Excited about getting out of debt? Yay! But, hold on. Before you start getting out of debt, you need a mini-emergency fund. Why? Because, if some unexpected emergency happens, you don’t want to have to borrow money to pay for it. Right? Right! So, here are 10 Tricks of the Trade for making and/or saving a mini-emergency fund of 1000 dollars.
1. Open up a savings account! If you’d like a referral for INGDirect.com, contact me at ncnblog@gmail.com. If you deposit a minimum of 250 dollars, you will get 25 dollars added to your account, and I’ll get 10 dollars added to mine. Also, see Bankdeals.Blogspot.Com for the latest and greatest in savings account information.
2. Have a yard sale. Seriously. You probably have at least 200 dollars worth of junk lying around. Do it next Saturday. Most papers will place a cheap ad for you in the classifieds, and you can clean out your closets and make some money.
3. EBay some stuff. If you don’t want to have a yard sale, then sell your stuff on eBay. It’s pretty easy to make some pretty good money selling stuff you already have. (I made almost 1000 dollars just selling my daughter’s used clothing!)
Edit: After reading one of the comments at the bottom, I thought I’d ad the following: You can also give your stuff to charity for a tax break, but the focus here is making immediate income so that you can build your emergency fund. As a family, we always give a minimum of 10 percent of all income to our local church, no matter the source.
As for how we made so much selling our daughter’s clothing, she had tons of really, really nice expensive baby clothes. Ages birth to 3. Each one sold for a minimum of 25 dollars, with shipping at 4.00. Pretty easy if you have a ton of outfits. Take good pictures and write detailed descriptions.
4. Gather your change. I’ll bet you have at least 50 dollars worth of change scattered throughout your home/cars/golf bags/etc.
5. Get another job. Pizza delivery, fast food work, late night store stocking, etc. UPS, FedEx, Wal-Mart, Kroger, etc.
6. Bag your lunch. Pocket the difference between what you were paying. If you save 5 dollars a day for 5 days, that’s 25 bucks. In 1 month, that’s 100 dollars.
7. Do you have junk you got for Christmas that still has the tags or is brand new? Return it for cash or gift cards. Really. I know it sounds cheesy, but I’ll bet you have brand new stuff in your closets, just sitting there. Get rid of it. Get some money for it.
8. Speaking of gift cards: Use them or SELL them. It’s money!
9. Cancel non-vital stuff. Netflix, sat. radio, etc. (I cancelled my XM Radio, and that was 10 bucks a month in savings, plus Netflix which was about 15 bucks, for a total of 25 extra bucks a month. In a year, that’s 300 dollars a year.)
10. Barter. Trade your services for the services of others. Baby-sitting, yard work, house sitting, dog walking, etc. Any money you don’t have to spend can go towards your emergency savings.