Timothy Armoo, founder and previous chief executive officer of Fanbytes.
Tim Armoo
Timothy Armoo, a founder and previous chief executive officer of influencer advertising company Fanbytes, is not what you may anticipate from a multi-millionaire.
He does not possess any kind of manors– or building in any way– stating he chooses to invest a few of his cash on diverse financial investments, varying from unique fruit services in Africa to moneying the sale of a lithium mine.
Armoo made his cash offering Fanbytes to electronic advertising firm Brainlabs in May 2022 for an eight-figure amount (the precise quantity has actually not been revealed).
But the young business owner informed Make It that he really felt “almost too crippled to spend the money” after maturing inadequate in public real estate in south London.
Describing what he called a “scarcity mindset” that he created maturing, Armoo claimed: “I was convinced that if I started to spend the money, it would all start to go.”
“I would track it every week, maybe twice a week,” he claimed. “I had this spreadsheet where I would track to the penny how much I had.”
Armoo understood he needed to locate a means ahead to terms with the reality that he was currently affluent, and had not been ready to shed it all– so he called his financial institution. “I said: ‘I would like to come and take out a million pounds in cash.'”
After numerous checks, Armoo gathered the cash money from the financial institution and took it home in a large bag. He after that spread all of it out over his bed.
“I just looked at it,” he claimed. “The reason I did that was that I wanted to make it very visceral to me that: ‘Dude, if all else fails, if you spend everything on gambling, or you spend it on crypto, or something bad, at the very least, you have a million pounds in cash.'”
‘Completely unique’ financial investments
Armoo claimed he spends his cash in index funds– easy funds that track an index, such as the S&P 500 — and owns a variety of stocks including Shopify and Cloudflare.
“So I basically have two camps: one is the extremely safe bucket: index funds, overweight cash, bonds and guilt and treasuries. Then the other side of things is completely exotic.”
Some of Armoo’s more unusual investments include financing avocado, soybean, and mango businesses in Kenya, Angola and Tanzania, which supply supermarkets in Europe.
Armoo on a banana farm in Angola
Tim Armoo.
He also admitted he gets involved in “random stuff” and “alternative investments” such as buying uranium and funding the sale of a lithium mine.
“I enjoy the game of finding different arbitrages and different cool ways to spend, and invest the money, as opposed to ‘we’re just going to put it all in index funds,'” he added.
Armoo is a minimalist and doesn’t own a house
Most wealthy people love to invest in real estate, but not Armoo.
“I actually don’t own a house. I didn’t get involved in any residential property or any direct commercial property,” he said.
“Most people see property as their way of building wealth, but I use businesses as my way of building wealth and I don’t have a family, I don’t have a partner now, so why?”
Armoo said he expects more younger millionaires to make this choice, rejecting property in favor of being able to travel and move around more. “I probably only spend maybe half the year in London,” he said.
And unlike his peers, he’s less inclined to buy extravagant things.
“I’m generally quite a minimalist person,” he said. The one example he gave of a “flashy” purchase was first-class flights to Bali for him and his now ex-girlfriend. “That was cool. I remember thinking: ‘Yo, this is gangster.'”
The young millionaire emphasized that sometimes it’s good to reject the traditional way of doing things.
“I think there’s actually a bigger point here, which is to examine the rules that you live your life by. You should examine them and say: ‘Well, why should I do this? Why should I choose this career? Why should I invest my money in this way?” he said.
“You should really examine those rules, because if not, you’re going to wake up later on and realize that you’ve lived your life by someone else’s rules.”
