Top Ways to Get $500 Quick

It is a sad fact that many of us these days live paycheck to paycheck.  Saving up for an emergency fund can be tough if you don’t have a large income, are unemployed, or if you have a bit of bad luck.  If an emergency occurs, many times you will need to have a couple of tricks up your sleeve to come up with some money quick.  The following are some top ways to get $500 quick if you find yourself in a jam.

Sell Your Extra Stuff

One of the best ways to come up with some extra cash is to sell stuff you are not using anymore.  This could be that old guitar you haven’t touched in years, or some old shoes.  You get the idea – if you haven’t used it in more than a year, you can probably let it go!  Ebay or Craigslist are great ways to get rid of your items.  The downside to this approach is that if you need money right away, you may not get as much for your stuff as if you have the time to find the highest bidder.  Most of us could get a couple hundred bucks quickly just getting rid of our old stuff without even breaking a sweat.

Borrow Money from a Friend or Relative

This is another quick way to come up with some money, but there are huge downsides!  There is no faster way to tarnish a good relationship than to borrow money from a friend or loved one and not pay them back.  If you are going to go this route, be very sure you can pay them back in full in a reasonable amount of time!

Get a Cash Loan

Another way you can get $500 quickly is by taking out a cash loan.  Many loan companies, such as 24Cash, can get you a cash loan in under one hour.  These loan companies can be great if you are in a jam and need money immediately.  As with the tip above, you need to be sure you can pay the loan back quickly.  Some of these loans have very high interest rates, so if you ever hope to save up for an emergency fund you need to use these types of loans responsibly!

Work Extra Hours

If you have a job and work hourly, then this is a great way to get some extra money quickly.  Work some overtime if your company allows it, and you’ll be able to pick up some extra bucks in short order.  The downside to this is that with normal pay-cycles you may not see the money show up in your check for a week or two.  So, this isn’t always the fastest option.  Those of us that work salary jobs are out of luck here!

Perform Odd Jobs Around Town

This is a good idea if many of the above options won’t work for you.  Cut grass, rake leaves, shovel snow, you get the drill.  These are quick ways you can help out neighbors and make money at the same time.  Just be sure you put your back into it!

Final Thoughts

These are just a couple of the ways to get $500 quick.  Life throws all kinds of situations at you, and sometimes you just really need some money quickly.  If you really need the money, try out some of the above tips.  If you don’t think those will work for you, just put your mind to it and you’ll be sure to identify a couple ways that you can get $500 quick!

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My All-Time Best Ebay Flipping So Far

If you have not started experimenting with Ebay flipping or Craigslist flipping, then what are you waiting for?  You can make a ton of easy money with very little effort involved!  If you are new to Ebay flipping – check out my flipping for profit section.  Read on to see what my all-time best Ebay flip so far has been – I made 4300% profit!

Ebay Flipping – Source of Goods

The usual mission objective here is to get your materials to flip from the cheapest place possible.  In nearly all cases, this is yard sales!  You will be very hard pressed to find something cheaper than what you can bargain for at your neighborhood yard sale.

In this case of my all-time best Ebay flip so far, I found my item for $0.50.  No negotiation was required in this case.  The only downside here was that I got the item at about 7am  I many cases, if you are going to flip on Ebay or Craigslist for the highest possible profit you have to be the early bird!

Ebay Flipping – Highest Profit Items

You can flip just about any item on Ebay or Craiglist if you can find a good enough deal.  The basic premise is that you’ll buy low and sell high – just like investing in the stock market.  The key to identifying a good deal is knowing the item in question and what you can normally sell it for.

I have had luck with some of the following items – some times items are priced so low it is a pretty minimal risk to give the flipping of it a chance.  I have placed them in a relative order with the best profits at the top of the list.

1. Video Games – Wii, PSP, Xbox, etc.
2. Guitars
3. Guitar Amps
4. Vera Bradley and Thirty One Purses 
5. Soccer Cleats
6. Pokemon Cards and Other Tradeable Cards

As you can see, video games can fetch some of the largest percentage profits.  In terms of overall most money in your pocket, larger items such as guitars and guitar amps tend to do the best.  These can also be flipped on Craigslist since they are so big!

My All-Time Best Ebay Flip So Far – 4300% Profit

I have flipped hundreds of items on Ebay over the years.  So, what has been my all-time best Ebay flip so far?  I was able to make a 4,300% profit by finding a PSP Dragon Ball Z game for $0.50 and selling it for $21.99 on Ebay.  That is a profit of ~4,300%!

It took all of about 10 minutes of work to buy the item and list it on Ebay.  That is the equivalent of making ~$130 an hour.  Not too shabby

Ebay Flipping – Final Thoughts

If you are on the fence about Ebay flipping – why not give it a try?  Find something around the house that you no longer use and try to get rid of it.  This will give you the hang of listing items quickly.

