Most people spend money once and receive
value once. The wealthy look for things
they can buy, build, or create once and
benefit from for generations. Number one
is incredibly rare, and the secret bonus
might just influence every investment
you ever make. Here are 15 investments
that pay you forever. Welcome to Alux,
the place where future billionaires come
to get inspired.
Number 15, own a business beside a
popular landmark. Tourists pay the
landmark once, then they spend money on
everything surrounding [music] it. The
hotel with the perfect view, the
restaurant across the street, the coffee
shop selling ice cream and water,
[music] the rental apartment within
walking distance. The landmark created
the demand, but your investment captures
where that demand flows next. A bar
gelatia literally on Piaza de Trevy
reported $2.2 million in revenue. This
is an undifferiated business with fairly
average service. A larger cafe with an
established presence like Cafe Dalom in
Paris with a great view of the Eiffel
Tower brings in between 10 [music] to 15
million in revenue per year and
approximately 2 million in profit. This
works because famous locations possess
something most [music] businesses spent
fortunes trying to manufacture. A
permanent reason for people to arrive.
There are business opportunities like
this all over the world where there's a
stable flow of potential customers.
[music]
An ordinary business can perform
unusually well when placed directly in
the path of an extraordinary demand.
[music] But money isn't the only return
that compounds, and this next one costs
money the moment you buy it, yet somehow
it becomes more valuable every year that
passes. [music]
Number 14, memorable travel. Most
purchases begin dying the moment you use
them. The right trip does the opposite,
[music] though. It starts compounding
the day it ends. This is called the
memory dividend. Take your parents
somewhere they always wanted to go while
they can still walk the streets without
help. Travel alone before your calendar
fills with other people's priorities.
Cross a country with your closest
friend. Show your children a world
larger than the one they currently
inhabit. The money is gone the second
the plane takes off. The return though
it stays and grows for decades, [music]
especially when things go wrong. The
delayed train, the wrong hostel, the
night you got lost. Those are the
stories that get told longest and become
family mythology. There's a difference
between being a tourist and being a
traveler. Travel involves adventure.
[music] Unlike almost every other form
of consumption, the value of a great
trip rises with time. Once you've bought
the memories that travel with you,
invest in something that can travel
without you and keep sending you money.
Number 13, dividend stocks, or even
better, EFTs. [music]
You buy a share of a company once. Every
quarter, if they make a profit, they
send some of it to you. No extra work
required. An ETF is simply a basket of
those [music] companies. One purchase
gives you dozens of dividend payers at
once, which makes the income more
stable. The real power is in the
combination of three things happening at
the same time. [music] The companies
grow, the dividends tend to rise over
time, and you can reinvest those
dividends, so the next payment is larger
than the last. This quietly compounds
while you sleep, travel, or raise your
kids. [music] Now, here's a few of the
most popular dividend focused ETFs and
dividend kings that have raised their
payouts for decades. [music] We'll put
the exact yields and how much you would
need to invest to generate $1,000 a year
on the screen. [music] And speaking of
investments that become more productive
with age, let's plant something you can
actually eat. Number 12, planting a
fruit garden. Now, most investments are
designed to serve the person who makes
them. A fruit tree is different, though.
It's one of the few things you can plant
that is capable of outliving you and
still giving. For the first few years,
the deal looks kind of terrible. You
dig, you water, protect, and prune while
the tree gives you almost nothing back.
Then one season it starts to produce.
After that, it may keep feeding people
for decades. A well-chosen fruit tree
can outlast the person who planted it.
Figs, olives, apples, pears, the
pimmens, their multi-generational
assets. Someone might eventually eat
fruit from a tree that was planted
before they were born. One afternoon of
work can create years of food, shade,
beauty, and family ritual. Children
begin to measure the seasons by what is
ready to pick. The garden becomes a
living calendar. If you own land, make
[music] part of it productive. Plant
enough trees that you can sell what you
can't eat, in [music] which case money
really does grow on trees. A single acre
of well-managed blueberries, can
generate tens of thousands of dollars a
year once those plants mature. Even a
much smaller planting, a few dozen
carefully chosen trees, can produce
meaningful income or feed a family for
decades. But even if you never sell a
single piece of fruit, the return is
still real. Most things you buy begin
losing value the moment you own them.
