Millennial Making Millions

Investing is Fun In high school I had a finance class that had us play a stock market game. It was based on the real market and I did really well. In 3 months I had 5% growth. I love it when my money grows. In the real world, I didn't really know how I could start investing in these things. Enter Stash. Stash Stash is the easiest investment app I've found so far. Its clean and straight forward and allows you to invest in different mutual funds (mutual fund: a collection of stocks). Mutual funds are great because it allows you to diversify your portfolio (make sure all your eggs aren't in one basket). The stock market makes, on average, about 12% each year. That's 120x better than my savings account. Stash details Stash only allows investing in their mutual funds. If you want to get into the details and buy individual stocks, this isn't for you. My favorite mutual fund on there right now is called Blue Chips. It has been doing pretty well for me. Stash c

I've taken one taxi ride in my life. I was in England and needed to get to the airport early in the morning. I rode from Oxford to the London Gatwick Airport. The fare was £145, which did not include tip. All said and done it cost about $200. The days of taxis, especially here in the US are winding down. Programs like Lyft and Uber are getting rid of that. The cost to take an Uber from Orem to the Salt Lake Airport from Uber is roughly $50, while a traditional taxi is $120-150. Are the Drivers Making Money? The short answer is yes, between $10-25 per hour. The companies don't want me reporting this though, likely because it varies, but I'm not about giving meaningless information. In fact, I had to pass on becoming an affiliate because I listed how much they get paid. I interviewed three Uber/Lyft drivers. I'll share a bit about each, their experiences, and what they've learned. Christine: Every daddy wants their daughter picking up strangers and taking

I love my Sams Club membership. Why would a student want a membership to a bulk store? My wife would say its for the dried mangoes, but I like it because it saves me quite a bit of money (until my wife spends it all on the mangoes). I found the very best deal available for a Sam's Membership (practically free) but I'm going to tell you why, even as a student, I would get one at full price myself. If you don't want to hear why, I get it. Math will be involved and the semester is over. Just scroll down so you can get the deal. I had to email the corporate people to get this deal for y'all. Why Its Worth It! I could talk about the good shopping, or the free fruit snacks I got from the freeosk. Most important to me though is gas. I drive a truck, so I buy a lot of gas. I have been trying to carpool with my wife a bit more, so I end up filling up both vehicles about once every week and a half, instead of every week. I save a gross total of over $100 per year on gas

I currently work at a civic innovation office. What that means is that we try to find innovative, smart, researched solutions to real problems in our community, and try to get government to do the same. I like the impossible tasks. I've been able to work with Utah State Legislators as well as city leaders in Utah. It has been an incredible experience and has helped me get into the best public affairs school in the nation. Hopefully it'll get me a lightsaber as well. A real one. For reals. How on earth does this relate? We want creativity and improvement in our future. We want cities and the life we see in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek. We wanted to start taking steps to making this actually happen.  How do we do that? We put together a writing contest for science fiction writers, to write about future cities, specifically a city that had solved accessibility issues for those with physical handicaps. OR they wrote about a city where it hadn't been

Guest Post by Josh Reif, Entrepreneur BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR SUCKS (but I love it anyway) Real talk right here. Most people are trying to sell you stuff. They paint a glorious picture of their lavish laptop lifestyle. They don't want you to see behind the curtain. All the times they failed. All the doubt and shame they felt. How hard it really is. Because it's tough to sell the blood, sweat, and tears. Selling the dream of quick money is a lot easier. You see these posts and it's demoralizing because you feel like you're the only one stuck, not succeeding, not making that easy million. So today, for me at least, I'm going to rip that curtain off. I am broke. This is embarrassing to admit, but it's the truth. The good news is, I won’t be broke for long. I’m hustling and I’ve finally found the right people to learn from. It's only a matter of time before I make it. I wanted to wait until I was successful so I could tell my "story" of how I "

There is no such thing as perfect conditions. Athletes dream about days when they feel 100%. I'm reminded of one beautiful day. I felt good. I was getting ready to run the 800, or half mile race. I felt strong and confident and I was actually excited about it. If conditions for running could be perfect, they were right before I ran, but life has a way of stomping on you when you things get going good. The race started and I had a great start. I was up with the leaders. I was on the outside which gave me freedom to move without being boxed in. I was able to get to where I wanted to be in the pack of runners, right behind the leaders, and I moved to the inside land and I waited till the time was right to make my move.  Half way through the first lap, during this race that was going perfectly, a runner came to pass me on the right. He cut it too close though and spiked me. Track spikes range from 1/4" to 3/8"  of solid steel, needle sharp spikes. I got 3 of them

