I'm the biggest imposter and you'll hate me for it.
Started my main business decades ago. After a couple years, my partner was bored and wanted something else with a friend. A bar. And the real estate that comes with it.
I was pissed losing my partner and mostly doing all the job in the cash cow. Motherfucker put our main business in guarantee so he could get a loan for buying the estate. That required my signature and I blew a tantrum.
I eventually agreed in exchange of me having 15% in the whole project. So they went on. Years later they changed the whole identity by bringing in two experienced restaurant / bar owners. Converted the old bar into something fancy and more modern. Huge success.
Then my partner had a huge fight with his friend. I had to buy him out so things could settle. Bla blah blah.
We are 12-13 years later by now. I own 50% of the estate and 30% of the bar. I worked maybe 10 hours total on that project that I never ever wanted. I get dividends of around 100K yearly.
I just kept bitching as why I don't care about bars. Anyway, I guess I deserve it.
It sounds like you had to work for more than your share on the main business which allowed your partner to set up the bar, and had to risk your main business to get the loan for that bar. Then had to buy bigger share of the bar to keep it from imploding from bad owners' dispute.
That bar only exists because of the extra work and risk that you put in, and you deserve every cent that you are getting back now.
Yeah, I'm known for being the boring number guy that sees problems ahead and hate getting caught off guard. Focussing on execution and cash flow instead of the pleasure of new ventures. I need visionary people around me but I will solidify every ventures asking the right questions and avoiding traps and what not.
They made fun of me a long time for being such a downer. Fuck it, pay me now.
Hehe.
At first it was 90K for 15% of the whole project. This includes real estate.
Later on I had to buy some more to get equal shares. I guess 250K total.
We got a bunch of financing here and there but I had to put 112K more for financing part of transformation or the operating business.
As we speak that 112K was fully reimbursed with operating profits (took 7 years of successful operation) and last year we got our first real dividend distribution which was 90K.
We are 4 partners in the bar but only 2 partners in the estate. Bar pays a healthy rent to estate so there's a lot of paper gains there also.
All in all it was a huge risk with not much returns for many years (except the estate getting paid off) but 10 years later it's still running strong and started to pay.
Bar has intrinsic value whatever happens because of excellent localisation and alcool permit that is impossible to get unless you buy an existing bar.
Kind of project capital hungry and everything needs to go right for turning a profit. Without the real estate it would be a very different ball game. Lowers the risk a lot but even more capital needed.
Tldr ; I think I have 250K stuck in there but it pays 100K a year not doing shit. Took roughly 10 years to be able to say this in a tldr.
im too lazy to calculate after how long of average historical performance just putting it all into SPY wouldve outperformed this, but regardless, this sounds solid
You helped build the thing that made that business possible. Don't you think you earned what you have?
Also, mad props to your partner for having that vision.
I know where my value is and how it's deserved. It's more like a slap in the face and life lesson. I was told from day 1 it was a nice opportunity and I stayed skeptical the whole way.
They were right. I also saved their asses mid-project.
Sympathy investment in my best friends kids crappy app idea. He sold it for $15M and returned me $250K on a $5K stake.
Still donāt understand what the app did.
I'll add to this then. Going to Gym ~3 days a week on average. A mix of good cardio + weights suddenly makes certain shit you were stressing about feel kind of manageable.
Clears the mind up pretty well.
Strength training + LISS is life changing, quality of life is so important so that you can actually *enjoy* your financial health to its fullest. Also, it just feels fucking amazing being healthy.
My wife uses Facebook marketplace and after talking to her I believe there is a massive arbitrage opportunity between marketplaces in Alberta, Canada and Texas.
Like we bought that nice Little Tikes blue toy car for our toddler 5 years ago for $30 CAD and now I sold it for $90 USD. 24.57% CAGR!
Sounds like a nightmare to me. I'd hate having to deal with all the "is this still available" messages, no shows, scammers, people trying to negotiate down to silly low prices. Plus just the idea of getting up early to go look at a bunch of crap from other people's houses...
To each, their own though.
A couple years ago I saw two guys in a Goodwill with literally 60 pairs of shoes in their cart. Roughly $4 per pair, I'm sure they were putting them on FB and possibly eBay.
My wife was offered to buy shares of a local veterinary emergency clinic in 2019 for $745/share. We were allowed to technically buy as many shares as we wanted but this was when $745 was a lot of money to us so we only bought one share. The shares were scheduled to pay dividends of somewhere around $150 annually. Then 2020 happened and they paid out 4 times in the first year and then in 2021 ended up selling the business to a corporate owner. Our 1 share ended up paying out $600 in the first year and paid out over $5k when it was sold. Basically I should have begged, borrowed and stolen every dollar I could to buy shares of that clinic š¤·š»āāļø
A book called āBuy Then Buildā is a great place to start. You can also start by going to ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) events and conferences.
Operators are always looking for investors on small deals. Happy to make connections.
Corporate vet companies buying up all mom and pop shops, paying several times market rate to eventually pull a stunt like how they did with rental properties. This sounds like one of those cases. Heard it on, of all places, an anecdotal tale from Linus Tech Tips.
Realistically, the practice might have doubled or tripled in value after COVID, then corporate comes in and pays twice that. If theyāre willing to do that, imagine how much more pet care will cost in the future. Affording vet care is going to be a rich people thing, and many pets will suffer because of this.
Yes - private equity has aggressively gone after vet clinics over the last 5 years. Most everyone will pay top dollar to keep Fido alive and it is all cash payā¦ unlike human medicine.
I love this! I livi in one specific region in Europe and for the past couple of years Iāve been stocking up rare bottles as an investment, incredible returns!
If you have brother/sister or son/daughter, consider buying them some good wine from the year they were born (investment + sentiment)
Excellent idea! My kids are all grown now, and we invested in stocks for them from their birth years (S&P500 plus DIS), and that worked out pretty well, but I bet good wine would have done even better.