But a fruit tree does the opposite.
[music]
It starts almost worthless and becomes
more valuable with time. And the garden
becomes even more valuable when you
enjoy the place surrounding it. Which
brings us to number 11. A beautiful and
comfortable home. You'll spend more of
your life inside your home than almost
anywhere else. What a blessing it is to
wake up in a beautiful home designed to
serve you. Most people either cheapen
out or design their home for somebody
else. The morning light should [music]
make waking easier. If walking barefoot
through your house doesn't make you
smile, you're doing it wrong. The
kitchen should invite people to stay.
[music] The chair should support your
back. The bedroom should be dark, quiet,
cool, and give you the best rest of your
life every night. There should be a
corner where you think clearly, a table
where the family gathers, and enough
[music] beauty around you that returning
home feels like a reward. These details
look small because none of them
transforms your life in a single moment.
They [music] transform it across 10,000
ordinary days. A beautiful home pays in
comfort, better rest, [music] deeper
conversations, family traditions, and
feeling that your life is happening
somewhere you actually want to be. A
beautiful home makes you feel at peace
in a world that's a lot like a storm.
Build the backyard where your children
learn to ride bicycles, where you drink
wine with your friends and can touch
grass. Don't be excessive, but don't be
conservative either when it comes to
your day-to-day environment. That's one
of the few things that experts agree on.
And speaking of experts, number 10,
getting a coach early. You know the Alux
quote, "Your life is cheap [music]
because you think investing in yourself
is expensive." Yet, most people try to
figure out life alone. They learn by
expensive trial and error, repeating the
same mistakes that thousands of others
have already made. But a good coach
shortcircuits that process. They've
already walked the path, seen the traps,
and paid the tuition. When you hire them
early, you compress years of struggle
into months of dedicated progress. The
right coach doesn't just give you
advice, they change the quality of your
decisions. They raise your standards,
keep you accountable, and show you
what's actually possible. You literally
are buying better odds at being
successful [music] at life. This
compounds aggressively. One better
decision at 25 can change the entire
trajectory of your career. One clearer
standard at 28 can improve every
relationship you enter after that. One
honest conversation at 30 can prevent a
decade of quiet regret. The earlier you
get this input, the longer the
compounding period lasts. A coach hired
at 45 can still help. A coach hired at
22 can reshape the next 40 years. Find
someone [music] who is further ahead in
the exact area you care about. Pay them
for their judgment and apply what they
tell you while you still have time for
it to multiply. We discovered the impact
early and it's why we were able to make
millions, but we know paying $10 to
$40,000 to a business coach is
expensive, which is why we'll pay the
fee for you and share the learnings. If
you go to alux.com/app right now, you'll
be able to access the 25 coaches that
have had a measurable impact on our net
worth, all in video format. Aram runs a
large private equity fund. Claudia helps
CEOs establish their personal brand. Sy
helps founders scale past seven figures.
and Christina will help you to negotiate
your next deal. Either start a 7-day
free trial or even better, once you have
the Alux app on your phone, scan this QR
code for 25% off. [music] That's
alux.com/app.
Every great coach will tell you the same
thing. The goal is to earn while you
sleep. [music] So, let's look at the
specific investments that actually do
that. Number nine, REITs. Now, real
estate has made more ordinary people
wealthy than almost any other asset
class. The problem is the work that
comes with it. Imagine collecting income
from warehouses, hospitals, apartment
buildings, hotels, and shopping centers
without ever receiving a call about a
block toilet. Well, that's the basic
appeal of a REIT. A real estate
investment trust is a company that owns
or operates incomeroucing property.
Instead of buying an entire building,
you buy shares in a company that owns
many of them. You receive a share of the
rental income as dividends, usually paid
quarterly. In the US, qualifying REITs
are required to distribute at least 90%
of their taxable income to shareholders.
