How Long Will It Take You to Earn $100,000 No Money Required?

Building your retirement nest egg or saving for your kids to attend college takes time, but it doesn’t have to take as long as you think. How long do you think it would take you to earn $100,000, no money required to invest, no need to buy stock and no risky investments in unstable currencies?

The answer is, of course, it depends. If you start with a small amount of money in a savings account, it could take you a lifetime to save that kind of money. You certainly won’t earn that kind of money in a typical 9-to-5 job, will you? If you want to earn $100,000 to tuck away, you’re going to need more than the typical, average salary. Here are a few of the more questionable ideas we’ve seen to earn $100,000 – no money required or with minimal investments.

Invent Something Wildly Popular

What are the odds that you could invent something so popular that it will earn you $100,000? Well, according to the U.S. Patents Office – and who would know better than them? – 99.8% of inventions actually make any money at all. Out of 1.5 million patents in force in the United States in 2005, only 3,000 of them were commercially viable. That’s a pretty dismal statistic. And to make things even worse, you’ll have to invest time and money into perfecting your invention, having it made and successfully marketing it. According to an NPR interview, the idea for your invention accounts for only about 10% of the chances of success. The other 90% is in the fabrication, packaging and marketing – and that all costs money. Scratch that idea to earn $100,000 no money required. It’s risky, and it’s likely to cost you a big bundle to get your invention to market – and it still might fail.

Be a Successful Day Trader

Over the past few years, day trading has taken on a patina of respectability and excitement. Unlike typical stock investing, when you buy a stock and hold onto it for years while it earns money, day traders tend to buy stocks with the intent of selling them quickly – often within days or even hours. If you play your cards right, you can make a lot of money with a relatively small investment – but it’s risky. If you buy “on the margin” and guess wrong, you could end up holding the bag for a whole lot of money to pay off your losses. And since most successful trades in day trading only earn you a buck or two a share, you have to be prepared to do it for a long time – or buy hefty blocks of shares. There’s one more idea to earn $100,000 no money required down the drain.

There are some other time-honored ways to strike it rich: you could marry rich, or win the lottery or be a successful gambler on the pro gambler circuit. Or, you can check into a credit-based earning opportunity that requires no investment at all, and can earn $100,000, no money required – just your good credit.