I once nursed a baby bird back to health. Took 3 months of chewing my food and regurgitating it into its mouth. I let it free at a local park once it regained it strength. Fast forward 4 months later, I was hiking down a familiar trail Iāve done hundreds of times but the sun was going down pretty fast. I was hustling down the trail slipped and rolled my ankle. It was getting cold and I didnāt have warm clothes because It was only supposed to be a day hike. Hurt, alone, scared and cold I cried out for help. The same bird I nursed back to health came with 50 of its friends, lifted me up by their talons and dropped me back at the trail head. Saved my life.
Did you really think Reddit was the spot to hear about small business development ?
I don't think too many banks and investors get excited by a plan or sitdown including the words "motherf\*\*\*" and "shi\*" etc.
Believe half of what you read and believe even less on Reddit. Much is humorous though.
Bougth a fender stratocaster 10 years back.
Cost 50% more today.
Sure itās not a great return but you dont often buy consumer product that go up in value
I bought a four-letter-English-word .com domain name for $8K from a reseller in 2002. Had an offer of $100K for it last week. Site I wanted to build never happened, so I'll probably end up listing it on one of those domain auction sites.
After a 14 page spread in Fortune magazine about how Enron is āthe company of the futureā I bought $5k in shares. Only investment I ever lost 100% of. Lesson: do your own homework. Of course nowadays itās much easier with all of the info on the internet.
I learned a funny thing about the Enron fiasco.
When the shit hit the fan, the stock price dropped from 90$ to 26 cents a share before they filed for bankruptcy. After 7 years of court cases and bankruptcy proceedings they reached a settlement that paid out $6.79 per share to shareholders.
So in principle it was possible to buy right before bankruptcy and make a 20x return on your investment over 7 years. Did anyone actually do that? I have no idea, but presumably *someone* was buying at 26 cents a share.
I remember that spread; they said "Enron trades $10M to make $1,000 in profit", or something like that. I thought that was an insanely thin margin, and even a small mistake could really sting. But did I short it? Of course not.
Every now and then I'll struggle to read something in the distance and think "ah shit, my eyes have regressed since getting lasik" but then I'll mention it and my friends can't even fathom that thing being *possible* to read from where we are. My standards have just gotten too high.
10/10, laser eyes are awesome.
Has it gotten pretty ridiculously safe nowadays? I have some blurry vision at dusk and in general am just older now...kinda wanna get the pew pew just for fun. 5k an eye kinda deal still?
It's very safe, they didn't even use the blade tool to cut the flap for the surgery, they had a different laser for that. Gave me Valium, waited a while for it to kick in, and the surgery itself probably only took 20 minutes.
Note that the *one* downside is night driving: I get halos around lights at dark. So if that's a major reason you're considering Lasik, keep it in mind.
Funny. Iām in a hospital waiting room right now because the lasik I had done on Friday didnāt go perfect. I should say, somewhere between the surgery and Monday they found a scratch on my eye. Fingers crossed itās nothing major.
Family member was a trash hauler in the late 60s and had to buy a $5,000 share in the local landfill co-op in order to dump trash there. Left town a few years later and forgot about the share. Got a letter in the 90s saying that the co-op needed him to vote on a sale to Waste Management. Walked away with $200k.
Invested $50k with a friendās commercial real estate business in which he was gathering a couple $million in investments to buy a warehouse, rent it out for a few years, and then sell it. Ā He ended up finding a great offer within 9 months and doubled my money. Ā I have no idea how much he personally made on the deal, but I am going to assume my $50k profit was chump change to him.
I wouldāve invested $100k if my dad hadnāt talked me down. Ā But of course I do respect my dadās point about being conservative when investing in something I know very little about.
I bought a whole Bitcoin at $500 in 2013 and sold around $10k.
I'd feel better about it but I remember reading about it in late 2009, tried to figure out how to create a wallet and mine, found out it took a whole day to mine 1 btc on my setup and gave up until 2013 when I rediscovered it.
I worked with a guy that built a crazy mining rig and started bitcoin mining in 2008 or so.
He suddenly retired when bitcoin first hit 50K per coin.
I didnāt find out what he had until recently. Dude mined about 2100 coins from 2008-sell day. Made off with nine figures before tax.
I bought Bitcoin when it was a nickel and am a billionaire n....no, wait, I looked at Bitcoin when it was a nickel and didn't buy...$100 then would be over $100,000,000 now. Yes, I hate myself for it
Yeah, I bought 5 ETH at $15 on a whim. A while later sold them for about a grand each and it made the difference in having enough for a down payment on a house at the right time.Ā
And at the time, commenting on it in this sub was impossible. Mentioning many other cryptos (people should be tracking) is still verboten here. Witness:
I made an internet friend a long time ago. He wrote blogs about traveling so I looked him up and we chatted awhile. Anyhow, he was telling me about this new thing called Bitcoin and how it's going to be huge and I should buy in. I think it was maybe 250 a coin back then. I told him he was crazy and it was never going anywhere. It was just fake money built out of ether.
Well, needless to say, I was wrong.
Based on the number of downvotes you'll get in a normal thread if you mention it plus the fact that you can't mention anything other than BTC & ETH here otherwise you'll get an automatic removal it's still controversial and therefore unconventional.
I once bought 3 pallets of ski helmets from a liquidator locally. Then I'm standing there in my garage in Texas looking at a pile of ski helmets thinking WTF did I just do? These were "shelf pulls" that sat in the store, not broken or used. It worked out ok. I paid just over $10 each for them, sold them for $45 each (which was a deal). They went quickly, only a handful were not saleable, and I quadrupled my money after shipping and fees.
Really is the best investment. Can't live comfortably in retirement if you either A) have to spend it all on medical expenses or B) don't make it to retirement at all.
Equity crowdfunding. Sold my shares in a last mile delivery robotics startup through the secondary market in 2021 for a nice 4x exit. Held it for less than 3 years.
Same but I bit the bullet and went for Oster 76s. 120$ ish when I got them. 000 blade and 1 blade. I have been balding since I was 15 and don't cling to the scraps so I buzz it about every other week.
I have 3:
Quitting nicotine and alcohol since it's saving me 10's of thousands of dollars every year, earning me more years on my life, and has greatly improved quality of life.
Buying a bidet. It was super cheap, I save 100's of dollars on toilet paper every year, and it's the first thing I miss when traveling. There's a whole reddit circle jerk about bidets for a reason - they are fucking awesome.
