If My Goal Was to Become a Millionaire, This is What I Would Do
Nothing is guaranteed, but this is as close as it gets.
There are many ways to become a millionaire in one’s lifetime.
The most common methods:
Inherit the money
Win some type of lottery
Grind away for 50 years, saving/investing every penny you earn
The latter is the one you see most, with the drawback being that most people are not able to enjoy the fruits of their labor until they are past their physical prime.
There are other ways of making it happen of course.
You can YOLO a few grand on 0 DTE call/put options on your Robinhood app (this is just another form of playing the lottery).
You could also come up with a unique business idea and then sell the company.
The problem with these ideas is that they rely on luck or something most people just aren’t capable of.
Well, what if I told you there is another option?
One that isn’t guaranteed, but is as close to guaranteed as you can get…
Before I tell you what that is, let’s address the idea of being a “millionaire”.
There are two reasons people wish they were one:
So they can buy a ton of dumb stuff
So they don’t have to work, unless they want to
This post is for people who want to make work optional one day. You know… that financial independence thing I’m always talking about.
For some people, this requires being a millionaire. For others, it doesn’t. It all depends what your expenses look like.
With that said, here is my millionaire blueprint.
The Millionaire Blueprint
There are two extremes on the income spectrum:
Work for an hourly wage
Win the lottery
Number 1 is the most inefficient way to make money, while number 2 is the most efficient way to make money.
The issue with number 2 is that there is a cap on the number of people that can do this. There are only a handful each year.
Sitting in between the two extremes is a happy medium that combines an efficient income with a high chance of success.
Rest assured that I have either done the research or that I have done what I’m about to explain, in real life.
There are a ton of different versions that could theoretically work, but here is my version:
Day 1 Capital: $5,000
I would deploy this capital into non-fiction books in either late June or early November for the upcoming busy season (late August or January)
For this example we will use August.
That $5,000 turns into $10,000.
Day 90 Capital: $10,000 (late September)
If you buy the right books, you could easily have $15,000 in capital. For this example, we’ll take the low end of $10,000.
Once November comes along, I would once again deploy the capital into books for the January busy season.
If you know anything about my book flipping business, this is as close to guaranteed profit as you can get.
We then deploy that $10,000 into more books for January.
Day 210 Capital: $25,000 (late January)
January has a smaller group of books that spike in value, but the spike harder than books do on average in the Summer.
That’s why we made $15,000 this time around.
(In real life, we would use that $25,000 to make more money until Summer-time but I want to keep it simple)
Once late June hits, we buy more books to sell in late August. All $25,000 is spent on books.
Day 455 Capital: $50,000 (late September)
With another busy season under our belt, we now have ten times the amount of capital we started with: $50,000
Okay, timeout.
Here is where we add something new in: LEGOs
I have a big post on this coming soon about LEGOs, but just stick with me on this.
In short, LEGO sets retire after a couple of years in production. This means a set number of them exist.
As more sets are opened, the supply of unopened product shrinks and becomes more valuable.
LEGO sets have outperformed the stock market as an investment class since 1987, just like the Pokémon cards I invest in have.
Not only do they grow in value consistently over time, but they really pop in price 6-18 months after retirement.
Anywhere between 50-200% has become quite normal if you know how to pick your sets right.
With most LEGO sets retiring at the end of the year, the start of Q4 is a great time to buy-in on sets we think will do well within 6-18 months.
We deploy $50,000 into different LEGO sets. We don’t spend the $50,000 we already made but instead put it on a couple of 0% APR credit cards.
You can routinely find these that offer 15 months of interest free credit.
We could have done this from Day 0, but that would have been more careless (despite how easy book flipping is).
We then take the $50,000 in capital left from August and deploy that into books for January again.
They generate $75,000 in profit, leaving us with $125,000 in capital.
Day 575 Capital: $125,000 + $50,000 in LEGO (late January)
With the January busy season over, it’s another waiting game until June.
Now, we aren’t going to drop the full $125,000 on books this time around.
While I’m sure you could do this, we are going to pretend there is a cap on how many books you can buy and still net 100% ROI.
(This cap exists, I just don’t know how much it truly is)
That cap in this example will be a nice round $100,000, which turns into $200,000 after August.
Day 820 Capital: $225,000 + $50,000 in LEGO (late September)
It has come time again to buy more LEGO. We will only be spending $75,000 on books for January come November, so that leaves $150,000 for LEGO.
The $75,000 put towards books for January nets $112,500.
We also start to offload our original $50,000 worth of retired LEGO from the year prior during the holiday season, which nets $50,000.
It could net more, but we are going to stay conservative.
$75,000 * 2.5 = $187,500 (books)
$50,000 * 2 = $100,000 (LEGOs)
We also pay off the $50,000 on the 0% APR credit cards.
Day 940 Capital: $237,500 + $150,000 in LEGO (late January)
We wait again until June and deploy $100,000 once again on books, which nets us another $100,000.
Day 1,185 Capital: $337,500 + $150,000 in LEGO (late September)
Just like the year prior, we set aside $75,000 for books and put the rest towards retiring LEGOs.
During the holiday season, we offload our $150,000 in LEGOs from the year prior.
$75,000 * 2.5 = $187,500
$150,000 * 2 = $300,000
Day 1,305 Capital: $487,500 + $262,500 in LEGO (late January)
There is no need to continue further.
Not only do you get the point, but once those LEGO sets sell in a year they will net us enough to reach the $1 million mark.
In this example it took just over 3.5 years to hit that point.
Let’s say we have a bad recession and things don’t go as smooth as I made them sound.
(book sales are recession proof but whatever)
So what, you get there in 5 years? 7 years? Sounds a whole lot better than 45 to me.
I chose books and LEGOs for this post because they are the two highest yielding products you can buy and sell that:
Don’t require you to invent anything
Don’t require a novel business idea
Don’t require you to wait 5-10 years to net 100%
They are the most asymmetrically skewed markets you can play and have a high chance of success with.
The money the generate is more guaranteed than that of real estate, cryptocurrencies, stocks, or even trading card investments.
Are there things that generate a higher yield than books and LEGOs? Of course.
Do those things have a much higher failure rate? Absolutely.
If I wanted to become a millionaire all over again from scratch, this is what I would do.
When you are ready, there are three different ways I can help you:
HI,
Can you elaborate a bit as far as that cap for OA used books? Even if it's not for 100%ROI, let's cut that in half, especially for non busy season months, is there enough books out there? What's the max that you have ever sourced?