Simple Ways of Raising £1000s in Hours

Simple Ways of Raising £1000 in Hours

You've just seen the chance to put together a great deal for yourself - a ‘can't miss’ new business, a chance to invest in someone else's, or you've found the ideal property on which to build your new home.  But you need £10,000 cash, and right away!  Could you raise it overnight?  Could you raise it at all? Actually, it's easier than it sounds, and if you can't do it right now through the ways I'll show you, then you should start making preparations so that, when your chance does come, you will be able to raise the money overnight and take advantage of some terrific deal.

Raise £10,000 in 24 Hours!

As a person who believes in getting the most out of life, I assume you already have several national credit cards that enable you to buy things when you want them even if you're temporarily short of funds.  But did you know that these same credit cards, nearly all of them, also allow you to ‘buy money!’ The ‘cash advance’ privilege that these cards extend is the best way to raise the cash you need, immediately, and with no questions asked!  If you have reasonably good credit, your credit limit on each of your credit cards should be £500.00 to £3,000.00 at least.

If you don't have them you may not realise that it's possible to have ten credit cards that offer cash advances, but you must remember that different banks sponsor different cards, and they all want you to use their card.  For example, you can have a Visa from the Bank of England, and another, separate, Visa from Barclay’s. The possibilities are numerous, and you should take advantage of them for this is certainly the easiest way of raising cash quickly.  If you don't hold these cards now, then you should begin to establish the credit that will enable you to get them in the near future, so you will have the reserves available when you too need to raise cash quickly.

Another Sure-Fire Way to Get Cash Fast!

Most bank accounts today, and yours is very likely to be among them, come with automatic overdraft arrangements whereby you can write cheques for more than the balance you have in the bank, and the bank will honour them merely automatically adding loan money to your account, and charging you the interest due for that loan.

In effect, this is an immediate and automatic loan to you, without any current credit check which is especially handy if, at the moment you need the money, you happen to be unemployed, and planning to start a new business, which banks sometimes look upon with disfavour, and refuse to loan upon until you're big and successful!

So go ahead and write a cheque for the full amount that you're allowed to draw upon, which is seldom less than £1,000.00, and which, in some banks goes to £5,000.00 or more.

If you're lucky enough, or provident enough, to have established two or three bank accounts while you were in the chips, each with its ‘ready-credit’, ‘check-credit’ or whatever-they-choose-to-call-it provisions, you can, of course, really cash in on this one, completely legally, and amass enough capital for your new business.

Blood is Thicker than Water!

If you're stuck for sources for capital, or at least for sufficient capital for the business you have in mind, give some careful thought to whom you could ask to help you. Almost all of us have a favourite relative or two, and, if we're lucky, at least one of those may have money.  Of course it's nice if he or she has loads of it, we all like to have a rich uncle, but even if the amount is not enormous, perhaps you'll succeed in persuading one or more of your relatives that they should help you, from whatever they've got put by for a rainy day.  Mother, father, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, even cousins – try them all where there's any chance at all they might have some bread stashed away, and might spring some loose for you.

Another Hot Idea for Raising Cash!

If you're buying the home you're living in, and have a conventional home mortgage, you may not realise that if you've been paying down the mortgage month by month for a number of years, you have a considerable equity built up.  In addition, your house may now be worth more than you originally paid for it.  Therefore, either your present bank or another may be willing to refinance your mortgage, which will provide you with a chunk of available cash with which you can capitalise your new business.  One advantage of this scheme is that you will most likely not increase your monthly payment by very much, perhaps it will not increase at all (although payments may extend for additional years at the distant end) and thus you will not have a heavy loan repayment schedule added to your obligations early on in the beginning of your business.

Besides the possibility of refinancing the original mortgage on your house, there is another way of using the equity you may have in your house - you can get a second mortgage, either from a bank or from professional lenders.  One reason why you might go the second mortgage route would be if your first mortgage was written at a very favourable rate of interest (such as 5½ or 6%) which you would not be able to match on your refinanced mortgage, and consequently you would not want to refinance the larger principal amount.