That's one reason income-seeking
investors find them so attractive. You
can buy individual REITs the same way
you can buy stocks, or you can buy REIT
ETFs that hold a diversified basket of
them. Most major brokerages like
Vanguard, [music]
Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Erade, and
Interactive Brokers offer both. You can
start with very little. Many platforms
allow purchases of a single share or
even fractional shares. Here are the
biggest REITs that have a good history
and have raised dividends every year, as
well as how much money you would need to
invest to get $1,000 per year back. Not
only does the cash flow hit your
account, but the value of the holdings
goes up. You get the economic benefits
of real estate ownership with the
simplicity of owning a stock or ETF. All
of those investments produce cash, but
this next one consumes cash and somehow
still ends up being the highest return
decision most people could ever make.
Number eight, having and raising kids
right. This is the only investment on
the list that will wake you up at three
in the morning, empty your wallet, and
openly disagree with your management
decisions, and you'll look back on it as
the greatest thing you ever experienced.
Children consume the dividends
everything else on this list produces.
But if investing means sacrificing
resources today to create value that
continues after you're gone, very few
investments are more powerful. The
returns are instant. It's like having a
magical button at home that you can
press anytime you want. And your
happiness resets at 100. They're the
biggest shortcut to meaning we've ever
encountered. And nobody who ever wanted
kids and had them ever regretted it. You
pour in time, patience, education,
discipline, stories, and love. A child
learns how to treat people, how to carry
responsibility, how to recover from
failure, and eventually how to build a
life without needing you to manage it.
The goal isn't to raise someone who
feels indebted to you. No, it's to raise
someone capable of standing strongly
without you. You don't put all of that
love, money, and energy into them to get
it [music] back. You put it in so they
pass it forward. Do that well, and your
influence enters friendships,
workplaces, [music]
marriages, and future generations you
may never live to see. Money survives
through inheritance, but values survive
through people. And if you're building
for a family, the next investment is
making the home protecting them less
dependent on the outside world. Number
seven, off-grid home infrastructure.
Most people rent their power, their
water, and their comfort from systems
they don't control. Every month, the
bill arrives. Every year, the price
tends to go up. Owning the
infrastructure that runs your home flips
that relationship. Solar panels, battery
storage, a reliable water system,
efficient heating and cooling. These are
permanent increases in your
independence. [music] Once installed on
a home you own, they keep working for
decades. Every sunny day, the panels
produce power you no longer have to buy.
As of 2026, solar [music] panels cost
around $25,000. They pay for themselves
in around eight years if you live in a
sunny part of the world. Add some
batteries and you're no longer left
without electricity when the grid drops.
[music] Not to mention that you no
longer pay for gas if you own an
electric car with the tank full every
time you leave the house. If space
allows it, expand [music] to the point
where you're selling electricity back to
the grid. The lower cost obligations you
have, the easier your life feels. Build
the systems that make your home less
dependent on the outside world. The
return compounds every single month you
live there. [music]
Number six, writing a book, a song, or
creative piece of intellectual property.
The real goal is to work once and keep
getting paid for it. It's the closest
thing to a legal money glitch. Write a
book once and it can sell for decades.
Record a song once and it can generate
royalties every time it's streamed,
performed, licensed to a film or used in
an advertisement. Build software, design
a character, create a course or
photograph, something valuable, [music]
and the same work can be sold repeatedly
without being recreated for every
customer. Then there are patents. Invent
a useful product or process, protect it
legally, and another company might pay
you for permission to manufacture it.
You don't need to build the factory,
hire the workers, or ship every unit
yourself. You own the idea underneath
the product if you protect it. This is
the power of intellectual property. The
first copy can require years of effort.
The millionth copy might cost almost
nothing to produce. But one creation is
still a lottery ticket. A catalog is an
asset. 10 books, 50 songs, several
patents, or a library of useful digital
products give luck more opportunities to
find you. And ownership matters. A song
you created but signed away might make
somebody else rich. A patent you never
protected can become another company's
product. A book nobody distributes
remains a file on your laptop. Create
the work, protect [music] the rights,
and build a system that keeps placing it
in front of new people. Most jobs pay
you for what you did today. [music]
Intellectual property can pay you for
something you finished years ago. And
sometimes the difference between an
overlooked creation and a global one is
knowing the right person. Number five,
building a highvalue network early. The
richest of our mentors told us this. The
bulk of your wealth will not be
generated by how hard you work. It'll be
a byproduct of who you know and the
deals you do together. And we've never
looked at relationships the same since.
