I’m in a predicament, and thought I’d present it first to the smartest people on the Internet I know, just to see if any brilliant solutions present themselves:
I’m moving out to college in about a month, I’ve got an apartment, but I’ve got absolutely NO money to pay the first months rent (300$). I can’t get a job here because I’m moving away in a few weeks, and even if I get a job immediatly where I’m going, I won’t get a paycheck until after due date. I’m sure my parents will bail me out if I just end up royally screwed, but I prefer to be self-dependent.
That being said, anyone have any genius schemes to rack up a 3 digit figure in mere weeks, using only household items and a limited amount of skill?
garage sale. ask all your friends and relatives if they have any junk they dont want. then have a huge garage sale. you may have to sell some things you don’t really want to.
Damn, after my browser froze, I even refreshed the board to make sure this wouldn’t double post. Oh well, maybe I’ll get double the answers!
As for selling things, that’s my first line of defense, so to speak. I don’t anticipate much more than a 100 or so dollars of my own personal stuff that I can bear to part with, but I never thought of the rest of family’s stuff…
Needles make me crazy.
I’m not to keen on exercising The Kaiser for profit, either. It seems whorish. Although the right amount of money could change my mind…
I’m not sure how it works in Texas, but here in Ontario there is a government run job board that you can use to find odd-jobs and day labour type work.
Also, it’s mean but you don’t HAVE to tell an employer that you are moving out in a few weeks. Get yourself a McJob and hang up the apron when you want. I’m sure they are used to the high turnover anyways.
Umm… if you have no money for 1st months rent, what about the 2nd? Do you have a student loan coming in?
In most of the US cruising neighborhoods for messy yards and offering to do mowing, rake and bag work or whatever passes for that in Lubbock will generally get you at least 50.00 - 75.00 + of work per day. Bringing your own mower, rake and bags will probably increase your response rate.
If you have access to an Ebay account selling your unwanted household items on Ebay will net you waht the market will bear.
If you have access to a credit card and 2-3 distinct deliverable addresses for rebates that are willing to give you the delivered rebates, you could easily make about $50-100 per week off the "0 after rebate" or the “$ 10.00 after rebates for a 50.00 CDRW drive” deals Office Max ads by reselling the items on E-bay at competitve prices.
About once every 2-3 weeks or so Circuit City has a mind blowing price on some peripheral like the 249 - 100 = 149 after rebates like the [120 gig USB 2.0 + Firewire external drive](") I got last week. I could easily flip this on Ebay for 200. 210. and make around 40-50 even after sales tax is taken into account.
The problem with the last 2 scenarios is that the rebates take about a month or more to be processed and for you to get the checks. If someone wanted to devote some time to it it would be childs play to send about 2 -3 hours a night to make $ 1000 per month doing this buying and flipping like this.
As an example there was a email to Computer Geeks preferred customers the other day for a new, non-refurb, desirable and easily flipped item where the Geeks-Ebay spread was about 25-40 dollars (and no rebate hassles). If I had the time and inclination to buy 8-10 of these and then re-sell them, I could have easily made 200 - 350 in a single night. The problem is buying and then re-selling and shipping 10 of these to Ebay buyers was simply more hassle than the deal was worth relative to my time so I just got one for my daughter and one extra to flip for fun, and so far it’s bid up to $ 30 past what I paid the Geeks with shipping and there are still 5 auction days to go.
If you know the relative product price spreads buying low and selling slightly higher for moderately priced items is an easy way to pick up some cash online, but it requires some interest in this stuff and quite frankly going to the beach is going to be more fun for most people.
Talk to a temp agency if there is one near you - tomorrow. Usually, they can get you into something quickly, and you should then be able to pull in a couple of paychecks before you move. Be willing to do manual labor/warehouse stuff and you’ll be ok.
And, if you find one that has offices near where you’ll be in school, your records may transfer so you can get something quickly there too.
Lsura, that’s probably what I’ll end up doing, I just get a feeling of overbearing dread when I think of it. Its not that I can’t do manual labor, I’m actually built just right to do it, but I certainly don’t enjoy it or the other people who do it.
Then again, beggars can’t be choosers. Guess thats what I get for being a stocky, well-built nerd.
Yeah, there still are jobs putting together displays of doggie treats. It’s not any real fun, and you don’t get much of a sense of accomplishment, but it pays something.
The ‘manual labor’ of temp jobs isn’t always all that grueling. I did it for a while in college, and I got mostly assembly-line stuff- boring, but easy. Just sign up for ‘light industrial’ or ‘assembly’ when you fill out the application.
Or if you can type, some temp places will send you to a data-entry job, and you can sit and type names in computer templates in an air-conditioned office instead of attaching widgets to sprockets in a hot warehouse.
Go sign up with Labor Ready. You have to show up really early but they should be able to send you out on something and you get paid the same day you work. You can also get $4-5 per person if you have a car and can take the other people around.
I pay my college age cousin to mow the lawn. If he were to come up to me and say “I need some cash” I have a ton of odd jobs I need to have done. Move some funiture out of the basement - hire and truck and dispose of it. Move some landscape rock and install a border around the flowerbeds. Paint a deck, install a new showerhead, install some new light fixtures - easily $300 worth of work that I know I won’t bother with - handyman and housekeeping stuff.
So I’d recommend calling your relatives and your friends parents and saying “I need some quick cash for an apartment when I graduate - do you have any odd jobs you need done.” Target the ones with more money than time - and the ones that have reached an age where doing their own lifting and painting isn’t easy. Some of them will do you a favor and find some make work project to be done - but I’m willing to bet that a few of them would think you were doing them a favor by calling.
Because you’ll be paid in cash - remember of course to claim it all when you file taxes - and your hourly rate can be set at higher than a temp service will pay you, you can probably get your $300 in a month of Saturdays or less. I pay my cousin $25 an hour
I don’t know about Lubbock, Texas, but here in Calgary, there are usually delivery jobs that pay cash nightly or weekly. You didn’t mention if you had a car, but that might be an idea if you do. Also, there are lots of bike messengers here in town - I don’t know how they get paid, but they are a fairly transient population, so I’m guessing they get paid similar to delivery drivers.
As for office temp jobs, most agencies will send you out on a daily basis (after you register) if you show up there when they open, ready willing and able to take whatever shows up that day. Some places need a warm body to answer phones for an unexpected sick leave, that kind of thing.
- and your hourly rate can be set at higher than a temp service will pay you, you can probably get your $300 in a month of Saturdays or less. I pay my cousin $25 an hour