- What's going on y'all, so today we're gonna talk about investing because it's one of those
things I love to talk about and in particular, we're gonna talk about how to invest $500. Now for many of you, $500 might not seem like a lot of money, or it might seem like a lot of money if you have no idea how to get $500. If that's the case,
that's a whole other video that we can talk about later. What I want to talk
about right now though, is that if you have $500 dollars and you want to start investing how do you do it? How do you get started, where do you go, what other options do you have. And here's the cool thing is that you do have options. You actually have quite a few options, but today I want to talk
about what are my top five. What are my top five
investment options for $500. So we're gonna look at those,
and the best part though is I think number five is the one you're gonna
be most excited about because you can take
action on it right now. So let's find out what these
top five investments are right now. (energetic intro) You got $500, does that limit you on some of your investment options? It does limit you somewhat. You got places like Vanguard, that you'll need at least a $1000. Fidelity, sometimes you need like $2500 depending on the fund size. Schwab, you need a $1000 to get started unless you're doing some
sort of monthly ACH. So there are some places that $500 will not allow you to
get started investing. These are just the minority,
they are several more options that you can start and that's what we're
gonna talk about today. The first place that we're going to start is investing into mutual
funds, ETFs, and or stocks. Now that is a wide array of different places that
you can invest into, but it really just depends on where you're at in your investment experience, where you're at
in your investment timeline, if you never invested before, buying a stock might not
be the best thing for you. So what does that mean,
so where should you start. That's where mutual funds or ETFs, exchange traded funds, are probably gonna make
the most sense because you are being diversified, you're not having to pick
one individual stock, if you're buying an ETF or a mutual fund, you're getting anywhere from
50 to 100 different stocks unless you're buying the SMP 500 index fund, then you're getting 500 stock so there are options. The most common question
I get is where do you go? So with $500 dollars that does
limit us as I mentioned, but here are some places
that you can check out. So if you want to have more control in choosing your mutual
funds or choosing your ETFs, these are the two places
you're gonna want to check out. The first place is Ally Invest. So with Ally Invest there is no minimum, so you can get started with $500 or less. They have full access to ETFs, mutual funds, individual stocks, so
whatever you're looking for, they have it. And when you make your trades,
they're not going to rob you. A lot of places, you know
they're gonna charge you $9, $12, sometimes more if you're going
into a full-service broker. With Ally Financial, you're
looking at $4.95 per trade. So like that is nothing. Yes, there are others apps we'll
talk about here in a second but don't chart anything before having full access. So it's like you have access to every single item on the buffet, and they're only gonna
charge you $4.95 per trade. That is a good deal, especially
since there is no minimum. Another online broker you can look at is E-Trade. And E-Trade is more commonly
known as Ally Invest, they are a newer company,
kinda had some mergers so that's why a lot of time you hear Ally, people are like who's Ally? Who are they? Most likely you've heard of E-Trade, you've seen the commercials,
you're comfortable with them. So with E-Trade, they have a $500 minimum account balance to get started. They charge $6.95 per
trade, so a little bit more than what you're gonna get at Ally Invest. So just two bucks more, not a big deal. If you need a name that
you're more comfortable with, somewhere in the sense that you have full access to everything. They've got mutual funds, they got ETFs, they got individual stocks, but here's the cool thing with E-Trade that you don't get at Ally is that they have over 90 ETFs that you can buy with zero commission,
so zero transaction fee. So instead of paying $6.95
or $4.95, you pay nothing. So there are 90 different
options that you can buy with zero transaction cost. So that is one leg-up on what Ally has. But once again, these are for if you want more control in choosing your actual investments. Now if you don't want any control and you want somebody to basically pick your investments for you, the first place I want to
talk about is Betterment. And I've talked about Betterment
before and this is why: so with Betterment there is no minimum, you can get started
with next to nothing. With Betterment, they are
choosing your investments for you. Now what they are choosing for you are ETFs, so these are
exchange traded funds. And how they determine which
ETFs they're buying for you is going to depend on
what your financial goals. So is this a short-term investment, is this something that
you're going to need in the next 3-5 years, or is
this something that you are saving or investing for retirement. So something you don't plan
