If you are living from paycheck to paycheck, you may find yourself coming up short for the monthly bills. Since charm, your degrees, and your fabulousness won’t keep your gas, heat, and lights on, you may have to resort to some extreme measures to make those ends meet. Here are four unusual yet viable ways to increase your income in 2016.
Rent Your Style:
Maybe one of the reasons you are short on cash is because you have invested a lot of money into your cultivating your impeccable style. If you are okay with renting your shoes, accessories, bags, and outerwear, dishes, or the like to your friends, you can bank that cash for your bills.
To get this enterprise started, start with people that you know and trust, set the pricing and expectation for returns and damage, and draft a simple contract to make the agreement binding. You think I am joking? Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, cofounders of Rent The Runway are making a killing off this concept.
Sell Your Gold:
After I called off my first engagement, I was left with a man’s (unwanted) wedding band. Last year, there was a Cash For Gold store that opened up in my neighborhood and I carried the ring in and was able to get a close to $200 dollars for it.
If you are short on cash and have jewelry from ex’s or only one side of several earrings, don’t be afraid to trade them for some dollars. You can even host parties and be paid a portion of your girlfriends’ payouts. Check your local listings for stores near you.
Sell Your Hair:
Based on institutional racism and Eurocentric ideals of beauty, this option may only be viable for those of us with certain textures and grades of hair. Selling your hair is nonetheless a surefire way to make money.
But don’t be fooled, there are stipulations attached. To earn upwards of $4,000 for your silky mane, your hair usually has to be at least ten-inches long, “virgin” (meaning never dyed, hardly heated, or damaged), and considered healthy.
On the flip side, for those of us curly girls in need of some money but outside the parameters of conventional myopic standards of beauty, don’t fret. You can save your pennies by cutting all of your hair off and rocking a sexy fade. You could use the money that went to paying (and tipping) your stylist and buying products to attend to your financial priorities.
Don’t Go Food Shopping Until Your Cupboards Are Bare:
One of the reasons that you may be short on cash by the end of the month is because you are buying food that you don’t need and end up wasting it. To nip this overspending in the bud, hold off on grocery shopping until all of your food in your refrigerator and pantry are gone.
BMWK Family- Are there other interesting ways to increase your income in 2016?