Hard [music] work makes you valuable.
Absolutely. But a network gives that
value somewhere to travel. The right
person introduces you to a market you
didn't know existed. Another brings the
capital. Somebody else has the
distribution. technical knowledge or
reputation the deal was missing. Alone,
each of you has an incomplete
opportunity, but together you've got a
billion-dollar business. This is why you
build the network early before anyone
urgently needs anything. Meet capable
people while they're still becoming
capable. Help them before their success
becomes obvious. Make introductions,
share opportunities, and keep your word
when breaking it would be more
convenient. People remember who believed
in them before everyone else wanted
access. But look, don't confuse a
high-value network with collecting
impressive names. A thousand contacts
who ignore you when you need it are
worth less than 10 people who trust your
judgment enough to take the call. The
real asset is accumulated trust, not
access. That's also why we included a
private network inside the Alux app.
[music] The right information becomes
far more valuable when people like you
share their perspective. Over time, your
network begins producing opportunities
you could never have searched for
directly and providing a safety net you
never thought would be possible. That
[music] said, these last four are pure
money printers that work almost anywhere
in the world. Number four, a permanent
billboard on a hightraic street. The
biggest constraint in the world is that
nobody knows who you are and what you
do. Historically, this was solved
through advertising, [music] which is
why it's a $1.26 trillion industry. Most
people pay to rent out attention for a
short time. A permanent billboard on a
hightraic street lets you own the
attention instead. [music] You buy the
land and build the structure once. Then
you rent the space to other businesses
that need visibility. Then they pay you
every month. You keep the [music] asset.
Thousands of drivers and pedestrians
pass that same location week after week.
The billboard sits there through rain,
holidays, and changing seasons. It's one
of the lowest effort things on this
list.
>> [music]
>> The demand for the location stays tied
to the road itself. A well-placed
permanent billboard is one of the last
pieces of physical real estate that
still delivers consistent unavoidable
attention. [music] Although you can do a
land lease, the play is to buy the land
so you don't have to worry about the
future. Depending on your budget and
location, we'd personally go with a
digital billboard that's more expensive
to build. But digital billboards bring
in three to six times more revenue than
traditional ones. Profit margins are
around 60%, but they do need electricity
and a bit more of maintenance, but the
cash on cash returns are pretty great,
usually over 20%. Advertisers come and
go, but the structure stays. As long as
the street stays busy, someone will want
to rent the space. Not to mention that
you might use it to promote your own
stuff if there are available slots. If
this sounded complicated, well, this
next one is the easiest of the bunch.
Number three, owning a parking lot in a
city center. land [music] and optionally
a barrier. That's the business. Okay,
maybe a security camera and a guy to
make sure the barrier actually works.
But you're using valuable city center
land in its least ambitious form while
the city itself makes it more valuable.
This isn't glamorous. It is not
complicated. It's one of the purest
forms of location-based cash flow.
Permanent demand [music]
meeting limited supply. Cars still need
somewhere to stop. Offices, restaurants,
events, and apartments keep generating
that need. You collect the money by the
hour, by the day, or by the month
without locking the land into one
permanent use. As the neighborhood
develops, rents rise and empty land
disappears. Your options expand. Keep
operating the lot and collecting strong
cash flow. Or sell it to a developer for
a serious premium. Here's what the
numbers look like in a busy urban
center. With a parking lot, there are no
elevators to maintain, no leaking roofs,
and no tenants calling at midnight.
Paint the lines, keep the payment system
working, and the land does the rest.
What makes this powerful is the
scarcity. City centers cannot create new
land. A building locks the land into a
single idea. A parking lot keeps almost
every future idea available. This is one
of the few loweffort investments where
you get paid well today for the chance
to get [music] paid even more tomorrow.
