These days it feels like everyone and his mother invests in the stock market. For most people, this means purchasing mutual funds through a bank. Serious investors though, know that in order to get wealthy, you need to by-pass bankers and put your money to work yourself.

There are a number of ways to invest your money without consulting your bank. Online brokerages let you invest in ETFs for a nominal charge, in addition to the cost charged by the fund managers themselves. ETFs are great if you don’t really know anything about the stock market and have no interest in learning.

Putting your savings in ETFs though, still isn’t the best way to get rich. As billionaires the world over have proven, leverage is the key to wealth. With leverage, you can put a small amount of your own money in the stock market, borrow the rest, when your profit is magnitudes larger than if you had invested only your own money.

Sound complicated? Luckily there are websites to help you figure it all out. ETX Capital for example, doesn’t just want to be your broker – they offer free education to help you avoid losing your shirt. Free education is readily available online but once you start implementing the strategies in a brokerage account it all kind of falls apart. Better to keep your brokerage and education together!

A further extreme in investing your money yourself is to put it into private businesses. Possibly the most risky, this plan can pay off tremendously if your business is a success. The man who revolutionized the hamburger industry did much better for himself than another person who put his money into the stock market would have done. Unfortunately, private businesses are expensive to start, expensive to operate and don’t have the same tax benefits or leverage options available to stock market investors.

No one said investing was easy. For the majority of people looking to invest for retirement, paying the bank a few percentage points a year sounds like a bargain compared to learning about investments themselves. But, for the minority of people who want to be rich, firing your banker is a great idea. Use your money to buy ETFs and private businesses or leverage your savings into huge returns with a bit of education. Either option is better than paying bank fees!