Using money to make more money

[TripleDigitRide]

If you had $5000 to spend, but could only use it to make more money, what would you do with it?

[dlm37015]

buy ammo

[nightrunner]

Havent really looked into it but i think silver would be a good bet

[Guest NYCrulesU]

I have pretty much the same question. I could take $3000 from tax returns and would like to use it to make money. I've thought of anything from buying/selling things to investing in some landscaping equipment to do smalltime on the side...etc

[JeffsSig]

How long would be the term to earn?

[TripleDigitRide]

How long would be the term to earn?

I'm not opposed to it eventually turning into something long term, but I'm leaning more towards something to make some money on the side.

[blizzard]

What a friend of mine has been doing for a couple of years now and does fairly well is, he will buy and sell about one car a month. You will have to be a little mechanically inclined. Were not talking about beaters or high end. Those $1500 to $5000 cars. Cars that with very minimal work can usually be sold quickly for cash. Not a lot of money but he usually clears over 1k a car. Sometimes more sometimes less. It still amazes me how quick he can flip a car.Object is to have cash on hand when someone has to sell quick. I just called him and he said so far he has sold two in the last 3 weeks(income tax time) with no out of pocket expenses other than buying them he has cleared $1800. Not too bad if you ask me.

[Guest NYCrulesU]

Perfect example Blizzard. I wanted to buy/sell cars from Sheriff auctions back when I was 17. Never did it.

My goal, ideally, would be to make $2000 a month. Of course that is what I would like. I would love right now just to maybe make $500-$1000 a month. Sadly, I am probably the least mechanically inclined male in the United States lol No, seriously.

The car idea is great, sepending on where you live. I might be able to do it if I sold in Cookeville, McMinnville etc. No way to make a profit in Sparta. Everyone here wants something for nothing and they trade cars for hunting knives around here. Slight exaggeration...but not far off. Have to be real carefully in what I "invest" the $3,000 in. One shot type of deal....atleast until next year

[DRM]

What a friend of mine has been doing for a couple of years now and does fairly well is, he will buy and sell about one car a month. You will have to be a little mechanically inclined. Were not talking about beaters or high end. Those $1500 to $5000 cars. Cars that with very minimal work can usually be sold quickly for cash. Not a lot of money but he usually clears over 1k a car. Sometimes more sometimes less. It still amazes me how quick he can flip a car.Object is to have cash on hand when someone has to sell quick. I just called him and he said so far he has sold two in the last 3 weeks(income tax time) with no out of pocket expenses other than buying them he has cleared $1800. Not too bad if you ask me.

Hate to be a Debbie Downer - but the state of TN says people who do this are supposed to register with them as a dealership, and get to enjoy all the accompanying regulations, taxes, fees, and so forth.

But I might have a friend who has sold more than the 5 the state allows... yeah - a friend, lol.

Flipping items is what I would do too - whether it's cars, parts, stuff, whatever... Easy way to turn 5k into 7 or 8k in pretty short order.

[TGO David]

Bill gates once said that if he was down to his last thousand dollars, he'd use it for marketing. So if you're already in business for yourself, re-investing it in some sort of advertising or promotional effort to gain more business is where I'd put that money.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Precious metals, a guy might not have high probability of getting stung too bad if he sits on the metals long enough before selling. Nothing is a sure thang. In every bubble there is that fella who was the "last fool in the chain of fools" who can't unload the stuff after the bubble pops.

If somebody has the salesman gene or the horsetrader gene, possibilities seem endless how to multiply the money. I was born entirely lacking those kinda genes.

$5000 probably isn't enough to put into real estate, and that would be a hold-it-and-hope proposition as well (lacking the horsetrader gene).

Something that might be "almost like making money" could be buying consumables that you know for sure you will need sometime in the future before the stuff goes bad on the shelf. Might get stung but on the other hand it is a "fairly safe bet" that most consumables will cost more in the future, rather than less? But if your income turns out to track inflation then maybe that isn't a good hedge. If price inflation exceeds income inflation might "save" money later on.

I've never trusted any conventional investment such as stocks or bonds, but on the other hand assuming I'd timed the market well, maybe would be better off if I had.

I end up dumping money into tools that at least theoretically make it easier to make money "by the sweat of my own brow" whatever I happen to be doing. In general it seems to work out. Some kind of tools get cheaper over time, so that the tools are too-expensive and go obsolete too soon before I can get my money's worth. I definitely got my money back out of stuff like the strobeotuner, the oscilloscope, multimeters, real-time analyzers, specialized piano repair tools, that kinda thing. Usually got my money back on keyboards, mikes, sound gear.