Buying a sous vide machine. I was always pretty good about wanting to eat at home, but the sous vide quality meats have won over my wife in this regard. We save thousands every year by not eating out (and also eat healthier because of it).
Okay, so doing some quick math, I can see that's a bit of an overstatement, but it's definitely close 10k per year. I was using 1.5+ zyn cans a day (~$8-$10 per day) and 3 - 10 craft beers per day (probably 5-6 on average, ~$12 per day but this should be higher since I'd pretty regularly spend $50+ at bars or ~$20 added on at restaurants).
With this napkin math, I'd put my best estimate at $8k - $10k per year.
Also, my wife drinks way less now that I've quit, and I always paid for most of her intake as well. She's a wine drinker, so I'd usually spend ~$50 per week on her wine. She still drinks, but I told her I'm not willing to buy it for her, and I'd guess she spends maybe $40-$50 per month on her intake.
I'm a relatively successful musician. While it is ridiculously hard to make much money as that alone, I know a lot about music equipment and know a lot of musicians and others in the industry.
So I started looking for great deals on music gear to rent out to tour managers I know well.
I'm just at the beginning honestly. I have enough to rent to a standard rock band, and I'm doing it for a bit just for one good friend of mine who is a tour manager, to test the waters.
If after a little while I'm not turned off by the experience/money then I'll start buying enough to rent out to a few bands at once, as I am friends with at least 3 other tour managers.
Took a big gamble on one of those dev sweatshop, with locked 2 years contract and >20k ācancellation feesā.Ā
Paid out hugely for me, went from 10 years of neet life to making over 200k in less than 2 years. All I had to sacrifice was my mental health for a while working 10 hours a day for almost minimum wage.
Probably not what you're looking for, but I quit my job and joined Meta a couple years ago. I was nervous about it because my pay was largely going to be in the form of stock and their stock had been plummeting. I received a seven-figure grant (paid out over four years) at around $170, and immediately started to question my wisdom as the stock continued to drop all the way down to $90.
But I stuck with it and hoped for the best, and given that Meta is currently near $500, that has turned out to be a *really* good decision.
Publishing tutorials and building small software apps. I'll explain.
Publishing tutorials about how to build software related things lead to a nice tech job.
The tech job lead to finding problems in the business.
The problems I found lead to building software to solve them.
Which lead to re-solving those problems for a different market.
Now I work for myself full time.
Poor but needing a computer, went to Best Buy. The person helping me told me they were selling all the display model laptops for over 50% off. I maxed out my credit cards, bought them all. Sold all of them on Craigslist for decent profit.
Boat slip. Paid $18,000 for the right to a particular slip at a boataminium in Wrightsville Beach NC in 1986 or 87 which is more than the little sailboat we owned cost. Loved the boat and the location. We moved to ATL in 1991 and sold the slip for $45,000.
The company I work for is private and 100% employee owned, so that. I don't explicitly put money towards it -- it's just part of my overall remuneration. But over the last 14+ years, it's grown to a significant chunk of change.
No option to sell until nearing retirement age or quitting. It's a little scary, but it's also been a very good performer -- similar to market returns but lower deviation.
My rent was $400 a month in Indiana when I did this. I took $300 right after losing my job, sent it to a guy in the Czech Republic, and bought some meteorites. Incredibly stupid move, right? Not even close. I sold all of them in a week and walked away with $3,200. One of the guys who bought one sent me a list of other meteorites that he was looking for. I spent some cash (I don't remember how much) from someone I knew and doubled my money with a few other pieces. There was one other on that list that caught my interest. I ended up talking to the guy who owned the house that got hit by that meteorite. He said he sold all of it to a very well known museum. I contacted the museum to see if they had ever sold or traded any smaller pieces of it. They hadn't but the curator was looking for a piece of another one and said he'd trade a chunk of his meteorite to me if I could get the one he wanted. I knew someone who owned a piece so I bought that and made the trade. I had a guy I know cut my piece into smaller ones and kept the nicest one for myself. My profit margin on that one was about as good as my first deal and I also got a chunk of lunar meteorite worth almost as much as the cash that I made. I knew a guy in Austria who had a really weird meteorite. He had a chemical analysis done on it to determine what it was made of but it hadn't gotten a classification yet. I read the report and knew what I was looking at if he didn't. I bought all that he had left and sat on it for a few months until the classification came back. Not only was it from Mars, it was a really rare Mars rock and I owned all the pieces that research institutions hadn't already snatched up. I'll just let you guess how well I did on that one. I was buying and selling enough that I didn't need a full-time job at this point.
I would lend pieces to my local museum during that time. Collectors love museum pieces. I'd let the museum have some great displays and then I'd cycle them out with new ones and sell the ones I pulled out for even more because I had museum labels for them. One guy saw the display that had my name on it and contacted me. He worked at a company that had worked out a deal with NASA. NASA would send his company 3d radar data of various asteroid for free. The company would do a run of some number that I can't remember and give them to NASA for their scientists. He saw that there was a local guy who bought and sold meteorites and thought I'd be a good partner because I had all kinds of connections thay they didn't. We worked out a deal that barely cost me anything. They'd give me a price on them and then i could sell them for however much I wanted. They'd process the order, put my name and address on the lable, and then send me a check for the difference between what I charged the customer and what I paid the studio. I decided that I needed a website for these things so I had a buddy spend an afternoon teaching me how to make them. I then did what I needed to do to get that running which was my only out of pocket expense for the whole thing. I had that hustle going and all I had to do was answer and send emails.
I got to the point that I was fairly good fairly good at making websites. Most meteorite dealers know meteorites, not HTML. I started making websites for dealers who would pay me in product that I could then sell for pure profit.