on touching for the next 10, 20, or 30 years. So depending on your financial goal, they're going to create a portfolio that matches that timeline. That matches that risk tolerance that is justified for that timeline so if you're going much more
longer term, 20+ years, you're going to be much more in stocks. If you are looking for something a little bit in the shorter term, like three to five years,
you're going to have more bonds than you do stocks. So it just really depends on
what your financial goals are. Another similar options to Betterment is called Wealthfront, and they are similar in the sense that you are not choosing the investments, they are choosing those
investments for you, they are also using ETFs,
exchange traded funds. With them, they do require a
$500 minimum to get started. Now what is really the
difference between Betterment and Wealthfront? Other than their logo, the name of the company,
they're very, very similar. Both of them are using low-cost ETFs, their management costs
are next to nothing, especially when you're comparing
them to any of these large New York Wall Street firms, I mean, for anyone to manage an
ETF portfolio for you for what they charge, it
really is next to nothing. I like these two outfits, if you don't want to have any control on choosing the investments, you just want to turnover to them, tell them your financial goal, and they'll build that portfolio for you. All right, so we talked
about online brokers, we're talking about robo-advisors, Betterment and Wealthfront, what about all these
different apps that exist. All these you can get started investing with $500, most of them a lot less than that. But there are so many
different ones to choose and even I'm getting confused on all the different
ones, how they operate, how one differs than the other, but let me break down some
of the more common ones that I hear about and probably
you've heard about too. So the first one is called Acorns. So with Acorns, their logo is
investing your spare change. So basically they're looking for to find additional money you
might have in your budget that you just aren't really
doing anything with it so instead of just having it sit in your checkings or savings
account, why not invest it. So what they're investing to are ETFs, just like Betterment and Wealthfront, you're not having any real control on those ETFs, but it is a very out of sight, out of mind
taking the money from whatever checking accounts that you set up and they're investing it for you. So it's kinda cool,
like I like this from a experiment of if you never really invested, or you just want to set
up something to where you don't have to manually
go deposit a check or log-in to your banking account
online and transfer money, it's those cases where a
lot of people get tripped up and they just don't do anything. Whereas with an app like Acorns, you set it up and it will
do it for you automatically so after a year, you
could have accumulated hundreds if not thousands of dollars just by having it do its thing. So that is one option that you look at. And the most popular investment
app that I hear a lot about that a lot of people are
talking about is Robinhood. So what made Robinhood so attractive, what made Robinhood you know, people talking about Robinhood and encouraging people to sign up, well basically they're one
of the first investment apps that I've seen that charges zero commission
for any stock or ETF trade. So that's pretty huge now for those of you that don't know this, if you were open up an investment account with like Merrill Lynch or any of these big brokerage firms, typically you're going to pay, I've seen anywhere from $20, $40, on up to $80-100, to make one stock trade. And that could have been
just buying one share, they could have been buying 10 shares, you could have been buying a 100 shares, depending on whatever the stock price was, but it actually it's
laughable to me just to see what these big brokerages are charging compared to places like Robinhood that are charging you nothing
to buy ETFs or stocks. Like that's pretty big, that's huge. So with Robinhood, you can
literally open your account in minutes. Sync up your online bank
account, transfer some money in, and make your first trade. Like that's pretty cool. You really have no excuse
not to start investing with apps like Robinhood. And just recently they've announced that you can also invest into
crypto with Robinhood, now whether that's a
good thing or bad thing, still remains to be seen, but just shows you that the
platform is adjusting, they recognize where people are investing, and what they are interested in, and they are making those
adjustments accordingly. Now I don't know if some
of these investment apps are gonna be around a year
or two years from now. You know, we've talked about Acorns, we're talking about Robinhood, Stash is another one you can look at, and there's probably 15-20 more that I don't have time
to mention on this video, but when I see companies like Robinhood that are adding different features, and they're listening, not
just to their customers, but they're paying
attention to what's going on in the market and what's
going on in the marketplace and making those adjustments accordingly like that's just good business. So that's why with a
company like Robinhood, I just like that for anybody that hasn't started investing yet, especially since, once again, they're not charging you anything. Now if there are any limitations,
