Pay for fun and make investments

If you have an extra $50 to spend, then you can take someone to the cinema to experience three hours of the Avengers: EndGame. If you had an extra $500 to spend, then you could have taken someone to experience about three hours of the Buju concert. Either way, you know that you are paying for fun.

If you had the extra money, then you would not likely be disappointed that you spent it, regardless of how hard you worked for it. You had it, you spent it, and you enjoyed yourself. If you had not spent it on fun, then you would probably have spent it on something else, or given it to someone in need.

Since you will have extra money sometimes, why not use some of it to get more money? With the additional money, you can: pay off your debts, help more people in need, and pay for a lot more fun. So, what can you legally do with an extra $50 or $500 to get more money?

You can play the lottery. However, you will probably lose all of your money quickly. You can invest it in someone else’s business. However, if they desperately needed your investment to keep going, then there may be structural problems with that business, and you may lose that investment. You can invest it in your own business, but if your business is not yet profitable enough to pay your monthly expenses, then a return should not be expected.

There are steps that you can take to make it probable that any extra money you invest will make more money. Before investing in any product, ask yourself these two questions. 1)  Are similar products selling well now?  2) Is it likely that your product will sell when you are ready to bring it to the market? Once the answer to both of those questions is ‘yes’, then ask yourself one more question.  3) What is likely to cause you to lose all of your money?

Let us test a few money-making ideas. What about planting, cultivating and selling beans? Are beans selling now? Yes. Will beans likely sell in two months when they are reaped? Yes. What will probably cause you to lose all of your money invested in this venture? Crop thefts by monkeys and humans is very likely, and you can do little about it at this time. So let us think of another product.

What about investing in building a house to sell? Are houses selling well now? No, the housing market is depressed. Will the house likely sell in one year after it is constructed? No. The market is likely to continue to be depressed while BERT/IMF is managing the economy. If the housing market were not depressed, you could have grown your $50 or $500 investment – we will address that in the next article.

What about an example that will work? That is the challenge. Before I tested the ideas, I thought that both of them were worthy investments. The test showed that while both ideas are good, they are just not wise investments at this time.

Every product has customers. One challenge is to identify those who are willing to purchase your product before you invest in it. The euphoria of coming up with a good idea leads many to make an emotional decision. They then prematurely invest their money and lose it. Testing the idea with the questions reduces the risk that you will make an emotional decision.

You can reduce the risk of failure by selecting a product from what you normally purchase in one week and making a business out of it. For example, you may eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Since everyone needs to eat to survive, food will sell today and tomorrow.

How can you lose your money with food? Preparing food that most people will not like, or cannot afford, or is inconvenient to purchase will likely do it. Since these risks are generally within your control, the next step is to design a business that avoids these risks.

Grenville Phillips II is a Chartered Structural Engineer and President of Solutions Barbados.  He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com