• Tweet

• Tweet

Everybody needs money now for something

If you urgently need money now then you’re probably knee deep in trouble.  If that’s the case, the one thing that wont help you are all of the “get a loan instantly” sites.  You might as well consider them loan sharks.  They’ll take everything you’ve got for a tiny loan and if you life isn’t already screwed up, they will be sure to do that too.

If you do need money now, do yourself a favor and check out some clever debt reduction strategies in my Can’t Pay My Mortgage post for some quick help.  You probably got into your current mess by taking crappy loans, don’t perpetuate the cycle!  Remember – Quick, high interest loans are not the answer!

For the rest of you, we will get you money now, but only a little bit.  See, just like losing weight, building a huge cash hord and digging yourself out of debt is very possible – it just requires focus and determination.  Those 30 pounds didn’t just melt off of you, and likewise you’ll need to do your fair share of work to stop the leaks in your spending.

Step 1 – Budget

You need to know what you’re spending before you can begin to address the problem.  I think if you check out the below articles in order you should have enough knowledge to take care of this step.  The reason you need money now is because you’ve neglected this step for too long!

Step 2 – Ways to Save

Having completed Step 1, we now understand where we are spending our money.  Knowing is half the battle when you need money now.  The other half is slicing out the fat.  It wont always be easy and in some cases it may be difficult at first but a few weeks down the line you’ll be much happier and much wealthier.  Remember, the easiest way to save more money is to spend less.  For that, we must optimize our expenses.

Step 3 – Increase your Income and Be Productive

One of the easiest ways of getting money is to make more of it.  If you want to make more money at a job you don’t need to put in 80 hours or wait until your manager dies so you can take his job.  There are a few easy things you can do right now that will pay you back in spades later.  I got my first job out of college that paid $67,000 and my GPA was a 2.3 and once I started understanding how things work I was able to bump my salary from $72,000 to $108,000 in three years.  I will be trying to write everything that I’ve done to achieve this in these posts so that you can do the same!

Step 4 – Collect Free Money (when you need money now!)

So, we’ve learned where our money gets spent and we’ve cut out the fat.  We’re now lean, mean and ready to capitalize on our new found control over spending.  If you need money now, these offers can help.  Here we’re going to look at things like cash back credit cards, sign on bonuses for opening accounts as well as some of the best credit card offers out there.  We can discuss this because you’re responsible with your finances now so I know you won’t be running up credit card limits, getting cash advances, etc.  I think you’ll find most of the things here every easy to put into practice, especially after getting your spending optimized.

Coming Soon:

• Get Paid to Save. Wait, What?!?
• The Ultimate Credit Card Matrix
• With what I already put on Facebook, I made over $100
• Getting Paid to Shop. The Mystery Shopper.

Step 5 – Make Your Savings Multiply

We’ve budgeted, optimized and hit up a ton of merchants for free cash.  Now that we have a savings account (which we were paid to open), and it’s starting to get full with cash (from spending less), it’s time to make these savings work for us.  We should be increasing our wealth while we sleep.  Everything in here is low risk and low effort.  I want you to have the piece of mind that your money is safe and growing while you focus your mind on other important things like your family, xbox, etc…

Step 6 – Advanced Savings Techniques

For people that are ready for a more hands on approach (and a bit more growth potential), this section is for you.  There will be risks here and I will be sure to outline them and caution you.  It will take a bit more work than a “set it and forget it” strategy, however you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to make gains here.  Just remember take the risks seriously.

• Coming Soon!

The Need Money Now Strategy Resources

Achieving financial security comes from learning best practices and being able to control yourself and your spending.  That said, there are a ton of tools out there that can make things really easy for you.  They may automatically budget for you, help regulate your investments automatically, get you automatic savings when you do spend or even challenge you to improve saving by giving you cash prizes!  Below are a few resources that I’ve found are extremely helpful in your “need money now” quest :)

For the full list of resources I use to manage my finances, click here.