HOW TO TURN $100 INTO $1000 (6 BEST WAYS)

What's up, Graham? It's Guys here. So, the other week, I posted a video about how to make $100 a day in passive income, but I'll be honest: most of that video assumes a long-term investment, consistent work, and slowly building up to an amount that would actually one day lead you to making $100 a day.

But now, I think we should take the opposite approach. Because I'm feeling impatient, instead of focusing on something that might take you potentially decades to work towards, we should flip the script and talk about the best ways that you could begin investing $100 right now with the expectation of eventually making as much money as possible.

My thinking is this: most likely $100 is an amount that almost everyone watching this video has access to. So, it's worth going into the best ways that you could invest that money immediately in such a way that nearly anyone could do as soon as this video is over. And even though $100 might not seem like a lot of money initially, it is possible to replicate some of these strategies whether you have $1,000, $10,000, or even $100,000 because at the end of the day, these strategies don't change.

So if you can get a good grasp on how to invest $100 right now, that will be money very well spent. But first, I got a huge favor to ask of you: there is a lot of work that goes into consistently posting three videos like this every single week on the channel. So, if you appreciate them or find them even remotely helpful, just do me a huge favor and destroy the like button for the YouTube algorithm. That's it! It's totally free to do, it helps up my channel tremendously, and it gives me a good indication of the types of videos you want to see more of. So, thank you guys so much for doing that!

And with that said, let's get into the video. All right, so let's just get this out of the way: this is going to be one of the few videos where I don't tell you to invest $100 in a broad Index Fund while you sit back and collect that sweet, sweet 8% return. Because here's the thing: even though I'm a huge proponent of the index fund strategy, the reality is that earning 8% on $100 is not going to turn itself into a life-changing amount of money.

There are better strategies out there that will give you a much higher ROI and a much faster return, which is why I'd recommend that you buy a lottery ticket. Just kidding! If $100 is all that you have to invest and you know you one day want to be rolling around in money, the first thing that I would buy is education.

Now, I've actually grown to really dislike videos like this, which tell you to invest in yourself because it's usually the most generic garbage advice out there coming from someone who wants to sell you a $997 program. But the truth is, good education can actually make you a significant amount of money, and you can really buy yourself pretty much everything you need to know for well under $100.

Here are my recommendations: the first thing I would do is go and buy the book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. This is probably the first book that I read myself cover to cover that wasn't for a school project or Goosebumps, and I got to say, I absolutely credit this book for helping me become who I am today. This book literally gives you the blueprint of being the type of person who attracts wealth with solid, actionable tips the entire time.

Plus, the 1937 version of this book is now considered public domain, meaning it's available for free if you want to read it online. So, I'll link to it down below in the description for anyone who wants to give it a shot. Now, the second book that I would recommend is "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

The reality is, no matter who you are or what you want to do, on some level, you're always going to be working with or collaborating with other people, and this book really helps you understand other people's perspectives while being a better communicator at the exact same time. Plus, there are some free audiobook options on YouTube, so there's really no reason not to try this.

Then, the third book I would go and read is "The 4-Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferriss. This book really gets you thinking in terms of how to accurately value your time, how to work as efficiently as possible, and how to maximize how much money you make. So, go ahead, buy it, read it, and at the very least, it's going to make you think outside the box.

Finally, fourth, go and get the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin. For me, this is really one of the first introductions I ever got to the idea of financial independence because this really helps put it in perspective in terms of how much our time is valued and how we should evaluate our expenses in terms of hours worked and not dollars spent.

It really helps paint a different picture that we should align our spending in ways that we find most valuable to us, like, of course, smashing the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Okay, but seriously, all four of those books should easily cost you less than $50, and I promise, if you actually go through and read all of them, it will be impossible that these books don't pay for themselves a hundred times over over the next 10 years.

Then, after that, the second investment that you can make with $100 is within the stock market. Again, I know it's going to sound like I've been taken over by an alien for saying this, but if $100 is all you have to invest, then most likely you're best off buying individual stocks.