yes they offer stocks, yes they offer ETFs, and some crypto, but that's really about it so there are like mutual funds for example, and they don't have the full service, the full access that you're gonna get with a place like E-Trade or Ally Invest. So that's just one thing to consider. All right, now that we've talked about how to invest that $500 into the market, and I've given you tons
of different choices, whether you want control, whether
you don't want to control, you want something to take advantage, or take that portfolio for you, you want to do it, use
an app on your phone, like there are so many different ways. Now the other way I want to talk about, this is number two is: $500 is to become a real estate investor. So with many people that want
to invest in their real estate they think of, well
that's buying a duplex, like that's flipping a house, that's taking out a mortgage, that's going to have to go to a bank and run my credit to see
if I can even approved to take out a loan. Now here's the cool
thing with technology and we're seeing this with the
apps that we just talked about like with Robinhood,
but with technology now is like you can become
a real estate investor without having to take out a loan, without having to have your credit run, and here's the best part: without having to even leave your house. So with $500 dollars, you can
become a real estate investor in a company called Fundrise. Now I did another video
talking about Fundrise and how it works and be sure
to check out that video for even more information about that, but I love Fundrise for
anybody that's interested in becoming a real estate
investor, a little bit hesitant, maybe scared to make that
first real estate investment and maybe you don't have a lot of money, so with $500, you can
open up a Fundrise account and get started. So how does it work, how
do you actually invest only $500 and become a
real estate investor? Basically what a Fundrise is they are a real estate investment trust company, so what that means is that they are actually going out and buying these properties on your behalf. Very similar to like an
ETF or a mutual fund, or we can think of it like
Betterment, Wealthfront, where they're building
that portfolio for you. With Fundrise, they are building
that real estate portfolio for you and other investors. And essentially what it is
is that you are crowdfunding their real estate investments and you're relying on their expertise to make you a good return. Now the cool thing is that they have a pretty good track record of making a good return. They share on their website
your expected returns, like what can you expect to
make investing with them, once you open an account, or even before you open
the account, you can see, like you can actually go
log on their site and see the different properties that they own, like with a Google Map
of what it looks like, and where it's located, and
if you actually live close by, you can get in your car
and go see it for yourself to see if like is this legit. Like is this is is this a real operation, well, it is. And it's just exciting to
see the different options that are available, and I
opened my Fundrise account earlier this year, funded that with $5000, initially it was a $1000, added
$4000, whole 'nother story, and I've already had dividends
start to be deposited into my account so it's
just kinda cool to see that my money is making
money for me, but once again, I have $5000 in there right now, you don't have to have $5000, you can get started with as low as $500 so if you ever been interested
investing into real estate, just didn't know where how to get started or just
didn't know what to do, here is a great option
that you can get started, without a lot of money upfront. All right, the third
option, this is an option that I'm fairly partial to,
yes I'm a financial planner, yes I'm a certified financial planner, I've been doing that 15+
years, but one of the areas of business that I get
most excited about is in the online space. Starting an online business. I have just found out through hardwork, grit, and determination, perseverance, and a whole lot of luck that if you can figure the
online business route out, the room for growth, the room for growth in the business,
growth in your income, growth in your free time, is
just so much more exponentially seen with an online business. So I spent 15+ years growing
my financial planning practice, you know, this is a brick
and mortar business, and yet my online business is generating me more, and has a higher valuation than my brick and mortar business. And yes I put a lot of work upfront to get it going, but as far as the maintenance, the upkeep, it's so much different,
so much less stressful than with my brick and mortar business. Now maybe that's just with my business, but I'll tell you what, I
talked to so many other people. They'll say the exact same
thing that I'm saying right now. Their online business is
so much more profitable, so much more, or less stressful, and just has allowed so
much more opportunity that they ever could have realized in their brick and mortar business. But I know starting an online business I mean there's just so
many different directions that you can go that it gets very, gets scary because there's
just so many different choices and where do you start? Well the first thing you gotta do is you gotta register a domain. Now the cool thing is, you