After you have a bit of experience listing items on Ebay, you can really start to expand your enterprise.  Next it is time to go out and find cheap items to flip on Ebay for a profit!  Do you think you have what it takes to beat my 4,300% profit all-time best?

If you are looking for more info or a Ebay flipping master, check out the following website: thriftstoreflipping.com  –  Happy flipping!

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For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

March 2014 – Money Making, Saving, and Investing Report

Welcome to the March 2014 Money Making, Saving, and Investing Report!

March 2014 was an interesting month overall for me – income and savings were both down, but I did really well with my goals

To view all previous reports and to find out why I publish these reports, click here

 Actions Plans for March 2014

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

•  Finish the book: The Four Pillars of Investing – COMPLETE!
  • You can read my book review here.
• Sell at 5 things on Ebay – COMPLETE!
  • Here’s what I sold…
    • Wii game – Super Money Ball: Banana Blitz – $7
    • Lot of 3 Holographic Pokemon Cards $2.50
    • Wii game – Rayman Raving Rabbids – $7
    • Corsair Computer Power Supply – $111
    • Wii game – Wii Sports – $20
• Finish chapter #5 of the Investing for Beginners book that I’m writing – COMPLETE!
• Post at 5 additional monetized YouTube videos – COMPLETE!
  • I posted nine monetized videos total
• Get all of my MBA assignments done on time – COMPLETE!
  • Got everything turned in on time and put forth good effort here.

I achieved all of the goals I set for the month!  I think that’s the first time I’ve been 100%!  Let’s look at the specifics for March 2014:

Notes on Making Money for March 2014

March saw income drop down back to normal levels.  I got a raise at the end of February, so that’s always good  Google Adsense revenue was just shy of $50, so this was the best month yet for blog ad revenue  Amazon Affiliate income was still just around $2.  YouTube income was only ~$5, and I had no article income this month  Ebay sales were OK at $145 because I had one large item sell.  When all the dust settled for March, my total side hustle income was $203.  Dividend income saw a nice pop and came in around $190 for the month – nice!

Notes on Money Saving for March 2014

Routine monthly expenses for March were nicely under control compared to previous months.

We had two big non-routine expenses for March that threw our expenses much higher than normal.  We took a weekend trip to meet my Sister in Annapolis which ran ~$300 if you consider gas, hotel, and restaurants.  Also, our house came with a hot tub when we purchased it.  Well, it decided to die and the bill for repairs finally came through.  After eight house calls from the repair company (please don’t get me started) and more than $750, the damn thing is finally fixed!

Because of these large non-routine expenses, our savings rate for the month was only 51%.  Not bad, but not all that great either…

Notes on Investing for March 2014

For March, I picked up 101 shares of  VEA at a price of $41.30 for a total of $4,171 invested for the month of March.  VEA is the Vanguard FTSE developed markets ETF.  This stock pays a quarterly dividend (3.3% annually).  This ETF gives me exposure to Europe, Australia, and Japan.  Ideally, I’d like to have 15% of my portfolio allocated to developed markets outside of the US.  I feel like VEA  is perfect for that sort of thing.

Actions Plans for April 2014

• Read the book: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
• Sell at 5 things on Ebay (I need to list a bunch more stuff – I’ve been slacking here)
• Finish chapter #6 of the Investing for Beginners book that I’m writing
• Post at 7 additional monetized YouTube videos
• Develop and post math & science tutoring “brochure” – that’s right.  I’m going to try my hand at tutoring!
• Finish my MBA!!!  Only one more week to go!!!

Other Points of Interest

• Here are the posts I created for the month of March:

1. Save Money and Lose Weight Today!
2. How to Get Sponsored Posts on Your Blog
3. How To Save Money at the Grocery Store (guest post)
4. Money Saving Idea – Pirating
5. Book Review – The Four Pillars of Investing
6. How To Save Money On Shoes
7. How to Punish Your Child – Charge Them!

• I purchased a nice microphone (Audio-Technica ATR2100) to perform MoneyAhoy videos and gaming videos with.  This should greatly improve my YouTube sound quality.
• I was also able to break below 135,000 on my Alexa ranking!  I’m making steady progress here thanks to the Yakezie challenge!

What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for April?

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For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

Selling on Ebay – Diamonds in the Rough

As you may have read, I’ve created a New Years Resolution to try and get rid of some of our extra stuff by selling at least 20 things a month on Ebay.  This will help us to declutter and also help instill the attitude of living with less.  This is definitely an important mindset to get into if you’re trying to save as much money as you can

Selling on Ebay – Diamonds in the Rough – The Background

This is one of those weird ideas that just sort of came to me the other day.  I was sitting on the couch and thought, why the hell do we have all of these DVDs we never watch?  With Netflix streaming and DVD rental only costing us ~$18 a month combined, we haven’t watched a physical DVD of our own in ages!  I’d venture to guess that we have about 150 of them just sitting there in the cabinet.  It’s probably close to an even split between kids movies and grownup movies.

