How to make money with a thousand pounds

Ask MetaFilter is a question and answer site that covers nearly any question on earth, where members help each other solve problems. Ask MetaFilter is where thousands of life's little questions are answered. Join 4, readers in helping fund MetaFilter. Ask MetaFilter querying the hive mind. I know NOTHING about investing, stock markets or investment markets. Any good resources to start this challenge with?

Ideas on best strategies for this sort of speedy growth? Do you think it's even possible? For one of us, but not both. They've never been keen on just giving us money, we've had to earn it, which has always provided some "interesting" challenges.

Having this would mean I can pay off my student loans, so I'm quite keen to take it seriously. How would you advise is the best method to do this? I know next to NOTHING about the stockmarket, other than a first-year-university class on economics and the mechanics of the stock exchange which I've mostly forgotten and don't have time to spend hours every day watching tickers and making decisions.

I've briefly considered some investment funds, but the market is massive, and where to start is a bit of a challenge. Better to go to a casino. The simplest way to try to do this would be to head to a casino, put it all on black at the roulette table, and hope to win 4 times in a row. You could also try to pick some stocks, but that would be equally unlikely to work and would take much more of your time and be less fun. That is far beyond what a reasonable investor would expect.

You basically need to get lucky, and if you don't know anything about the stock market now, you are basically throwing money away. Use the money to fund some kind of small business. Buy X, use it to make Y, sell Y? You won't get anywhere by investing it. Learn the lesson early, put it all into a retirement account for yourself, and just say "Thanks ma and pa! Yeah, -harlequin- has it - its not about investing. Its not possible to passively invest this sum and get the desired return.

What could you do with £? - Alastair Humphreys

You have to do something: That's the only way to get the return you want. Or teach your parents a lesson, put it in savings, get a job, earn in the next six months, and come back with to them, and ask for the extra 5k! Set up a gambling pool as follows: And sorry, I was assuming the lesson was: You can't get rich quick by investing.

If you're going to the casino, play blackjack and stay well away from the roulette table, where the odds are fairly disastrous. You still need to be lucky to win at blackjack, but you exert more control and the odds are better. If you are investing, you are either going to have to get some insider info illegal or be very lucky. Most normal stocks just will not increase that quickly over a short time frame. The other option is to find a stock where the hedgies have shorted it a lot and hope for a short squeeze and that you are paying attention as to when to sell at the right time.

I guess what I am trying to point out here is that there is an investment to be made here - your parents matching amount. Collect parents matching amount 3. If you could get a 10x pure passive investment return in 6 months, I would be on the next plane to the UK to learn your secret. Otherwise, you're going to have to work as others said, start a business to turn that into , which shouldn't be too hard. Good luck posted by Admiral Haddock at 7: I remember seeing all these mobile cafes on the backs of tricycles when I was over in England - can you buy one of those for around ?

Sort of a grown-up lemonade stand, and the summer weather should be good for it. The only way to get those kind of returns is either incredible risk or outright fraud Bernie Madoff style. Assuming that fraud is off the table, you're not going to be able to simply invest in some mutual fund. That kind of return requires active participation, to the point of it becoming, basically, your job.

But unlike a regular job, there's no guarantee you'll end up with anything at all. I'd get a regular job. There's no way to do this with legitimate investments like the stock market or, if there is a way, it's not so different from the roullette wheel suggestion made above--akin to winning the lottery. I'd be surprised if you could do it by captializing a small business, either. And I'm having trouble imagining a business you could start for that little bit of capital and be making that kind of money on in six months.

I'd like to hear a buisness plan from people who think it's do-able, especially if you have other obligations like school, or a full-time job. You might be able to earn that much money from that investment if it is your job, but what would you live on, if you have to preserve the to show your parents at the end of the six months?

Basically, I think your parents have set you an impossible task.

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I'm not sure what their motivation is for doing that, or whether they realize how impossible it is. Can you ask them? Would they be willing to change the terms? Like whichever of you comes back with the most money on November 4 wins the 5k? Or the first one to 5k wins the matching funds?

Get a 5k loan, using the to pay the interest for 6 months. Keep the 5k in a savings account. In 6 months, withdraw the 5k, show the stack of bills to your patents, then use the matching 5k to pay off the loan. I think I could do this selling on e-Bay, if I wanted to invest the extra time and energy.

For me, it's certain brands of clothing and bags. Once you figure out what the best selling items are, start trying to find them on the cheap. This can mean thrifting, second hand stores, Craigslist, or at other types of discount stores. Examples of what I do. I found two shirts by a certain niche brand on ShopGoodwill.

