Seven Smart Investments You Can Make With Just $25 A Week

by Libby Kane

Even if you only have $25 a week, you can still make your money work for you.

How? Over on Quora, a user asked the community what they would recommend he do with his limited cash, and they were full of ideas.

Here are our favorite answers:

1. Set up an emergency fund.

"Shop around, you might get 2% [interest rate], and keep putting it in until you have six months worth of living expenses saved up. This may take a while, but it's worth it. It will protect you against financial disaster. 2% may not sound like much, but it will offset inflation. This is emergency money, it shouldn't be in stocks, mutual funds or pretty much anything but a safe investing account. Don't lock it in for extended periods of time." – Mike Davey

2. Pay off your debts.

"First of all, if you have any credit card or other debt, pay it off first. The interest you save from that will exceed what you can get from most investments." – David Down

3. Treat people to coffee.

"I'd say use it to take mentors, people of influence, former colleagues, etc. out for coffee or lunch. Increasing your network and sphere of influence is much more likely to pay off in the long run than the market returns on such a small investment." – Elizabeth Baum Milne

4. Get started on your own business.

"$25 a week is plenty ... that's $1,300 a year, and you can reinvest your earnings until it grows. I started my consulting company less than two years ago after freelancing for a few years. I spent about $500 for the LLC, EIN, website, and cards. The revenue last year was about $90,000, and I was only working part-time since I lead a nonprofit (my dream job). I already had those skills and network, but if you start small and think big, you could pass me 100-fold." – Frankie Fredericks

5. Learn something new.

"I recommend you invest your $25 every week to acquire knowledge. Invest some time together with your money. In this way you will learn the steps to take, the skills, to acquire the behaviors and attitudes to cultivate in order to become the person you need to be, to do what you wish to do." – Ken Portnoy

6. Increase your online presence.

"My suggestion is that you upgrade to a premium LinkedIn account so you can easily meet new people. Or you can just get a premium website, learn some SEO, and get your site online, and if you have some great content, you can attract money (advertisement)." – Egeogho Carlson Kimbi

7. Start your own website.

"For $25 you can buy a domain name and set up a website. Think which topic or a few topics you know the best. Start blogging or write the articles around these topics ... Then research how to drive traffic to your site — tons of free information available. Then read about monetization. In most conservative way, you will see $25 coming every week. If you will really dig into this you can make $25 off site even every hour." – Magaril Pavel

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