Now, before everyone goes off on me by saying, "But Graham, you can't go and get any meaningful returns in the stock market with only $100! It's too risky! Plus, you should teach good habits of buy-and-hold index fund investing!" Okay, fine, just hear me out. No matter how you slice it, unless you luck into buying the next GameStop or Dogecoin at the perfect point and ride it to the moon, investing $100 is most likely not going to make you a substantial amount of money.

And even though I would recommend an index fund for a consistent long-term investment, if your only goal is to invest $100 as fast as possible with the highest possible ROI, buying individual stocks has a lot of advantages that initially aren't so obvious. What you're going to quickly realize is that it's one thing to read about the theories of what you should and shouldn't do when it comes to investing, but I promise you, all of that goes out the window as soon as you have your own money at stake.

You're going to find yourself panicking at the slightest glimpse of your stock going down in price, or getting a little bit too greedy as soon as the stock goes up faster than you anticipated, or getting impatient if your stock does nothing but stay flat. So, I would treat that $100 as your ticket to getting real-world experience in terms of managing your emotions, evaluating companies, understanding the fundamentals on your own, learning how swing trading works, learning what all of these terms mean, and just getting a good education on what it means to be an investor.

I promise this is going to be a lesson you'll be so glad to have had that experience early on, and investing $100 now you can make all of your mistakes ahead of time is going to be a lot more expensive than losing more money later on when you're not as sure of what you're doing.

Now, in terms of how you could get started, I would recommend you use a free stock trading brokerage that allows you to buy fractional shares. And then, from there, research the companies that you use on a daily basis. You can then utilize all the free resources on YouTube, Reddit, CNBC, CNN, and so on, and absorb as much information as you possibly can.

But either way, no matter what platform you want to invest in with $100 and a weekend of your free time, you could learn so much information out there that's really going to give you a great understanding of how to invest in the stock market.

Then third, if your only goal with $100 is to try to make as much money as possible as fast as possible, if you're willing to put in the work, you could use that $100 towards starting a small business, like buying lawn care equipment and then of course soliciting your neighbors for a job.

Now again, part of me cringes at the advice of telling people to go and buy a lawn mower and go and mow lawns because it's such cliché advice. But the reality is it's a really viable way to make money, and there's a reason why so many people say to do this. For example, here's a used lawn mower that you could buy for $80, where brand new it's $400 with tax. Then you could go and charge $30 an hour for your time, and within an afternoon, that lawn mower is completely paid for, and everything else after that is gravy.

This is the same strategy that Warren Buffett employed when he was a teenager. Believe it or not, his first business was a $25 pinball machine that he set up in a barbershop in 1946 when he was 17 years old. This business was fairly simple: Warren Buffett bought the machine and negotiated with the store owner, his friend fixed the machine, and they split the profit evenly. Within a week, they had enough money to go and buy a second pinball machine, and from there, the business grew. A year later, Warren Buffett ended up selling that business for $1,000, all from a $25 initial investment.

So strategies like this can absolutely work. Even though it's kind of cheesy to think about investing $100 into buying lawn care equipment, just think outside the box and get creative with what you have to offer. Maybe it's car washes, shoveling snow, mowing lawns, cleaning windows—just think of things that you could do with $100 and then go for it.

And I got to say, if you put in the time, there's no other investment out there like this that will pay for itself so many times over. After that, fourth, we have another one that's been glamorized by so many YouTube and TikTok videos, and that would be flipping items.

This is the idea that you could take something small like a paperclip and slowly flip that into something of value, like a house. And if you think that's impossible, then just consider this: there was a story a few months ago about a woman who started out with a bobby pin, eventually traded up to a vacuum cleaner, to a snowboard, to headphones, to camera equipment, to a car, and eventually to a small trailer cabin.

Getting started with this is incredibly easy too. Here in the US, Craigslist offers what's called a free section, where everything is at a low cost of $0. Just go and pick it up for free, and from there, ready to sell it to someone else for a profit. Like, here's a totally free granite counter and sink—just pick it up, take some better pictures, and relist it somewhere else for $100. Your initial investment is going to go a long way in terms of paying for the cost of labor and gas to go and pick it up, and everything after that is profit.

