trial skills as well as to test the strength of their case before a real trial. If you join one, you can earn $100 or more for one day of mock jury work.
And if you don’t want to visit a court house to get paid as a mock juror, you’re in luck: many mock jury positions are now online. You can get paid to help a lawyer out without leaving home!
49.) Carpool with Coworkers (and Be the Driver)
Live near some of your coworkers? Offer to drive them all to work for a small fee. Charge them a few dollars per day, less than what a comparable Uber would cost, and you’ll have at least an extra $20 every week, if not more.
Ask your coworkers nearby your desk, but also consider posting a message on bulletin boards around the office and/or advertise your service in company emails/newsletters.
50.) Wash Cars
Most people don’t like washing their cars. However, the thought of them taking their precious automobile to a car wash that could damage the bodywork is a nerve-wracking prospect as well.
If you don’t mind washing cars, you can make some fast money doing this job that few others enjoy doing.
Get the supplies, work your network, post a Craigslist ad, you know the deal.
51.) Painting
Another job that is pretty important and physically laborious, yet not many enjoy doing it. If you think you’re handy with a paintbrush, offer your painting skills to others.
Charge a healthy fee of $100 or more per room, and ask that your customers provide the paint so you can save on costs. For many of them, that’s a small price to pay to avoid getting paint on their clothes.
52.) Bartend for Events
If you don’t want to pick up bartending as a regular side job but still have the skills and experience, pick up bartending shifts for event such as weddings or weekend parties.
You get the best of both worlds: bartending tips without sacrificing several nights of your week to serve bar-goers.
53.) Become an Exercise Instructor at a Local Gym
You don’t need to have an exercise science degree or a personal certification to teach exercise classes at your local gym or health club. As long as you’ve been doing a particular form of exercise for a long time (yoga, spinning, dance, cycling, etc.) and enjoy doing it, a gym near you may just hire you.
Hey, you get exercise too!
54.) Seasonal Jobs
Seasonal jobs make you money fast and they switch things up every few months to keep things fresh.
For example, you could be a weekend golf caddy from the late spring to late summer. During the fall, switch to something such as detasseling corn.
A great time for seasonal work is tax season. Help people organize and/or prepare their taxes by landing a temporary role at a tax prep company like H&R Block.
55.) Hit the Work Suggestion Box
Does your company have a suggestion box? Many companies pay their employees for leaving good suggestions that can help improve the company.
If you ever find yourself bored at work, brainstorm some ways to make the company better instead of twiddling your thumbs. Even if your employer hasn’t explicitly stated that good suggestions pay, they might pay you anyways if few employees participate.
56.) Refer Employees to Your Employer
Here’s another paying way you can help your company: refer new employees. Most employers pay $50 – $100 for each employee that puts your name down as the person who referred them, provided your referral holds their job for a certain amount of time.
This won’t come fast, as you have to wait for the aforementioned time period to end. However, it’s so easy to do in your free time that it’s worth considering.
You might even make a new friend or hire a current one.
57.) Refer Customers to Your Employer
Even better than referring new talent to your employer? Referring new business to them.
Not all employers have a customer referral program (that’s what their sales team is for), but if yours does, brush up on your sales skills and start bringing more customers to your employer.
Think about this: if someone higher up takes notice, your customer referral efforts might lead to a raise or a promotion.
58.) Participate in a Focus Group
Focus groups are demographically diverse groups of individuals who are paid by companies to discuss said company’s products, services, or another customer-facing aspect of the business. Companies factor this data into their marketing and product decision-making.
Think of it like a more in-depth version of survey sites.
Focus groups pay as little as $30 sometimes, but the more niche focus groups consistently pay in the hundreds of dollars range.
59.) Answer Questions
People browse the internet for expertise all the time. JustAnswer provides a platform for doctors, lawyers, and other professionals to earn a small side income by providing their expert insight to the curious layperson.
If you have advanced knowledge in a certain area, it’s a win-win situation. You earn money quickly and while helping people with questions that might otherwise cost them hundreds of dollars per hour.
60.) Decorate Homes For Holidays
The holiday season is a busy time for many, so squeezing in decorating can be tough. Offer to decorate for them next time the holidays roll around!
