If you have enough capital to semi-retire but not enough to maintain your present lifestyle if you live to see the age of 90, there are several options for trying to make your money grow in order to enable to retire comfortably in a few years time.

A simple savings account may be safe, but is definitely not going to make you rich.

You could consider starting your own business and using all of your capital for that business. With an average start-up survival chance of roughly 20% you are likely to end empty-handed without a business and without money after a few years.

Being in the above-mentioned situation of having enough money to stay alive but not to live happily ever after myself, I realized that I had to come up with a different approach and I looked for a way to increase my odds. After ample consideration I decided to partition $ 50,000, into 5 equal parts.

I put out an ad indicating that I would like to make modest investments of time and money in small companies. My experience as a former CEO of small and mid-sized companies came in handy.

About one year after I placed the ad I had a stake (varying between 10 and 20%) in 5 different small companies and I was helping each of the owners with operations on a part-time basis. From each of the companies I received a very modest financial compensation for my work.

Two of the companies I was involved in failed within the next year. Gone was my money.

One of the companies became a real hit. It grew so fast that we had to get in real investors to finance the growth. Last year they bought us (the original owner and me) out. The 15% stake that I had was worth well over $ 400,000.

The two other companies are still operating and create some profit and dividends. Not something to make me rich yet. In the meantime I am sitting on an additional nest egg of more than $ 400,000, wondering whether I should repeat the trick.

By dividing my money into 5 slices I have spread my risk and I leveraged myself since other were working for me to create value for my stakes in the companies.

If you are considering to do something in this direction you could inform capitalhelpers that you are looking for interesting investments. They can bring you into contact with interesting ventures.

About The Author:


Robert Hunter is a management consultant and business angel. As an experiment he has made, what he refers to as the simplest website that generates passive income, http://www.cashmanual.com.