In my last post, 5 Ways to Make More Money You Probably Never Thought About, I noted how wealthy people use their money and resources to make more money for them, rather than squandering them or sitting on them. In this post I wanted to give you some additional ways in which you can get your existing money and financial resources to do more than one thing at a time for you.
- Apply savings to debt. Rather than “parking” money in passbook savings that will make very little interest, why not deposit that money in a HELOC (home equity line of credit)? This puts the saved interest expense in your pocket (which is usually always going to be more than what you’d earn in passbook savings) while still keeping that money available for those emergency and emotional spending events that are sure to happen.
- Turn a non-producing (or low-producing) asset into a high-producing asset. Money that you have deposited into a 401(k) or IRA, for example, is sitting their earning a modest amount of interest, or it may even be losing money, so it’s probably not wise to put all your long-term savings into such “stagnant” programs. Investing some of your money into real estate or equipment that can be leased out is a better way to get your assets to produce more money for you.
- Spread out your investments. Consider various investment options based on how they are taxed, risk risk level, capital appreciation, and so forth.
- Increase your return on investment. While it’s important for people with large debt loads and little savings to be quite conservative early on with their savings habits, as you get spending and debt more under control you will see a little cash accumulate. When this occurs it is foolish to leave the money in a low-return program such as a CD. Consider, instead, what savings should be converted to higher yielding investment plans.
- Examine ways you can make your current investments more valuable. Like I mentioned in my last post, can you convert real estate space into rental income Do you need to study the market and trade investments in more lucrative fields? Can you use the equity in your current real estate to purchase additional properties to begin a “rolling” real estate investment?
More ideas in coming posts. Hope these are some you will take into real consideration as they could be resources you already have that you are not using to their full potential.