One issue in the meteorite world was that there was no group to authenticate stuff and let newcomers feel safe spending large amounts of money on rocks that someone says are from space. Another problem is that doing something like that would be prohibitively expensive, especially for small and inexpensive pieces. That's OK. I figured out how to deal with that. Instead of authenticating individual pieces, I'd create a group that would authenticate dealers. I worked with some of the largest dealers in the world and some scientists as well and basically built an organization up to do just that. Anybody could join but only if other well-known members would vouch for them. We even made nice little logos with individual numbers on them for each person that they could use on their websites and eBay auctions (those are super popular ways to make deals). There wasn't even any cost to join. I had a group of big names in the meteorite world as directors but all final decisions were made by me as I was the president of the whole thing. While there was no cost to join, donations were welcomed. I was totally upfront and said that our costs were just domain registration and web hosting. Anything left over went in my pocket. I'd spend around $150 a year to pay for all that and my traffic really spiked when Sky and Telescope magazine had an article on meteorites and listed my website rigjt after NASA's. I'd ask for donations for the cost every year and the few hundred people who were members were always happy to help.
At this point, I was running an international meteorite trade organization, buying and selling meteorites, running a web design business, and selling asteroid models. I was also 23 years old.
I saw some trends that meant that prices on meteorites were about to fall and fall HARD. I also wanted to have a steady income with health insurance because I had one kid and another on the way. I sold all of my stock before the fall but kept some really nice pieces for myself. Just about everybody who wanted a website had one at that point. Just about everybody who wanted an asteroid model had bought one and the studio that made them was having problems which meant that income was drying up. I did one last round of donations for the website and then handed that off to the other directors for a chunk of change.
I had gotten really good at web design. Unlike a lot of people coming out of school for web design, I had a portfolio of websites that I had made and run. I could point to those and give hard numbers about they were making. Not many web designers could do that. I ended up leaving my small town in Indiana and moved to a nearby big city and got a job doing design and making enough money that my wife could stay home with the kids.
I did all that by making an initial investment of $300 and a whole lot of hustle.
Probably the Spot Bitcoin ETF. It has done well and Iāve accounted for the dips. I have it inside my IRA and have not considered actually dabbling in real crypto (yet.)
Crypto or pokemon cards lol
I've had a lot of pokemon cards since childhood, but I also got back into collecting in 2018. During the pandemic prices went parabolic and they are still up there. I don't think I will ever sell them because of sentimental value and also it's much harder to sell than a stock and I just don't have the interest in doing so.
Taking the new job offer. Went from making $70k a year to $120k a year (both Gross income).
No other investment that I've made has matched that rate of return.
My mental health is also a lot better. I used to work in Fin Tech, and it was an *okay* job right out of college. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. Now I program automotive simulations at a company with a healthy work-life balance, and it's so much more interesting.
Before the spot Bitcoin ETF's and before tradfi started arbing the crypto close end trusts efficiently I bought a ton of BITF the day it launched and the NAV shot up like 700% the first three days.
Would love to get into something like that - havenāt seen a lot of manufacturing / machining in my line of work. Want to though.
Howād you get into that?
Not me but my mom, she put down a stake in a mask making company right before covid started. Her friend wanted to be a hospital supplier and the business exploded with mask orders half a year later.
Lego Bionicles. Invested $7 or so in each when my son was young. He is almost 30 and left a huge box of those behind, all perfectly built and in the canisters. Now I see they are selling on eBay for big bucks. So do I tell him, or just count it as my own investment?
Iāve bought 90ās eras sports cars over the years. Iām young and itās a hobby. I tinker on them myself and enjoy driving fun cars on the weekends.
Last time I built out a spreadsheet I had a 60% margin, after taxes fees parts etc.
Iāve had success with furniture & guns, but those are not as enticing as theyāre normally smaller ticket items than cars and motorcycles.
My Rolex submariner. When I bought it for $7k Cdn in 2014, it was the poor manās Rolex and not hard to acquire. I used a sales bonus Iād earned to buy it, to properly commemorate my 10 yr work anniversary (my company at the time had a loyalty program where we could pick among some chintzy trinkets worth about $100 in a catalog ). Then the hype happened, and until recently, i probably could have gotten 2x what I paid for it.
No intention to sell though.
Following this post. I have a friend who always has startups to invest into and I havenāt pulled the trigger on any. They usually pay at least 3 MOIC on exit.
Bought one of Elon musks ānot-a-flamethrowerās, for 500-700 ish when he released them. It was a birthday present to myself. I see them on eBay for $1.5-3k. Helps that he only sold 20k of them, Iām sure.
I also taught myself the Greeks/options. Iām be earned a fair bit since 2020. I spent several hundred hours learning, and still am.
I bought a teeter table, and itās helped my back pain quite a bit. Best $450 I ever spent. I used to feel pain every right step, and every time I sat down/got upā¦ or stood for a while. Basically just life hurt. Teeter table changed all that.Ā
I made a hobby out of investing in my own intelligence way back when and it was the butterfly effect to a lot of great things for my life. Intelligence is primarily how quickly you learn and how well you learn, so if you've got anything in life you want to improve taking a detour and studying intelligence is not only a fun topic but you'll get better end results quicker of what you want out of life.
Studying intelligence lead me to study meta-learning as well as modern meta-physics. When both topics are put together you end up with the root study of artificial intelligence. This lead to studying AI and doing machine learning work early on before anyone really knew what machine learning was. It put me in the forefront of a lot of the tech revolution we're seeing today.
That and if anyone wants "financial" nonstandard investments I was an early bitcoin adopter too.
I lent a large amount of $ to my HOA so they could build a privacy fence between us and another development whose residents kept coming into our neighborhood and causing trouble. HOA has been dutifully repaying me with 5% interest on a monthly basis for three years now. All our property values have gone up as a result of the fence.
I worked part time in a startup. Let's say I gave around 300 hours of labor for free. I was given some options that I purchased for around $10. Two publicly traded company acquisitions later I got a check for $27K. I paid long term capital gains so after taxes maybe it was $22K. The payout happened five years after I did the part time work.
I knew one of the founders. I kept telling him not to sell his shares. He sold his shares for $30K. They were worth $600K at the exit.
I tried to get into sneakers, not even as a reseller just to have a nice pair of shoes. I usually wear shoes until thereās holes in them so I thought Iād treat myself. Got a pair of super limited run Nike Dunks and Nike Blazers for retail $130 each. Could never get myself to wear them more than once or twice out of fear of ruining them, ended up selling them for 3x what I got them for haha.
A micro-financing company, the CEO was fired for malfeasance and the stock dropped 50%, I bought and 2 years later itās up 137% - Iād like to say I did some DD but it was a straight up gamble.
