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"  Of all the people I know and love, I can&amp;#039;t think of anyone who wouldn&amp;#039;t welcome a small income boost this month\u2013or any month, for that matter. Whether you&amp;#039;re between jobs, figuring out how to cover an unexpected bill or hoping to stash more cash into savings, here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing.   Get Cash for Cards  Shockingly, more than $6.7 billion in unredeemed gift cards is floating around out there. Dig out the ones you have, and put them to use. Can&amp;#039;t use them? Trade them for cards you want, or sell them for cash at Cardavenue.com, Swapagift.com or PlasticJungle.com.Caution: Gift cards are not &amp;quot;just like cash&amp;quot;\u2013they&amp;#039;re store credit. Many are self-eliminating through maintenance fees, and some even have expiration dates. If you sell or exchange them, expect to have the value reduced even further.The Boost: No matter how much you get for your cards, it&amp;#039;s more than you&amp;#039;re getting right now. If they have a total face value of $200 and you can get half, that&amp;#039;s still $100!   Don&amp;#039;t Overinsure  You need term life insurance (8 to 10 times the annual income of the single breadwinner; in a two-income family, insure each spouse for 6 to 8 times annual gross salary). But you can confidently cancel duplicate coverage: that credit card life insurance you thought you needed, mortgage life insurance, accidental death and child life.Caution: Get term life first if you don&amp;#039;t have it, then cancel the duplicates. Don&amp;#039;t leave even a tiny gap between coverage.The Boost: Add up what you&amp;#039;re paying for credit card life insurance, life insurance on the kids and the mortgage, plus any riders you have for accident insurance. What was offered to you for &amp;quot;just pennies a day&amp;quot; is probably more like $100 a month. Or more.   Fatten Your Paycheck If you got a tax refund, rethink it: You&amp;#039;ve been giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan. To have less withheld from your paychecks, file a new W-4 with your employer, increasing the number of allowances you&amp;#039;re claiming.Caution: Don&amp;#039;t overadjust or you could end up owing the IRS next year. Get out your latest federal tax return, then go online to figure out how many allowances you should take (go to irs.gov, then click on &amp;quot;Withholding Calculator&amp;quot; in the &amp;quot;Individuals&amp;quot; section).The Boost: If you&amp;#039;re getting a $2,000 tax refund, adjusting your withholding will increase your net income by about $163 each month.   Scout Books You may remember from a past column how to get cash for your books at Cash4Books.net. Let&amp;#039;s review: Just type in the book&amp;#039;s ISBN number (on the back cover or on the copyright page in the front), and see if you can get cash. Complete the transaction online, print out a prepaid mailing label, pack up those books and send them in. In just a few days you&amp;#039;ll either receive a check in the mail or a deposit to your PayPal account. Once you&amp;#039;ve run out of likely candidates from your own shelves, scour garage sales and thrift shops. If you&amp;#039;ve got an Internet-enabled PDA, you can look up books at Cash4Books.net/mobileas you shop.Caution: While you might hit the jackpot at a garage or estate sale, keep in mind there are condition requirements, so get familiar with them before you head out.The Boost: You could easily find that Cash4Books.net is offering $5.25 for a book you can buy for a quarter.   Moonlight Taking a second job at a crafts store made all the difference for reader Kathryn Gritts (we told her story about getting out of debt in the September 1, 2008, issue). &amp;quot;It was challenging to go to my second job, but I boosted our income enough to get us through a rough patch,&amp;quot; says Kathryn. Typically, food service, drugstores and some retail stores offer part-time work conducive to moonlighting.Caution: Unless you&amp;#039;ve suffered a loss of income, taking on a second job could push you into a higher tax bracket. Run the numbers before you make your decision.The Boost: How much you can earn depends on the jobs available. Kathryn worked 10 to 20 hours a week at her second job, earning a little more than minimum wage. This increased their household income by up to $400 for each of the six months she moonlighted.   Join E-clubs  These days, most retailers, restaurant chains, supermarkets, drugstores and travel-related companies offer some kind of program to encourage customer loyalty. Whether it&amp;#039;s discounts, rebates or free products, as long as it&amp;#039;s free to join, do it! On your birthday you may get anything from a free Cold Stone Creamery ice cream to entrance to a Disney theme park during 2009 (sign up at DisneyParks.com). Visit the websites of your favorite restaurants and retailers to sign up. Also check out priorityclubrewards.com, where you can earn points toward free night stays at IHG hotels, air miles, cruises, electronics and more.Caution: Merchants and service providers use e-clubs for sales and marketing purposes. This generates a lot of e-mail, so set up a free e-mail account at Yahoo or Hotmail just for your e-clubs.The Boost: E-club fans Russ and Kathy Chapman of Buena Park, California, always have a coupon handy that they&amp;#039;ve printed from a reward e-mail. Two-for-one, half-price entr\u00E9es, free desserts...it all adds up.   FreelanceElance.com is an online workplace where small businesses connect with qualified professionals to get work done. If you are a writer, programmer, graphic designer, marketer or have other skills to offer, you can bid on jobs and get paid for doing what you do best. At AssociatedContent.com, an open content network, anyone can submit content on any subject. If the editors like it, they&amp;#039;ll pay you for it, and give you bonus payments based on the number of views the article receives.Caution: Make sure your daytime employer has no restrictions on freelancing.The Boost: At Elance.com, jobs vary and can pay $500 per project for writers, $1,000 per project for programmers. AssociatedContent pays $2 to $12 per article, with a 400-word minimum.   Call Your Auto Insurer Has your teenage driver brought home a great report card? Most auto insurance companies will knock about 10% off the top if an insured teen maintains a 3.0 GPA. Is there an educator in the family? Mercury Insurance and others give credentialed teachers and educational administrators a 7.5% discount. If you have a bachelor&amp;#039;s degree in an engineering or science-related field (biochemistry, mathematics and more), Mercury offers a 12% discount. &amp;quot;I suspect that statistically, people in these fields are cautious, and that shows up in the way they drive,&amp;quot; says insurance agent Mark Fitzgerald of Cal-Coast Agency in Los Alamitos, California. Insurers also give discounts of 20% or more when you insure all of your cars with one company.Caution: Don&amp;#039;t assume that discounts are automatic\u2013you have to speak up. Ask to see a complete list. (Note that not all companies offer the same ones.)The Boost: Cathy Hollenbeck of Cypress, California, got Allstate&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;good student discount,&amp;quot; 12% off their $2,200 six-month premium, when she faxed them her daughter&amp;#039;s report card. That put $264 back into the family bank account.   Trade in Your Cell The average American gets a new mobile phone every 12 months\u2013so it&amp;#039;s a good bet you&amp;#039;ve got some old phones lying around. Trade them in for cash at sites like CellForCash.com and Flipswap.com. Just input the brand and model to see what these buyers are willing to pay. Both sites let you print a prepaid mailing label for sending in your phone.Caution: Before you mail it, make sure you remove the auxiliary memory card, reset the password to 0000 and delete all of your information from the phone or remove its SIM card.The Boost: CellForCash.com offered $6 for my elderly Palm Treo 700w, and Flipswap.com offered $20.58. The average cash offer at Flipswap is $35; at CellForCash it&amp;#039;s $30. (Bonus: Turn your unwanted CDs, DVDs and video games into cash at SecondSpin.com) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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