Summary and Recommendations

All of the many suggestions contained in this article should certainly get you the capital you need to start your business. Of course, you can combine two or more of the methods if not one alone will provide what you're looking for. And although I've not specifically mentioned it, don't forget that regular commercial banks (not savings banks, they're not allowed to) will sometimes make loans for the establishment of new businesses if they know the borrower from past experience, and see a potential in the proposed business.  Don't assume they will say no, and so don't ask them.  You'd be surprised that they might just say ‘yes’. They're particularly likely to lend you some of the money you need if you've already proved that you can raise money and that you have the majority of the money you need. For example, if you've raised £10,000.00 already by other methods, they may come through with an additional £3,000.00 for working capital.

How to Self-Publish Your Own Books, Manuals, Reports or Newsletters

You can make a lot of money by writing and self-publishing your own material, if you are willing to write the books, manuals, reports or newsletters that millions of people across the UK, and throughout the English-speaking world.

Today, more than ever before, is the age of information. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there continues to be an incredible demand for information throughout the UK and the world. There is an astronomical demand for information-packed books, manuals, reports and newsletters of almost every imaginable kind.

It's really much easier than you might have ever guessed to start filling your bank account with cash from information you possess. People crave information that appeals to their basic needs and will somehow educate or enlighten them. Simply by putting your own specialized information into books, manuals, reports or newsletters, you can start putting a hefty price on information you have no doubt been giving away.

Find Your Market -Then Write Your Material

Anyone who can communicate an idea to another person should be able to get their same message across on a written page. If you are either and expert on some subject, or are interested enough to obtain the information needed for a project, you have what it takes to go from having an idea, to self-publishing your own material in whatever format it develops into.

There are hundreds of publications filled with ads by people just like yourself, who discovered they could make a lot of money writing and publishing their own work. Looking through opportunity magazines, or other publications that cover the field you are interested in, is a good place to start looking for ideas.

Cash in on Your Creativity and Expertise

Be creative in developing your material. Perhaps you are aware of some techniques that allow people to accomplish their goals faster in a certain field. Maybe you can think of a better way to cash in on some current fad. The bottom line is that people are hungry for information and ideas, and you can become the writer or self-publisher of information people want to buy. 

If you can fill any of those needs with information that can be put onto a written page, there are millions of people waiting to hand over their cash to get it.

Knowing How to Package Your Information Can Earn You a Fortune!

After you have written your material, you will have to decide on how you will package the information to make it salable. Depending on your market, some packaging will sell better than others. For example, you can print your information in a series of publications, print it in a book, manual, report or newsletter, or publish it online. You can focus on one area, or utilise many areas.

One thing is certain, people are paying billions of Pounds Sterling to obtain well-packaged information! There are books that sell for up to £100.00 and more, with manuals coming in a close second. There are reports that consist of 10-12 pages selling for up to £10.00 or more, while some seminars can cost as much a £15,000.00 for a single weekend. It may sound incredible to the average person, but people are willing to pay top bucks for information. However, the ‘packaging’ must be perceived as being worth the price you are asking.

Fill Your Material with Self-Interest Benefits

Many new writers fail to understand that if they expect any hope for business survival, let alone success, they must come to realise early on that a big part of their job is to arouse the emotions and desires of their customers. Your product, whether a book, manual, report or newsletter, must be portrayed as being jam-packed with self-interest benefits.

Millions of Pounds in failed business ventures are wasted every year simply because entrepreneurs fail to understand that what they have to say is not necessarily what customers want to hear. You should never forget this valuable lesson. It can make you rich!

Advertising is Vital to the Success of Your Self-Publishing Venture

The success of your advertising will ultimately depend on the salability of your book, manual, report, newsletter, etc. Good advertising will make a good book or article sell better but it cannot transform a poor book into being successful.

Advertising is vital to any business venture because:

1)   It allows a business to deliver their message repeatedly and reinforce it in the minds of targeted consumers.

2)   It allows a business to reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers at a relatively low cost compared to individual sales calls.

3)   It allows a business to target their market and test their product.

4)   A business identity can quickly be established.

5)   A forum for showing a product, together with benefits and advantages can be established.

Ten Money-Making Reasons Why Self-Publishing is the Best Choice

You become a ‘self-publisher’ by taking your material (book, manual, report, newsletter, etc) and bypassing all the middlemen. You bypass the middlemen by going directly to a printer and handling all the marketing and distribution of the product yourself.

As a self-publisher you invest your talent, time, energy and money. The benefits you receive are complete control over your product and all the profits!

