The 100-Rupee (or the $1.6) Investment

I recently came across an question on the popular Q&A website called Quora - Where can one invest ₹100?

For the record a hundred Indian Rupees is the equivalent of approximately $1.6 - a rather paltry sum. But I'm guessing the question came from a young student who was looking for the best possible returns on very modest capital. And this is what I wrote

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The thing is that when a person talks of investing money into something, the average bloke thinks about direct finacial return that could obtained from that amount.

However, a wise person thinks in terms of value obtained for that same money.

A capital of ₹100 is too small to invest in the equity market to fetch you any worthwhile absolute returns (even a rather rich 50% return, in the right stock, would translate to just ₹50 in profit - a paltry amount in absolute value).

Invest that money in a bank’s fixed deposit, and you’ll get an additional ₹6 after a year.

Clearly, the time you have to wait to get direct financial returns won’t be worth the time you wait. So let’s think out of the box here.

What if you invested that ₹100 in acquiring knowledge - intangible value that could give you far better returns than what ₹100 on its own could fetch you?

So coming back to the original question -where should you invest ₹100?

Invest in… wait for it….YOURSELF!

So how exactly can you invest ₹100 in yourself?

Answer: Buy a book and learn from it.

You can get plenty of good books from second hand stores for ₹100. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad - A great book on personal finance that will change your outlook towards investment and could be instrumental in making you financially successful in the future

2. How to Win Friends and Influence People - A timeless book that will help you improve on your interpersonal skills by leaps and bounds (it will make a difference in how you interact with people in general and will have a cascading effect on all facets of your life)

3. Think and Grow Rich - Another classic non-fiction book from which you can learn many things that can improve the quality of your life overall.

4. Any good book that teaches you a specific skill you can use - There are plenty of books out there that can equip you with skills you can learn, practice and master over a period of time with experience. There are books to help you improve your writing or presentation skills, there are other that teach photography, there are books that teach you how to trade in stock markets etc.

Once you learn something new, you will get an opportunity to leverage your new skill, and you will see that over time, it was a far better return on your investment than what that ₹100 could have fetched in monetary terms when invested directly in some money making scheme.

Happy investing!

PS: Originally posted by the author as an answer on https://quora.com