don't even need a domain, but I know for me, like starting
my blog, having a website, I'm willing to have a
domain, I have to have my real estate in the online space. So you can go to GoDaddy,
you can go to NameCheap, buy a domain for $12 bucks or
less, like that is nothing. Like that is so nothing investments, especially
we're talking about $500 to get started, so from there you're gonna need a hosting account, some place to actually host the website, there you're looking at
anywhere from $5 bucks a month, maybe $60 for the entire year, and then maybe you need
this, maybe you don't, but you can get a lot of free
website templates out there or you can buy a premium one, right now I use WordPress for my blog. Now WordPress by itself is free, but with having like a professional theme, or just like a good looking theme which is kinda like the
template, how the site looks, those will run you
anywhere from $60 bucks, maybe going up to a $100. So with just those three
things, we're looking at $60 for the hosting, $12 bucks for the domain, maybe a $100 for the website design, just the theme, I mean we're not a lot in and we still have a lot
left from our $500 to really call as a more more action and more to invest
to grow this online business. Now it just lot of people get stuck on
where you start, what do you do. You know for me, it was starting a blog. And with blogging, was I talking about like what I ate for lunch yesterday or where I took my kids on vacation, kinda not really. You know for me, I was a
little more intentional. You know being a financial
planner, having that in my background, my
blog was more focused on talking about investing
and financial planning and some of the experiences that I had with that part of my career, but I've seen other
people talk about writing, talk about food, talk about travel, talk about sports, talk
about their hobbies, like their dog training or karate, or running, I mean
there's so many different things with the blog that you can talk about. If it's something that
you are interested in, I promise you there are others interested in that exact same topic. So first it's just kinda
finding that community, and finding those interests, and just sharing those experiences, and then, at least for
me, that's how I started. I didn't start with the intent of actually making money with the blog, it was really just like I
mentioned earlier in the video, a little bit of luck, this was definitely a little bit of luck and also hard work and whatnot. Once I got the readership and understood what
people were looking for, then that's when the income followed. That's when the revenue
started coming because initially I was there to serve others you know, with that website. Now maybe blogging is not your thing. Maybe that's not the
direction you want to go and you want more of like the brick and mortar business
that is in the online space. I mean that's where you
have places like Shopify, where you're selling physical product. Now this could be products
that you are making, these could products that
you are drop shipping, there are so many options
that you can look at. I've talked to many people that have the some sort of Amazon FBA business
so where they're ordering products off Alibaba, from another country and then they're drop shipping
it to somewhere in the US. I've seen people selling everything from wooden kitchen spoons to
ladders to a trampoline, to wiffleball bats, I mean it truly is endless what you can sell. Now with Amazon FBA, like there is no cost to
actually set up the store, you still gotta go out
and find the products. With Shopify, I mean they're
gonna charge you about $29 a month just to have the ability to have the storefront to be able to sell things so you can have that site for over a year and you've not invested
your $500 bucks yet, so there isn't a lot of
money upfront to get started. And that's what I love
about the online business, because with my brick
and mortar business like we had a lot of upfront
costs to get going. We had to have our phone
line, we had to have desks, we had to have a sign, stationary, internet, computers, like all that stuff. And that's what I love about
the online business is that it doesn't take a lot
of money to get started. What is going to cost you
the most is your time. Trying to figure out where, what kind of business do you want, where do you what community, all that community you
wan to be a part of, like and who do you want
your customer to be, and who are you going to serve. So there is a lot of
time capital up front, but once you invest that time
and to connect with others and understand how it works,
that's when it gets fun. It's just getting past that initial hurdle of starting to see some
success in the online space. But man for those that I know that have pushed forward and pushed
through and got past that hurdle, it is a fun place to be. If you are interested in
learning about setting up a blog and getting started, you can also check out
my Make $1K challenge. So this just my free e-mail
series that I put together for those that want to get a blog started, don't really know how, I show you how to get your blog started, how to get it set up and just some ideas on how you can make your
first $1,000 online so if you're interested, go