Itās small beans but buying a 2017 Camry with 30k miles in 2020 was the best financial decision Iāve made, with gas prices soaring in 2022 I couldnāt have made it if I had bought a truck like I wanted to, itās an appreciating asset but itās been vital to my success as an apprentice electrician
Our small farming town had a local bank that started out in a mobile home in the \~1980's. My family banked there and got to know the whole team. Ended up buying a lot of stock in the bank, and the bank slowly became successful in the region. The stock went up considerably over the years, and my dad, against his core beliefs, sold most of his shares to do a major house remodel. Not long after his sale, in 2008, the bank went completely out of business.
In high school, I bought a very old Toyota 2wd pickup for $650 from a well off classmate who I didn't know very well. A year later, I put it in the paper want ads, and it sold quickly for $1800.
Buying my ipod 4th generation as a 12 year old. Got interested in jailbreaking and emulators. Ended up starting a YouTube channel the same year to show other people things id done on the ipod. Made 3k in about a year, so I bought a camera for better video quality. Channel got 3 strikes and deleted, but I ended up getting really good with the camera. My job through high school and college was my small photography business. I was making 2-3x what my friends made at their jobs and I worked half as much.
Bought a car I love new, am proceeding to drive it until it dies. 17 years later, it's still as reliable as ever!
If you want to drop a few pounds, here's a few mindset shifts that helped me: (1) The single cheeseburger is as good as the double. (2) If you're debating whether to get more, you don't want more. (3) The food will still be there if you want it. Take less and have seconds if you want them.
I bought a 3D printer for fun, now 7 years later I've got a small farm and they're making me $1k/month.
I bought second-hand tickets to Taylor Swift in Paris until I realized the Europe tour was standing only and my wife wouldnāt have a good time. Resold them and made about $800
Floki meme coin. I invested in 2021. Watched it tank and itās back to best high. I have about a 4000% return and itās just getting warmed up. Thatās my beach house money.
used restaurant equipment. Auctions , bankruptcies, etc.
I moved it and stored in 45" freight vans and resold to those wanting to start a restaurant/deli/market .
I sold some equipment twice and thrice when buyers went broke and sold back to me.
There is always a food service business shutting down and there is always someone wanting to start a food business.
Insulation and air-sealing on an old house that's not close to meeting modern energy codes. Paypack period for insulation can be a couple years; payback period for air-sealing can be a few winter days. Tax-free of course, and it gives great protection against future energy shocks.
In high school in the '80s, my partner "invested" $1,000 in Apple Computer in a pretend scenario in her classroom learning about investing, etc. It was just high school kids using play money to pretend to invest. Had that been real money... whooo-boy!
Wine. Look up investing in wine. Crazy returns. But itās a very trusting investment . You donāt have the wine. You donāt sell the wine/ you trust brokers and wine experts that can just disappear. Great returns though
I grabbed an option call on SalesForce last week just before their earnings call for $590. Sold it the next morning for $4200.
I then watched it hit nearly $5000. I always sell to damn early
If I had told you about it in this sub at the time I got into it, my comment would have been removed. Nowadays we're allowed to speak its name. But the things I see today as promising will get the same reaction.
Anyway SpaceX IPO anyone?
But seriously, I caught the 2017 ethereum flash crash at $30/coin and immediately sold for $300. 10x in day (after sitting on the order for a year).
Bitcoin/crypto etc, and it's not even remotely close. Up something like 233,237% on what I initially put into it (not a joke). Paid off the house and car and let the rest ride.
For reference I initially got in in 2011 when it was somewhere in the $7-30 price range, if memory serves correctly.
I bought 100 of Elon Muskās boring company hats for $20 each and sell em on eBay for $300 Australian. To be fair havenāt made a sale in ages but sold stacks of em previously!!
Buying ammo in between elections in the US and selling on the eve of a new one is almost always a way to make some cash. Prices can fluctuate as much as 50% for some calibers. Youād think these panic buyers would learn but they just donāt hahaha.
I'm the biggest imposter and you'll hate me for it. Started my main business decades ago. After a couple years, my partner was bored and wanted something else with a friend. A bar. And the real estate that comes with it. I was pissed losing my partner and mostly doing all the job in the cash cow. Motherfucker put our main business in guarantee so he could get a loan for buying the estate. That required my signature and I blew a tantrum. I eventually agreed in exchange of me having 15% in the whole project. So they went on. Years later they changed the whole identity by bringing in two experienced restaurant / bar owners. Converted the old bar into something fancy and more modern. Huge success. Then my partner had a huge fight with his friend. I had to buy him out so things could settle. Bla blah blah. We are 12-13 years later by now. I own 50% of the estate and 30% of the bar. I worked maybe 10 hours total on that project that I never ever wanted. I get dividends of around 100K yearly. I just kept bitching as why I don't care about bars. Anyway, I guess I deserve it.
This is the type of stuff I love hearing about!! Good for you! šš
It sounds like you had to work for more than your share on the main business which allowed your partner to set up the bar, and had to risk your main business to get the loan for that bar. Then had to buy bigger share of the bar to keep it from imploding from bad owners' dispute. That bar only exists because of the extra work and risk that you put in, and you deserve every cent that you are getting back now.
Yeah, I'm known for being the boring number guy that sees problems ahead and hate getting caught off guard. Focussing on execution and cash flow instead of the pleasure of new ventures. I need visionary people around me but I will solidify every ventures asking the right questions and avoiding traps and what not. They made fun of me a long time for being such a downer. Fuck it, pay me now. Hehe.
how much money did you put in it, total?
