Ask HN: What would you do to turn $100K into $1M in 3 years? How would level up $100k an order of magnitude? |
Ask HN: What would you do to turn $100K into $1M in 3 years? How would level up $100k an order of magnitude? |
But yeah, if you're talking USD, then one could easily live comfortably for five years in Vietnam/Thailand for $20k/year. (Although you could easily live in a ton of countries if you pick your town/city/area correctly) Then smash out all those side-gig bootstrap ideas that come to mind. If you can build MRR of approx $6k, then you've effectively built up the equivalent of $1M earning 7% in the bank.
Actually, my latest company was started 3 years (and nearly a month) ago, and is now earning easily that in revenue from one of its Saas products, so yeah, it's definitely acheivable.
Haha I love this! There was a gentleman that put his entire life savings on red and televised the event [0].
In reality for anyone reading, if you do want to gamble against the house, I suggest playing Craps and betting the Don't Pass Line. After surviving the first roll(s) and the button has been placed, you're allowed to place an additional bet called "laying the odds". This is the best bet in the casino. It is exactly 50/50, 0% house edge. The total casino edge for this combibed bet is less than 1% [1], where are roulette, red or black can have a house edge over 5% [2].
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Airbq7bn0_o
If you are trying to save as much as possible you'd be able to live on half that in Vietnam easily.
Spend 800$ to live in a fancy, big apartment or a nice small house, eat out as much as you want, do vacations live a good life on 20K per year.
After 3 years you will have 750K saved + 100K was never touched and only need 15% growth in 3 years (instead of the illusional 100% growth of stocks hoped for in the above comment) to be at a million. Even if stocks go down you are easy FIRE with a SWR that gives you 30 to 40K a year so close to double of what is needed.
This should work much much more likely than the crazy thing OP suggest, not even sure if meant with sarcasm or not.
Source: Did exactly that in the last 3 years
I spent a year trying to do freelance (10ish years of experience and some major brands like NFL and Microsoft) and couldn't land anything close to that either, so I ended up getting a normal job.
I'm currently doing something similar to what you're doing (I live in Taiwan and work for a California company.) Where are you living where you have a 10% tax rate? Even Signapore's income tax isn't that low. I'm assuming when you say "take home 270k after taxes" you mean personal income taxes?
My suggestion of leetcode grinding was a bit tongue in cheek but I still think it's the least risky, most control-able way to reach that goal in three years.
Like I said though, I'm genuinely curious. I'm always down to learn about ways to make more money for less work :D
High risk appetite: You might see massive returns, but will most likely lose a lot (e.g. gambling, speculative stocks).
Low risk appetite: Achieve much smaller returns, but the chance of any loss is much lower (e.g. blue chip stocks, bonds).
Maybe you're asking how to earn massive returns with minimal risk? If I knew, I wouldn't tell you. I'd be busy taking advantage of the opportunity. If a stranger on the internet wanted to share their secret on how to make 10x your money in 3 years, it's almost certainly a scam.
Sorry, there are no easy answers.
But I also think we're undervaluing the possibility of just hanging on to $100,000.
In the investment world, anything close to 10% return is usually highly risky, speculative.
So it's downright unattainable, since the vast majority of the population which invests money gets returns that are 20x lower in a good year.
Assuming that you get paid monthly, that there are no caps on the product, and that you get the same margins consistently:
A product with 100% margin will have you grossing $1 million in four months.
A product with 50% margin will have you grossing $1 million in six months.
A product with 25% margin will have you grossing $1 million in eleven months.
A product with 20% margin will have you grossing $1 million in fourteen months.
Even a product with a mere 10% margin will have you grossing $1 million in a little over two years.
Also assuming the margins are after all expenses? Isn't Amazon FBA taking like 30% cut?
Informational, educational, software products through affiliates are also targets to run paid ads against.
It doesn't really matter to do that in 3 years you're gambling.
If you have a business that you're passionate about and are willing to spend huge amounts of energy on you might be able to generate that sort of money with 100K starting. However I'd argue you're putting in a lot more than $100k. You'd have 3 years of lost earnings.
The trick is to find something that you can buy low, sell high consistently. Obviously in the above scenarios you are reinvesting all your gains to operate with ever greater amounts of capital. It would also be prudent to pick transactions at some small fraction of your total.
BUT ... it is unlikely that you can implement the above as a passive investment and it might require to do a considerable amount of work. Oh well .... them's the breaks!
1. Move to cheap COL.
2. $100k = 3 years run way, and some modest expenditure (ads, servers, etc)
3. Build a bootstrapped business.
4. You might have $1m or be on your way to it.
DINK = Dual Income, No Kids
SINK = Single ""
COL = Cost of living
Or downpayment on home in upcoming area while working at FAANGs leetcoding and playing offers off each other. Renting all your rooms out, sleep in garden tent.
Alternatively, look into REIT limited partnerships.
If you’re high risk, low time then I’d just put it all in Ethereum.
If you have a large amount of time, I’d start an online business and use the $100k to hire international contractors.
moving companies are money printing presses.
since ai art is popular right now, make it better than lensa.
hire influencers with a 20% cut if they refer your app.
invest in pr & aggressive marketing in addition to that.
if you do it right, this should turn your $100k into $1m in <3 months of launch.
if you don't get it done fast, then you can try instagram photoshoots or try to automate onlyfans with an ai.
this will take some work but its a sureshot way to make >$1m with the ai hype.
Remember - before you buy something - be quite sure you can sell it quickly and that you won't lose money on it.
Will take prolly 8 years though. But you have 25K available cash as a margin loan/credit line.
2. Pump
3. Dump
Going back to getting a start, unless you know people or get lucky first this will probably be something that doesn't pay well and is hard, but don't get stuck, keep learning and growing.