check out Make $1K Challenge, sign up for the free e-mail series so you can see what that's all about. All right, number four:
another way you can invest $500 and I'm amazed at how many people that I've seen, especially
in the YouTube space that just are, that will bash
this idea as if like you investing this money,
you're not really investing it, you're just throwing it away, might as well just flush
it down the toilet because it's a waste of money. So what am I talking about here? It is online courses. Investing into online courses. I get it, there are definitely
a ton of online courses that are complete scams. People just trying to rip you off, claiming they have the
next great thing and you know just $9.97 and you'll change your world and become a millionaire overnight now that's not what I'm talking about here so it really depends on what
are your expectations so if you're investing into
an online course and you think that you're going
to become a millionaire overnight then, really that's not shame on the person you bought the course from, like that's shame on you for an unexpected reality check of what's really gonna happen
with this online course. But if you're looking
for a specific result and you know you have something
that you want to accomplish then taking $500 and investing
that into your education, into just getting past
a lot of the hurdles that many people get stuck on, like if there's an online
course that satisfies that, then why wouldn't you want to invest $500 into something that's
going to save you time, frustration, failures, I mean to me
that's like that's why I've always been okay with buying courses because that was, that's why I was buying these courses, because there was something
I wanted to learn, because I didn't want to
have go through the 2+ years that it takes most people
to get to that point. Because for me, like starting my blog like that was me learning on my own because there weren't any online
courses at the time to buy or there were, like I
didn't know about 'em, so they weren't doing a
very good job marketing them to the public, like I would've paid $500 in a heartbeat to learn what I had what I had to learn on my
own that first two years of starting my blog so and that's why like I said, I
am totally comfortable buying and paying for online courses. And I just did a quick tally of some courses that I bought
in the last two years and I have paid over
$9,000 in online courses. I bought a course called
TRIBE by Steve McClaren, talking about membership sites. I bought a course by Todd
Herman called 90-Day Year. I bought a course by Michael
Hyatt, The Best Year Ever. I bought First Page
Videos from Brian Dean. I brought, I bought Video Market
Academy from Alex Becker, you know, wanted to
learn more about YouTube. Like all these together were
over $9,000 that I spent, that I invested into my education through online courses. And I don't regret
buying any one of these. Like there was something that I got from each and every one of them and that's value, like
that's money being made. I mean that's ROI, return on investment, that I have got from these courses and like I said, if I didn't buy these, could I have figured it out? Eventually. But this shaved off so much
time, so much frustration, my goodness, like I am thankful, like I am thankful for
the fact that these people put these courses out that I could purchase them, that I
could buy them because man I wanted to learn from them. Now with most of these courses, they do cost more than $500 so what are some courses that you can buy that you can invest in
yourself for $400-$500. Michelle from Making Sense of Cents. I interviewed her before where she talked about she's making over a $100,000 a month from her blog. So Michelle has a course
that she also sells, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. And it's $200 and it's shows
how she's been able to make over a $100,000 a month from her blog through affiliate marketing,
that's just one example. Another blogger that
I know, Holly Johnson, she is a writer and she generates
over six figures per year through writing, so she has
her course that you can buy for less than $200 bucks that shows how she started as a freelance writer and she was able to increase her rates to where 'til now she generates
over six figures per year just from writing. And even these priced at $200 is more than some other courses that
you can get because you can go to places like Udemy that I mean if you sign up
to Udemy's email list, like they will sell you a course for $12.97 or less, like every single day. So all their courses are
about $13 bucks or less and you can buy it on
learning a new language, how to invest in the stock market, how to increase your productivity, how to become a professional programmer, I mean they have so many different options of courses that you can buy. I mean there's a lot of courses
that you can buy there for $500. But the point is that this is not an expense, this is not a sub-cost. Buying an online course if
there's something specific that you're trying to accomplish, like this an investment in
yourself, and treat is as such. Like don't think that you're
wasting money or that you're a sucker because if if you bought something that information is available on the internet, why would I pay $500 when I could go to the
internet and Google it. I mean you can, right, but
