If your scope is seven years or less, there is only one answer: Start a business. You can’t start a capital-intensive business with $18,000. You can’t, for example, open a restaurant or create a new line of pharmaceuticals. But you don’t want to be in those businesses anyway. (The risk/reward ratio isn’t working for you.) Much better to start a business selling something you know about—such as gardening or collecting beer steins or taking care of pets. You can start a little business like this for a few thousand dollars if you start small and go slowly—at first.

I made a point of explaining what a beginning wealth builder shouldn’t do.

1. First, when figuring your investable net worth, you really shouldn’t count the equity in your present home unless you plan to sell it and buy a less expensive home during retirement. And even if you do that, you can count only the difference between what your house is currently worth, the mortgage, and what it will cost you to buy another house that you’ll be happy with. Using the example of our dissatisfied conference attendee, he admitted that there was little or no hope of finding a nice retirement home in a community he liked for less than the equity he had in his present house.

2. Next, you shouldn’t be investing in stocks and options if your investable net worth is less than $25,000. In our example, the gentleman was playing the stock market with his entire savings: $18,000. Think about the risk this guy was taking!