One was slightly damaged, but very desirable. The other one was in good condition. I took the damaged shirt to the tailor and had the repair made. Listed them on ebay. When I was really broke I would do this: Go to Marshalls or Filene's or TJ Maxx. Scour clearance, especially looking for high end brands in particular styles and sizes. Buy them- keep the receipt, and note the return date.

Then I would list those on eBay for at least double what I paid. If they sold, awesome. If they didn't, I could return them and would only be out the listing fee usually less than a buck. I guess the key is that you really have to know your product, and particularly how it sells on e-Bay.

But if you find the right market, I think you could absolutely grow that money tenfold in six months. It would take time and hustle, but it's possible. So if they're being serious about this, they're being kind of nasty.

What will our investment virgins do with £1, They've never put money into the stock market and they're terrified of losing it | This is Money

It's up to you and your sister, but the odds of getting some return are better if you cooperate. Given that the amounts seem to preclude sharemarkets, I wonder if the parent's hope for this challenge is that both kids will try the self-employ route, and six months from now, both their kids have created a burgeoning business that they've invested enough blood, sweat, and tears into that And even if they abandon them, they'll have learned the ropes and have the confidence later down the road to seize any good business opportunity.

If it works, it'll be one hell of a lesson. I'm taking notes in case I have kids! My point is - seven months from now, you need to write up the story, so someone can put it in the blue.

Back to the question, start thinking about how you can add value. Do you have hobbies that give you skills that can be applied elsewhere? The "get a loan" people here are right. You don't even really need the seed money. How much you can keep for yourself is up to you to negotiate. I presume they'll match the money of the sibling with the greatest returns? If so, your least risky strategy is to form a pact with your sister to split the money evenly.

The "loser's" total return is zero, which ius not matched. I think the idea here is that you can't do it passively you need some form of labor on your part for this to work. I'd try to find something topical like Charlie Sheen's outbursts a few weeks ago make a witty T-shirt, print them up and see if you can sell them.

Maybe you can see enough profit by the end of 6 months to pull this off.

How will the accounting work? Taking out what is effectively a variant on a 5K loan that is obfuscated various ways mentioned above, Wall Street style, is simple enough that it doesn't mean you'll win, because it's trivial for the sister to do it too.

Which means it comes down to a judgement call from the parents as to who wins, and they're presumably going to reward the generation of wealth over the generation of debt. So a poor strategic approach might be to get the 5k loan just as a backstop so that you can claim to qualify for the prize regardless of how successful you are at generating wealth, and on top of that loan, try to generate 5k ideally, or less than ideally, more than your sister.

A financial version of the idea that you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your running mate. A better strategic approach might be to bring up the 5k loan with your parents and sister so they can make it official that money owing comes out of your total, and thus loans don't help unless the money is put to work.

Get the rules changes so that they don't waste your effort. If you succeed, thank luck and nothing else. Just doesn't happen, at least not reliably enough to be meaningful.

Almost a cruel joke on the part of your parents. Do you really think MeFi is going to have anyone who can reliably tell you how to get that level of return? As you move from passive to active i. As you redefine the problem of 'turning into ' from 'using to obtain ', your probability of success increases. That simply involves borrowing 5K the day before, and paying it back the next day. It involves not telling them how you did it. It involves nitpicking the assignment to the letter, not the intent.

Sadly, it also involves your sister and the detriment of her interests. How about teaming with Sis, then you only have to raise 4K. When the parents pay off, you have 5K to split, a happy sister, frustrated parents, teamwork, community, ya da ya da.

If you see your parent's tell them I said they were assholes. First, if I were the parents I would see through this. Second, pitting you against your sister is not great. Whatever you do, I suggest making a deal with your sister and pool your resources. Then you only need a 5x return on your money. Done correctly there is no risk involed. Getting to 5k would be a big challange though.

It's possible to invest and get that kind of return in six months. It's just ridiculously improbable. Good luck finding the right stock at the right time.

Sirius XM Satellite radio. Yup, that's what I would do. I'd start a business on eBay if I were you - have a look at prices of niche items i wouldn't go electronics, maybe look at something crazy like glass tiles or table lamps and see if you can use your up-front capital to order them in bulk from a supplier like Alibaba.

Back in the day, my husband made a good amount of money buying up broken keyboards for Dell laptops and selling each key individually for 99p each - it turns out there were a lot of people looking for an individual key. Even without any marketing or advertising, he was making a good profit. A wee AdSense campaign to go alongside a nice eBay storefront, and you've got a decent chance. It's possible to gamble the money on the stock market in such a way that you actually can make that kind of money, but it's very unlikely.

What you have to do is invest in options. Keep in mind you'll most likely just lose the money, but if you do options trading you could theoretically make that kind of money.