For instance, thankfully I never spent big-time sums on cutting edge recording studio equipment back when I'd do some of that biz. For instance early digidesign studio gear could make a fella a lot of money if he worked the tools hard and got his money back in a couple of years. But I knew some guys that would borrow tens of thousands of bucks from the bank to spend on bleeding edge studio equipment, and not make their money back quick enough, and still be paying bank notes on the stuff when an amateur could buy a better system for $1000 out of the next generation of products.

Such ventures with "bleeding edge" gear is taking advantage of capabilities when it is so new that the average joe can't git er done and has to hire you to do it for him. You got to get your money back before any pimply faced kid with $100 of gear can do the same thing but better.

I guess $5000 wouldn't do it, but the good old boy who installed my fence, was wistfully describing if he could scrape up enough money for an old dump truck and a BobCat in good shape, he was pretty sure he could stay in work and he personally enjoyed such work. We had to rent a bobcat for a day to clear parts of the fence line and he was having so much fun he should have been paying me.

There is a nice old guy who has ground some stumps for us. I bet his stump grinder cost more than $5000. Maybe 10 times as much for all I know. He had a big old beat-up step van he almost certainly didn't buy new, and a really kewl small "remote control" stump grinder that drives itself around on tracks, and has a "robot arm" with an evil stump grinder on the end of it. He got good money for the service, seemed to stay busy because he was always coming from some other job or going to some other job after mine. Didn't look like real hard work. Looked like fun decimating stumps, though I guess anything can get boring after awhile.

Maybe if somebody could figure out something they would like to do in a field where they are hiring, maybe even spending the $5000 on specialized education wouldn't be a serious waste?

[Guest NYCrulesU]

Over the past few mo ths I have thought about pressure washing, stump grinding, tree trimming, tree removal, painting.....and the list goes on.....

I certainly don't mind hard work and would love to work my own schedule. I think though I would enjoy buying/selling better...although I think straight up work is less of a risk.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Over the past few mo ths I have thought about pressure washing, stump grinding, tree trimming, tree removal, painting.....and the list goes on.....

I certainly don't mind hard work and would love to work my own schedule. I think though I would enjoy buying/selling better...although I think straight up work is less of a risk.

Old Dad was a practical man engineer, descended from practical working men, and tended to hold bean counters and sales folk in low regard compared to people who "do something useful" for a living. I learned that attitude from him. The first time I saw a different side was in a management class. The prof said that all parts of a biz are obviously important, but regardless how good the product, the biz will go bankrupt and everybody in the company will lose their jobs unless marketing and sales can move the product.

I don't have any talent at sales and would go broke trying to sell water to people dying of thirst in a desert. Maybe it is a "grass is greener" thing, but sales looks like the best way to make a buck assuming somebody has the knack.

Of your list of "working for a living" items, the tree work appears the hardest work with the highest risk of getting hurt. We've hired a few tree guys over the years and they've all been fine fellows. I don't understand how they couldn't have been making decent bucks since they appeared to stay busy, got good pay, and had relatively low equipment investment. But those tree guys sure do work their butts off. The two previous fellas eventually quit tree work because of bad backs.

I don't get out much and might be all wrong, but knew a couple of guys who did pressure washing and deck sealing, supplemented with minor deck repair work and such. Those guys seemed to get pretty good pay, appeared to work pretty steady, and the equipment investment is fairly low compared to many other fields. Maybe got the wrong impression. For all I know the market is saturated nowadays.

[LI0NSFAN]

A friend of mine clears $2000 a mo in vending machines. He has 5 and he bought ones that already had locations. I think he said he bought his first one for 1500 and it took a little while to find the other 4 to come up for sale. He took all the money he made on the first one and saved it until the next one came up and so on. He said yo don't make a whole lot off the first one but the sales in the first one takes care of all of his cost for the month and that means the other 4 are all profit. He goes out and fills them on Monday and Thursday for about 2 hours each day.

[Guest A10thunderbolt]

Power washing can earn some extra money, I did it for years the good thing is if you dont have much work just start knocking on doors or drive around until you see something that needs cleaned. I got a lot of work that way. the equipment doesnt cost a lot for the amount of return you can get.

