Where Do You Go If You Need Cash Quick? – Episode 194

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we have the president of Partners for Prosperity and our co-host, Kim Butler here with us today. And we’re going to be reviewing, it’s a section of called the money saving section. And it’s in the AARP magazine. And this one happens to come from the June, July 2017 edition. And it’s a great question. Where do you go if you need cash quick? Now, a lot of people, I would think, could answer that.

[00:56] But the statistic that is why we are talking about this today is that nearly half of American adults say they can’t cover a $400 emergency expense. What do you think, Kim? That’s mind boggling, absolutely mind boggling. And yet, I’ll admit, I’ve been there. There have been times in my life where I’m not sure I could have handled that. So that is a challenge that we need to help people with. It starts out with saving money. And part of the reason that so many Americans don’t save money is, of course, their own lack of discipline, but also their lack of excitement about where they are storing said saved money. And then furthermore, the fact that no financial advisor wants to help them save money.

[01:46] Typical financial advisors do not get paid when clients save money. They get paid when clients invest money. And there’s a big difference between those two. I didn’t used to think so myself. But I’m very clear now that there is. So apparently this article has some good ideas for us on where we should get the cash. Well, I’m going to ask you to evaluate each of them, whether they’re good or bad. And then I’m going to ask you to see if you might have some better ideas or at least some additional ones. OK. So the number one they start off with is sell the shirt off your back rather than donate or toss your clothes, sell them through. It’s called tradesy for women’s designer goods and real real for men’s luxury

[02:33] clothes. They evidently tried this and said that you could average getting six hundred and seventy dollars in 30 days by doing that. Do remember, though, that you used two words, women’s designer and men’s luxury. So while I’m sure they did get six hundred and whatever dollars, not everybody has designer clothes. I don’t. I’m not one of those people that care about that kind of thing. I realize others do. I’m not making a judgment about it, but there is no way that I could sell for any amount of money the grubby jeans that I wear. Oh, I’m not supposed to admit that, am I? Or, you know, the T-shirt that I have on that I wore in the barn this morning. And so I’m not OK with this. I will admit that giving donating clothes to Goodwill is awesome.

[03:30] I think the tradesy thing is cool. If that’s your bailiwick and you’ve got designer clothes. And of course, as we know, the people that wear those only want to wear them once. And so fine, that that’s awesome if that works for you. It’s a no for me. Sorry. Got it. All right. Number two, redeem US savings bonds. More than twenty three billion dollars worth of bonds have matured but have not been cashed in. Well, now that I will agree with. But of course, that assumes that you actually had some to begin with. And it is rare that I meet a client that actually has some. If they do, it’s somebody that got them from grandma or what have you. And yes, it is important to redeem them because they are not earning

[04:13] very good interest rates. And so those dollars could be used for something else, either obviously handling the emergency or being stored in a more effective place to store cash. But in terms of its validity for somebody solving a cash crunch, I’m going to guess that the people that have these serious cash crunches probably don’t have US savings bonds. I think I have to agree with you there. I’m going to have to go with a no. Yeah, I just I’m not sure if it’s because I think when World War Two, probably the huge push for bonds and people really bought war bonds. And I don’t know. I just don’t think bonds look I mean, US savings bonds. I just don’t think they represent that big of an asset, although obviously twenty three billion dollars.

[05:03] But those could be to some significantly wealthy, older Americans, too. Agreed. All right. Number three, tend to pet, love being around dogs, become a dog sitter. They were able to earn a thousand dollars in a month. Now I’m all into that. Emma Dogg is currently laying on the floor, wiped out from her walk around the porch because Emma Dogg is a Great Dane and chills all the time. So she’d be an easy one to dog set. But now you’re talking about something that I can absolutely back up, not because the dog setting is totally cool. It is. But also, you’re working, you’re getting your little self up off the couch and giving of your time and your effort and your skill set and providing value and then getting paid for it.

[05:55] There is nothing more wonderful. There is nothing more valuable to us as human beings than providing our strengths, our resources, our time, our effort and then getting paid for it. It is a beautiful thing that somebody created where we can actually work for money and when we can provide value to somebody that needs what we provide. And there is just all kinds of good that go along with that. Number four is join a focus group. Participating in focus groups earn 50 to 250 dollars for one to two hours of your time and your opinions. Now, I would think this would be a high area to get ripped off in. So you need to be kind of careful. What do you think? Yeah, I’m not certain about that. It’s a really good point to make.

[06:48] But what I am conscious of is that a lot of marketing people are realizing that focus groups are not the most effective way to get information. There’s a really fun book that I’ve read named Ask by Ryan Levesque. And that’s Ask by Ryan Levesque. I’ll grab it here in a minute and spell his name. And it talks about how if you want to know what service you can provide to people, then think of something that you love. Find just a few people that are interested and ask them questions about that interest and glean information from people that are truly invested in the source of the information and the results of the information, et cetera. Whereas somebody that’s in a paid focus group. How independent is their opinion, really?

[07:42] Well, and I will tell you this. You know, I’ve studied a little bit about Apple, and Apple has never once conducted a focus group. That’s right. And if you think about the products they make, we would we didn’t even know we needed them till after they made them. Exactly. Yeah. Famous Steve Jobs line. They don’t know what they don’t. They don’t know what they don’t have or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I want to spell Ryan’s last name. So the book, again, is called Ask, A-S-K period. And the author is Ryan R-Y-A-N Levesque L-E V as in Victor, E, S as in Sam, Q-U-E. And the subtitle is the counterintuitive online method to discover exactly what your customers want to buy, create a mass of raising fans and take any business to the next level.

