So you want to be a Millionaire ?
Discussion
So you want to be a millionaire and you have about £500k (plus debt)or so you could invest in a business....... as an alternative to working 9-5 for somebody else ...... what would you do ?
Lets assume it doesn't have to be in the UK ,that you'ld like a nice lifestyle ... and grow the business or investment to £1m - £1.5m in 5 years or so .....
What sort of business or investments would you either buy or set up ?
Where would you do it ?
Edit to add : this is not a *hypothetical* question - I basically have a major "life" choice of either trying to get back into "Corporate" work after travelling, or do something else ( I'm in my 40's and single)
>> Edited by alfaman on Friday 18th November 13:14
>> Edited by alfaman on Friday 18th November 13:14
>> Edited by alfaman on Friday 18th November 13:27
Lets assume it doesn't have to be in the UK ,that you'ld like a nice lifestyle ... and grow the business or investment to £1m - £1.5m in 5 years or so .....
What sort of business or investments would you either buy or set up ?
Where would you do it ?
Edit to add : this is not a *hypothetical* question - I basically have a major "life" choice of either trying to get back into "Corporate" work after travelling, or do something else ( I'm in my 40's and single)
>> Edited by alfaman on Friday 18th November 13:14
>> Edited by alfaman on Friday 18th November 13:14
>> Edited by alfaman on Friday 18th November 13:27
I'd get into mass housing construction (flats / high rise), seems there might be a market for that on our over crowded, under housed island. Im sure it costs more than £500,000 to build a block of flats though..
If i was to do it purely for fun, rather than making money, i would probably play around with rockets
>> Edited by scorp on Friday 18th November 13:22
If i was to do it purely for fun, rather than making money, i would probably play around with rockets
>> Edited by scorp on Friday 18th November 13:22
staceyb said:
I'd open up an mp3 shop where people can drop in their mp3 players with a list of songs they want and we can put them on for them. I know it would take a huge database and all that lark but is anyone going to be buying cds in 5 years time?
It' called the internet, do you actually think anyone is going to be going into shops to buy data in 5 years time? Clothing, food and stuff maybe, but stuff you can download without getting out of your chair, I don't think so.
I'd buy up a promising small kit-car venture that never got off the ground (you get them for sale all the time in the back of Kit-Car magazine), and set up a factory for turnkey cars, to be built up to production car standard in small numbers, with fully trimmed interiors, reliable and fast production engines and so on.
With the right factory demonstrators sent to the right magazines, and a competetive yet workable price and the right development over time, I could, like Lotus, Marcos and TVR, join the supercar 'club'.
I mean, look how far Ultima's come in the last ten years.
In fact, with the right development, I could do as Ascari - build a test track next to the factory and allow owners free use of it if they ever wanted to drop in.
>> Edited by Twincam16 on Friday 18th November 13:24
With the right factory demonstrators sent to the right magazines, and a competetive yet workable price and the right development over time, I could, like Lotus, Marcos and TVR, join the supercar 'club'.
I mean, look how far Ultima's come in the last ten years.
In fact, with the right development, I could do as Ascari - build a test track next to the factory and allow owners free use of it if they ever wanted to drop in.
>> Edited by Twincam16 on Friday 18th November 13:24
Einion Yrth said:
I'd open up an mp3 shop where people can drop in their mp3 players with a list of songs they want and we can put them on for them. I know it would take a huge database and all that lark but is anyone going to be buying cds in 5 years time?
It' called the internet, do you actually think anyone is going to be going into shops to buy data in 5 years time? Clothing, food and stuff maybe, but stuff you can download without getting out of your chair, I don't think so.
But the internet you have to sit and download songs and make sure its a decent copy and all that faff. I reckon people will be shopping forever its something that is just going to be there.
staceyb said:
But the internet you have to sit and download songs and make sure its a decent copy and all that faff. I reckon people will be shopping forever its something that is just going to be there.
An interesting idea, but in real life, i suspect only one person needs to pay for your hard-to-get mp3 and its up on every file sharing network known to man. You would only get to sell your mp3's once, if that.
Actually I was given some great advice from an Asian entrepeneur once, which makes very good sense when thinking of starting a new business. He was explaining the difference between how British people and Asian people saw business opportunities (a bit generalised, but good advice none-the-less).
British person moves to a new village and decides to start his own business. He looks at what shops are in the village, sees there is no mirror shop, sees that as a gap in the local market so sorts out a good location for the shop and starts selling mirrors.
At the same time an Asian person moves into the same town and also decides to start his own business. He looks at what shops there are in the village, sees there are two corner shops that seem to be doing well, so opens another corner shop.
12 months on and the British man realises that there is no sustainable market for mirrors in the village and after a hard year of minimal sales, closes the shop. It seems there was no mirror shop in the village before his for a good reason.
12 months on and the Asian man is doing very well, for the first six months he undercut both the other corner shops by a significant margin until one finally lost so much trade they went out of business, he raised his prices back up to keep profit at a sustainable level and is happy with the state of his business. He realised that there was enough trade to sustain two corner shops in the village, but rather than buying an expensive existing business, he started his own and made sure he got his share of the market.
British person moves to a new village and decides to start his own business. He looks at what shops are in the village, sees there is no mirror shop, sees that as a gap in the local market so sorts out a good location for the shop and starts selling mirrors.
At the same time an Asian person moves into the same town and also decides to start his own business. He looks at what shops there are in the village, sees there are two corner shops that seem to be doing well, so opens another corner shop.
12 months on and the British man realises that there is no sustainable market for mirrors in the village and after a hard year of minimal sales, closes the shop. It seems there was no mirror shop in the village before his for a good reason.
12 months on and the Asian man is doing very well, for the first six months he undercut both the other corner shops by a significant margin until one finally lost so much trade they went out of business, he raised his prices back up to keep profit at a sustainable level and is happy with the state of his business. He realised that there was enough trade to sustain two corner shops in the village, but rather than buying an expensive existing business, he started his own and made sure he got his share of the market.
With £500k you could buy a company making, say, £100k profit per annum (which is 5 X operating profit). Buy it from someone who is retiring and is not running it with any real vigour. Ideally, invest in a company that has some tangible assets (property if pos), so the risk is reduced. Run the company for, say, 5 years increasing the profit from £100k pa to £200k pa. During this time extract the property from the business and pocket the profits from the company. Finally sell the business for 5 X operating profit. Net result, circa:
500k invested =
100k year 1
125k year 2
150k year 3
175k year 4
200k year 5
100k property
1000k sale of business
£1.85m total
Voila - you couldn't get that level of return from natwest!!
Edited to add: The final cherry on the cake is that because you will have owned the shares for more than 2 years you'd get 75% tax relief on the capital gain on the sale of the business - so you'd only pay £50k CGT on the disposal!
>> Edited by srebbe64 on Friday 18th November 14:11
500k invested =
100k year 1
125k year 2
150k year 3
175k year 4
200k year 5
100k property
1000k sale of business
£1.85m total
Voila - you couldn't get that level of return from natwest!!
Edited to add: The final cherry on the cake is that because you will have owned the shares for more than 2 years you'd get 75% tax relief on the capital gain on the sale of the business - so you'd only pay £50k CGT on the disposal!
>> Edited by srebbe64 on Friday 18th November 14:11
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