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How much do you need by Christmas?
Pick your number and I will show you exactly how to get there, or tell you honestly if it is a stretch.
Pick one
What is your Christmas budget?
Your Christmas math
Yes. $300 is very doable.
The two moves below get you past $300 without a single gig shift. Open one bank account, claim one app bonus, and you are done. Most people overcomplicate this.
Start with this
Unclaimed money
$0 to $500+Every state holds unclaimed money in names like yours. Old deposits, final paychecks, closed accounts. Free to check and it takes two minutes. Most people find nothing. Some find enough to cover Christmas outright.
Search for unclaimed moneyThen stack these
Chase Total Checking®
$400This single move covers your entire $300 with room to spare. $400 bonus once you deposit $1,000 within 90 days. Twenty minutes of paperwork. The $15 monthly fee is waived with a $500+ direct deposit.
Get the $400 Chase bonusBigcash
$40 to $70/mo3,000+ offers and a $15 welcome bonus. Get paid to try apps and level up in games. It will not fund Christmas alone, but it stacks on top of the bank bonus nicely.
Claim your $15 bonusFileYourClaim
$5 to $300Open class action settlements you may already qualify for. Free to file. The catch is timing: payouts often take months, so file now and treat it as bonus money rather than counting on it.
Check open settlementsYour Christmas math
Yes. You can cover $600 before Christmas.
The bank bonus alone gets you two thirds of the way there. Add selling a few unused things and you are past your number without ever picking up a gig shift.
Start with this
Chase Total Checking®
$400Two thirds of your Christmas budget for twenty minutes of paperwork. $400 bonus once you deposit $1,000 within 90 days. The $15 monthly fee is waived with a $500+ direct deposit, so if your paycheck lands there you never pay it.
Get the $400 Chase bonusThen stack these
Unclaimed money
$0 to $500+Every state holds unclaimed money in names like yours. Free to check and it takes two minutes. Do this before you earn anything, because for some people it covers the whole budget on its own.
Search for unclaimed moneySell what you already own
$100 to $500Facebook Marketplace, Mercari, OfferUp. December is the single best month to sell, because everyone is shopping and hunting for deals. Old electronics, unused gear, clothes that do not fit. Photograph it well and price it to move.
Current
$75 + advancesA $75 bonus with no credit check, plus cash advances up to $750 if December gets tight. Two things from one signup, and a useful backstop if you fall short.
Get $75 with CurrentBigcash
$40 to $70/mo3,000+ offers and a $15 welcome bonus. Realistic, not life-changing, but it is money from time you were losing to your phone anyway.
Claim your $15 bonusYour Christmas math
Yes, but you have to actually work for it.
The bank bonus and selling your stuff get you to about $900. The last stretch needs real hours: either delivery shifts or a seasonal job. There is no version of $1,000 that happens purely from apps.
Start with this
Chase Total Checking®
$400Forty percent of your goal for one afternoon. $400 bonus once you deposit $1,000 within 90 days. Nothing else here comes close on a dollars-per-hour basis, which is exactly why it goes first.
Get the $400 Chase bonusThen stack these
Seasonal retail or warehouse work
$500 to $2,000Target, UPS, Amazon, and every mall retailer staff up hard in November. Guaranteed hours and a real paycheck, which is what separates this from everything else on the list. Apply by early November. By December the good shifts are gone.
DoorDash
$15 to $22/hrDecember is the best delivery month of the year. Bad weather, holiday parties, people who will not cook. Real cost is about 25c a mile in car wear, so a $20 hour is closer to $15. Still the fastest path to real cash.
Start deliveringUnclaimed money
$0 to $500+Free to check, two minutes, and a real chance your state is holding money in your name. At a $1,000 goal, a $300 find is a third of your problem solved before you start.
Search for unclaimed moneySell what you already own
$100 to $500December is the best selling month of the year and this converts to cash faster than anything else here. Do this the same weekend you open the bank account.
Your Christmas math
Honestly? $1,500 is a real commitment.
I would rather say this now than have you find out on December 20th. Bank bonus plus selling plus apps gets you to about $1,080. Closing the last $400 realistically means a seasonal job or steady delivery shifts. It is achievable, but not passively.
This is the one that actually closes the gap
Seasonal retail or warehouse work
$500 to $2,000At $1,500, this stops being optional. Target, UPS, and Amazon staff up hard in November and the hiring bar is lower than any other time of year. Guaranteed hours, a real paycheck. Apply by early November or the shifts are gone.
Then stack these
Chase Total Checking®
$400Still the best dollars-per-hour on the page. $400 for twenty minutes of paperwork. Deposit $1,000 within 90 days to earn it. Start it now, since the bonus takes weeks to post.
Get the $400 Chase bonusDoorDash
$15 to $22/hrDecember weekends are the highest-earning delivery hours of the year. Real cost is roughly 25c a mile in car wear. Skip this if your car is old or it is your only car.