And speaking of storage, one of the
fastest growing businesses is storing
everything people refuse to throw away.
Number two, a storage facility. People
buy more than they need and then refuse
to throw most of it away. That single
habit creates one of the most reliable
cash flow businesses in real estate. A
self-s storage facility is simple. You
build or buy rows of locked units.
People pay monthly to leave their excess
belongings there. You rarely see them.
They rarely call. The units stay full.
Demand is permanent because clutter is
permanent. Moving, downsizing,
divorcing, inheriting, starting a
business, or simply accommodating more
stuff all feed the same need. When the
economy is good, people buy more. When
it's bad, they still need somewhere to
put all that stuff they already own. The
numbers here are strong. A midsize
facility can generate hundreds of
thousands in annual net operating income
with far less day-to-day work than
homes. Most of the job is keeping the
gates working, the lights on, and the
rates competitive. [music]
What makes storage powerful is the
combination of high margins and very
sticky demand. [music] Once someone
moves their boxes, furniture, or
inventory, inertia keeps them paying
month after month. You collect reliable
cash flow while the underlying land and
building quietly appreciates. This is
one of the cleanest [music] set it and
collect kind of real estate businesses
available. People keep buying more than
they can fit into their homes because
our culture is addicted to stuff and
filling emotional holes with material
purchases. [music]
So, now we're up to the craziest one on
this list. Number one, owning a
landmark.
Now, at number 15, we told you to own a
business beside a landmark. The ultimate
investment is [music] owning the
landmark itself. Are you kidding, Alux?
How am I supposed to own the Eiffel
Tower or the coliseum? Well, not so
fast. Okay. A landmark can be a historic
hotel, a castle, [music] restaurant,
theater, vineyard, lighthouse, statue,
even a wishing well. Ordinary real
estate has an address. A [music]
landmark has a name that people travel
to. They photograph it, hold weddings
there, and tell others they have to see
it at least once in their life. People
pay to see Juliet's balcony and tour
homes where celebrities once lived. That
recognition creates demand before you
spend anything on advertising. [music]
You can monetize it through admission,
hospitality, events, restaurants,
merchandise, filming, and licensing.
[music] But the real advantage is that
nobody can build another original. They
can open up a competing hotel, but they
can't recreate the history, memories,
and cultural significance attached to
yours. Landmarks can be expensive to
maintain and difficult to renovate. So,
you're buying responsibility together
with the opportunity. [music] For
instance, Dracula's Castle in
Transennsylvania is owned by one family.
As you can imagine, it's been printing
cash for them for generations and
probably will not stop doing it. That's
why Landmark sit at number one. You own
the land, the business, the attention,
and the story at the same time. As long
as people care about that story, the
asset can keep paying the family that
protects it. Now, you can choose only
one money investment from this list to
own for the rest of your life. Which one
are you picking? Let us know in the
comments. And since it's a Sunday,
here's your bonus. Going the extra mile
to pick [music] the right partner.
Pretty cheesy, right? But seriously,
okay? Almost every major outcome in your
life will eventually pass through
[music] this decision. They'll cheer for
you to give your dream a shot. They'll
be your shelter in the storm. They'll
take care of you when you're sick.
They'll laugh with you, live with you,
share snacks with you, and grow old with
you. It's so sad to think that some
don't have anybody to do any of this
with, or worse, they have someone who
isn't their peace. How painful is it to
be alone in a marriage? So, go the extra
mile. [music]
Choose the person whose presence makes
you feel lighter, whose values still
make sense when the chemistry settles,
[music] and whose love doesn't require
you to abandon yourself. The right
partner will not complete you, but
they'll make it safer for you to become
everything you are capable of being. And
in turn, you'll do the same for them.
And you know, we've got a gift for your
partner. Have them scan the QR code on
screen and get one year of the Alux app
for only $99. It's our way of giving
back to the true Aluxers. [music] If
that's you, write the word forever in
the comments. That way, we'll know
you're a real human and not a Chinese
bot shilling random books or financial
services. My friend, we salute you.