Its kind of embarrassing, but my mommy filed my tax return for me last year. This year I procrastinated it a ton, but I am glad to say I've moved to the big kid table. I got some tax software and I did it myself. There are free options, and even free helps for students, but with only a couple days left, most of those helps were gone. I opted for the easiest software, according to most every review, and me, Turbo tax. I actually found an awesome Amazon deal for the good package, $35. Ironically, I'm the guy who teaches how to take advantage of savings, and I ended up paying $56 for it. Be smarter than me. Here's a link to Amazon if you've procrastinated like me. You've got 1 day left!   I'm no tax experts, but here are some tax things you need to know! #1. File for your return! Right now at my day job I make $12 an hour. It took me two hours to file, and I'll get about 1,300 back this year. 650 an hour sounds pretty good to me. Most guys my a

I remember the day that Facebook came to my mission. I got on and saw that an old girlfriend was married and had just had a baby. Ouch. This was one of many learning experiences on my mission. I learned a lot though about social media from this, and other experiences, that can apply to furthering absolutely anything on social media, from the gospel, to a business, to networking and building friendships. 1. Don't get sucked into scrolling. Have a goal It was hard seeing the girl on my news feed. It would have ruined my productivity for the day if I hadn't already had a plan for the day. I was getting rid of strange old photos that my highschool self thought were good to post. If I didn't have that plan I would have spent the rest of the day wallowing in self pity and scrolling for happiness and fulfillment. Hint: happiness, fulfillment, or success isn't found further down your news feed. 2. Friends/followers are the lifeblood of success Build your sphere o

I am a huge fan of digital movies. They're great. I have a digital movie library of almost 300 movies. I don't have to store them anywhere and I can access them on my laptop, on my X-Box, on my phone, on my wife's phone, and on any other device I have an internet connection on. I use Vudu, and these are the top 9 reasons why: 1. It's Free It doesn't cost any monthly fees to store your movies. Unfortunately, it's not Netflix where all the movies are provided to you. It is a free service, but you do have to buy movies for your library. There are different and cost effective ways to do that though, such as... 2. UV Spider:  My wife just had a birthday. I bought her a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to find it the day after it came out on DVD and digital. I bought it LEGALLY, on digital for $6, and it has been one of the more expensive movies I've bought. UV Spider sounds like it would be a sketchy place. It isn't. It is a website that tracks multi

I remember the day my buddy tried to sell me women’s clothing. He was telling me all about how comfortable they were, how much I’d like them, how much my wife would like them, and how I should get them for her, but if I wanted some too he would be happy to sell to me. Hard pass. I watched my buddy Matt and his wife get into LuLaroe and have seen their experience up until now. This is their story. They got into the company because he and his wife wanted a business opportunity to do together. Money was a factor, but not the primary factor. They wanted to see if their ideas could blossom. It’s hard to imagine money not being the primary factor in business. Matt was initially horrified of Multi-level Marketing companies. He was worried about the price mark-ups that have to happen in these companies, and he was also worried about challenges in selling. I was shocked when Matt told me they were going to get started, and that they were going to take out a $7,000 loan to do so. I was worr

The Penny Hoarder is not your friend. They penny hoarder runs a website that will come out with a list every so often about ways to make money. The easiest and most "do-able" option they list every time are different paid survey opportunities. I was bored, naive, and wanted to make more money. I took the bait and downloaded a couple survey apps.  Having tried a few others since deciding to write this article, I'll give you what you need to know about these different survey options. General Survey Information: I haven't earned enough to cash out from any one of these. This isn't to say that it can't be done. I have points and cash in each of the different apps saved up, but they all require you to meet a minimum threshold before you can cash out. "That's like a dollar an hour" It's difficult to reach the minimum threshold when you only make about a dollar an hour, which is about how much I made doing surveys. Theoretically, you could m

You've looked into a multi-level marketing company. In all honesty, I think everyone has, but we treat them as taboo. We seem to feel that society places them at a level just below prostitution and drug dealing, so we don't dare talk about them, or ask questions openly. Although I am not in a Multi-Level-Marketing company, I think that society is overly harsh. I'm unashamed to say that I have looked into a few of them. In doing so, and in talking to other people about them, I have heard so many generalizations, both for and against multi-level marketing companies. I want to lay out the different things I've heard, then explore them. Behind every generalization is a grain of truth, or in some cases a lot of truth. Before I do, I am not a part of a multi-level marketing company. My wife is, and I have turned down a few offers, so I know most of the generalizations. Generalization #1: It's a pyramid scheme that leads you to leach off of underlings Strictly s