Here is a condensed version of 10 good reasons why you should self-publish:

1)   Self-publishing may be the only way to get published. With thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, etc, being sent to publishers continually, you may not be able to get anyone to even look at your idea. Self-publishing may be your only solution.

2)   As a self-publisher you get to keep all of the profits from your sales. Why accept 4% -6% in royalties from a publishing company when you can have it all!

3)   You have absolute marketing and editing control when you self-publish. According to Writer's Digest poll, 60% of the big publishing firms do the final editing; 23% select the final title; 20% will not even consult an author on the cover design, and 37% do not involve authors in promoting their own material.                                                                      

4)   Major publishers may receive up to several hundred manuscripts a week. Unless the have already published your work, the odds they will even look at your material aren't very high.

5)   When you self-publish you are in control every step of the way. By depending on another publisher to make things happen for you, you take the chance of never getting anywhere.

6)   By self-publishing you gain the perspective of being able to see the complete marketing picture from a publisher's point of view.

7)      Even if a publisher did accept your work, it would take an average of 18 more months before the first copy reached the market place. Self-publishing saves you valuable time by targeting a specific or specialized market in a short a time as possible.                   

8)   Waiting for a letter from a publisher that never comes can be frustrating and embarrassing. Self-publishing eliminates the waiting and wondering.

9)   When you self-publish and get more directly involved in marketing you will obtain a more total business picture.

10) As a self-publisher you will receive more business tax advantages.

The Media’s Obsession with Negative News

Last week I sauntered onto a train (it was an hour late) hopefully to get me to my destination in one piece. And, as usual, the carriage was strewn with crushed-up copies of a free, daily tabloid newspaper, The Metro. So I sat down, managed to get a copy that wasn't crumpled and wrinkled like Ena Sharples’ face, and scanned the front page. There was the momentous disaster that was Notre-Dame. The front page also covered a bloody stabbing that took place in London the previous night. Still in London, on the front page, there was a column covering demonstrations relating to climate change that had resulted in widespread violence with 767 arrests for drunkenness, breach of the peace and other 'sordid behaviours.' And just as I was about to turn to page two, there was the horrific report of a ten vehicle pile-up on the M6 close to Salford resulting in the deaths of 24 people.

I had had a pretty shitty day at the office and was looking forward to either a stiff G&T or a couple of large glasses of wine to ease the twitchiness that had gripped my nerve endings like a blacksmith’s vice! But these front page disclosures: misery, doom and gloom, despair, cans of rotten worms, catastrophe-en-contretemps. And as I eventually did get to page two, there was the story about an OAP in Manchester being arrested for defecating in the Arndale Shopping Centre - hellish!

Later, I sat back with what turned out to be my third glass of Chianti Classico Riserva and was aware of my mind drifting. It was a hazy shade of red, just like the Chianti. I started to reflect and uttered to myself, ‘Life as we know it?’ Depends which side of the fence you sit on, doesn’t it? So what am I saying here? Well, it has been a life-long conundrum for me. It is this. Why, during my life, have I been spoon-fed by the media: newspapers, television, radio, Internet newscasts, you name it, daily bucketfuls of unreserved crap? Why this obnoxious obsession with feeding the public with endless headlines covering death, hatred, Islamic terrorism, suffering and starvation, stabbings and murder? I mean it is fed to us by the media moguls as if our very existence depended on it.

As I poured myself another very large glass of Chianti, I decided to switch on the telly. Unfortunately, Sky News was on, and before I could switch channels I caught the last few seconds of a news item: seemingly the Chao Phraya River in Thailand had burst its banks resulting in the deaths of scores of people . . . deary, dear, some things never change. Or, the media and life as we know it (from the media). 

Male Versus Female Qualities - Employment Suitability

' . . . the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence.' ¹

So the question under consideration here is, are there certain jobs that are more suitable for men than for women? Agree or disagree, that is the question. I think at national and global levels the answer can be yes and no. For instance, back in the 80s, did we ever come across a male shorthand typist? Alternatively, how many women bricklayers would you get on a building site back then? Even today, in the year 2020, there are jobs that are specifically more befitting to the fairer sex and vice-versa. I still have never discovered the male equivalent of the ‘fairer sex.’