Start deliveringSell what you already own
$100 to $500The fastest cash on this list and it costs nothing to start. December is the best selling month of the year. Be ruthless about what you actually use.
Unclaimed money
$0 to $500+Free, two minutes, and at this budget a real find would take a serious bite out of your gap. Do it before you commit to a single shift.
Search for unclaimed moneyThis tool sorts the options by what actually clears your number. Free tools come first because they cost you nothing. Some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a commission at no cost to you. That never changes what gets recommended, and it never changes the numbers.
Christmas has a deadline, which makes it different from every other “make extra money” problem. You do not need money eventually. You need a specific number by a specific date.
So this is not a list of 40 ideas. It is a plan. Every option below tells you what it actually pays, what it costs you, and whether it can realistically move the needle in the time you have left.
Do the math before you do anything else
Most people skip this step and then panic in mid-December. Two minutes with a calculator tells you whether your plan is a plan or a hope.
Take your Christmas budget and divide it by the weeks left. If you need $600 and there are ten weeks, that is $60 a week. Sixty dollars a week is very achievable. If there are three weeks, that is $200 a week, and now you need a different strategy entirely.
The number itself matters less than knowing it. Everything below is organized around what actually clears your number in the time you have.
The one thing that changes everything: how early you start.
The same $1,000 is $50 a week if you begin in October and $250 a week if you begin December 1st. Same goal, five times the difficulty. Nothing else on this page will swing your odds as much as the date you start.
Find your situation, skip to what works
Every row below goes somewhere real. Tap the one that sounds like you.
Start here · Free · No affiliate links
Money that might already be yours
Before you spend a single evening driving for DoorDash, spend ten minutes checking whether you are already owed money.
I make nothing from either of these. No affiliate links, no commission. They are first because they are the highest dollar-per-minute thing on this page, and burying free money under fifteen apps would be dishonest.
Search for unclaimed money in your name
Every state holds money that belongs to people who never came to collect it. Forgotten security deposits. A final paycheck from a job you left. Insurance refunds. A utility deposit from an apartment you moved out of years ago.
States hold this indefinitely. They just do not go looking for you.
It pulls unclaimed property records from all fifty states into one search, so you check your name once instead of hunting through fifty separate government websites.
Check open class action settlements
Companies settle lawsuits constantly. Data breaches, hidden fees, false advertising, defective products. When they settle, they set aside money for affected customers, and most people never claim it because they never knew the settlement existed.
FileYourClaim tracks the open ones. Many require no proof of purchase, just an attestation that you used the product.
The single biggest number on this page
One afternoon, $400
Open a bank account with a cash bonus
If you only do one thing from this entire article, do this one. Nothing else here comes close on a dollars-per-hour basis.
Chase Total Checking® pays a $400 bonus. To earn it you deposit $1,000 or more within 90 days of opening. The account carries a $15 monthly service fee, but that is waived with $500 or more in qualifying direct deposits, so if your paycheck lands there you never pay it.
Twenty minutes of paperwork. Four hundred dollars. For most people that is the majority of a Christmas budget, and you did not deliver a single burrito.
If your credit is not perfect, Current is the fallback. Smaller bonus at $75, no credit check to open, and it also gives you access to cash advances up to $750 if December gets tight.
December-specific advantages
Things that only work this time of year
These are the options where the holiday season is an actual advantage rather than just a deadline. Ignore them in March. Take them seriously in November.
Sell things you already own
This is the most underrated item on the list and it costs you nothing to start.
December is the single best month to sell used goods, because the entire country is shopping and hunting for deals. That old tablet, the bike nobody rides, the coat that does not fit, the gaming console gathering dust. In March those sit for weeks. In December they move in days.
Facebook Marketplace for local pickup, Mercari and OfferUp for shipping. Photograph in good light, write honest descriptions, and price to move rather than to maximize.
Take seasonal work
Target, UPS, Amazon, FedEx, and every mall retailer in America staff up hard from November through December. They are actively desperate for bodies, and the bar to get hired is lower than at any other point in the year.
What makes this different from everything else on the page is that it is a real paycheck with guaranteed hours. Not “up to” money. Not “some users report.” An actual hourly wage on an actual schedule.
Look at Indeed, Snagajob, or apply directly on the company site. Night shifts and weekends are usually the easiest to get.
Deliver or drive
December is the best month of the year for delivery. Bad weather, holiday parties, shopping trips, and a nationwide unwillingness to cook. Demand spikes and so does surge pricing.
DoorDash is the easier one to start, since you can deliver by bike in a lot of cities and approval is faster. Uber pays more per hour but demands a car that meets their requirements.
Phone money · Honest expectations
Apps: helpful, not magic
Let me set expectations properly, because a lot of Christmas articles will not.
Money-making apps will not fund Christmas by themselves. If you need $800 and you are starting in December with nothing but a phone, no app is going to close that gap. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
What they will do is add $30 to $80 a month from time you were already going to lose to your phone, and that stacks on top of everything else. Two apps plus a bank bonus plus selling some old gear is a real plan. Two apps alone is not.
