5 Ideas for Building an Emergency Fund | brokeGIRLrich
I’ve spent a lot of this year harping on the fact that emergency funds are incredibly important. Despite that, I get that it can sometimes feel like wringing water from a stone.
One nice-ish thing is that if your finances are super tight, that means even a little bit can help so this list looks at some options to find that money to get you to your first $100 or even $1000 with the idea that this goal will probably take about a year with any of these methods.
Dobot
This app is incredible and really helped me at the beginning of my personal finance journey. Dobot analyzes your deposits and spending and sets aside a little bit here and there based on the algorithm it creates with that info. This is called their Smart Savings option, on the incredibly rare chance the algorithm is off and it creates any kind of overdraft fee, Dobot will refund that.
I have used Dobot both while working a steady job, where the transfers were kind of predictable to doing crazy varied freelance work and it never overdrafted me. It did, over about 3 years, save me more than $2,000.
The drafts go into a Dobot savings account that you can then transfer to your own emergency fund savings account.
UserTesting
If you can’t squeeze another penny from the budget then you need to make another penny and UserTesting is a pretty easy way to do it.
UserTesting is a website where you test websites. Each test takes between 15-25 minutes and pays $10. The problem with UserTesting is that there aren’t always website to review or they might be looking for a certain demographic.
That said, with UserTesting up in the background while I’m doing other work or watching TV, I can easily make $40-50 a month, sometimes considerably more. The work is very easy. You install an app that records your screen when it’s running and when you’re approved to review a website, a little pop up appears asking you to do certain tasks on the website and think aloud your opinion of how easy/difficult it is to navigate, how appealing it looks, etc.
Mystery Shopping
I’m not gonna lie, mystery shopping can be a pretty big pain in the behind, but it is free and easy to sign up. I do not recommend this if you don’t live in a big city. If you can’t just hit up the places they need reviewed on your already existing daily travels, it won’t be worth it.
I was most successful at mystery shopping when I lived in NYC and had a monthly metro card, so I would just pop off the subway along the way home or to work and pop back on with no added expense other than a few minutes of my time.
The reason I think mystery shopping is such a pain is because the company I’m going to suggest, Sinclair Customer Metrics, makes you take like a 40 minute pre-qualifying quiz to work with a company. So to mystery shop Auntie Anne’s (which was worth it because there are many of them all over America, and in airports – actually, if you fly a lot mystery shopping can also be a good choice because there are often bonuses for doing airport mystery shops), I take the 40 minute quiz on what to look for and then I’m approved to mystery shop Auntie Anne’s.
Conversely, I did the same 40 minute quiz for West Elm, only ever did one shop there, and for that quiz plus the time to go in and make the purchase, and then do the little report when I got home (the reports take about 10 minutes each) and made like $10 and got a free napkin ring.
Additional downsides to mystery shopping are that you have to pay for the item you buy, though you are reimbursed. Watch out for the higher end stores though because they’ll often give you like a $10 reimbursement limit and you’re left buying a single napkin ring somewhere like West Elm. Also some shops require you to make a purchase and then return it the next day – all for a range of $5-20 usually.
Again, if you’re between a rock and a hard place to come up with extra money and live in a big city, it’s an option. I also liked that for food mystery shops, you get a free meal – once you get the reimbursement check in a month.
Collect Coins
This one isn’t going to make a huge life difference, but again, to hit the first $100, you can possibly do that in change over the year. Find a mug, jar or bowl and put it in a prominent place. All change goes in it.
Make it a family game. Turn picking up change off the ground into a habit. You can either roll them yourself when the container is full and take the change into the bank, or find a Coinstar, which will unfortunately take a portion as a fee if you pick cash, or you can get a gift card with no fee, which is useful if there’s something you know you’ll use like Amazon or Home Depot. Then you can transfer that amount from your bank into your savings.
Donate Plasma
You can donate plasma several times a year and if you donate through a company like CSL Plasma, they reward you via a prepaid gift card with a “point” system that translates into dollars for how often you donate. Payment amounts vary but are generally around $50 and the donation takes approximately 2 hours. A thing to be aware of is that you can be pushed for twice weekly donations and America is the only country in the world that sanctions that – it’s likely safer to go once every two weeks, which seems to be the global standard.
None of these are going to make you rich or are even very good long term options, but as things that are accessible to (almost) everyone, they could be worth the temporary sacrifice to reach those initial emergency fund goals.
Individually, you could possibly hit that $1,000 in a year, combined you can knock down the time even further.
