There are lots of methods out there that talk about how to invest $100 or simply grow your money, but one of the most milestones when you only have $100, is to try and get it to $1000 and hopefully $10,000 or more. A lot of people discount the power that $100 has in growing their wealth.
Basically, $1 million comprises ONE million $1 bills. This is to show that every dollar counts when it comes to building your wealth, even small decisions around your money can have a compounding effect over time. It’s really important that with $100 we make the best decisions possible, and invest it in the best possible way.
Risk is going to be a really big factor when it comes to investing $100. If you’re too risky, you’ll blow it off quickly, and if you’re too risk-averse, your money is probably going to take forever to grow.
Disclaimer
Before we continue, I’d like to mention that these methods are actually not get-rich-quick methods. They all take a lot of time and discipline, but if you stick with me till the end of this article you’ll learn six different ways to invest $100.
6 Ways On How To Invest $100
1. Flip Items
It may come as a shock to many that I put this on my list, but in my opinion, flipping items can have what we call an Infinite Return, I’ll talk about that later on in this article. If you know the market really well, you’re going to be taken calculated risks that are hopefully going to work out for you 99% of the time. Essentially what you’re going to do is, look for items that you know the market very well on websites like Craigslist, Nextdoor, and Facebook marketplace.
You’re basically going to identify underpriced items, negotiate for these items, and flip them at a profit on those same marketplaces. For example, I know a lot about computer accessories, if I search on Craigslist for computer hard drives, I get a list of them. If I am able to find some listings that I believe are below market value, I’ll contact that seller, purchase that item, and resell it at a profit.
This doesn’t work just for computer accessories, it can be applied to different products across different kinds of industries. For example, furniture is one of those items that you can find good deals on because a lot of people are trying to move their furniture as quickly as possible. Once you purchased them you can resell them and make quite a bit of profit on that resell, because of how big the market of furniture usually is. People just expect furniture to cost a lot of money.
Zero Risk Strategy
Another way you can leverage flipping items with zero risk at all and almost infinite return, is just to explore Nextdoor, Craigslist, and Facebook marketplace in the free section. Explore these marketplaces, find something that is free, contact the seller as soon as possible and sign up an arrangement, pick up that free item, and re-list it on the same marketplaces. This carries no risk besides your time because as long as you’re getting something for free and you’re able to resell it, it’s basically instant profit.
Tip
When it comes to flipping thins, look for things that are universally applicable. Stay away from items that are “too niche” or basically just have a really narrow market. Instead focus on things that everyone can buy like furniture, baby stuff, etc.
You can invest $100 and buy items for less than that and flip them for a profit. Also, you can just try the free to flipping strategy.
2. Low-Cost ETFs
A low-cost ETF is a diversified investment that you can actually buy in the stock market. ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund, by buying this fund, you automatically own a small percentage of everything that the fund buys into. Imagine one individual stock is like one honey bee, if you invest $100 into one individual stock, for example, lets you invest in Facebook in your portfolio, that means Facebook is your one honey bee. If your one honey bee dies that means your entire portfolio is gone.
Now, with an ETF, the experience is different. An ETF is like investing in a colony or a beehive, by investing in the beehive you own a small percentage of everything that the beehive owns or a small percentage of all the honey bees in the beehive. If you have one honey bee which is equivalent to individual stock and it suddenly dies, at least you have the other honey bees in the beehive keeping your beehive afloat. I guess this analogy makes sense.
Basically, an ETF is a diversified way for you to invest in the market. ETFs typically track market indexes, and the most prolific ETFs these days are the ones that track S&P 500. By buying ETFs that track the S&P 500, you’re buying individual investments that own a small percentage of every single one of those companies in that index.
How To Buy ETFs
The best way to buy an ETF is through a brokerage. With $100 it’s important that you choose an ETF where the ETF price per share is less than $100, or you’re not going to be able to buy it unless that brokerage offers fractional shares. Most traditional brokerages won’t allow you to buy a fractional share, you either have to buy one or nothing of that ETF. However, there are some new brokerages out there like discount brokerages such as Robinhood, that allow you to do fractional share investing.
This is where you can specify how many dollars worth of an ETF you can purchase. Instead of needing to have $348 to buy one share of the vanguard S&P 500, you can simply just buy $100 worth of it which will give fractional ownership of 0.29 shares. An ETF is a good way to invest $100 and invest in many companies.
The S&P 500 ETF has averaged an annual return of 13.84% in the last 10 years. If you invested in it 10 years ago with a $100 investment it’ll be worth about $351 today using compound interest. One of the great things about ETFs is that they are low cost and they’re a pretty passive investment. You can invest in them, let them sit there, and you don’t have to do anything at all. They are passively managed, you don’t have to do anything.
