What is the best investment you ever made?

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Let's not include education or our spouses.

I am talking things like a house, art work, stocks etc....

For me it was a job with a pension. I was average middle class when working but have a nice pension and SS to live on.

My house hasn't appreciated that much, no art work here, no stocks that skyrocketed etc.
 
Bought a house in 1986 for 142k, sold it 5 years later for 200k.
Started a job in the 80s with a defined pension plan. Ready to retire soon on that plan.
Didn't sell my stocks during dotcom bust of 2000, or the bust in 2008-9.
 
Back in the day I bought a bunch of Ford stock for $2 a share
That was back when things were really bad in the auto industry.

Next would be Florida land- I bought a parcel of land that was the front entrance
of a development and after 17 months I sold it for 2.5 x what I paid for it- no fees either.
Here I got lucky- as when I bought that land it was for sale for 11 years-no takers. it was so nice,
and so cheap after I researched it, I was still afraid to buy it.
I regret the sale as I didn't want to sell it but the HOA kept bothering me and upping the price.
 
First home in early 20's purchased for $100k with 3% down and sold 6 years later for $250k in 2002. I invested all of $3000 into home in renovations and upgrades.

Not an investment but accident/luck, a year before a stock market crash/correction I was laid off and my $100k 401k was thrown into a IRA with Money market. I ignored money until the stock market got trashed and then placed back into investments.
 
Ten years ago I bought several Zimbabwe One Hundred Trillion dollars bill, after it was demonetized. They were selling for $3 a piece as a cool memento. I even gave several of them away to waitresses as a fun gift with the tip.

Today, they sell for $120-$140 EACH. Best investment I ever made. Its worth 40 times more than I purchased it for, in only 10 short years. Had I known, I would have bought thousands of them and been a millionaire.

https://www.ebay.com/bhp/zimbabwe-100-trillion

160504154606-one-trillion-dollar-large-169.jpg
 
Found a PRC-77 military radio for $10 at a yardsale, sold for I think $150 when I got tired of having it (and that was way under market price at the time).

Bought a popup camper that wouldn't open for $275. Fixed it for $20, threw on $150 of HF wheels, got a couple trips out of it. Sold for $500.

Everything else has been a net drain. Some good deals, but not sold for a profit.
 
Bought a house for 81k, flipped it for $135k. Bought another house for $225k. Flipped it for $451k two years later. Took the 180k profit from the second sale and bought a house for almost cash, and paid off all our student loans/debt @ age 33.

Because of our hard work, we can afford for my wife to stay home and raise our daughter.

I also just got a significant raise/promotion to Assistant Principal at a new Middle School!

As I tell my students, your hard work will pay off.
 
Originally Posted By: JeffKeryk
I have a house in Los Gatos, CA (Silicon Valley). Paid $330K in 1995 I believe.
Today $2.5M; would sell in 3 days.
Expected to go up 20% in the next year.


2.5 to 3 million would get you an absolutely beautiful brand new mansion around here... like 15K square feet on 10 acres. And no state income tax. I'd sell that house and MOVE! Or a new 8K square foot house on the ocean with a million dollar view.
 
In early 2009 I put all the cash I had into some mutual funds, so that modest sum is now quite a few modest sums!
Buying our land in the early 2000's was a good idea too, 100 acres for the price of a fancy pickup truck, less than one hour out of the GTA! Problem is that if you don't want to move, you can't cash out. Should've bought more farm land or houses at the time. We have a good severance section but we will keep that until the kids are done college and see one of them wants it.
 
Many years ago, I bought a ton of stock in a pharma company whose primary wonder drug trials had failed miserably, after I heard there was a possibility they might go into a 'reverse merger' with a medical records company. I bought a pile of stock at $0.02 per share.

About 3 months later, the reverse merger went through and the stock started going up. About 2 months after that, I was able to sell my shares for $0.36 per share.

About 2 months after that, I was back down around $0.16 so I bought more stock, and sold it about 2 months later for $0.32.

Tidy little profit.
 
It's definitely the brand new house my wife and I bought in March 2016, which we'll finally be moving into on August 10th. When we bought it, the real estate market had not really taken off just yet here in Ontario, and so we paid $1,059,000 for a 2800 square foot detached house (with a double car garage) At the time our current home was worth about $750,000. Fast forward to now, and our current house is listed on the market for $1,038,000 (and we'll get very close to that) The home we're moving into has already gone up in value by $300,000 (even with the downturn in the Ontario real estate market) and once the market recovers it should go up in value another $300 to $500,000 by the year 2022 (when we retire) The builder of this home is confident enough in it's value that if you buy the exact same model from them now (in our same community) the new price of our home is $1,850,000! (that's what they project it's value to be in 2020 when that phase is completed)

It's this house purchase which is going to allow my wife and I to take early retirement at age 52 (in 2022). Homes near Toronto sell for a lot more than homes in the Niagara region, which is where we are planning on downsizing to. We'll buy a home there for a 1/4 of the price that we sell our Oakville home for.

Timing is everything though. Anyone trying to do the same thing as us now won't have the same luck. Even though we made this purchase mostly as a future investment (since we could easily have stayed in our current house for many years), we really had no idea in March 2016 just how valuable of a purchase this would end up being for us.
 
bought a house in 1983 for 36,000. sold in 2004 for 120,000. next best was probably Bank of America. first bought @ 5.00 in 2010.sold and bought several times since. I;m up 116% on my last purchase @ 16.00 I think.

worst was Chesapeake Energy. bought at 20.00, it got up to 30. I didn't sell and it's at about 3.00 now. so it tends to even out for me.
 
Originally Posted By: bubbatime
Ten years ago I bought several Zimbabwe One Hundred Trillion dollars bill, after it was demonetized. They were selling for $3 a piece as a cool memento. I even gave several of them away to waitresses as a fun gift with the tip.

Today, they sell for $120-$140 EACH. Best investment I ever made. Its worth 40 times more than I purchased it for, in only 10 short years. Had I known, I would have bought thousands of them and been a millionaire.

https://www.ebay.com/bhp/zimbabwe-100-trillion

160504154606-one-trillion-dollar-large-169.jpg


At first I thought the pic was a krhap pile emoji, as in this bill isn't worth [censored]
grin.gif
 
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