#RichLifeLawyer Show 011: Five Ways to Get Cash Now

No one ever wants to be in a cash crunch. But it happens.

Maybe the IRS handed you a bill you weren’t expecting, or your car suffered a catastrophic failure. No matter the reason, sometimes you just need cash. Here are five way to get it right now – just watch the video!

Hey everybody, welcome to episode eleven, whatever, of The Rich Life Lawyer Show, as always I’m your host, Christopher Small, I’m excited to be here with you today, I’m excited to talk to you about the five ways you can put more money in your bank account today. Now, let’s just dive right it. Let’s just dive right  in, these are things that I’ve learned from all over the place and they can work for pretty much everyone. I can tell you, maybe I’ll give you the bonus sixth way at the end.

Way number one, first way to put bank account in your money today is to renegotiate your bills. What I mean is, you can call, there’s a couple of you that can’t really renegotiate with like gas company, electric company, like water, that’s probably it but cable, it’s a big one. You can negotiate with those guys. You can get them to knock your bill down. Tell them you’re thinking about leaving. Tell them that you wanted to call and see if there’s an opportunity to lower your bill. Often the cable company will give really close to the current special that they’re offering and you can do that. So, call them. You can save some significant money there. Telephone, cellphone, they’re always doing deals and it’s not fair that the new people should get the deals. So if you call them, you can often negotiate a better rate. Some sort of a deal, some sort of a discount that can save you a lot of money over the course of time. Then just think about the bills that you pay every month. Insurance, car insurance in particular. Call them up and say, “Hey, am I eligible for any discounts?” Then you probably are and you can pay those down.

Way number two. Second thing that you can do is, you can negotiate your interest rates. If you have credit card bills that you pay, you can always call them up and say, “Hey, can I get my interest rate lower?” Often they would do particularly if you have been paying on time over a relatively the long amount of time but the worst they can say is “No.” You know you call them up, they’re not gonna raise your interest rates. So you can call them up and then say, “Hey, hook me up with the lower interest rate. You know, I’m a loyal customer. I’ve been using you for a long time. We’ve got a lot of money on the account. I’ve been paying it. Give me a little bit lower interest rate.” You often see how they will often be able to do that for you
The third thing that you can do is to ask for a raise. Unless you work in my company then don’t ask for a raise. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. If you are providing value to your company, over and above what you are making, then you probably have good standing to ask for a raise. Now, when you go in there, the way that you don’t wanna do it is to say, “Hey, can I have a raise?” because what are they gonna say, “No.” A better way to do it, maybe to say, “Look, my job is XYZ, I’ve been doing this job really well”

And then you go one step further, you must go one step further and you say, “The reason I know I’ve been doing well is that over the course of time that I’ve been here, our revenue has gone up X percent because of me. We signed X new clients because of me. I’ve helped to introduce XYZ posies and procedures in the systems that have lowered the inefficiencies and increased revenue. I should be rewarded for that and above that you also gave me X’s responsibilities when X left. You gave me Y’s responsibilities when Y left. I didn’t see an increase there.” If you laid out like that, most employers are gonna go, “Okay.” and they’ll hook you up with something. But again, it’s one of those deals where if you don’t ask, you’re not gonna get it. Now, be careful about walking in there like with an ultimatum. Like, give me this money or I’m gonna leave. They may tell you “Leave.” So, be prepared for them to say no or negotiate back with you but that’s an easy to put extra money in your pocket right now.

Number four, number four is kind of, you know, well this is easy. Walk around your house, look at all the stuff that you don’t use anymore and sell it. A lot of us, most of us have a bunch of stuff in our house that we don’t use that someone else would find useful and therefore it’s valuable. So you can sell it. So go around, sort of like a garage sale but just put it on eBay, put it on Craigslist, and you’ll get some real money for it. You know, we’ve done that in our house some several occasions. We sold beds, couches, all kinds of stuff. If it’s just taking up space, get rid of it. Put the cash in your pocket and you’ll be feeling about yourself immediately. For two reasons. Reason number one is because you have the cash. Reason number two is because you have that thing out of your space and your space will be more open. Which is always a good thing.

And then number five is to cut something out. Do you really need, you know speaking of negotiating cable, do you really need cable? Or can you survive, or can you make your work with iTunes and Netflix together which is significantly cheaper than cable. Or cut out the cable just have the internet, and then work around it in some other way. Do you really need that ten X phone plan, when you could use the two X phone plan. That kind of stuff. Think about, do you have three gym memberships. I have know some people that do. Do you have things in excess that you’re not using or do you have things just purely that you aren’t using that you could get rid of. I think we all confine those things, cut that out and that’s money that is automatically in your pocket.

And then sixth, the sixth bonus way that you can put money in your bank is to start doing something new to earn more money. That can either be through a raise or you can be doing something on the side. You can be whatever. Whatever your passion is, you can probably turn that into money in some way. You can coach on it. You can teach it. You can create a product. You can do all kinds of cool stuff but earning more money is always an option when you need to make more cash. Get a second job too by the way. I mean let’s be honest, if you really want something and you need more money, and you’re not wanting to do these other things, you can always go get a second job. You can sleep less, work more.

So, hopefully this helped. I think that, you know, look, we all wanna put more money in our pockets and I think we’re all in some ways letting, you know, imagine you got a bucket with some holes in it. You plug those holes up and the bucket fills up faster. That’s what we’re talking about doing today. So, question of the day, I know, if you could cut one expense, what would it be? What’s the one thing that you think you could live without. I’m not asking you to actually do it, just tell me what that is. And remember, if you have questions, you can go to Twitter @richlifelawyer. You can go to Facebook, facebook.com/richlifelawyer. Just use the hashtag richlifelawyershow. Catch you on the flip side.

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. Do you have kids? Have you completed guardianship paperwork? Have you done it correctly? Click here to find out what happens if you don’t do anything: Are you okay with a judge choosing the guardians of your children?

P.P.S. Do you own a business? Do you have a plan so the business, and your family, can survive if something happens to you? If not, click here to learn how simple it is to protect your business and your family from tragedy: 5 Ways to Protect Your Business from Catastrophic Failure.

P.P.S. Do you have no kids and think you don’t need an estate plan? Single and think a will is only for married couples. You couldn’t be more wrong. Click here to learn more: 5 reasons estate planning is a must have even if you don’t have kids.

Christopher Small is a Kirkland estate planning attorney who helps people get rich and live forever. He is also the owner of CMS Law Firm LLC.