3. Individual Stocks
The next on my list is investing in individual stocks. This is going to have higher risks, but with $100 I think it’s a great idea to invest on a platform that allows you to buy fractional shares because that’s going to allow you to buy 20 stocks for $5 each or 10 stocks at $10 each.
When it comes to picking individual stocks, it’s important to diversify across different companies and also different industries as well, because let’s say you bought 10 different stocks and they’re all tech stocks, that means that if tech stocks take a dive, then your portfolio will too. When it comes to investing in stocks, you want to do as much research as you can when it comes to figuring out what types of stocks to buy. If there’s something that you don’t understand about a certain stock, it’s best to Google it or head over to Investopedia and look it up.
In general, you want to invest in good companies with solid finances and a good long-term outlook. Another thing with individual stocks is that you can actually invest in safer stocks such as dividend-paying stocks. These are usually more stable companies with proven cashflows, so much so that they actually pass back a percentage of their profits back to the shareholders. Popular dividend-paying companies include JnJ, Coca-Cola, AT&T, and Apple.
4. Yourself
This is one of those things that you might think “ huh, that’s kind of stupid. You didn’t actually tell me how to make money by investing in myself. How am I going to make any cash?” Well, in my opinion, education or tools to help you make more money is actually a good use of your money. If you’re able to take this $100 and invest in some sort of new skill and trade that skill in the job market for money, then it is such a great use of your money.
In terms of education, you can take a course online for less than $100, maybe a course on email marketing, photography, or even a course on how to become a YouTuber. You can buy books to educate yourself in certain types of topics and hopefully, you can use that knowledge in the job market to get higher paying job or project.
If you don’t want to spend money on books, you can go to the library and borrow books for free or you can find free ebooks online.
Tools
As I mentioned earlier, another good way to invest in yourself is through tools. Imagine if you’re someone who’s tutoring kids in your local area, and the only way that people get to know you these days is by posting a local ad on a local posting board. With $100 you can build your own website and list your services online. I’ll classify that as a tool.
Another tool you can invest in is to increase the quality of your webcams so that the quality of your study session is improved as well. I think education is great because no matter where you are in life, the more education that you acquire, the more knowledge you’ll have, and hopefully, you can trade that knowledge for higher-paying jobs.
5. High Yield Savings Account
I personally don’t really love this method right now because of how low-interest rates are. I think if you have the chance to choose between a regular savings account versus a high-income savings account, then no brainer, you should put your money into a high yield savings account.
In my mind, there are two advantages to having high yield savings account over a regular savings account. In a high yield savings account, at least your money is generating interest and also they’re FDIC insured up to $250,000 most of the time.
Popular high yield savings account includes the one by Ally bank online, as well as Marcus by Goldman Sachs. But I think their current rate is about 0.5% interest. However, $100 sitting in a high yield savings account is going to just basically sit there, it’s going to generate a little bit of profit, but it’s not going to make you another $100 at least not for a while.
6. Retirement Account
Contributing to your retirement is going to be one of those essential investments that you make for your core investment holdings, that will have a very large impact for the rest of your life. Because of how compound interest works and investing, you want to start as early as you can when it comes to investing in retirement. Popular accounts are the traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 401k, 403b, etc.
In retirement accounts, you can’t touch your money without penalty until you retire. You’re going to want to hold that money for 30-40 years. Hopefully, these would be safer investments. Popular safe investments for your retirement accounts are things like ETFs and Index Funds.
Another great thing about investing in your retirement is especially if you have a 401k through your employer, your employers will typically offer a Contribution Match depending on your employer. That means a $100 investment could actually be matched up to 100%. That’s a free extra $100 for your retirement investment.
If you work for a company with a 401k or 403b, you’re going to want to ask your employer if they actually match any of your contributions. And if they do, then you want to take advantage of that all the time.
Whoo! Finally, The Bonus
Alright, those are the six ways to invest $100, but I actually have a bonus for you guys to actually invest $100, that’s actually starting a side hustle. There are lots of side hustles that can cost less than $100 to start, and I think this is a great use of $100 because if you’re able to start a successful side hustle, you’re going to have more money coming in.
For example, you can do online music lessons, you can sell on Etsy store and sell arts and crafts there, you can homemade meals and sell them to students who don’t have time to cook, you can walk dogs, start a blog, you can start a power washing business where you buy a power washer for less than $100. All of these side hustles cost less than $100 to start and can potentially make you more money down the road.
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