the whole point of a course and the big difference is this: is that it's presented to you in a format that is understandable, and is digestible, and for the most part, should encourage you and allow
you to take action. That is the whole point
in buying a course is that to be able to consume the
information to take action. So if you're going to Google, find the information that
you need and taking action, then more power to ya. But if you're going to
Google, finding your answer and doing nothing about it,
and just complaining that why would I want to buy a course for $500 when I could just go to Google. Well if you're not doing
anything about it then you know, just stop complaining so buy the course, consume
the course, take action. All right, number five
and I said this would be my most favorite one and this
is one that I'm excited about just because anybody can do it. It's something that I'm going
to get my kids to do because I've already talked to them about it, we just haven't taken action
yet, but I promise we will soon it's Summer time, we got
some free time on our hands. Like this is gonna happen this Summer. So what is number five, where does the one $500 investment
that I'm excited about? What I'm excited about is this: doing the flip challenge, now I didn't come up with this. I wish that I did because
it's such a great idea, but there's a guy that you may know by the name of Gary Vaynerchuck. - Just my big belief. My big belief is this, my friends. The #2017FlipChallenge is this: I believe that if you amass the hours that you allocate to a iPhone game for three hours here, to when you're on the bus
commuting for an hour. - So last year, Gary Vaynerchuck
came up with this concept and he called the Flip Challenge and what this Flip Challenge
is all about is that he recognizes that we spend a lot of time on our phones. We are constantly looking at social media, looking at whatever
apps that are available, and we just spend so much time, like we're wasting so much time on our phones, not being productive and always complaining that we don't have enough money and
that we're always broke that man, I just wished that
I had some extra money so I could do XYZ. The challenge is this is that if you're gonna spend so
much time on your phone then why not be productive and actually make money from it. So that's when he came up
with the Flip Challenge. So what is this Flip Challenge about? So what he's talking about is you're spending all this
time on your phone, right and why not instead of just wasting
your time playing Fortnite, or any of these stupid games is that you can go to a garage sale or you can go on online like an online discount retailer, or head to your local Walmart and check out the clearance aisle, find something that is on sale and then flip it for a profit and you can flip it on places like Amazon or Ebay are probably the two most common things. So think about the things that
you can go buy on Craigslist or at a garage sale
that somebody is selling for dirt cheap and you can
sell on Ebay because, man, somebody's junk is
somebody else's treasure and Gary knows that. Like I mean, there are just so many
different things out there and it could be like video
games, it could be baseball cards it could be shoes, there are so many different things. So why not spend your time
doing the research on your phone instead of wasting your time on Facebook, Snapchat, whatever, and actually make a profit so like that this is something that
I think anybody can do and especially for if you're complaining about
always being broke then why not, why not spend
a little bit of time, do some research and flip something for a profit like there are garage sales in your area? Probably, can you go onto
Craigslist on your phone and find things that are on sale that people are trying to get
rid because they're moving, or you know, they just don't want anymore, and then you can go sell that on Ebay or Facebook sales group or something. I mean there are all these different areas that you can sell this
stuff to make a profit. So that's the one I'm excited about, and I'm excited just because I know that this is gonna be such a
valuable lesson for my kids to show them and this is just a non-traditional way of making money. You don't have to go to
McDonald's and get paid minimum wage to make some money, you can spend a little bit
of time making a lot more if you can find the right thing. So that's why I'm excited,
you know my oldest he's gonna be 11 this Summer and we're gonna do this, I already told him we're gonna do this so I've
been doing some research trying to figure out what are
the some items that we can get that it makes sense to him, something that he's he kinda gets, I don't want
anything that's too complicated, but I just know that we're
gonna have a lot of fun. And I know that's something
that you can a lot of fun too. All right, so those are the five ways that you can invest $500. I want to know, which are you the most excited about. 'Cause in investing in the stock market
using like an online app, or using robo-advisors,
visit the Flip Channel, Fundrise with real estate, let me know which one resonates with you the most, the one that you're gonna
take action on immediately. Let me know in the comments below. All right, this is Jeff Rose
reminding that it's your money, your life, and only you
can make it awesome. Until next time, peace.