          When you think of eleven year old kids making money recycling, you think of cub scouts going door to door collecting pop cans. My brother Tyler and I had much bigger ideas. My family would recycle our newspapers, taking them to the local elementary school. Community recycling hadn't come to Utah yet. My dad had the idea that someone could make a business of picking up people's paper recycling and taking it to the school for them. My brother and I were fascinated by this idea. Tyler had, and still has, mad computer skills, so he made a flyer, and we went door to door in our neighborhood. Maybe it was initially out of pity, but we had about a dozen people sign up on our first day out, and it only grew from there.           We started out putting people's papers in a big old cardboard box in the trunk of our family's Buick. My mom drove my brother and I to people's houses and we would get the papers and then take them to the school. It quickly expanded an

"I swear there was more money in that account." I think we've all said this before. Then we open our bank statements and say, "Oh yeah. Yup. Uh-huh... *Sigh*" When you're in college this seems to happen fairly often. There is a way to stop that cycle though: make a budget! A budget will put you back in control of your financial situation. A budget should be realistic. You plan out what your monthly expenses are, what your income is, and you set goals to improve your financial state.           The most important thing with a budget is to make sure you have enough money coming in to pay for all of your expenses. If you can't pay your bills, you need to either figure out where to make cuts, or figure out how to make more money! "I'm able to pay my bills, but I can't seem to build up my savings account." What are you saving for? Because I'm  s upposed to  isn't a good reason. If you don't have a good reason to save mon

          At my last job I was responsible for filming and live streaming events. I've filmed footage for a couple online classes and I run three YouTube channels. You wouldn't think filming an advertisement for my wife's makeup company would be a big deal. She wants me to be the model in the commercial though, modeling some girly lip-stuff.            How did I get in this mess? Well, for me it started on our wedding day. My wife wanted to kiss me but also wanted to wear lipstick, pink lipstick. I wore lipstick that day, but it was second hand, and I carried a tissue to wipe it off. There is an acceptable way for a man to wear lipstick, and this was it.           You'd think it would be a good thing that my wife would find a lipstick that was kiss proof, especially when you are as kissable and attractive as I am. I thought it was cool, but I just thought war paint was war paint. My wife became obsessed. She decided she wanted to sell it. I supposed an obsessio

          There are an estimated 7.5 Billion people on the earth today. Facebook has about 1.5 Billion users, Instagram has over 400 Million users, and Twitter has 320 Million users. There are approximately 2.22 Billion social media accounts active in these, the top three social media platforms. I became interested in social media as an LDS Missionary. I was in one of the initial pilot missions that attempted social media missionary work for my church. We saw an incredible boost in the work from social media usage. I recently read a book, The Tao of Twitter, that provides incredibly simple, but effective, ways to boost your business through social media. The book focuses on Twitter, but it much of what it teaches can be applied universally across all social media platforms. For those of you who don't want to read the book, I'll provide the basic, most important lessons from the book on social media use. 1. Targeted Connections 2. Meaningful Content 3. Authentic Hel

          Growing up, I wanted to be in the Olympics. I wanted to be an Olympic runner. I used to go to the end of my street and race against cars on the sidewalk and see how long I could keep up with them. I was an Olympian at that moment. I didn't get tired, but in fairness, you don't get tired when you're eight years old and following your dreams. I ran track and cross country in Jr. high and high school. I wasn't the fastest, but I always ran to beat the fastest, and sometimes I did.           I never became an Olympian, but I followed that dream until it wasn't a dream of mine any more. I was an all state track athlete, walked on to a division 1 track program, and helped my team win our conference championship by scoring points as a freshman. By this time though, I had developed other dreams-- dreams that became more important to me than an athletic career. The dream that took me away from track was to serve an LDS mission. When I got home the goal was to g

          There are all sorts of lousy YouTube videos out there. It is surprising that some of them get as many views as they do. Do you realize that the people who made these videos are making some good money from them? I make a bit more than $1 for every 1000 views I get on a video, so if you see videos on YouTube, you can start to imagine how much people are making from their monetized videos (To learn how to monetize your YouTube videos, watch this quick video tutorial ). Gangnum Style has the most views on YouTube right now with 2,780,694,120 views (as of 3/7/2017). Following my formula, they have made about $3,000,000 just from the add revenue from that. Then you have to consider that they are also selling copies of that song, and the video only helps them sell the music. The creators of that song and video are doing alright. It's hard to just start making videos though, and it's hard to imagine what people are going to watch.           If you remember, I posted a v