Back in the 80s especially, I worked overseas much of the time, flying out of Heathrow airport working as an expat, as far afield as Singapore, Indonesia and then throughout the Middle East. Looking back I cannot recall ever seeing a female pilot on any flight. Last year I flew from Aberdeen airport in Scotland to Gatwick airport in England and the first pilot and co-pilots were both women.

So looking at the question of qualities in men and women when it comes to employment; it begs the question, are the qualities of the male pilot any different from that of the female pilot? In a word, no! The only qualities that differentiate these pilots are their physical make-up. Going back to the bricklayer, would it really be any different for a woman to learn how to cement a brick in a wall? Again, in a word, no! However, possibly the female ‘bricklayer’ might feel that the mixing of cement, handling rough bricks, wearing dungarees and trying to cement the brick exactly in place, might just be a bit off the beaten track. Having to wear those latex-coated gloves could be a bit off-putting as well.  

These days much of the employment opportunities are governed by political correctness. I can use the fairer sex attitudes to female British Members of Parliament. And once again, I can turn the clock back to 1918; that year was when the first woman MP was elected, one, Nancy Astor. She was definitely a one-off in her day. Fast forward 102 years and we find today 220 women MPs sitting in the House of Commons whereas two-thirds of the seats are represented by men. It further begs the question, if we cannot get male-female equality in the highest domain in the land, what chance is there for equality at the humdrum levels of everyday employment?  

The gender equality issue also relates to pay. It emerged recently, that male and female TV and radio presenters working for the BBC were employed at different salary levels even when doing the same job. It has rightly been chronicled as the ‘gender pay gap.’ This was all brought to a head when the BBC China editor, Carrie Gracie, resigned from her post in 2018 that prompted (reluctantly) the corporation to rethink the whole gender gap pay issue.

So to answer the question about whether some jobs are suitable for men and others for women; unfortunately, not much has changed. The butcher in your local shop will nearly always be a man. Whereas the secretary to the CEO of a global energy company, for instance, is more than likely to be a woman.

1. Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women (London: Penguin Random House, 2019), page 1. 

The Coronavirus and UK and World Energy Crises

In all my 40 years’ experience and career in the oil industry, both here in the UK and abroad as an expat, I have never experienced anything like our current coronavirus turmoil. And I think I speak for all of us both inside and outside of the energy industries. When the virus began to spread throughout the country in March this year I must confess to being a bit dubious about the non-stop, 24-hour media coverage. There was the conspiratorial reports as to the origin of the virus; bats and other animals being caged in the most brutal of conditions in so-called 'wet' markets in Wuhan, China. There followed other propositions that the Chinese government intentionally concealed knowledge of the virus to bring possible economic mayhem to Western businesses and societies. Well, if that is the case, then President Xi Pinjing has succeeded. But as an ingrained sceptic, I am still to be convinced. I ask myself, why hasn’t the World Health Organization not implemented an official enquiry into the outbreak in China?

My worry is about the current and future economic, business and employment prospects for all of us in the UK. Last week I read about the first Covid-19 cases offshore in the North Sea. Now that was scary. Not only do we rely on North Sea products such as oil and gas to keep our societies going, but we also rely on a stable crude oil price to maintain business ventures across the board. Back in June the price of a barrel of Brent crude dipped to below $20.00/barrel - this in contrast to its highest ever price of $136.00/barrel back in 2008. Energy keeps all our lives moving and our incomes safe but a vicious germ such as Covid-19 is day-by-day causing job cuts and lay-offs, business closures, schools, colleges and universities closing, the majority of national and international sporting events cancelled - the list goes on - and at the end of the day we can all appreciate that money really does make the world go round whether we like it or not.  

So that is the negatives out of the way. Well, have I anything positive to offer? I know people in many areas of life and in the newspapers, etc, have likened this pandemic to the horrors of World War II. In a way it is but in a way it is not. First of all mankind is not attacking and killing mankind. We are not dropping bombs, invading countries and taking prisoners. No, we are at war with one of the deadliest viruses ever known to man. I would just echo the UK Government advice, self-isolate, only go out if necessary - supermarkets for food, etc, pharmacies and exercise - by doing so, we shall win this war and get our lives back to normal. It will take time but then in these dark times, patience IS a virtue.

Lastly, I shall quote that ancient Hebrew saying, 'This too shall pass!'