For us who love investing, we almost always wish we had more capital for our favorite investment: GameStop, Bitcoin, whatever. When you’re so confident your pick is going to the moon, it makes total sense to dump all your spare cash into it.
It’s tempting to live a spartan lifestyle and put every drop of disposable income into these vehicles. That’s great. But some expenses are simply unavoidable.
You will always have to eat.
You will always have to live and sleep somewhere (even if it’s in a van).
You have to have some kind of transportation.
Knowing this, you have two options:
- Minimize costs to the absolute minimum
- Find a way to turn those necessities into opportunities
Minimizing Costs
I already wrote a whole blog post on this.
It’s wise to do this, especially in the beginning. You know your limit.
But don’t stop there. Get creative.
The spirit of this blog is to live large and use your mind to always find economic advantages.
Most people think “oh, I gotta get a house. Shucks, this is going to cost me, golly gee. If I don’t do this I’m a loser.”
Yeah, or, sit down and think about how you can turn your cost into an opportunity.
Turning Costs into Opportunities
Let’s stick with the house example.
For me, I have zero interest in owning a single-family house (at least at this time in my life). If I have to live somewhere, I’m first going to live as cheaply as possible—even if I can afford more. This is what I’m doing at time of writing.
Next, I may buy a house, but only if I can make money off of it.
I spotted a property that can give me money in three ways:
- It’s a multiunit, so I can rent out the other units (AirBnB or full-time tenants)
- It’s in a growing neighborhood
- It has a couple of units that need renovation, so fixing them up will give more value to the property than the money I’ll put into repair
This is honestly a dream property because only one of these opportunities has to happen in order for me to make this property a worthwhile investment.
One of these factors is absolutely in my control (renovation), another is pretty much in my control (renting it out—I can’t guarantee I’ll find tenants but come on, it’s pretty much a given).
The “growing neighborhood” part is the only gamble. And it’s a pretty safe one.
RELATED: The Absolutely Most Lucrative Way to Buy a House
Car, Food, Insurance
Can you use your car for work and write it off?
If you have specific food needs, maybe that’s a unique business opportunity others will be interested in, too?
Why keep your money in a giant, useless bank? Start your own. Seriously. It’s easier than you might think.
You’ll have an even better idea than these. Pick the expense you hate most in your life right now and brainstorm hard until you can think of 10 ways you can potentially turn it into an asset, income generation, or at least a tax-writeoff.
It Goes Beyond Conventional Expenses
I’ll even take it a step further: having friends is a need, so you might as well have friends who could benefit your life financially.
Of course, you don’t have to only be friends with people who are going to help make you rich. But if you don’t have at least a few people in your life whose finances, career, etc. whom you don’t at least admire then you are absolutely doing it wrong.
If nothing else, I want you to think about how having rich friends is a possibility. If you can’t find successful people, find hungry and talented people.
They’ll soon be rich.
