Having a lot of debt prevents you from making the most important purchases in your life. You might not be able to buy a new car when you need one, or worse, you can’t buy a house. If you have a large pile of debt, you can put yourself in a better financial position a lot faster than you think with the following four ways to access cash quickly and pay off your debts.
Sell Extra Electronics
Have an extra laptop or an extra TV? Sell it. Same goes for extra phones, extra tablets, or extra-anything that you don’t really need or don’t use that often. You’re only one person who uses one of each electronic device at any one time, and most of the stuff you might watch on a TV you can watch on a smartphone or laptop. Sell the extras and use the cash to pay off a few credit cards.
Get a Side Hustle
A “side hustle” is any job you can do to earn money quickly that fits in around your regular work schedule. For example, you could pet sit or dog walk in the evenings or on weekends. You could drive a car for a rideshare company or work as a food delivery driver. Shovel driveways or walkways in winter for immediate cash, or mow lawns and trim hedges in summer. The cash isn’t a lot, but if you hustle the cash could be a lot.
Take Out a Home Equity Loan
Sure, it’s debt chasing debt, but a home equity loan only allows you to borrow against the current equity in your home. These loans offered by companies like American Financing have a significantly lower interest rate than all credit cards and most school loans. You are essentially consolidating your other debts into the mortgage on your home. Then you only have to pay one monthly bill every month instead of several bills. Another option is a cash-out refinancing program, which reduces the interest rate on your current mortgage and combines all debts into the mortgage at the same time by giving you “cash back” at the refinance signing.
Liquidate Financial Assets
Having savings, stocks, bonds, and an investment portfolio to build wealth is useless if you have amassed so much debt your “wealth” can’t pay it off. Liquidate your assets and a chunk of your investments to pay off debt. Then you can rebuild that wealth debt-free and not worry about having to pay it off with your “wealth” later.
You don’t have to be stuck in the debt cycle. Find solutions that work for you to reduce your debt.