Take a lesson from Warren Buffet, you don't need money to make money. It just helps, a lot.

There are many ways to make money that have nothing to do with investing. These require a little ingenuity, planning, skill, patience, and/or industry. Warren Buffet started young in life by looking through thousands of discarded tickets at the dog track. He was looking for winning tickets that people mistakenly discarded. And he found them.

Making money without money requires:

Ingenuity. if everyone is doing it the chances to profit off of it are slim. Try something new.

Planning. Spend your money wisely, don't waste it.

Skill. Hey, if you have a talent for something find a way to profit from it.

Patience. It may take some time but working patiently toward a goal is the best way to make your money grow, starting with money or not.

Industry. Get your hands dirty. Hard work may be its own reward, but it should also be a monetary reward.

Finally, if you are lucky enough to have some money to help you along, your money should be making you money. You've worked hard for the money, make it work hard for you.

The trick, be a lender, not a borrower. There are lots of ways you can lend money. You can lend it to a bank, to the government, to a friend, to an insurance company, to start up businesses... some web sites even allow you to lend money to complete strangers.

Generally speaking, the greater the risk the greater the potential reward. When lending to a bank or the government don't expect a huge payback, these investments will likely only barely help you keep up with inflation. When lending to a friend you set your own terms, but for the sake of your friendship you may want to be pretty lenient. Insurance companies are pretty safe, well the highly rated ones anyway. Lending to them in the form of an annuity offers several benefits and will typically pay better than a bank. Venture capitalism, lending to a start up, involves a lot of risk but could be very rewarding.

You don't need money to make money, but having it work for you is an ideal way to build wealth.

Learn more about this author, Daniel Xiao Wang.
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