If you experience an emergency and need cash fast for your business, you won’t have the leisure to apply for an SBA loan or seek out new investors. You may not have personal savings to help you out.
There are options for obtaining a quick infusion of cash for your company. Review all of the options and determine which is best for you after taking costs and other factors into account. Here are five ways you can get money within a day or so.
How to Get Cash Fast
1. Use Online Lenders
With some sites, you can complete an application in minutes and obtain cash in as short as 24 hours if you provide all required financial paperwork immediately. Usually, however, it takes a few days for approval. Some sources to consider:
- CashCall
- Kabbage
- OnDeck
Check out the borrowing limits for which you can qualify. Keep in mind the cost of this borrowing, which may not be cheap.
2. Factor Your Receivables
Usually you have to wait 30 days, 45 days, 60 days, or more to collect on your invoices. However, you can factor them for quick cash. You’ll receive a discounted amount for the invoices you factor, so the cash you receive reflects the factor’s fee (typically 2 percent or more, depending on your industry, your customers, etc.).
It usually takes several days to set up an account with a factor. Once this has been done, you can submit invoices at any time and typically receive cash within 24 hours.
3. Use Your Business Line of Credit
If you have a line of credit in place, you can take cash from it at any time up to the extent of your line. You pay interest only on the portion of the line that you use.
The size of your line of credit depends on the typical loan criteria. These include capital or what your company is worth, capacity to carry debt, collateral that can be sold if you don’t repay the loan, and character, including the number of years in business, whether there’s been any prior bankruptcy, and other factors.
Caution: Some online lenders advertise 24-hour approval for a line of credit, but it’s really only a factoring variation, based on your invoices.
4. Cash Advance from Your Credit Card
Use your business credit card’s cash advance amount if you need money quickly. You can tap into your limit through an ATM or obtain more than the ATM’s limit in the bank.
The cost of money through a cash advance is steep, so use this option only as a last resort and only for a small amount of cash.
5. Borrow from Your 401(k)
If your company has a 401(k) plan in which you participate and the plan lets participants take loans, then this may be a good source of quick money. The maximum amount you can borrow is 50 percent of your vested account balance or $50,000, whichever is less. If your vested account balance is less than $10,000, you can borrow up to $10,000.
The loan takes only as long as the administrator needs to process it. If you’re the administrator, this can be very quick.
The good news about his type of loan is that interest can be very low and the repayment can be spread over five years, with no prepayment penalty if you want to pay it off sooner. The bad news is a reduction in your retirement savings while the funds are out of the plan, and you can’t deduct the interest.
Conclusion
As you can see, the instant-money options often require some advance planning so you can access them quickly when needed. For example, you can apply now for a line of credit, even if you don’t currently need the cash so it will be in place if you have a cash crunch. Or you can research now the best credit card option for a cash advance so if you need to use it, you won’t pay a cash advance fee — or at least not a hefty one. NerdWallet has a list of the best credit cards for this purpose.
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