Bigcash
Over 3,000 live offers. You get paid to download apps, level up in games, and complete partner offers. The $15 welcome bonus is meaningful, since most apps hand you a dollar.
Branded, get paid to test apps and games
Companies need real people to try their apps and mobile games, and they pay for that feedback. This is not a survey site, which is why the payouts are meaningfully higher.
Branded has been featured on CBS and has paid out over $6.9 million to members. Users report earning up to $300 in a week working the higher-paying offers.
Nielsen Pulse
The one genuinely set-and-forget option. Install the app, never open it again, and Nielsen pays you $60 a year for anonymized usage data.
Read this before you tap
If it is December 20th and you are short
Cash advance apps
EarnIn gives you access to up to $1,000 of the paycheck you have already worked for, before your employer pays you. No interest, no credit check.
Here is the part other Christmas articles will not say plainly: this is not new money. It is your January paycheck, spent in December. You will feel it in January, and January is already the month everyone feels broke.
The thing nobody says about Christmas debt.
Putting Christmas on a credit card at 24% APR and paying it off over a year turns a $800 Christmas into a $900 Christmas. If you are already carrying a balance, the smartest financial move available to you is not earning more, it is spending less this year and being honest with the people you buy for. Nobody remembers what they got. They remember whether you were stressed.
Things I would skip
Most Christmas money articles pretend every idea is good. Here is what is not worth your December.
- Most survey sitesThey pay $2 to $5 an hour. With a real deadline and limited hours, that is the worst possible use of your time. App testing pays several times better for the same phone.
- Starting an Etsy shop in NovemberThe advice shows up in every one of these articles. It is a good business and a terrible December plan. You will not build an audience, get reviews, and ship orders in six weeks.
- Anything that pays out in 60+ daysClass action settlements, most investing, affiliate income. All real, none of it arrives before December 25th. File the settlements anyway, just do not count them.
- Buying supplies to make things to sellYou are spending money you do not have, on inventory that may not sell, to fund a deadline. The math rarely works.
- Anything asking you to pay upfrontNo legitimate earning opportunity charges you for the privilege of working.
The actual plan
What I would do, in this order
The failure mode here is doing nothing because the list feels long. It is not long. It is three things: check for free money, open the bank account, sell your unused stuff. Everything else is a supplement.
Not sure what fits your situation?
Tell MoneyAnswers your number and your deadline and it will map a plan to your circumstances instead of making you work through a list. Free AI money mentor.
Frequently asked questions
Selling things you already own, by a wide margin. December is the best month of the year to sell used goods because everyone is shopping and hunting for deals, and it converts to actual cash in days rather than weeks. Old electronics, unused gear, and brand-name clothing move fastest on Facebook Marketplace, Mercari, and OfferUp. After that, delivery driving pays within the same week, and holiday demand means December weekends are the highest-earning hours of the year. If Christmas is only days away and you are genuinely short, EarnIn advances up to $1,000 of the paycheck you already earned, but understand that is your January money spent in December.
The single easiest route is a bank signup bonus. Chase Total Checking® pays a $400 bonus for opening an account and depositing $1,000 or more within 90 days, which is roughly twenty minutes of paperwork for most of your goal. Add selling a few unused items and you are past $500 without a single shift of gig work. The catch is timing: the bonus posts after you meet the deposit requirement, so this needs to start weeks before Christmas, not days. Start it in October or early November and it is the least work for the most money on this list.
Not on their own, and any article claiming otherwise is selling you something. Realistically apps produce $30 to $80 a month with consistent use, so over a six-week Christmas run you are looking at maybe $50 to $120. That is real, and it stacks on top of everything else, but it will not fund a $600 budget by itself. Bigcash is the one I use daily and it lands around $40 to $70 a month. Skip survey sites, which pay $2 to $5 an hour and are the worst possible use of limited time when you have a deadline.
October, and this matters more than any single option on this list. The same $1,000 goal is $50 a week if you start in October and $250 a week if you start December 1st. Same money, five times the difficulty. It also determines which options are even available to you: seasonal retail hiring closes by late November, and bank bonuses take weeks to post after you meet the deposit requirement. Starting early does not just make it easier, it unlocks the highest-paying options entirely.
If you can commit real hours, yes, and it is the highest total on this page. Target, UPS, Amazon, and mall retailers all staff up hard from November, the hiring bar is lower than at any other time of year, and unlike gig work it is a guaranteed paycheck on a guaranteed schedule. Expect $500 to $2,000 over the season depending on hours. The real cost is your evenings and weekends during the busiest month of the year, and the hard deadline is that you need to apply by early November. By December the good shifts are gone.
Before you go, you might be leaving free money on the table. Sign up for a few of these apps and you could pocket $250+ this month just for playing games and completing simple tasks. Most people start earning within minutes. See all verified apps here, free to join.
