10 People Share The Bizarre Things They Did To Save Up For A Car

“I wore a donut costume and stood on a street corner to advertise for a donut shop. You actually get paid a lot for these gigs, especially if you can do dance moves, which can really add to your rates. I got plenty of free donuts and saved up enough bank for my first car that way.”

—Tim A.

“A friend of a friend asked me to help her type out a book she was working on using a typewriter. A typewriter!!! She was super paranoid about doing anything on a computer because it 'could get stolen,’ so everything she did was handwritten (which honestly didn’t make sense to me because you can steal paper easily too, but I just went with it because she paid really well, haha). I didn’t even know how to use a typewriter when I started, but she trusted me to keep her book a secret! I saved up for a car, and she still hasn’t published the book, I don’t think.”

—Rebecca J.

“I cleaned my dad's friend's apartment while she drank wine and gossiped with me about her life. Sometimes I got free things out of it, like pashmina scarves and tomato peelers. I was terrible at cleaning, but I was a great listener and wine drinker!”

—Jo S.

“I’m a HUGE audio nerd, and I always wanted a bumpin’ sound system in my car. One day, my friend was buying a car and asked my advice on some tech upgrades he should get. I didn’t expect it, but he gave me $50 for my time. The idea clicked! So I started posting on job boards, and I consulted with friends and family about how to upgrade car or home sound systems. It def took a few years, but eventually I saved up enough cash on the side to get a decent car with a real fly sound system.”

—Ben L.

“I live in an apartment building where people have a lot of pets...like seriously, I think everyone has a dog or a cat except me. I work from home a lot, so I put an ad under everyone’s door offering to walk their dogs while they were at work. A lot more people went for it than I thought, which kind of became a nightmare. I’m now one of those people who walks down the street with 15 dogs. It’s fun! But I’m never getting my own pet.”

—Rachel B.

“I started making autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos and posting them on YouTube to make money from that. If you don’t know what that is: AMSR is the use of sounds, like whispering and tapping on objects, to stimulate calming receptors in your brain. Basically, I record sounds that make people feel relaxed. My videos are popular, which allows me to make side money from viewership and paid sponsorships. But barely anyone in my social life knows I do this. It’s a painfully awkward conversation to have if someone doesn’t understand AMSR and just thinks it’s creepy...whichhhh I can understand.”

—Anonymous

“There’s this booming subculture of professional cuddling in NY that I joined after hearing about it from a friend. It’s actually quite lucrative for extra money (if you’re good, of course), and people are generally respectful because they just want to be held or to hold someone. It’s much more therapeutic than I thought, and the pay is great! It helped pay for my car that I took across the country when I moved from NY to LA.”

—Roger W.

“In college, I saved up a lot of money by offering to go around the dorm rooms and pick up clothing that students wanted to get rid of or donate. I charged a fee to pick up the items, and I’d make money reselling some clothes to other students at pop-up shops or to consignment-type shops in the city. You wouldn’t believe how easily students threw out designer clothes! :O”

—Marjorie L.

“When I graduated from college, I lived at home and was just in a really rough spot because I couldn’t find a job or internship in creative arts, which is what I wanted to do. My younger sister, who was a senior in high school back then, had a big volleyball game and kept bugging me to help her decorate the windows of her car in school-spirit colors with those erasable window pens. I jokingly put flowers ALL over her car, thinking she would hate it. She loved it, and so did tons of her friends. I suddenly had all these teenagers coming to our house asking me to decorate their cars for games and dances. I must have decorated at least a hundred cars and charged $20 each, so I saved up enough to put money down on my first car!”

—Maggie Y.

“I sign up for a lot of psychology studies or medical studies because I live near tons of research universities and hospitals. I once got paid $2,000 to drink one can of soda every week for 12 weeks. That was the best thing ever.”

—Pratyusha Y.