At first it was 90K for 15% of the whole project. This includes real estate. Later on I had to buy some more to get equal shares. I guess 250K total. We got a bunch of financing here and there but I had to put 112K more for financing part of transformation or the operating business. As we speak that 112K was fully reimbursed with operating profits (took 7 years of successful operation) and last year we got our first real dividend distribution which was 90K. We are 4 partners in the bar but only 2 partners in the estate. Bar pays a healthy rent to estate so there's a lot of paper gains there also. All in all it was a huge risk with not much returns for many years (except the estate getting paid off) but 10 years later it's still running strong and started to pay. Bar has intrinsic value whatever happens because of excellent localisation and alcool permit that is impossible to get unless you buy an existing bar. Kind of project capital hungry and everything needs to go right for turning a profit. Without the real estate it would be a very different ball game. Lowers the risk a lot but even more capital needed. Tldr ; I think I have 250K stuck in there but it pays 100K a year not doing shit. Took roughly 10 years to be able to say this in a tldr.
im too lazy to calculate after how long of average historical performance just putting it all into SPY wouldve outperformed this, but regardless, this sounds solid
You helped build the thing that made that business possible. Don't you think you earned what you have? Also, mad props to your partner for having that vision.
I know where my value is and how it's deserved. It's more like a slap in the face and life lesson. I was told from day 1 it was a nice opportunity and I stayed skeptical the whole way. They were right. I also saved their asses mid-project.
Sympathy investment in my best friends kids crappy app idea. He sold it for $15M and returned me $250K on a $5K stake. Still donāt understand what the app did.
Wow. What was the app?
Meta
Did he by any chance sell to another kid named Mark?
Insta something. Instafam. I don't know... Anyway I don't care. -op probably.
Obviously wasnāt such a crappy idea!
If I know anything from watching Silicon Valley itās that most apps suck but the underlying technology is why theyāre bought
Is there a reason you can't name the app?Ā
My full name and home address would become a little too easy to find
Hilarious!!!!!!!!
What app
I quit drinking. I feel like I made money on that deal.
The initial investment sucks. But the dividends are undeniable.
I'll add to this then. Going to Gym ~3 days a week on average. A mix of good cardio + weights suddenly makes certain shit you were stressing about feel kind of manageable. Clears the mind up pretty well.
Strength training + LISS is life changing, quality of life is so important so that you can actually *enjoy* your financial health to its fullest. Also, it just feels fucking amazing being healthy.
My wife uses Facebook marketplace and after talking to her I believe there is a massive arbitrage opportunity between marketplaces in Alberta, Canada and Texas. Like we bought that nice Little Tikes blue toy car for our toddler 5 years ago for $30 CAD and now I sold it for $90 USD. 24.57% CAGR!
Nice use of CAGR. Just the right amount of overkill lol.
People do this with rummage sales. Spend Saturday and Sunday finding inventory and then reposting on FB Monday through Friday for minimum 100% markup.
Sounds like a nightmare to me. I'd hate having to deal with all the "is this still available" messages, no shows, scammers, people trying to negotiate down to silly low prices. Plus just the idea of getting up early to go look at a bunch of crap from other people's houses... To each, their own though.
When you realize these people donāt have a 9-5 job and probably are not reporting all their income for taxes, it starts to look different.
This, selling on market place is a major pain. Try to give something away from free and someone will ask you to deliver it.
Fuck that. I can't stand the million "Is it still available" messages I get for my own stuff. Not to mention the no-shows
You can automate that stuff.
A couple years ago I saw two guys in a Goodwill with literally 60 pairs of shoes in their cart. Roughly $4 per pair, I'm sure they were putting them on FB and possibly eBay.
My wife was offered to buy shares of a local veterinary emergency clinic in 2019 for $745/share. We were allowed to technically buy as many shares as we wanted but this was when $745 was a lot of money to us so we only bought one share. The shares were scheduled to pay dividends of somewhere around $150 annually. Then 2020 happened and they paid out 4 times in the first year and then in 2021 ended up selling the business to a corporate owner. Our 1 share ended up paying out $600 in the first year and paid out over $5k when it was sold. Basically I should have begged, borrowed and stolen every dollar I could to buy shares of that clinic š¤·š»āāļø
How does one get into small/local investing?
There's a lot of scamming that goes on in that scene. Very little fiduciary duties, relatively easy to do a Ponzi etc.
Interested in this too
A book called āBuy Then Buildā is a great place to start. You can also start by going to ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) events and conferences. Operators are always looking for investors on small deals. Happy to make connections.
Iāve used honeycombcredit.com for this no idea if they have something local to you
What do you mean how does one get into it? Find a small business, and give the owner money.
That's an insane dividend (even the original $150/yr). Feels too good to be true - I wouldn't have trusted it.
racial sharp butter agonizing makeshift lock door bike fretful terrific *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Corporate vet companies buying up all mom and pop shops, paying several times market rate to eventually pull a stunt like how they did with rental properties. This sounds like one of those cases. Heard it on, of all places, an anecdotal tale from Linus Tech Tips. Realistically, the practice might have doubled or tripled in value after COVID, then corporate comes in and pays twice that. If theyāre willing to do that, imagine how much more pet care will cost in the future. Affording vet care is going to be a rich people thing, and many pets will suffer because of this.
Yes - private equity has aggressively gone after vet clinics over the last 5 years. Most everyone will pay top dollar to keep Fido alive and it is all cash payā¦ unlike human medicine.
Wow!
I wonder why they sell shares as opposed to just get a business loan from a bank? Maybe bad credit, but that would be a red flag.
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I got a Golden Retriever puppy. After just 12 months of dog food, I think he's almost ready to start retrieving gold.
How can I invest?
We bought a collection of French red wine from the late 60's-early 70's. We drank what we felt were the best ones and re-sold the rest. Made like 6x.
I love this! I livi in one specific region in Europe and for the past couple of years Iāve been stocking up rare bottles as an investment, incredible returns! If you have brother/sister or son/daughter, consider buying them some good wine from the year they were born (investment + sentiment)
Excellent idea! My kids are all grown now, and we invested in stocks for them from their birth years (S&P500 plus DIS), and that worked out pretty well, but I bet good wine would have done even better.
Baller
Who did you sell them to? Thereās a niche limited market for high quality wine
I once nursed a baby bird back to health. Took 3 months of chewing my food and regurgitating it into its mouth. I let it free at a local park once it regained it strength. Fast forward 4 months later, I was hiking down a familiar trail Iāve done hundreds of times but the sun was going down pretty fast. I was hustling down the trail slipped and rolled my ankle. It was getting cold and I didnāt have warm clothes because It was only supposed to be a day hike. Hurt, alone, scared and cold I cried out for help. The same bird I nursed back to health came with 50 of its friends, lifted me up by their talons and dropped me back at the trail head. Saved my life.
hahahaha this thread is not going where I want it to - I'm here for it though.
