Ask HN: What was your best $1000 investment?
What is the best investment you have done or are planning to do under $1000? It feels like this question wants to be saying "what price did you buy bitcoin"? :-) He said best investment, not luckiest :^) Buying a 1 year commitment to my gym; I went from a bad cholesterol of 421 to 189. Amazing drop, 3 months in and I've lost 30 pounds and significantly reduced my A1C and other factors. On target to lose 100 pounds. Did you change your diet at the same time or it was just gym? Diet too. Dropped lattes in favor of Americano's. Stopped eating office snacks and eating really clean. Did the Whole 30 for a month. Way to go! Nice! This might not be the answer that you are looking for, but a good set of peripherals for my PC. A good mechanical keyboard, 3 decent screens, a stand to mount them up high and make room on my desk, and a few other smaller things. Those parts have done more for my career and sanity than anything else I could have spent my money on at the time. I spend 40+ hours a week at or around this desk, I want it to be comfortable and work well for me. Not to mention that even if something makes me 1% more productive, it's worth it to spend $1000 a year on it and still "break even" in terms of cost (in theory) A good chair? I was lucky enough to have gotten a good chair from my wife as a present already, so that didn't really apply to me, plus my list of stuff was already getting close to $1000! I bought a business/website while in school for about $400. This year I anticipate earning about 7-10k from that site. It was a great investment for the financial return alone, but I also learned a lot about business, marketing, and the technical skills needed to run the website. The AWS bill for my first personal website. Being able to say "I built a website on AWS" in 2009 was probably the reason I got my first job making >100k. technically, it wasn't my investment, but my Father bought me a PC when i turned 13, and that cost about 800EUR at the time (close enough to $1000)... i got hooked on computers, and have been working in the field for the last 13 years full time. Buying 4.16 bitcoins in 2015 for $240 a piece. Have you sold them yet? did you lose* them yet? any more details on this? been hearing from some of my bullish friends that the earlier they got into bitcoin the more likely something "odd" happened to them. Besides having more time to lose them, the farther back you go, the less they were worth, so there was less reason to be careful with them. Yeah, have diluted most of it to various alts. I bought 300 when they were $5 a piece back in like 2011. Joining a dating site. Met my wife a week later! one week on a dating site cost $1000? Yeah, there’s this dating site that charges $1000 memberships, but all the people are super attractive, wealthy, and looking to get married. Actually with sales tax it’s a little over $1000, but close enough. It’s super selective, though, and I signed an NDA so I can’t reveal the URL or the name of it. You’ll just have to take my word on it. Wait, so they do the Fight Club thing where you can only find it from word of mouth by close people? How do you find this kind of place? Not that I'm interested in finding it, I don't care, it's pure curiosity now. I’ve already said too much. That sounds like something a movie character would say before seeing a red dot on their body and being executed :) Don't worry about it, I'll take your word for it. The world is more interesting than I thought! So is there love or is it primarily an arrangement (which I have actually no problem with) ? Prepaid a 1 year gym membership. Returns will be non-monetary. Awesome! True the returns wont be in money, but they'll be in GAINS. 1,000 BTC at 0.70 in 2011... When did you sell? do I have that right? if you held your bitcoin they'd be worth 14M today? According to google, those 1000 bitcoins would be worth: 16,240,230 and some change. $16M $17M Which at conservative returns is nearly $700k/yr in recurring revenue. $18M I bought $1000 worth of Ford stock at its all time low after the market crashed. Incidentally, I also bought $1000 of TSLA when it was in the double digits per share. Too bad I sold it for like a $100 gain (edit: total $100 gain, not per share - I figured 10% was a nice gain and to not get greedy). I've made enough bad stock calls that I don't regret putting only $1000 in those, though. Those just happen to be my winners. We might need an Ask HN on our worst $1000 developments :) When I was younger, I was frugal about everything. I scrutinized every purchase with "do I REALLY need it?" Sometime later I figured out that if the thing is going to help me get closer to my goals (books, productivity enhancers, computers...etc) and was affordable, then just buy