Feb
So last night I committed myself to investing $1 of my own money and with one step at a time I’ll double that money each time. Sometimes more than one step may be completed in a single day…obviously easier to do in the beginning, and consequently some steps can take days, weeks or even months to finish. I’ve started with writing down my goals and other personal thoughts and will keep that with the money all the time. Each time I do something with the money I’ll write down what I did and how it turned out. After each step (each initial amount of money has been doubled) that step will be marked as finished and I’ll go onto the next step. Just so it is clear to everyone…first step, invest $1, second step take that dollar and make it $2, third step, take that $2 and turn it into $4, take that $4 and turn it into $8, and so on and so on until it doubles to 1 million dollars.
Now, I know you don't know me and you’ll automatically think about this in relation to yourself and weather or not you believe any person at all can actually pull this off. I believe in myself and that anything we set our minds to, we can accomplish. I’ve set my mind to this and I intend to accomplish it. I probably will get some negative words from some people, but that doesn't matter…I know there are doubters, but I hope that there will be some positive people out here that have known people who have achieved great things because they set their mind to it, or have done that themselves or simply believe and know that it is true that people can achieve great things just because they want it bad enough and believe they can and refuse to let anything stop them.
OK, so now that all that’s stated…I do have lots of ideas and creativity in thinking is not new to me so as I go along I know new ideas will come to me on how I’ll double my money each time, but for fun and to see what others might come up with, I though it would be interesting to ask for ideas from all of you. Now it doesn't matter if the idea you have would apply to something small like taking the initial $1 and turning it into $2 or taking $8000 and turning it into $16000 or a higher number than that…just give me your thoughts and have fun comeing up with ideas.
I'm excited to see what you all come up with. Thanks for participating!
Answer:
There are techniques you can use in the stock market that’ll help you achieve your goals. You won't double your money every month, but over time, with consistent investing, you'll end up with a lot of money.
For example, if you were to initially purchase one share of a high yield dividend stock and then one more share each month (making sure to use a direct stock purchase program to avoid commission fees) between the dollar cost averaging and the dividends being reinvested your initial share would become several and over time you'd have quite the nest egg.
direct stock buy programs:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5289072_enroll-d…
dividend reinvestment plan:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5289084_enroll-d…
dollar cost averaging:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5294323_make-mar…
Answer:
Hmm, I like a lot of what you are trying to do. In particular it's good that you’re breaking the steps involved in becoming a millionaire into small, discrete units. As the saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Nor is your goal particularly difficult to reach. According to the following link, at the end of 2008 there were 6.7 million households in the U.S with a net worth of $1 million or more. The number is undoubtedly much higher today, since virtually all investments performed exceptionally well in 2009. If millions of other people can do it, so can you.
So you need to double your investment 20 times in order to turn $1 into $1 million. No doubt this is doable - one of my own investments more than doubled last year, and I'm sure you'll get lots of people to refer you to the latest hot stock tip. But let me instead caution you on some of the problems with your approach.
1. You are ignoring the important role that a habit of regularly saving money plays in acquiring a big fortune. If you’re willing to discipline yourself into saving as tiny as $3 per day from your pay checks, you would have over $1,000 by the end of the year. That would reduce the number of times your money has to double from 20 down to 10. In effect you would cut your task in half.
2. You haven't defined how much risk you’re willing to take. One legitimate approach to doubling $1 is to take it to the roulette table and bet it all on red. But are you really willing to risk losing your entire stake just in order to make a measly dollar? If so, would you be willing to take the same risk with $1,000? How about $10,000?
3. The way you've structured your task, you’ll spend practically all of your time trying to figure out how to double relatively small amounts of money. But nearly all of the heavy lifting involved in making $1 million comes at the end, when the last two doublings get you from $250k to $1 million. That's a full 75% of the money that you need. I suspect that most well-to-do people spend a lot less time than you’ll “sweating the small stuff” and instead have made wise decisions that made it easier to get rich. You should be asking yourself how you want to approach the task at hand. Do you want to be a stock investor? Maybe it would be superior to study hard and go into a high salary profession, such as physician or lawyer. Or you could look into starting your own business once you accumulate enough seed capital.
Good luck, whatever you decide.
Answer:
I have a great idea for steps 1-10. Risk free.
I live in las vegas so it would work for me.
The first month I would dress up like im homeless and stand on the side of the road with a sign up asking people for money. Once you obtain $100. I would go down to the Las vegas strip on those hot summer days and sell 1 bottle of water for a dollar ( you can purchase a 24-32 pack of water at the grocery store for under 5 dollars). That might get you up to $4000 but $1000 for sure.
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Answer:
So you’re a dreamer…
You’re correct that steps 11 to 21 are going to be the killers. (From $1,000 to $1,000,000)
(Here comes the simple math)
A 100% return by normal means is a reasonable goal for 10 years. So by normal means you can reach your goal by 2112 if you hit $1,000 by 2012.
If you ratchet up the risk to speed up the process, you will also increase the likelihood that up will not reach your goal (because you’ll loose some or all of your money in the process). If you double your risk by normal means, you’ve a better than 50% chance of hitting $1 million by 2062.
Guess what happens if you increase your risk by more than 2x?
Okay…so that isn't what you asked.
By my calculations you have two realistic options to reach your goal within 30 years:
(1) Add additional savings from income every year to the total for a “growth bonus.” (Minimum of 10% of gross and doubling of income every 10-12 years required)
(2) Build something with organic value than generates income growth at a rate higher than 10% per year on average. Companies with revenue growth potential are the “easiest” options.
BTW. (1) & (2) create more than 90% of all self-made millionaires in the US. (1) creates the highest number (think millionaire next door — which the title of a book FYI) and (2) creates the wealthiest kinds (think Sam Walton and Bill Gates)