A Plan for Finding Fast Cash

Excerpted from Quick Cash by Richard E. Schell © 2004

When people are asked if they had an emergency that had to be solved in ten minutes, how much time should be spent on planning, most say they would spend one minute on planning and nine minutes on action. When the same question was posed to astronauts, they said they would spend nine minutes on planning and one minute on doing.

This observation has some valuable wisdom for raising cash as well. Planning can be very valuable because, as the old adage goes, if you don’t have the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over? The first step to successfully raising quick cash is to know your outcome and plan strategically.

This chapter has some specific exercises that will help you to develop the plan, you need to respond to the challenges you are facing. To have a plan, you have to have a figure in mind that will solve your temporary cash need. After you have the figure, then you need a deadline.

Setting a goal for a sum of cash uses the same elements that you’ve used successfully in other areas of life. In addition, good plans have an order and logic to them.

This planning process should also help you evaluate alternative ways you could generate cash. There are different considerations of cost and time involved if you need to raise $50 until payday, as opposed to $10,000 for something else. Time spent on getting a true picture of how much cash you need, when you need it, and what your best available options are, will be time well spent in savings and effort. If you need $5,000 dollars in three months, that plan will require different resources and actions then will raising $50 dollars by the end of the week.

To develop the picture of what you need, you must start by examining your cash flow.

The Importance of Cash Flow
Cash flow analysis involves matching income against outgo. Cash is to a business, what blood is to a person. This also applies to the little businesses called lives that we all run. Unless you are a monk and you have taken a vow of poverty, a certain amount of money comes in and a certain amount of money goes out. That is called cash flow. More than any other factor, cash flow will determine how often and how much cash you need. The single best way to get a handle on it is to get your checkbook and then raid an old board game for play money. Pay yourself your normal, expected income and then start paying bills with the play money. If at the end of the game you have money left after paying all your bills, you have positive cash flow. If you have run out of money, but still have bills to pay, you have negative cash flow. That means you are spending more than you are taking in.

Cash Flow Analysis
Sometimes the need for quick cash can be solved in other ways than raising cash. The outcome that you need right now is more money, the means to get it could be to get more cash flowing in, or it might be to stop cash from flowing out.

The most essential part of any plan is the documentation and follow through. So, when you’re ready to begin the planning process, you have got to be able to write down the answers. Writing down the outcome of what you want to happen is particularly important with cash because it gives you a place to hang your action steps so that you can really get some traction in achieving what you want.

You have to be able to define your target of how much additional cash you’re going after. Then you have to ask yourself how you plan to get there. Finally, you have to be able to create an after-quick-cash scenario that you can live with.

Goal Setting
Setting a goal involves asking questions about what is possible and what is desirable. Before making any decisions about raising cash, ask these questions to guide yourself through the planning process.

• Where am I now in terms of how much cash I need?
• When do I need it?
• What would I be willing to do to raise it?
• Who could I ask for it as a gift?
• Who could I borrow it from?
• What objects do I have that I could pawn to raise it?
• What could I cash in to raise the cash I need?
• What could I sell to raise the cash I need?
• What service or product could I sell to earn it?
• What sources of unclaimed cash could I have overlooked?
• What would I absolutely not be willing to do to raise it?
• How much time do I have to raise this cash?
• How much work do I want to put into raising it?
• How likely is it that a bank, credit union, or finance company will lend to me?
• How certain am I that I can repay a loan within the time frame I need?
• What would I sell in a heartbeat if I could to raise the cash?
• What would I never sell to raise it?
• What job would I do immediately if I could make money?
• What task would I never do to raise this cash, no matter how much I needed it?
• What is my back-up plan if I cannot raise the cash I need?