it. Or if it will save me time such that I can work on something else (i.e. Pay someone to mow the lawn), also worth it. This thinking has substantially changed my life for the better. Probably my iPhone SE. Bitcoin made me richer, but I didn't get on early enough for it to have made any real difference, where as the smartphone changed my life. That or my cat. What breed ? Why consider it a good investment when you could have one for free ? Under 1000$ I did a life design workshop in Montreal for 40$. In just 3 hours I figured out what I really wanted in my life. Thanks to the workshop I now make 300$ more a month on a side project, moved to a house with a jacuzzi where I can rent the basement out (about 400$ a month and communal life which I love), and negotiated a 5 hours a week reduction in work. The reduction of hours might cost more than 1000$ though... but it is well worth it! I bought a round-trip plane ticket to Shanghai China for $900 to attend the Ethereum developers conference when I was completely broke. The conference inspired me to get involved with Ethereum development. Even though it was a lot of money for me to spend at the time, it ended up as one of the most rewarding decisions of my life. AAPL at ~$12/share in 2000 (price not adjusted for splits). I bought a 1992 Subaru Legacy for $700 cash. I put some parts in it and drove it for 4 years. Survived a couple fender benders during that time too. I gave it to a friend who was hard-up who drove it for 2 more years, and hit a deer with it. It wasn't really phased, but I had to rig the mirror back on. I took it back when he was done and finally scrapped it for $200. It was still a fully working car when they took it away. 10/10, would buy again. engagement ring :)
better than my bitcoin investment... An engagement ring is not an investment and, furthermore, its not even a requirement marriage - you can get married without one (I did). The subtext is more unpleasant... For me it is an investment in life, future and love - why should everything be about money. I really like the ring, it is beautiful. And she loves the ring! The unpleasant subtext here being that you're basically saying your girlfriend's love and commitment are dependant on receiving an expensive trinket. At least that's unpleasant to me. no - it is just a sign... a nice one If it's just a nice trinket that has sentimental value then it's most certainly not an "investment in life, future and love." Did she say yes? Yes, she did - we are together since ten years - so i did not really had a doubt :) My 1 year Krav Maga membership, a self defence system. Went from heavy smoker, no-cardio-at-all-person to feeling confident because I know how to defend myself, picked up running, swimming and regular body weight exercise on the side. Looking and feeling pretty good nowadays. More energy, brain activity, focus. Defo most bang for the buck. Similar, I put down a $1000 for a year of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Doing something like that is a lot more fun and life changing than just lifting weights at a gym. Technically it was around $1800 but bought in two $900 lots, but my first 5000 shares in a promising mining company. Bought in at $0.33, sold at $1.12 two days before the CEO got caught being rather naughty and the whole thing tanked. Monetarily, not massive returns, but as a percentage that was by far my biggest return on any investment. Saving in a savings account at DCU - Digital Federal Credit Union. They give 5.1% interest rate for the first $1000 Risk free investment:-) I guess it was quite a good investment to adopt my dog. But I think by now it cost me over $1000 so it does not qualify anymore. This question is actually quite hard because so many things cost <=$1000, but it is hard to pick one that is the best. 10 shares of $GOOG in 2004. Still have it? yup! not me but somebody made a lot of money in the last month with alt coins. I bought 1000$ worth of ETF in Stash app and am planning to hold it for 10 years. Which ETF? A Neato vacuum robot and a ScanSnap scanner. Automate your chores. A Pentium III 450mhz and an NVIdia TNT2 in the year 1999 I can imagine that - we had a Pentium II 400Mhz with an onboard Nvidia riva TNT - the onboard part made it fast... And outcast, C&C 3 and AoE II came out that time My beloved book. My kids books. My cat. I bought Amazon Stocks many years ago. A round-the-World travel ticket. bitcoin ether Probably my first PC. Bought and scalped 4 Hamilton tickets. the first $1000 we saved for the down payment on our house ETH bitcoin obv Winter tires + wheels. Driving in the winter used to freak me out and it was so worrisome to feel as though I was at the mercy of all sorts of yahoos. Now, I feel in control and I don't have to pay more for an AWD/4WD vehicle.