Tag Archives: stocks

5 Ways to Make Money

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You miss 100% of the opportunities you don’t take. You’re rejected by 100% of the girls you don’t ask out. If you are afraid of failure, then you’ve already failed. Those who dare to fail greatly, often achieve the greatest success. Life is too short not to take risks. So take that opportunity. Ask out that girl. The only thing standing in your way is fear. And the only thing we should fear, is fear itself.

Over 2 years ago, I wrote a post describing how if you live modestly, graduate debt free, have dual incomes with a spouse, and invest in stocks and real estate, you could be a millionaire by age 36. That is completely doable. To me, money is something that takes a while to save up, but once you work enough for money, you can get money to work for you.

I was born into a relatively poor family. My dad was a farmer and my mom was a city girl. We luckily had the opportunity to move to Canada when I was young. But even then, my dad had to work very hard to make ends meet. It wasn’t easy for us. My parents had to work hard to get where they are. And when I see today’s international students, sent to America from China/Korea/Japan, loaded with cash and whose parents invest in real estate and buy expensive cars for them, I don’t think they realize how money is made. When you are born into wealth, you don’t know how to make money. When you start from the bottom and work your way up, then you know how to earn money.

1) Study a major and find a job that is in high demand. According to this article, the best jobs right now are Nursing and Software Development. Therefore, you should study Computer Science or Medical Science, because those fields are in high demand and have high salaries. This is the first step. Find a good occupation. Making enough initial capital requires working for several years to save up money.

2) Invest your money. Invest your money in a basket of risky and non risky assets. Ideally, invest 75% into stocks (small cap and mid cap) and 25% into government bonds. Bonds are guaranteed returns, so they are always safe. Stocks will provide high return but require more risk. Each paycheck, after the necessary budgets are accounted for, should go into investing. This is how your money will make more money. As you get older, shift more into bonds / T-bills, so it becomes safer.

3) Buy real estate. Now is a great time to buy real estate. Houses are very cheap right now, because of all the foreclosures and the recession. Investing in real estate means you can repair the house and furnish it, then rent it out, and hire someone to manage it for you. You can buy many properties this way, and ones in favorable locations such as Florida, Hawaii or SoCal will have high demand. Trouble is, real estate requires a lot of initial capital to work with (several hundred thousand), but property has historically been the best way to accrue wealth.

4) Start your own company. Entrepreneurship is risky, but rewarding, especially for software engineers and web developers. It’s very easy to start a web business, develop a web or mobile application, develop a facebook, xbox or iphone game, and start making money off it. Find a niche for your product that caters to people. Market it. Develop it. Expand it. There is great consumer demand right now for mobile applications, mobile games, and for emerging markets like India and China. These can all be exploited (for example taking an idea abroad). The opportunity is out there, but it requires a lot of time, effort, money and risk to do this.

5) Use your talent to become famous. This is the most risky method. But there are those lucky few who have the God given talent and/or good fortune to become discovered. Musicians, Composers, Comedians, Actors, Writers, Directors, Athletes all fall into this category of making money. Lately it has become easier because of Youtube to become discovered, but still very rare. However, if you have a unique talent such as singing or writing songs, acting, or playing football, this method will easily lead into the millions of dollars. Usually only charismatic people can make money this way, and it requires a lot of skill and luck.

And that’s 5 ways to make money! A person could conceivably, have all 5 ways at the same time. You could be a superstar who is working a day job on the side, investing in real estate and stocks, AND having your own company! Read Think and Grow Rich for more details on growing wealth. The most important thing, I think, is that people think money is the solution to all of life’s problems. Money cannot mend a broken friendship. Money cannot bring back a deceased family member. Money cannot get you the girl of your dreams (unless that girl is materialistic). Money cannot make you more charismatic. Money cannot make you taller, younger or more handsome. Money cannot make you undo your past mistakes. Money cannot cure cancer or other such diseases. Money is merely a means of surviving, and it’s not as difficult to earn it as people think. And most of all, Money cannot buy love or happiness.

Status of my goals and end of undergrad

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Last year, I outlined a list of several goals that I had set for myself this year to achieve.

Let’s check back on the status of these goals now.

1) Graduate on time
I just finished writing my last exam today, and am confident of passing all my courses. As for my GPA, hopefully it will be improved.
Edit: Finished with a 2.75 GPA, achieving my goal of having my GPA >= 2.7!!

Status: Done

2)  Eliminate three quarters of my debt
If you take a look at my spending levels compared to last year:

Spending May 2009 - Sept 2010

Spending May 2009 - Sept 2010

Spending Sept 2010 - present

Spending Sept 2010 - present

Comparing the two, it’s easy to see that without a car or eating out everyday, I saved a lot of money. The increased tuition and fees in this period is because of full time school plus cost of attending conferences and events this year. I’m happy to say that I took a lot of money out of my stock account this year and paid down $14,400 of my debt, that’s 77%. So yes, I achieved this goal.
Status: Done

3) Secure a job by graduation time
After many interviews, I managed to get the job offer from the company I was interviewing with in San Francisco. What a relief for me! I’d like to thank everyone who supported me, including those who comment on my blog, my family, friends, my professor for my CSC490 CS Education course, my AIESEC VP of Communications and my  former manager from Environment Canada for serving as my references. I worked hard and I will continue that way.
Status: Done

So all of that is done and it feels rather surreal to me. Seems that college went by rather fast, a lot of all nighters, and maybe not enough socializing. Still, I think it helped me evolve as a person. Even this year, I am quite different than a year ago. I don’t have a car anymore, no steady source of income yet, no $20k in stocks, and no girlfriend once again. Yet I feel more mature somehow. Maybe cause I have tangible achievements now. Anyways, I thank the University of Toronto for causing me to become a stronger person, and feel quite relieved to end off my 17 years of education (since kindergarten). I still don’t know about grad school yet (GPA too low), but I am ready to move on to the real world now.

Goals for graduation

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Goals:

I have set three goals for myself that I want to achieve by the time I graduate. These goals are necessary in order to keep me motivated and thinking. I graduate next year, June 2011, so I hope these goals will be met by that time.

1) Get close to a 3.0 GPA as possible, and graduate on time.

This goal is most important because, otherwise I won’t be able to graduate at all and all my other goals are ruined as well. I am taking 5 courses currently, and doing about average in all of them. Hopefully I can stay afloat with my courses and graduate without issues.

2) Eliminate over 75% of debt, and/or leave only my student loan as debt.

As mentioned in previous posts before,  I am quite in debt. However my stocks have been improving, so hopefully I’ll be able to take some money out soon. It really depends on how well my investments go until then though, but I want to get most of my debt eliminated by the time I graduate. I have about $6000 in student loans, but relatively that’s not that bad, and it also happens to be about 25% of my total debt right now.

3) Secure a job / internship by graduation time.

I’ve been meaning to find a job in the US for a while now, so hopefully I can act on that more next semester and find one before I graduate. There’s all sorts of visa issues I’ll have to deal with once that happens – but I’ll deal with them then. Alternatively, getting an internship position in Asia through AIESEC wouldn’t be bad either.

All three of these goals require hard work and a good amount of luck and fate. I promise to work hard, and ask only that God give me guidance to help light my path. My situations tend to be a bit more complicated than the average person – my life isn’t as simple as I would want it to be, and there’s a lot of factors involved. So for all the troubles I’ve received this year, I can only hope that what goes around comes around, and that next year will be a better year.