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We could all use a little extra cash.

Living is expensive, as we are all very, very aware. And for many of us, one job's wages aren't going to cut it, forcing us to get creative when it comes to making a little extra money.

In some ways, necessity really is the mother of invention. Nearly every niche talent, interest and/or skill set can be turned into a profitable business. Have a knack for finding cool, unique things at Goodwill? Sell them online. Willing to do simple chores that others can't be bothered to complete? Offer those services. The world is your capitalist oyster.

In other ways, society is a serpent eating its own tail. When people are all but forced to squeeze a penny out of every moment just to make ends meet or dare to try to make life better for themselves, then suddenly the only value registered is monetary value. That causes potential soul-nourishing hobbies to be drained of their magic by constantly trying to turn them into a "brand," never pursuing certain hobbies in the first place for fear that they won't make money, chasing get-rich-quick schemes out of desperation, following less-than-virtuous business practices…the list goes on.

But let's focus on the former for today.

Recently, u/bigdope-smallgirl asked folks on Reddit to share the 'weirdest' ways they make money. In a world where it seemed like we've seen every side hustle in existence, the answers were quite unexpected, not to mention lucrative, with some gigs raking in an extra $400 to $500+ a month. Perhaps most surprising of all—only one person seemed to mention selling pictures of their feet.

Here's what they had to say:

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Trevor Noah's talked about Elon Musk's Twitter purchase in a Between the Scenes segment.

In the era of the mega-billionaire, much has been made of how such gargantuan wealth is built and what kind of taxes on wealth are fair and unfair.

The intricacies of economics can make such questions a bit tricky both practically and ethically, but there's no question that billionaires get enormous tax breaks through loopholes in our tax system and through straight-up tax legislation favoring the wealthy.

For the average American who will never see so much as one percent of a billion dollars in our entire lifetime, wrapping our minds around the financial workings of extreme wealth is like trying to learn another language. The whole "here's how much money I earn, here's what I can write off, here's what I pay in taxes" thing is pretty straightforward, but not how the uber-rich life works. Wealth doesn't equal money in uber-rich-land—except when it does.

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Democracy

This Map Reveals The True Value Of $100 In Each State

Your purchasing power can swing by 30% from state to state.

Image by Tax Foundation.

Map represents the value of 100 dollars.

This article originally appeared on 08.17.17



As the cost of living in large cities continues to rise, more and more people are realizing that the value of a dollar in the United States is a very relative concept. For decades, cost of living indices have sought to address and benchmark the inconsistencies in what money will buy, but they are often so specific as to prevent a holistic picture or the ability to "browse" the data based on geographic location.

The Tax Foundation addressed many of these shortcomings using the most recent (2015) Bureau of Economic Analysis data to provide a familiar map of the United States overlaid with the relative value of what $100 is "worth" in each state. Granted, going state-by-state still introduces a fair amount of "smoothing" into the process — $100 will go farther in Los Angeles than in Fresno, for instance — but it does provide insight into where the value lies.

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It all started with an AITA ("Am I the Asshole?" for the uninitiated) on Reddit, in which a man explained how he and his rich family went on a ritzy vacation and invited his girlfriend along, expecting her to pay her share of it. He comes from a moneyed family and makes $150,000 a year. She's a teacher, making $45,000. She took a second job to be able to afford to go on the trip, but still had to duck out of some outings and meals because they were too pricey for her budget.

The man wanted to know if he was the a-hole because he was disappointed that she didn't just tell him she was struggling with the cost. As if it weren't obvious, and he couldn't have offered to cover what she couldn't. The whole story was wild, and his responses to people's comments were even wilder (as he came to the realization that he "deserved more" than her) so yeah, he was most definitely the a-hole in the situation.

But the post did prompt a lot of interesting conversation about what is actually reasonable to expect financially in a relationship between two people who make drastically different incomes.

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