How to Buy a Brand New Studio for US $15 000 (and 4 Other Weird Ways to Invest This Sum)
$15 000 dollars is a weird sum to have.
While it looks (and is) like a lot of money, it can’t get you much further than $5 000 would.
After all, what can you get for $15 000 that you can’t get for $5 000?
I went on a quest to answer this question and came up with 5 weird investments to do with $15 000.
Find them below.
1. Buy a Studio in Bansko, Bulgaria
Bansko is a charming and picturesque village in the south of Bulgaria, located some 3h away from Thessaloniki, Greece.
I consider this place to be one of the best locations in the world. It is part of the EU, located at the bottom of one of the biggest (and nicest) ski stations of Bulgaria, in beautiful nature, not far from the capital city Sofia, not far from the Mediterranean, the food is amazing and everything is cheap.
What else would you need?
Now, you may think that $15 000 for a brand new studio…is very, very cheap.
It is indeed.
You see, when Bansko started developing its tourism industry oriented towards mountain activities, investors thought it’d be flooded with tourists.
But…it wasn’t.
Since they overestimated the demands for real estate, they ended up with a huge surplus.
Economics teaches us that as supply increases, prices decrease, right?
This is exactly why you can buy a studio in Bansko for as little as US $15 000.
True story!
2. Buy a Campervan
When I invited a good friend of mine for my birthday in my remote village, he came with…a campervan.
A campervan! I didn’t know he had a freacking campervan, and when he told me why I understood the genius behind his decision.
“I can live for almost free anywhere I go to, he told me. He had used his campervan to explore Norway and Switzerland on a budget. “But the campervan doesn’t only help me save money, I rent it out on Airbnb when I don’t use it.”
Genius. He had turned his campervan into real estate!
Since he had bought it second hand, he had amortized it after a year or so.
That’s how I found out that campervans could be in fact, high-yielding investments.
3. Buy a Car and Lease It
Ok, this one is a bit less original, but you’ll make much more money renting out your car on Getaround or other apps than you would invest $15 000 in an overvalued stock market.
Some apps actually install a device in your car so that you don’t need to be present to give and get back the keys.
The renter sends you a message on the app to see if it’s okay if they rent your car. You hit accept, they pay, and can unlock the car with Bluetooth.
They subsequently send you pics of the car to show that nothing has been damaged.
All you do is sit and wait for the car to refund itself.
Can’t get more passive than that.
4. Go on a World Tour
This one may be a bit more controversial as spending money on plane tickets may sound like a consumption decision, and not an investment.
However, no one said you couldn’t monetize a world tour.
From writing articles to taking pictures, there are a million ways to monetize your travels.
You can also write a book if what you’re doing is crazy in a way (like walking from your country to…China, and not taking the plane), or use the money to set up a charity in your location of preference.
They say investing in yourself is the best decision you can make, and I highly agree as long as the investment can yield ultimate results – throwing a giant party is NOT a way to invest $15 000, just a way to burn them.
5. Start a Company
While the costs to start a company have drastically gone down, some companies are more expensive to create than others. Should you wish to build a web platform or an app with no coding skills, these $15 000 may offer a solid foundation.
It will for sure be easier than if you had started with $0.
Starting a company is the highest-risked investment on this list. You may fail and lose all your money.
You can also succeed and make much more!
Either way, I personally don’t see starting companies as a loss, even if what you lose is a million dollars.
Whatever you do, whatever you start, whatever initiatives you take, it will teach you something.
And this knowledge is worth much more than the sum you had to spend on the initial investment.
Whatever the period, whatever the place, whatever the product or service, starting a company is ALWAYS a good idea.
Best-case scenario, you succeed.
Worst-case scenario, you learn.
The Bottom Line
There is actually quite a lot to do with $15 000.
Don’t let them sit purposelessly on your account.
Get your money to work.
You never know what could happen.
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Photo credits: Photo by Kristin Wilson on Unsplash