4 Ways to Invest Your Money That Can Actually Have a Positive Impact on Your Future

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So you’ve got a bit of disposable income, and you’re thinking about how best to invest it for your future. Well, the possibilities are all but endless, and even just a quick, cursory look at some of the thousands of articles and books and instructional videos to be found online will have your head spinning with talk about the best stock options and so on.

But when it comes to investing your money so as to benefit your future, are you really content with just obtaining potential benefits to your financial life? What about everything else? The kinds of relationships you have with people, your own contentment in life, your health and general wellness. Are these things just equivalent to earning a bit of extra money?

Well, in some cases, they might be, but for the most part, you’ll want to invest in those things that promise a good chance of yielding multi-dimensional benefits to you down the line. Benefits which impact as many of the different dimensions of your life as possible.

Without further ado, here are some ways to invest your money that can actually have a positive impact on your future.

Buy property overseas

Investing in property is one of the age-old approaches favoured by those who want to expand their wealth over time. Although it’s a little-known fact, even Arnold Schwarzenegger was something of a real-estate mogul from his bodybuilding days onward, and made a considerable fortune was dealing in real estate.

Buying property overseas, however, has multiple potential benefits which in many ways far outweigh the benefits of investing in property more generally.

For one thing, property markets in different countries may be vastly more lucrative than the property market in your own country, especially if your currency is strong relative to the currency of the country in question. Cyberjaya property is booming, for example, and getting in at the right time could certainly yield financial dividends.

But buying property overseas is also an investment in a holiday home of sorts. It’s an insurance policy. While you may rent the property out to locals and make a tidy bit of (largely) passive income by doing so, you could also use your overseas property as a place to potentially retreat to when you need to get away from the irritations and stresses of everyday life.

Of course, you could alternate between the different approaches. You could act as a landlord and rent the property out for a number of years and then, depending on your future financial situation, could reclaim it and use it as a holiday home, or second home.

Pay for self-development books and tools

The “self-help” industry is unfortunately rife with shady marketers and people looking to make a quick buck, but there are nonetheless gems to be found out there under the broad umbrella of self-development.

Throughout the ages, many people have written many, meaningful books, about their quests for betterment, and the strategies they’ve uncovered which have worked for them — which may be rooted in scientific research, and which may tie in with ancient philosophy.

From fitness, to self-discipline, habit formation, and more, it’s well worth your time investing your money in books and tools aimed specifically at improving the kind of person you are, across the board, and developing your character.

While this may not seem like an “investment” in the traditional, financial sense of the term, it is in fact perhaps the truest overall form of investment, as the quality of your life is, to a large extent, determined by the quality of your character.

Start your own business or side-hustle

Starting a business will, generally, cost money, not to mention the requisite investments of time and energy, and the fairly high probability that any given business venture will struggle and even fail.

Nonetheless, putting your financial resources into starting up your own business or side-hustle is, in reality, one of the best possible ways of spending your money, not least of all because it may bear the fruit of financial autonomy down the line, not to mention a more meaningful relationship to your work, where you feel truly invested in the success of your company and actually look forward to getting out of bed each morning.

But even if your startup doesn’t become your full-time career — at least not in the short term — you can still benefit immensely from the exercise of starting up your own business or side-hustle, because you will learn an incredible amount by putting in the work and going through the process.

In fact, even if your business fails, you will have acquired an array of skills and a depth of knowledge that you might previously have lacked altogether, which will significantly increase the odds that the next iteration of your business you try out will be successful.

After all, don’t forget that entrepreneurial heavyweights such as Richard Branson have a large number of failed businesses under their belts. It’s just that you tend not to consider those, in light of the fact that successes shine more brightly.

Invest in your appearance and your immediate environment

For many people, the idea of “investing” in their appearance sounds embarrassing, self-indulgent, and maybe even vain and laughable.

Investing in their immediate environment — in the sense of organising their home appropriately, so that it’s a pleasant and orderly space to spend time — is often hardly less of an embarrassing or seemingly wasteful proposition.

But there’s a lot of deep psychology that touches specifically on the themes of how our self-image and sense of purpose and control, in life, is influenced by the degree to which ourselves and our presentation as something worth treating with some respect and earnestly investing in.

If you currently dress sloppily, feel pretty bad about yourself and your presentation, and your home is a mess, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that you are actively sabotaging yourself by not making amends.

Invest in your appearance and your immediate environment, and you might well find that the future suddenly looks — and then becomes — brighter.