“Quick Cash: A Guide to Raising Money During Life’s Planned and Unplanned Changes” (Sphinx Publishing, $14.95) is wildly entertaining, but it’s also loaded with practical advice. Author and lawyer Richard E. Schell provides gobs of ways to ask for, borrow, earn or find money if you need cash fast.
We took note of the sections on unemployment insurance and food stamps (you never know), laughed hysterically at the part about hitting up family members (we’d get more money under sofa cushions) and carefully read the part about making a hobby (such as mosaics) pay off. We wound up with a list of books and Web sites and learned to find out what can be produced legally at home. There goes that mosaic vase holding the marijuana plant.
Schell sees the cash possibilities in everything from pawnshops to sperm banks; he can be practical, such as when he explains how to refinance real estate; and fanciful, such as when he suggests finding buried treasure with a metal detector. He also has a handy list of things you should not sell “without checking.” It includes alcohol products, canisters of welding gas, firearms and human organs. So much for the garage sale.
On where charity begins: “Nobody on the planet is too old for a quick loan from a family member.”
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