This strategy was also a favorite of Gary Vee, who had talked non-stop about this a few years ago as a way to make money for absolutely free. The entire point of this was that almost anyone has access to make it work as long as you're willing to put in the time. Plus, it's going to give you really valuable experience in terms of learning how to value an item, how to market a product, how to work with other people, and how to negotiate so you get a fair price for what you have to offer.

Then, if you want to take this up a notch, you could also buy items on eBay that you know are worth more money that you could then relist and sell later for a profit. Now, even though you're going to have to be mindful of eBay fees and shipping costs, if you know what to look for, you can absolutely make money doing this with as little as $100.

After that, number five, we have the riskiest of all of them—the one that would scare a lot of people—and that would be using $100 to invest in cryptocurrency. See, here's the thing: anytime you invest your money, there's certainly a risk versus reward ratio that you have to consider. Like, basically, the amount of money that you could make is directly correlated with the likelihood that you might lose everything.

For example, throw $100 in an index fund and the chances of you losing any money over 20 years after inflation is pretty much non-existent. But put that same investment into cryptocurrency, and you could either have thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of dollars—or absolutely nothing.

That's why the greater the chance that you have of losing money, the more upside there is to gain, and that's where cryptocurrency comes in. Even though I'm rather optimistic about Bitcoin and Ethereum, and $100 invested in Bitcoin in 2009 would now be worth over $50 million today, finding the next Bitcoin or any other currency that would see a similar sort of return is really just like a shot in the dark.

But if you believe in a particular project or you have one type of currency that you want to invest $100 into, it has the chance to do well—even though you have the risk of losing all of it. For every great Bitcoin and Ethereum out there, there's a BitConnect that went completely bust when it was discovered it was a giant Ponzi scam.

However, if you do your research and you're familiar with what's being offered, I'm sure over the next 10 years, this is really just the beginning. Even a $100 investment in Dogecoin two years ago would now be worth $10,000 today. And even though those ones are certainly anomalies, who knows what the future holds?

So if you want a high-risk, high-reward way of investing $100 while getting the experience of researching different projects along the way, this is certainly a viable option. Lastly, number six: you could use your $100 and hustle promotional offers for free stuff.

Here's the thing: businesses will often give you free money or free stuff just for signing up and trying them out. It's their way of paying for marketing, except instead of paying an advertiser to run an ad in front of you, they just choose to give you that money instead, and then it's a win-win scenario for everybody.

This is something I still do all the time. If a bank account offers me a sign-up bonus or a new credit card gives me a whole bunch of points, or if a company offers money back using a referral link, I go ahead and do it because in my opinion, it makes sense to get something for free that I was planning on doing anyway.

There are also plenty of examples of other brokerages doing this. You can literally just go down the list, getting a whole bunch of free stocks in the process for really just a few minutes of your time. And even though now we get into the more than $100 category, there are so many other promotional offers out there that could pay you a significant amount of money.

For example, signing up for a credit card, spending $500 in the first three months, and they will give you back $200 on a credit card that cost you absolutely nothing to open and keep active. I would do this all the time and open up multiple credit cards every single year just because I wanted the sign-up bonus.

So if you have the spare time and don't mind using $100 to take advantage of some of these promotional offers, this could be a great way to eventually build up to $1,000, at which point you're going to have more money to reinvest elsewhere.

And really, at the end of the day, those six ways of investing $100 should really be used towards education, which will stay with you for the rest of your life, or be used in such a way that will grow to a larger amount where it will eventually have more of an impact.

The goal with this one shouldn't necessarily be to pick the riskiest thing you possibly can with the highest upside and then hope for the best—like going and buying a lotto ticket—but instead spending it on something that you could learn from that gives you a great experience with a high likelihood of making you more money long term.

All of these options, in my opinion, would give you a really great starting point, and really, no matter what happens long term to that $100, I promise you it's going to be such a great experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to destroy the like button, subscribe button, and notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily. So if you want to be part of it there, feel free to add me there.

As for my second channel, the Graham Stephan Show, I post there every single day I'm not posting here. So if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. Thank you guys so much for watching, and until next time!