I'm in two money pools.
With the family and with my closest friends.
Basically, everyone who is in puts in 100 dollars a month into an pot and one of the pool members gets the cash on a monthly basis. Lets say my month is June every June I get the money in the pot. Another person, gets the money next month. If you have alot of trustworthy people then it works great. But if you have a person that doesn't abide by the rules then it can be ugly. We've been doing it for many years and it has been working great. It's tax free money and it better than a tax refund. Plus Uncle Sam doesn't have any idea about it. The number of people makes it great. Since I'm part of two it help out alot for any money needs. I usually invest the money when it my turn.