How, could one possibly invest one million dollars for 20% returns? A 20% return sounds potentially risky. The problem with investment is that by it's nature, we have to hand over all that hard earned money to someone else and trust them. Control is relinquished the minute we sign the contracts and our funds leave our own bank account. Now that money is in the hands of a stranger, that we trust will return our one million dollars and hopefully the promised return also.

You can park your money in a bank or government CD's that will return you a few percentage points above the over night cash rate due to the large amount you have to deposit. Your money will be VERY safe, but so will the possibility that you will make a noteworthy return.

The key to a decent return is executive control. If passive investing is for you, I cannot stress how important it is that you abandon the search for a return higher than what banks are offering on one million dollars. Rather than increasing that one million, you could quite easily halve it or worse!

Real Estate historically returns about 14% which is better than the banks returns, by giving you around 7% capital gains and about 7% rental returns. But even this takes a certain amount of expertise and a capacity to buy right in the right area etc. It's not as simple as just buying any real estate that comes along.

However let me give you a few simple ideas that you might find interesting. One of the biggest things you can do to get a better return is to change the time period. Most people are obsessed with getting a higher compounder per year. However, what really matters is your SOR or speed of return.

Ideally, if you invest one million dollars, you would want that executive control, so you are not just blindly handing over your one million to some third party and hoping for a whole year that you may even actually get it back!

Instead, an ideal investment will let you actively control the process, right down to the last dollar. In other words having the flexibility to invest $100 or even less. See what happens. Also a fast turn around is better than an annual one. If the investment vehicle you chose was able to complete it's cycle in a month or a week! this is much better than annual.

Look at it this way. Invest $100 this week. By the end of next week if you have made $108 that is an 8% return in a week. If you feel confident with that process, try $200, if it works well, go to $500 and so on. Remember, 8% return per week is 400% per YEAR! Now that is a nice return!