So I have a nice job lined up that I will be starting in a couple weeks. However, life is expensive and I need to get to my first paycheck, so things will go a lot more smoothly for me if I could rustle up a couple hundred bucks between then and now. My situation isn't bad - I have a pretty good support network I could borrow money from, but I'd like to hold myself up as much as possible before I go asking.
I've come up with a few possible plans:
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Sell Plasma. I used to do this back in college and pretend I was straight. Is gay blood still a no-go? I'm also on injectable estrogen, would that disqualify me? It seems to pay a hell of a lot more than it did in the 2000s, so if I qualify I could get what I need in just a couple sessions.
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Temp Work. I know there's a place nearby where I can just show up at the crack of dawn and they'll give me a job for the day, paid at the end of the day. I've referred lots of my homeless clients there. But from what I've seen it's mostly very physical labor, and I am small and weak. I don't know if I could handle warehouse work, and the city is still recovering from a blizzard so outdoors work would be a lot less fun than normal. Does anyone have experience with these types of day labor programs?
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Download grindr andNOPE not doing that again -
Rob a bank. It worked for Stalin.
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Swallow pride and ask family for help. It's not unusual for us to float a couple hundred between each other, but I just don't want to ask if I don't have to.
What's your go-to for when you need more than a couple bucks real real quick?
Honestly plasma or asking friends/family might be the best bet as crumby as that may be. You could also try and explain your landlord the situation and they might give you a break for a few weeks but its never good to rely on something like that. I used to do bike delivery and would pick up shifts under the table because my old store was always understaffed but that is a pretty unique situation.
Plasma is a disgusting saddening thing. I work in a shelter now and its so depressing seeing people literally sign up to visit the vampire in order to meet their basic needs.
Here it's illegal to sell blood/plasma for money but I guess the US is so atomised it's the only way to get enough to donate.
On the other hand there are very few ways to make money for ordinary people who just need a quick job for a day or two.
It's disgusting here. One of the few countries where it's legal. It's not just a product of atomization, blood products are a major export here worth about 2.5% of all exports.
It's pretty hard to become a plumber though isn't it?
Here you need to complete an apprenticeship and certification and that takes 5-6 years at least, more if not full time. Also the answer to "where can I become an apprentice?" is generally "no, go away".
I know a friend that steals food from grocery stores and whatever else he needs from pharmacies, Walmarts, etc. so that he doesn't expend his last bit of cash savings
Obligatory steer clear of target unless you want to get lulled into a felony by their loss prevention forensics labs
Not to disregard what you've said about "holding yourself up" in your post but I really do think this is a good time to ask for help from friends & family. I know it can feel weird, and it all depends on your relationship with them, but speaking as someone who loaned their sister money fairly consistently for the past few months I'd much rather have her ask for money from me than sell plasma even if it was tight for me financially. That's what you do for the people you care about. And if you are going to be making money soon, you can hopefully sock some away to pay them back over time.
If you'd prefer to think of it in a way that benefits your loved ones, think of it as momentarily leaning on your support network to get yourself in a position where you can return that support when others in your network need it—a bit like putting your own oxygen mask on first to make sure you're conscious to help others.
Contact the local Russian and/or Chinese consulate and ask about their "paid to post" program. It's not an election year, so the pay isn't as good.
But I think there are uber-like apps for odd jobs. I moved furniture for a summer once and one of the other guys got his work thru that app. It seemed a better situation than actual uber or doordash, those suck and the margins aren't good. It was more like Craigslist without sex or weird stuff.
Oh like taskrabbit? I have a friend - a mechanical engineer with a good job at Ford mind you - who assembles Ikea furniture and gazebos and shit on one of these apps. Says he enjoys it lol
I bought a couch at Ikea and taskrabbit was straight up their first option for delivery. My phone had no reception and no built-in QR reader and the poor girl running the delivery kiosk looked at me like an alien. We tried doing the non-qr route and they didn't deliver to my area. I ended up getting the "secondary" delivery option, which was a day sooner and showed up in a box truck with a guy and what seemed like his son. The pillows all came in huge boxes for some reason so it was a lot to carry up so I helped them and gave them a good tip.
Come to think of it, I do enjoy assembling ikea furniture and am also an engineer, maybe I should sign up....
I'd focus on the other end and cut expenses to zero first because it's a little easier. Food bank, dumpster diving, use few utilities, cook at home, etc.
Once that is done... yeah plasma. Or sell some things you don't care about.
If you want a wage of some kind and like back-breaking labor, you can find a work center and sign up to be a day laborer. This fucking sucks because you have to get there at the crack of dawn, you aren't guaranteed a spot, the labor will be manual and probably be lifting things, and you won't get paid well. But you do get an actual wage.
And gig economy stuff.
Do drug studies.
Sell stuff on Amazon that you shoplift from corporate chain stores.
A friend of mine did transcription. You need to dig a bit for a service that doesn't rip you off, and even if you do 60 WPM it may still not break minimum wage, but you can control when and how much you do it.
like someone else suggested, i always came at it the other way. cutting expenses as deep as i could go, eating baked potatoes/rice, doing nothing but reading/napping. basically anything to get to the paycheck and keep expenses at the floor.
when i had an emergency expense in those times, i reached out to family to borrow and paid back asap (less than a month/first check if possible).
i also have a a knack for fixing computer / home network problems, so i would do that for friends, friends-of-friends, word-of-mouth as a cheaper/last ditch before they involved geek squad. i would figure out whatever the local big box rate was and offer to fix it for half in cash, unless a hardware replacement was called for and then i would find a deal online to replace it or whatever at cost + half rate of labor in cash. this generally ended up being a good deal for both of us. but hardware issues are rare. most people with "computer problems" on a windows computer have the same problem (loaded up on malware, insane popups, degraded performance) but every once in a while it would be like "no sound" or "can't print to a network printer" which required troubleshooting logic and knowledge.
i always offered an out, that if i could not figure out what it was and had no advice, i wouldn't charge them anything. i used to do phone based end-user tech support for years and did a lot of enterprise level IT shit, so i have seen just about everything that some goofus can do to their own computer. if you can come to them (so they don't have to bring it to someone that will snoop their saved accounts, bookmarks and porn) and deal with it while they are there, they will be grateful and happy to pay.