You aren’t limited to the October – December, though: there’s also Valentine’s Day, 4th of July, Easter, and more.
Decorating tasks could include hanging decorations, putting up trees, setting up party games, and stringing up lights. Handle all of these and you’ll make plenty of cash to cover your holiday budget.
61.) Take Out a Personal Loan
If you’re in a pinch, getting a personal loan from a place such as Prosper or Upstart can hold you over until you’ve made more money.
Credible is an interesting tool that pulls together multiple pre-qualified loan offers from across their network of lender partners. Use Credible if you want to save time on your personal loan search.
Now, we don’t recommend taking out a personal loan for extra cash because, well, you have to pay it back plus interest.
But when money’s tight, they’re there for you.
62.) Borrow Money to Make Money
Here’s where a personal loan would make more sense: if you know of a business or investment opportunity but don’t have enough cash for it, a personal loan can get you there.
You’ll want your rate of return to be higher than your loan’s interest rate if you hope to make a profit.
Again, this is risky. If it’s an investment, understand that you could lose the money and still be liable for paying back the loan and its interest.
If you need the loan to launch or grow your business, work extra hard to ensure that the cash infusion pays off.
63.) Referee Sports Games for Kids
Refereeing sports games gets you outside breaking a sweat while you earn. Thanks to the physical activity, time flies when you’re working this job.
As for earning potential, you’ll earn more if you referee older age groups or more advanced leagues.
Bring a thick skin; some parents get really into their child’s sports games, and aren’t afraid to yell at you for making a “bad” call “against” their kid.
64.) Sell Your Class Notes
College students that need to make money fast: did you know you can sell your class notes online? NexusNotes provides a platform for you to upload your class notes and sell them to other students.
In fact, your notes can create a passive income stream for you.
Once NexusNotes approves your notes, they pay you half the $35 sale price ($17.50) for each sale of your notes.
We all know how college students are broke all the time, so help a fellow student out and get paid.
65.) File Your Taxes ASAP
The IRS isn’t known for its speed when it comes to your refund. Neither are many state governments. However, if you can knock out your taxes as fast as possible, you’ll have you refund in your hands earlier.
And remember: check your tax return after tax season once or twice to make sure you didn’t miss any deductions. If you did, file an amended return to get that extra cash.
66.) Cash Out Investments
This is another action we don’t recommend you rely on. You should leave your investments alone so they can grow.
Also, selling your investments could trigger negative tax consequences.
But if you’re in a financial bind and don’t want to take out more debt, selling off investments will put extra money in your pocket fast.
67.) Claim Your Unclaimed Money
State governments, federal agencies, and other organizations hold almost $60 billion in unclaimed money, benefits, and other assets.
Some of that could be yours. The following items could be out there, waiting for you to claim them:
- Back wages
- Forgotten bank accounts
- Forgotten insurance policies
- Unclaimed refunds
- Safe deposit box contents
Unfortunately, there is no central source for collecting unclaimed funds. Check out this article to learn more about how to collect your unclaimed property, as well as where to look for it.
You can also look into Unclaimed.org and MissingMoney.com.
68.) Flip Items
This is the classic “buy low, sell high” business model. Successfully flipping items requires having a good eye for undervalued items.
Some “niches” of items, especially larger items, also require you to be handy. Furniture is a good example: find some free furniture in poor but fixable shape, repair it, clean it up, and you have a marketable product on your hands.
You can start flipping items right away, provided you know where to find items that are priced below what they should be.
Check out the following locations to find undervalued items:
- Friends/family/neighbors
- Craigslist
- Facebook Marketplace
- Garage sales
- Selling apps (such as Mercari)
- Consignment stores
- Thrift stores
Make Money in a Day, a Week, or a Month
There you have it: 68 ways you can make money fast. Whether you have a financial emergency, plan on traveling soon, or you just want to give your retirement fund a quick boost, putting these money-making methods into action a few hours a week will generate cash quickly.
Some of these ways will take days, others weeks, and still others as long as a month. Choose a method according to how desperately you need the cash.
Account for how much startup money each of these methods requires, too.
For the best results, combine some of these earnings methods together. For example, pick up a second job on the weekends and combine it with a more flexible gig like driving for Uber and Lyft.