[08:36] So it’s off the point, but it’s a cool book. I highly recommend it. Super. Number five, rent out your car. If your vehicle is just sitting in the driveway, use sites such as Turo and get around to let other people drive your car when you’re not. All right. Well, I love the idea. And I’ve definitely heard from the second in command at Uber that our cars are not used 94 percent of the time. I know a lot of people are very what’s the word I’m looking for? They’re very conscientious about their car, like they would never, ever let a stranger drive it. Other people don’t have any problem with that at all. And of course, that’s going to be very site specific. Like if we put our car out for rent here in Mount Enterprise, Texas,

[09:21] nobody would come by to get it. But in New York City or, you know, a larger community, that might work great. And of course, I trust that maybe one of the things we’re going to come up with here is driving people and earning some money that way. But yeah, if you’re sitting in an office desk all day and your car can be out and being used by other people, that’s cool. The one thing I would say, and I just went through this with my own personal insurance, is that the Property and Casualty Insurance Agency is taking a very dim view of this. Yeah. And check with your insurance agent to make sure that if you are being paid to rent your car out, you don’t some way invalidate your insurance. Very wise.

[10:09] Number six is refer a friend. Recommending a job candidate to your employer could earn you a cash bonus. About two thirds of employers offer incentives to employees for referring a new hire, and the fee can be as much as $10,000. Love it. What a great idea. The good jobs are often found that way, statistics show. And what a win, win, win for everybody. That’s a fabulous one. Number seven, clean house. Selling your old stuff keeps getting easier. Craigslist largely free remains the major online marketplace, but more apps there list some that are coming to help you do that as well. So get rid of stuff and get cash. I mean, I kind of like the de-stuff concept already. Absolutely. Yeah, you can’t go wrong there.

[11:04] And the decluttering or de-stuffing of one’s home often contributes to a cleaner mental approach to things as well. So, yeah, love that. My daughter’s in Denver and it’s school change over time. You know, everybody’s leaving in June and new kids coming in. And apparently people just put things out on the lawn with a price on them. And sometimes it’s free. They just want it hauled off. And there’s just all kinds of couch and bed trading going on around the colleges these days. So, yeah, we can do that as adults. And the final one that they list is to tap insurance. And it mentions that permanent life insurance has an investment component that builds up cash. If you have such a policy, you can withdraw or borrow some of that cash,

[11:54] which we actually know is borrow against some of that cash. And they’re getting there. Boy, I I’m grateful for it. Absolutely. I do want to clarify that permanent insurance should mean whole life, not universal life, not flexible premium life. Those two terms, universal and flexible premium, indicate a product that is not necessarily a good match for this strategy. But and obviously, thank you for clarifying, borrowing against whole life insurance cash value is a fabulous strategy. It’s why my son at age 18 bought his own policy to start to build up his cash reserves. Every family needs one. Every person, individual, single or, you know, confirmed bachelor or bachelorette until we find you can benefit from owning whole life insurance.

[12:49] And if you’re interested in this area, please contact us directly. We do help people buy life insurance. Sometimes I think on the podcast, people get confused that maybe we’re just a provider of education. We want to educate, but we also want to help you implement. It’s so important to put the pen to the paper, write the check, make the product happen. And so the storing of cash as your emergency opportunity fund in cash value of life insurance or permanent life insurance or whole life insurance is a fabulous structure. Now, I’m not going to call life insurance an investment like they did. I totally disagree with that. And it is, again, such a important thing to identify what is an investment versus what is savings and whole life insurance,

[13:41] permanent insurance cash value is savings. It’s liquid money available to be used. And so I’m thrilled that they brought it up. We’ll be grateful for that and we’ll overlook the slight misuse of words. I think that, you know, our parents, I guess I’m in my 50s, but and into our generation, there was a lot of life insurance, small life insurance policies purchased for young people that were whole life policies. They were paid up over a few years and people probably are just they may they probably don’t even know what the death benefit is, let alone the amount of cash value that’s in there. I can see a lot more of those laying out there than the doubly bonds. Absolutely. We often help people figure out what to do with those life insurance policies.

[14:36] And usually the best thing, especially if they are whole life, is to keep them keep paying the premiums and keep the building of the cash value going on. So there’s a lot of good there. And if you have questions about an old policy that a parent or grandparent gave you, please reach out to us more than happy to help. A good email for that is hello at partners. The number four prosperity dot com. That’s hello at partners for prosperity dot com. Send your life insurance questions, send your podcast questions, send your alternative investment questions. We are happy to help. Super. All right. So we have reviewed their eight and some we were better than others. And I think we came up with a couple along the way.

[15:19] Anything you think to add before we wrap up? No, I think this is a great discussion. And I’m super grateful that we had it. And I trust it was beneficial to our listeners. And I would like to also ask them a la Ryan Lavesque. What else do you want us talking about? Todd and I have a lot of wisdom. We’ve both been helping people with their personal finances for a long time. And we’re good at jabbering. Todd’s good at finding articles and we’re good at talking about all kinds of things. But we’d love to answer your questions on the podcast as well. Super. Well, again, thanks so, so much to all of our listeners. And we’ll see you all again real soon on the Prosperity podcast. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast.

[16:04] To take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partners for prosperity dot com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.