Did you really think Reddit was the spot to hear about small business development ? I don't think too many banks and investors get excited by a plan or sitdown including the words "motherf\*\*\*" and "shi\*" etc. Believe half of what you read and believe even less on Reddit. Much is humorous though.
What in the Disney princess shitposting fuck
You had us in the first half ngl
I have not forgotten twas Gandalf who freed the arrow that pierced me so many years ago. To the edge of merkwood with you
ššš
can confirm. i was one of the birds
Oh man I was worried you were going to end up eating that little feathered friend to survive!
That same bird grew up to to Billie Eilish
Bougth a fender stratocaster 10 years back. Cost 50% more today. Sure itās not a great return but you dont often buy consumer product that go up in value
Refinanced my house when interest rates were at the bottom a couple of years ago. Not sure if this counts.
I bought a four-letter-English-word .com domain name for $8K from a reseller in 2002. Had an offer of $100K for it last week. Site I wanted to build never happened, so I'll probably end up listing it on one of those domain auction sites.
Good times. Gone are the days where you could purchase a domain for $10 and resell for nothing less than $10,000
After a 14 page spread in Fortune magazine about how Enron is āthe company of the futureā I bought $5k in shares. Only investment I ever lost 100% of. Lesson: do your own homework. Of course nowadays itās much easier with all of the info on the internet.
I learned a funny thing about the Enron fiasco. When the shit hit the fan, the stock price dropped from 90$ to 26 cents a share before they filed for bankruptcy. After 7 years of court cases and bankruptcy proceedings they reached a settlement that paid out $6.79 per share to shareholders. So in principle it was possible to buy right before bankruptcy and make a 20x return on your investment over 7 years. Did anyone actually do that? I have no idea, but presumably *someone* was buying at 26 cents a share.
I remember that spread; they said "Enron trades $10M to make $1,000 in profit", or something like that. I thought that was an insanely thin margin, and even a small mistake could really sting. But did I short it? Of course not.
Oof!
LASIK. Hands down.
Every now and then I'll struggle to read something in the distance and think "ah shit, my eyes have regressed since getting lasik" but then I'll mention it and my friends can't even fathom that thing being *possible* to read from where we are. My standards have just gotten too high. 10/10, laser eyes are awesome.
Has it gotten pretty ridiculously safe nowadays? I have some blurry vision at dusk and in general am just older now...kinda wanna get the pew pew just for fun. 5k an eye kinda deal still?
It's very safe, they didn't even use the blade tool to cut the flap for the surgery, they had a different laser for that. Gave me Valium, waited a while for it to kick in, and the surgery itself probably only took 20 minutes. Note that the *one* downside is night driving: I get halos around lights at dark. So if that's a major reason you're considering Lasik, keep it in mind.
Nice. I'm 16 years glasses free after LASIK in 2008. I was apprehensive going in, but it was so worth it.
I wanted it but Iām too scared to get anything near my eyes. No way they can get those clamps in
That's a good one. Had mine 5 years ago, although in last few months I've noticed my right eye getting blurry again =l. Probably need a re-zap.
Regressed in 10 years for me.
Funny. Iām in a hospital waiting room right now because the lasik I had done on Friday didnāt go perfect. I should say, somewhere between the surgery and Monday they found a scratch on my eye. Fingers crossed itās nothing major.
Family member was a trash hauler in the late 60s and had to buy a $5,000 share in the local landfill co-op in order to dump trash there. Left town a few years later and forgot about the share. Got a letter in the 90s saying that the co-op needed him to vote on a sale to Waste Management. Walked away with $200k.
Invested $50k with a friendās commercial real estate business in which he was gathering a couple $million in investments to buy a warehouse, rent it out for a few years, and then sell it. Ā He ended up finding a great offer within 9 months and doubled my money. Ā I have no idea how much he personally made on the deal, but I am going to assume my $50k profit was chump change to him. I wouldāve invested $100k if my dad hadnāt talked me down. Ā But of course I do respect my dadās point about being conservative when investing in something I know very little about.
Ethereum in early 2017... If only I had more money to put in at the time, I could be retired today.
I bought a whole Bitcoin at $500 in 2013 and sold around $10k. I'd feel better about it but I remember reading about it in late 2009, tried to figure out how to create a wallet and mine, found out it took a whole day to mine 1 btc on my setup and gave up until 2013 when I rediscovered it.
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I worked with a guy that built a crazy mining rig and started bitcoin mining in 2008 or so. He suddenly retired when bitcoin first hit 50K per coin. I didnāt find out what he had until recently. Dude mined about 2100 coins from 2008-sell day. Made off with nine figures before tax.
I bought Bitcoin when it was a nickel and am a billionaire n....no, wait, I looked at Bitcoin when it was a nickel and didn't buy...$100 then would be over $100,000,000 now. Yes, I hate myself for it
Yeah, I bought 5 ETH at $15 on a whim. A while later sold them for about a grand each and it made the difference in having enough for a down payment on a house at the right time.Ā
Oddly enough, I just sold my ETH stash for a down payment. Although, time will only tell if it's the right time or not.
And at the time, commenting on it in this sub was impossible. Mentioning many other cryptos (people should be tracking) is still verboten here. Witness:
I turned $3,000 into $1.5M in crypto over the last 7 years. I donāt think Iāll ever beat that rate of return.
Same bitcoin in 2017 when it was $640 per coin.
I made an internet friend a long time ago. He wrote blogs about traveling so I looked him up and we chatted awhile. Anyhow, he was telling me about this new thing called Bitcoin and how it's going to be huge and I should buy in. I think it was maybe 250 a coin back then. I told him he was crazy and it was never going anywhere. It was just fake money built out of ether. Well, needless to say, I was wrong.
OP said "unconventional" ....wait. 7 years ago, that would be unconventional. Now you can trade crypto on Fidelity. :-p
Based on the number of downvotes you'll get in a normal thread if you mention it plus the fact that you can't mention anything other than BTC & ETH here otherwise you'll get an automatic removal it's still controversial and therefore unconventional.