[Guest nicemac]

Buy Apple stock. Averaging 30% per year the past couple of years. It is changing my retirement outlook.

[Garufa]

Facebook just filed for an IPO to begin selling stock in May. Have no idea if it will take off or not but as an example Google stock started at $85 the day they went public in 2004. At market close yesterday is was $606.77. I image it will take off as well.

If you can find a broker to get in on that it might be a worthy "gamble"

Edited February 8, 2012 by Garufa

[Guest nicemac]

Facebook just filed for an IPO to begin selling stock in May. Have no idea if it will take off or not but as an example Google stock started at $85 the day they went public in 2004. At market close yesterday is was $606.77. I image it will take off as well.

If you can find a broker to get in on that it might be a worthy "gamble"

It might-who knows? The difference in Google and FaceBook is that Google has a revenue stream. FaceBook has data about it's users. The only way that is valuable is if they sell the data. If they start doing that, people will bail to protect their personal information (That is why I am not on FaceBook). They just don't have a revenue model that doesn't chap lot of people off (selling personal info or ads on pages).

The market is strange. FaceBook may open at $50 and close at $500…

Skip the broker. Setup an account with an online trading site. Schwab, eTrade, etc… It saves tons on commissions.

[Guest NYCrulesU]

Thunderbolt, that's how I view power washing. Not a ton of effort or expensive vs profit that can be earned.

Climberscott, I researched vending machines for a few weeks once. While I like the idea...own boss, own route, own schedule so to speak....as hard as I tried mathematically I just couldn't come up with $1500-2000 a month profit even with 5 machines.

Don't get me wrong ..I could be looking at it wrong and simply underestimating the sales potential of snacks/soft drinks. I kept coming up with a profit of $60-$80 (give or take) a month from one machine...after restocking costs, gas in travel and whatever percentage you paid out for the location you are "renting"/using.

Again, I have no experience in vending machines and was simply Googling answers to my questions and trying to calculate. And also factoring those days, weeks, months that items don't sell...when people pass your machine up. I tried to factor in all variables.

A good example that I have about location is my buddy back in Culpeper, Va. He sells sporfs jerseys. The ones that come out of Asia. They are knockoffs and the buyers know they are knockoffs. He buys they in bulk at about $19 each and sells them for $60 each. He makes easily $1000-$2000 a month without even hesitation and for just aitting in a sports bar for a few hours a week.

He has a key demagraphical location. A lot of people wearing jeraeys in that area, a lot of repeat customers. For me, that would never work to that extent here in White co, TN. Maybe Memphis, maybe even Nashville somewhat. But I tried it my first few montha here in TN. I listed some jerseys on LSN....not one bite, not even a nibble lol So that was one idea that went down in flames.

I like the vending machine idea. Just need to research more and find the right locations to maximize profit potential. I also like the power washing idea.....mayne combined with the painting idea. If one were to get a few contracts with a couple of apartment complexes, you could make a killing. Painting their turnovers and power wexteriorseir exteriors. You would need a registered business and insurance. So it would take more than $3000 to start....but could be worked residentiart small with residential.

[Guest NYCrulesU]

Sorry about typos. My phone won't allow me to scroll down in long posts to see what I am typing or to And go back and fix them. And for the life of me...I can't find the "keyboard calibration" section on this Droid X2. I am hitting letters and it is placing other letters in theirplace. And it auto inserts the last word typed if you tey to correct a typo. Need to talk to Verizon.

[MacGyver]

$1799 for a MacBook Pro and $99/year for a developer account. A lot of good free resources online to help you learn. Design that cool app you wish you had on your phone.

That leaves you $3000 for education, training or whatever.

If it's me and my business, and we've got surplus money - it's going to training and furthering our expertise. It always pays off.

That said, I just spent three days pressure washing my deck. It's hard work that I bet a lot of people would pay good money to have someone else do for them.

[Guest Revelator]

If you've ever been interested in the wild and crazy world of commodity futures trading, I believe you could comfortably trade $5000 on a small account with the goal of building it up. Be forewarned, though, trading is not easy and it requires a steep learning curve.

You could risk less of your overall equity in day trading, but day trading means being glued to the screen for hours at a time. I have neither the schedule nor the mental capacity to do that. I swing trade, which means I might keep a position for days or even a couple weeks in some cases. I just check in a few times a day, depending on market conditions.

