How do you 10x your money, for instance to turn £100 into £1000? Maybe you want to buy something that costs £1000, you only have £100 and you don’t want to use a credit card. Very sensible.
Bet on something at 10:1 – not good
Here’s a very quick way, find a betting market with odds of 10:1 and place your bet. I’m being facetious here, by the way. It’s not a clever idea.
Buy shares and wait 25 years – not good
You could buy some shares and wait 25 years. On average the stock market rises 10% in the UK, every year, so your £100 will double every 7 years. Your money will be worth more than £1,000., after 25 years. I’m jesting again. This is a bad idea.
These are examples of the two extremes you hear about – gambling and investing. Neither are going to bring you instant cash. Gambling is stupid and investing is, well, investing.
So here are some sensible ways to turn £100 into £1,000, fairly quickly.
Buy stuff second hand you can sell for double – repeat. It takes work
£100 can be turned into £1,000 in a short space of time by buying something second hand, at a low price and selling it on for a higher price. You can use arbitrage here. Either by buying in once place where items are plentiful and selling where they are rarer.
Arbitrage can be geographical, on platforms or in time. For instance, you can buy things cheaply on eBay and sell at a higher price on Amazon. Or you can buy things out of season (think winter coats in summer), wait and sell them when demand is higher.
Another method is to buy things on eBay cheaply where the seller has written a poor description, with blurred or missing photos. Once you receive the item, you can relist it, making sure you write a great, honest description with clear photos. You are in effect doing a better job of selling the item.
Your profit margin will vary and it’s not uncommon to be able to double the price or even triple. Once you receive your money, recycle it by buying more items and repeating the process.
Buy something you can repair or add value to – it takes work
Are you handy? Do you repair broken things at home, rather than replacing them? Do you upgrade old furniture rather than replacing with the latest fashion? If so, you might be able to turn your £100 into £1,000 by repairing and reselling broken items. The list of items you can repair is endless, especially today in our throwaway culture. It’s also better for the environment. A good idea is to start at home. What have you got in the loft or garage that could be given a new lease of life?
Old Furniture
Old wooden furniture can be made to look fantastic with a repaint, re-varnish or by sanding down to the original surface.
Fabric suites and sofas can be upgraded by putting new fabric on. Often it might just need a good clean.
Electrical Items
If you can rewire a plug, you could repair simple household electrical items such as kettles, lamps, lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners etc. Often people will replace a faulty item, which has the simplest fault, like a loose wire or blown internal fuse. If you are comfortable dismantling the appliance, to look for a fault, you could immediately fix something up for resale.
After you’ve made some cash with your first items found at home, it is now time to scale up. Was there one particular project you enjoyed more or was most profitable? Perhaps you can find more of those broken items.
Where to find broken items
Here are some places you can find items that can be upgraded or fixed.
- Seach on Ebay for your specialist item and filter the search for Used- for parts only.
- Car boot sales
- Charity shops
- Online forums such as Freecycle
- Local municipal recycling centres. Obviously don’t go climbing into the skips, but you could keep your eye out for items, as people are discarding them. Politely ask if they would like to give it you to up-cycle. As they are throwing it away anyway, they should be happy to give the item a new home.
Pay for a course to learn some skill you can sell as a service – it takes work
It’s often said that the best investment you can make is in yourself. Could you spend that £100 on a course which teaches you a valuable skill, which you can offer as a service to someone else? Have a look at Udemy for some ideas.
Turning £100 into £1000 can be easily done, but in most cases will take either time and/or effort. But here’s the golden nugget. If you can turn £100 into £1,000 you can turn £1,000 into whatever you want.
Unfortunately, there are no get rich quick schemes that work as far as I can see. If you do find one, please let me know.