Living on the fringe

Until recently (eight weeks ago), I was jobless and not enrolled in school. Life was bumpy. I couldn't really support myself so I found myself seeking alternative methods of financial support.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

One of the methods I discovered was making money online. It took a while to find a real method but this one is legitimate and it is called Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Basically you do random menial tasks, and I mean menial. Of course it is arguable that if you gain "skill" then you can elevate your income of a cent per task up to a few dollars per task but it should also be noted that the responsibility and time required may also go up.

I was able to make $45.00 a week if I worked diligently to maximize the work limit per day in which case was approximately 100 hits in a day. Each hit ranged from $0.05 to $0.30. The work varied and some were not appropriate for all ages.

Of course it should be noted that $45.00 a week is ridiculous, at my current job stacking boxes at a factory, I make at least $300.00 a week which as another job which requires very little skill rather your body's youth, is not bad for a single young adult without many financial responsibilities. And in fact it is this job that is allowing me to take the first step into being an adult by being on my own. I have a vehicle and I will soon own my own place before I return to the university and go to another apartment.

Having income is important. It allows you freedom which you would not have if you did not have income. Freedom to buy food you like, go places, live in certain places, just freedom in general which if you have dependency on others then it sucks not to have that ability.

PayPal and eBay

Another method I found was to sell my possessions. If you really need money, you need to first see how much your item is being sold for and perhaps cut your price in half if not 75% of the competition's price. Of course you will lose money but if you are really in a desperate place in life and you need to see results, well you have to remember that these possessions are just objects and in most cases when life is better again, you can regain them.

Let me give an example, one of my favorite model airplane motors is the E-Flite Park 480, this is a pretty expensive motor in my current life condition, and I have had this motor at least 10 times and of those 10 times the motor was not the same as in, I bought it, sold it, bought it again, sold it again. Of course I lost money, but did people buy my item thereby allowing me to survive another day? Yes.

PayPal is nice because if you don't have a bank account, PayPal can serve as your bank account. They offer debit cards with Mastercard services therefore your money is good almost anywhere.

Before I received my debit card, I used the phone number transaction capability which is not as popular as Mastercards obviously so I was limited to Home Depot but there I was able to buy Nestea and Peanuts to survive on for a few days.

When you find yourself in a funk, you can always find a solution. Don't give up.