We all want to be successful and college used to be a route to success. But with college costs so high, it’s out of reach for some so we’ll explore alternatives to college.

The cost of college tuition has risen 1,120% since 1978. There is $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loan debt in the US. Even if you do go to college, a degree is no longer the almost guaranteed ticket to the upper middle class it once was.

But not going to college, or not going via traditional routes, doesn’t mean you are destined for a life of low wage jobs and poverty. There are many paths to success and they don’t all require higher education.

Invest

Most of us are not going to get rich simply from our 9-5 jobs and even if we do, it’s still important to have at least one form of passive income, something that makes us money with very little effort on our part.

The best form of passive income is investing and the most important way to make a lot of money through investing is to start early. The more time your money has to grow, the better and there is no substitute for time when it comes to investing.

If at 18 years of age, you started with $1,000 and invested an additional $100 every week for 30 years at 7%, at the end of the 30 years, when you are 48, you would have more than half a million dollars, $539,643. You would have contributed just $156,000, the other $382,643 you made just from interest, from doing literally nothing.

If you don’t start until you’re 28 but start with double the amount, $2,000 and invest double the amount, $200 a week at the same 7% for 20 years, at the end of the 20 years when you are 48, you would have $461,451. You contributed $208,000 and the other $251,451 you made just from interest.

You can see what a difference time makes. We started with and contributed twice the amount but we still ended up with nearly $80,000 less because of the additional ten years our money had to grow in the first example. I’ll say it again, there is no substitute for time when it comes to investing. 

Our favorite gateway drug to investing is Betterment. The fees are low, there is no minimum, and you don’t have to know anything about investing to get started.

Rental property is another great form of passive income. You might not think it’s passive if you think you have to be a hand’s on landlord and you would be right. And if you’re a hand’s on landlord, you’re restricted to buying property in an area close enough to where you live to attend to the property which is limiting if their isn’t a lot of stock or the area is very expensive.

But, when you partner with Roofstock, all of those problems are gone! They are a turnkey real estate investment property and do everything from find you a home to collecting the rent and taking care of repairs and maintenance. Not only do they do the work for you, but they greatly expand the areas where you can own property since they do the day to day stuff for you. We did a full review of Roofstock.

If you can’t afford to buy a rental property, you can still invest in real estate. Fundrise is crowd funded real estate. It allows individuals to invest in commercial property through an eREIT. We did a full