I then began to wonder about all the old video games that I have just sitting on the shelf.  The oldest one I still could put my hands on was The Legend of Zelda – The Minish Cap.  I’m a die-hard fan of the overhead type of Zelda games, and I had saved the game, box, and manuals all these years for some reason.  I believe the game is something like 10 years old by now.  I’m think the game probably cost $30 new when I purchased it all those years ago.

Selling on Ebay – Diamonds in the Rough – Jackpot!

Imagine my surprise when I found out that complete versions of the game were selling for $65 – $75!  This game is just sitting there on my shelf taking up space, and I know that I’ll never play it again!  Finding this “diamond in the rough” that I can sell on ebay gave me the motivation I needed to decide to sell all of these old games I’ll never play again.  This whole discovery got me thinking – how much will other unused things around the house sell for if I listed them on Ebay?  I’m looking at all of our material possessions in a whole new light as a result of running across the wacky pricing of this old game.

Selling on Ebay – Diamonds in the Rough – Final Thoughts

What do you think?  Is there much point to keeping old games, books, movies, etc. that you probably aren’t going to ever use again?  Why do people hold onto things and collections in the first place if they aren’t going to actively use them?  Aren’t these things just one more thing to tie up your money and hold you down?!?

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Selling Pokemon Cards on Ebay

One of the suckiest things about being in MBA classes every other weekend is that I miss out on all the great yard sales with my wife and kids.  Just this past week, I think my wife struck yard sale gold!

Selling Pokemon Cards on Ebay – The Haul

My wife was at one particular yard sale with a couple Pokemon young reader books for sale.  My son had a quick look at them, and they decided to buy them.  Shortly thereafter, the man at the yard sale pulled my wife to the side.  “Would you be interested in buying this box full of Pokemon cards?” he asked.  He didn’t want to offer her the box where my son could hear.  He was going to give her an entire adult sized shoe box full of Pokemon trading cards for only $5!  My wife decided to buy them because she knows how much he likes Pokemon.

Selling Pokemon Cards on Ebay – How Much Are They Worth?

She showed me the box when I got home and I could hardly believe my eyes.  Someone probably paid more than $1,000 at some point for all of these cards.  They are about $11 for a pack of 40 on Amazon.  My son has a handful of hand-me-down cards that his friends have given him over the years, but we’ve never bought any new cards for him because they’re so damn expensive.

So we called our son over to the table, and I told him to close his eyes.  I brought the box over and set it in his lap.  I then told him to open up the box.  He almost had a kids excitement attack when he saw the box full of Pokemon cards in front of him!  As we were looking through them, my brain popped into MoneyAhoy mode – “I wonder if any of these are worth anything?” I thought aloud.

Selling Pokemon Cards on Ebay – Learning to Value Pokemon Cards

A Google search and about 30 minutes of study later, and my son and I knew what to look for in terms of rare and valuable cards.  We spent the next 3 hours sorting through all of the cards looking for all the rare and valuable Pokemon cards that we could sell on eBay.  We made a deal that we’d split any profits 50/50 – I thought it would be a great way for him to learn how to make some money.

Now, these cards aren’t in the best of shape – it’s evident that they been used pretty heavily.  Out of all of the cards, we identified somewhere around 250-300 that were rare and valuable.  Checking Ebay, most of these rare cards have sold for anywhere from $1 – $5 each.  We’d get much more money if we sell them individually, but I’m not sure if it is worth that much time and trouble.  I suspect when we sell they’ll fall on the lower end because of their condition, but we could get $300-$400 buck for all of these in total depending on how much time we devote to listing all of them!  Or so I thought…

Selling Pokemon Cards on Ebay – So Far, Not Too Much Luck

I’ve listed a handful of them so far, and they haven’t really sold at all.  The problem is the sum of PayPal, Ebay, and Postage fees comes up to about $1.  So, if we sell each card for $1.50, it really isn’t going to be worth our time.  I’m going to try and list a couple more of the most expensive cards to see if I can get any takers.  If not, we’ll have to mark this down in the history books as a waste of time  I was hoping we would be able to get $300-$400  for all of them combined (a return of up to 60,000% on our money), but it doesn’t look super promising at this point.  All-in-all, we’ve spent about 6 hours so far sorting through all of them.  I’d hate for it to be a complete waste of time, but I guess some times that’s the way it goes  I may try to combine some together into small lots to increase the chances of getting them sold if I continue to have trouble moving them individually.

Selling Pokemon Cards on Ebay – Final Thoughts

Selling Pokemon cards is just another example of yard sale arbitrage.  You win some and you lose some  The pic on the left below is of the box of Pokemon cards my wife bought for $5.  The pic below on the right are all the cards I’m hoping to sell for $1 – $2 each (fingers crossed).

Box ‘o Pokemon Cards – Whole box for $5

Hope to Sell these for ~$1-$2 each

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