An option is basically the right to sell or buy a stock at a certain price. So you'd have multiplied your original investment by 20x in just two months. Also, the price of the options will go up and down based on the probability of Amazon's stock hitting that price over time.

So you can sell it before the expiration date and potentially make a profit, or loss. However, that's pretty unlikely to happen, right? And the more volatile the stock is, the more expensive the options are.

The Hundred Pound Challenge | the art of making money for yourself

In that case, you are actually converting your labor into money, so even with an initial investment you're not really making 10x return, but on paper that's what it looks like. Even the long-shot stock possibilities are made waaay harder by the amount of money you're starting with, investing is pretty heavily weighted against small-time folks and fees would eat up a large percentage of your money starting off.

I think your best bet is to find some cheap product that you can buy in bulk and sell at high markup. Colorful plastic sunglasses or slap bracelets or something to sell to hip kids at a 4x markup. Buy sodas and bottled water at a discount store, throw them in a cooler and sell them on the side of the road. Get a bunch of clever t-shirts printed and sell them. At first i thought the loan comments above were so awesome and was going to suggest the same. But I don't think winning would be that easy They could easily say you cheated and not pay you, leaving you with a huge liability.

At the end of the day your parents are only going to pay out if they are happy with how you earned the money. You also have to think about your future relationship with your sister She'd resent you for a long time.

Your parent's goal for this is for you to either gain some entrepeneurship skills, and for you two to work your creativity. I agree with the posters above that say you should participate with your sister.

Skillful poker is NOT the same as throwing your money on the roulette wheel. If you practice, learn the odds and the discipline, this is something you can definitely achieve with gbp of starter money. I don't know if you can force yourself to learn how to be good at poker within six months, but if you could this would be the easiest way to achieve this in my mind. Do NOT immediately join a pound buy-in game hoping to win. As far as the loan goes, there's no guarantee your parents will see that as a legitimate strategy, but either way I would say not to try it until close to the end of the six months, to minimize interest.

As for simply investing in a stock for six months, any stock you're likely to know about will be known about by enough people that its value will be correct to within a certain margin, and what you want to get this kind of return on investment is a stock that's EXTREMELY undervalued, which generally means a stock no one knows about in a relatively small company that's about to blow up. Obviously this is really hard to find without extensive research and time that you said you don't have.

Investing in a starting business is the same way. You would need to know about an amazingly great business venture that no one else knows about. Buy an iPad first generation, used or an iPod touch, enroll in Apple's Developer Program and program an app, or apps.

Use the remaining money to advertise. Nthing the 'start a business' angle - being in the small business world myself, it's simply a matter of combining what you know with an opportunity you're in a position to take advantage of. Start with what you know - Photography?

Consider the investment as a way to purchase the assets you might need a new DSLR camera, a netbook, tools, etc. Wow, thank you for so many replies My parents have liked to provide "challenges" for my sister and I, to show that you have to "succeed" and won't just "receive" things. I have a full time job in insurance, which pays the bills but little else at the moment. Some of the ideas small businesses etc are interesting and honestly I'd written them off without much thought , and definitely worth another think.

I need to have a proper read through just got home from work. So many good ideas, and possibly a few questions I need to answer. Thank you everyone who's answered so far The two best answers in the thread are: The second is actually quite clever and your best bet. This isn't investing, it is gambling. And not very well. Otherwise, it could just be a race to see who can do this first.

How To Make $4,000 a Week With No Work At All

I wouldn't call it "investing" though, it's almost the definition of "speculation". Timing is probably the most difficult, although you can buy longer term options and pay more for the extra time in order to give your strategy time to play out.

Many people use these strategies for individual equities around when they release financial results. However, if there is only a small, or no, move, then you can lose all of the money spent buying the options to execute the strategy. They are primarily used as market insurance to protect more traditional positions. Obviously, the correct answer here is dealing drugs.

Buy supplies from Cosco or whatever bulk store teh UK has posted by WeekendJen at 1: Hot dogs are also good high margin items if you can get a spot at a street fair or something and have a grill posted by WeekendJen at 1: Your parents are either a screwing with you, b have no real idea how investment and money work or c trying to teach you a very different lesson than what it is on the face.

I'm hoping for option C. But if that's not the case, two options: This works best if you're near a university. OR more than one if your budget lets you. Also buy 1 sledge hammer. Drain all the fluids, remove the battery. The highest bid gets first whack, second highest gets the next 2 minutes, etc.

Be sure to have everyone sign a waiver. They may do this for free in exchange for the metal in the car. I knew an individual in college regularly pulled several thousand pounds per car doing this. Low-carb brunch ideas please!

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