With $5000 you'd probably want to start with the "mini" contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The overnight margins are just a few hundred dollars (margin is a deposit you get back after you close out the trade, minus any losses or plus any profits), and you could risk around 5% total equity per trade. Less than that and you could be looking at death by a thousand paper cuts. At $250 per risk, you'd have to be wrong 20 times in a row to get cleaned out. Not likely to happen.

Trading is not a get rich quick scheme. To me, I look at it as my retirement plan. You have to be patient and disciplined, and if you do that you can compound your money over time. Starting out is the hardest part. I would practice trade for at least 6 months. Some online brokers want minimum 10k, but some will take 5.

Vending machines sound like a good idea. I may look into that. I don't know about precious metals. I'm not a buy and hold kind of guy. I much prefer to have the ability to go long or short with futures contracts. The stock market's a joke.

Edited February 8, 2012 by P. Stegall

[DRM]

If you are really interested in flipping items, start with what you already know. Make a list of 5 things/areas you KNOW, as in - you are already VERY knowledgeable concerning those things. You start with one or two of those 5 things because your base of knowledge already lets you know relative value right out of the gate, helping you find "deals" and then know how much you can sell them for on the market, or in another market.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Interesting ideas from folks. There must be numerous "little known" obscure ways to make a buck. I ought to start writing em down just for curiosity, can't recall many at the moment but it hasn't been uncommon to occasionally run across some guy making good money on something totally obscure, and thinking, "who'd a thunk you could make a living doing that?"

The Apple stock may indeed be a more sure thang than death and taxes, but I recall times in the past when they would be flying high and then suddenly within months on the brink of disaster. Apple's survival for such a long time period has got to be less probable than "lightning strike" odds. Many companies founded about the same time did great and maybe made a few people a bunch of money, now dead, gone, and forgotten.

On selling bootleg sports jerseys-- That is most likely an illegal activity. Maybe a guy could go a long time and never get arrested, but I wouldn't knowingly do something that might land me in jail. Ain't worth the risk.

The deal of door-to-door selling pressure washing services-- Reminded of this nice older guy who would drive thru the neighborhood maybe twice a year. He must have got too old to do it anymore, haven't seen him lately. He would drive up the street and blow leaves off folks roofs and blow out their gutters for something like $25 apiece.

Didn't take the man much time to do each house. Just about everybody would pay him to blow their roofs because very few homeowners fit enough to do that chore, especially want to do that chore.

And many people are either unqualified to do it or are afraid of ladders. With good reason. One old guy I know broke his arm and two legs falling off a ladder cleaning his own gutters. He had done the same thing every year for decades before he screwed up big time, just that one time. If somebody would still drive up the street offering that service, I'd be a customer.

[Guest nicemac]

If you've ever been interested in the wild and crazy world of commodity futures trading, I believe you could comfortably trade $5000 on a small account with the goal of building it up. Be forewarned, though, trading is not easy and it requires a steep learning curve.

You could risk less of your overall equity in day trading, but day trading means being glued to the screen for hours at a time. I have neither the schedule nor the mental capacity to do that. I swing trade, which means I might keep a position for days or even a couple weeks in some cases. I just check in a few times a day, depending on market conditions.

With $5000 you'd probably want to start with the "mini" contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The overnight margins are just a few hundred dollars (margin is a deposit you get back after you close out the trade, minus any losses or plus any profits), and you could risk around 5% total equity per trade. Less than that and you could be looking at death by a thousand paper cuts. At $250 per risk, you'd have to be wrong 20 times in a row to get cleaned out. Not likely to happen.

Trading is not a get rich quick scheme. To me, I look at it as my retirement plan. You have to be patient and disciplined, and if you do that you can compound your money over time. Starting out is the hardest part. I would practice trade for at least 6 months. Some online brokers want minimum 10k, but some will take 5.

Vending machines sound like a good idea. I may look into that. I don't know about precious metals. I'm not a buy and hold kind of guy. I much prefer to have the ability to go long or short with futures contracts. The stock market's a joke.

You don't start off at age 16 driving in the Indianapolis 500 and you don't start off in the market trading futures, options and day trading. Find a couple of stocks and follow them for a while. Make simple trades. Buy low and sell high. Or buy high and sell higher. As your knowledge of how markets work improves, you can ease into more complex trading.

The best way to get rich quick is to get rich very slowly.

The stock market is not a joke. With proper knowledge and careful investing it is a powerful tool to use to achieve your financial goals.