With the holidays just around the corner, coming up with extra cash can be a bit difficult. Some people turn to things like payday loans to get extra money, but that isn’t such a great idea when finances are tight.

So, here are five ways that you CAN make a bit of money throughout the holidays.

1) This is probably the most important, get a job. It doesn’t have to be a permanent job, there are plenty of places that are hiring just for the holidays right now. Temporary work may be the best kind that you can find right now.

2) Clear out your closet and sell that junk! You can make some extra money by selling your stuff on eBay or through a garage sale. I was recently able to raise $300 by selling some of my more useless junk on eBay. I was able to sell an old iPod that was broken for $40…you would be surprised as to what some things can sell for.

3) Work extra hours if you are able to. Not everyone has the option to work overtime anymore, but if you do time and a half is not something to turn down. I’m sure that there are lots of people who have the ability to work overtime and are taking the time.

4) Spend less than you earn. This is more of a tip as to have more money during the holiday season. This would probably be a better tip for earlier in the year if you were trying to save up for the holidays. However, if simply don’t overexert yourself financially then you would have plenty of money left over for the holidays.

5) Eating in versus eating out. Again, this is just another tip to help you save money, but it is still important to remember how much money you can save if you eat in rather than eating out.

AT&T was highly criticized recently because of outages of not only data services but also voice services during the South by Southwest festival. The problem arose from the use of iPhones and other heavy-data usage devices. Everyone who has these devices are paying more for unlimited data and (usually) text message plans both of which are extremely profitable for the company.

AT&T had to bring in extra equipment to handle the issues with the network, however, with all the extra money the company is bringing in from the sales of the plans one would think that their network could handle the issues that are arising from heavy data usage?

Recently, I was using a friend’s iPhone and realized that, without WiFi and WITH 3G coverage, the internet was crawling. I needed her Facebook application for something, otherwise I would have just used my phone.

The way that the cell phone companies are battling this increase in usage is to start coming up with the 4G network. 3G networks are all being touted as the newest and fastest thing now, but these carriers are starting to come up with the 4G networks “of the future”. Sprint has already started to launch its 4G network. It has already launched in Atlanta and Baltimore. I feel bad for T-Mobile at times because most of its coverage still isn’t 3G and watching Sprint launch 4G just reminds me how slow T-Mobile is at getting its coverage ready.

With these heavy data usage phones, the networks have got to get it together. They really need to start catering to the users who are paying the premiums for the phones and data plans. The average iPhone user spends more than $100 per month on the plan, other users on AT&T spend half of that amount.