The 2025 Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey found 49% of non-investors cited insufficient funds as the reason they don’t invest, with the median typical starting amount reported at $1,000. However, delaying investing until you have a lot of money means falling behind and missing out on compound growth.
In a recent video, money expert Jaspreet Singh explained you can start building wealth with only $100, which he said could grow to over $34,000 in 50 years. Learn about his recommended strategies for investing your first $100 and boosting your income so you can grow your money faster.
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Secure Your Financial Foundation
Singh suggested focusing on your financial foundation before investing money. First, have a $2,000 emergency fund so you can handle any unexpected expenses without using debt. After that, eliminate credit card debt, which costs you interest and uses up your income.
In 2025, the Federal Reserve reported a national average credit card rate of 21.39%. You can compare that with the much lower 10% average annual investment return Singh cited, which shows that paying off the cards right away offers a much higher guaranteed rate.
Leverage AI To Boost Your Income
Once you have that financial foundation set up, then you can consider how to invest that $100.
“If your goal is to create more income, you better be smart with AI because this has some of the biggest and fastest-growing opportunities that our economy has ever seen,” Singh said.
Putting some of your first $100 toward premium versions of tools like Claude and ChatGPT can pay off if you know how to leverage their features to build a business or career. The higher income would allow you to invest much more than $100 regularly.
As an example, Singh discussed using AI agents to identify potential customers for a hypothetical window washing business and obtain contact details to use for landing deals. He also mentioned using AI more broadly to serve as your virtual assistant, write programs and brainstorm revenue-boosting strategies.
Read Books To Help Build Wealth
While AI tools are great, it’s also helpful to learn about building wealth from different types of books. Singh provided a list of seven suggested book categories: personal development, investments, money management, careers, leadership, biographies and business scaling.
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He explained that these books will teach you important things such as having a growth mindset, staying motivated, increasing business revenue, getting promotions and spending less money.
An older video from Singh listed several must-read titles, including Dave Ramsey’s “The Total Money Makeover,” Lawrence Ingrassia’s “Billion Dollar Brand Club” and Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” You can likely borrow these and others from the library for free if you don’t want to spend money on them.
Start Investing Your Money
Now that you have your foundation taken care of and have found ways to grow your income and improve your success, you’re ready to invest your first $100, which can have a large impact.
“If you have $4 a day, that’s about $100 a month, you can retire a millionaire, assuming you have enough time,” Singh said.
While that’s based on getting a 10% average return and continuing to invest for 45 years, Singh added that you could end up with $2.8 million if the return were 13%. Ultimately, the return, investment amount and time will affect your wealth-building potential.
When it comes to how you invest the $100, you can take a passive or an active approach. The risk level, return potential and investing strategies used differ for each.
Singh explained that passive investing means you’re aiming for the average market return, often through diversified market funds like the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) and SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). If you go this route, his advice was “always be buying,” meaning you automatically invest on a chosen interval, such as weekly or monthly.
Active investing comes with higher risk, but also higher earnings potential. Singh explained that identifying undervalued companies, carefully digging into their financials and paying attention to “market shifts” will be key.
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This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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