The $100 Investment That Tripled My Monthly Income

You don’t need to make a ton of money to invest. In fact, even just a $100 a month investment can add up over time, especially if you invest in the stock market.

But there’s a new strategy for investing that can boost a simple $100 per month investment to triple your returns — and eventually end up with a $1 million portfolio. Below we will walk through how this investing strategy works.

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Start By Investing $50

Growing an investment portfolio starts with taking your first step. And with this strategy, you can start with just $50 per paycheck.

If you get paid twice a month, investing just $50 per paycheck can result in a consistent $100 per month invested.

While this can feel like a drop in the ocean when you’re trying to get to $1 million, this is just the first part of our investing strategy. And even just investing $100 a month in a simple stock market ETF (like Vanguard’s VOO) can result in nearly $200,000 over the next 30 years.

Add in Your Tax Refund

The average tax refund in the 2025 tax season was $3,116, according to the IRS.

The second part to your million-dollar investing strategy involves taking your tax refund, splitting it into 12 deposits and investing in the stock market over the next 12 months.

With the average refund of $3,116, this means you can split your tax refund into 12 monthly investments of $259.

If you add that $259 to your $100 per month investment, you’re now investing a total of $359 per month.

Over a period of 35 years, $359 per month invested in a stock market index fund at an average return of 10% would result in a portfolio of $1,167,572.

This means just investing $100 per month plus your tax refund could make you a millionaire in the future.

What’s the Difference Between Stocks & Bonds? ???? - MoneyLion

Invest in Index Funds

Of course, this strategy only works if you invest in the right types of stock market funds.

While you may be tempted to pick the next Tesla, Nvidia or Amazon — most individual stock pickers actually underperform a simple stock market index fund.

But picking broad-based ETFs that simply follow a specific stock market index can be a simple way to diversify your investments, keep costs low and spread your risk among a wide range of stocks instead of a few hand-picked stocks.

If you want to hit the million-dollar mark on just $100 a month plus your tax return, you’ll want to find funds that can earn around 10% per year (or more).

Here are a few index funds to consider for high growth and long-term investing:

ETF: Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund ETF (VOO)
- 10-year average return: 13.60%
- Expense Ratio: 0.03%
ETF: Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF (QQQM)
- 10-year average return: 18.97%
- Expense Ratio: 0.15%
ETF: Vanguard Growth Index Fund ETF (VUG)
- 10-year average return: 16.18%
- Expense Ratio: 0.04%

Start Small, Win Big

The key to any investing strategy is to start small. Pick an amount you can invest every paycheck without thinking about it.

For some of you, this might just be $25 or $50. But once you’ve created the habit of investing every paycheck, you can begin to increase your contributions over time. If you get a raise or get on a budget and start saving, you can bump your contributions up a little bit.

And over time, your investments will compound, turning a small monthly savings habit into a million dollar retirement. Start small, but win big.

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