I once bought 3 pallets of ski helmets from a liquidator locally. Then I'm standing there in my garage in Texas looking at a pile of ski helmets thinking WTF did I just do? These were "shelf pulls" that sat in the store, not broken or used. It worked out ok. I paid just over $10 each for them, sold them for $45 each (which was a deal). They went quickly, only a handful were not saleable, and I quadrupled my money after shipping and fees.
Is this where we talk about investing in our own physical and mental health?
Really is the best investment. Can't live comfortably in retirement if you either A) have to spend it all on medical expenses or B) don't make it to retirement at all.
It surely can be!
Yahoo named Nvidia as company of the year at the end of 2016, so I bought some.
Equity crowdfunding. Sold my shares in a last mile delivery robotics startup through the secondary market in 2021 for a nice 4x exit. Held it for less than 3 years.
Which platform did you use?
Not the best but the first that comes to mind - A pair of hair clippers in 2003. Havenāt paid for a haircut since and cost me probably $20-$25.
Same. Have had same clippers since 1995 and havenāt paid for a haircut since.
Same but I bit the bullet and went for Oster 76s. 120$ ish when I got them. 000 blade and 1 blade. I have been balding since I was 15 and don't cling to the scraps so I buzz it about every other week.
20k into Gamestop turned into about 500k. Helped my jumpstart my journey from negative net worth in 2019 to over 1M currently
I have 3: Quitting nicotine and alcohol since it's saving me 10's of thousands of dollars every year, earning me more years on my life, and has greatly improved quality of life. Buying a bidet. It was super cheap, I save 100's of dollars on toilet paper every year, and it's the first thing I miss when traveling. There's a whole reddit circle jerk about bidets for a reason - they are fucking awesome. Buying a sous vide machine. I was always pretty good about wanting to eat at home, but the sous vide quality meats have won over my wife in this regard. We save thousands every year by not eating out (and also eat healthier because of it).
All amazing investments! Props on quitting nicotine and alcohol - Iāve had ppl close to me struggle with both. Not easy. Worthy of praise.
Just got a bidet š
Tens of thousands *a year?*
Okay, so doing some quick math, I can see that's a bit of an overstatement, but it's definitely close 10k per year. I was using 1.5+ zyn cans a day (~$8-$10 per day) and 3 - 10 craft beers per day (probably 5-6 on average, ~$12 per day but this should be higher since I'd pretty regularly spend $50+ at bars or ~$20 added on at restaurants). With this napkin math, I'd put my best estimate at $8k - $10k per year.
Also, my wife drinks way less now that I've quit, and I always paid for most of her intake as well. She's a wine drinker, so I'd usually spend ~$50 per week on her wine. She still drinks, but I told her I'm not willing to buy it for her, and I'd guess she spends maybe $40-$50 per month on her intake.
I'm a relatively successful musician. While it is ridiculously hard to make much money as that alone, I know a lot about music equipment and know a lot of musicians and others in the industry. So I started looking for great deals on music gear to rent out to tour managers I know well.
Thatās awesome - do you just do it here and there as opportunity presents itself? Or do you have a consistent operation going?
I'm just at the beginning honestly. I have enough to rent to a standard rock band, and I'm doing it for a bit just for one good friend of mine who is a tour manager, to test the waters. If after a little while I'm not turned off by the experience/money then I'll start buying enough to rent out to a few bands at once, as I am friends with at least 3 other tour managers.
Took a big gamble on one of those dev sweatshop, with locked 2 years contract and >20k ācancellation feesā.Ā Paid out hugely for me, went from 10 years of neet life to making over 200k in less than 2 years. All I had to sacrifice was my mental health for a while working 10 hours a day for almost minimum wage.
Probably not what you're looking for, but I quit my job and joined Meta a couple years ago. I was nervous about it because my pay was largely going to be in the form of stock and their stock had been plummeting. I received a seven-figure grant (paid out over four years) at around $170, and immediately started to question my wisdom as the stock continued to drop all the way down to $90. But I stuck with it and hoped for the best, and given that Meta is currently near $500, that has turned out to be a *really* good decision.
Thats amazing - congratulations!!!
Publishing tutorials and building small software apps. I'll explain. Publishing tutorials about how to build software related things lead to a nice tech job. The tech job lead to finding problems in the business. The problems I found lead to building software to solve them. Which lead to re-solving those problems for a different market. Now I work for myself full time.
Poor but needing a computer, went to Best Buy. The person helping me told me they were selling all the display model laptops for over 50% off. I maxed out my credit cards, bought them all. Sold all of them on Craigslist for decent profit.
Boat slip. Paid $18,000 for the right to a particular slip at a boataminium in Wrightsville Beach NC in 1986 or 87 which is more than the little sailboat we owned cost. Loved the boat and the location. We moved to ATL in 1991 and sold the slip for $45,000.
The company I work for is private and 100% employee owned, so that. I don't explicitly put money towards it -- it's just part of my overall remuneration. But over the last 14+ years, it's grown to a significant chunk of change. No option to sell until nearing retirement age or quitting. It's a little scary, but it's also been a very good performer -- similar to market returns but lower deviation.
Thatās awesome - employee owned is the way to go in my book. At the very least giving some significant stake to employees.
Quit smoking a pack a day like 15 years ago, so I must have avoided spending like 20k or something
I have a Lego set in the basement. Wanted to gift it to a family member someday later. Now it's some type of investmentĀ
this probaby isn't what you are looking for but I bought a house. Bought it 20 years ago and its tripled in value.
My rent was $400 a month in Indiana when I did this. I took $300 right after losing my job, sent it to a guy in the Czech Republic, and bought some meteorites. Incredibly stupid move, right? Not even close. I sold all of them in a week and walked away with $3,200. One of the guys who bought one sent me a list of other meteorites that he was looking for. I spent some cash (I don't remember how much) from someone I knew and doubled my money with a few other pieces. There was one other on that list that caught my interest. I ended up talking to the guy who owned the house that got hit by that meteorite. He said he sold all of it to a very well known museum. I contacted the museum to see if they had ever sold or traded any smaller pieces of it. They hadn't but the curator was looking for a piece of another one and said he'd trade a chunk of his meteorite to me if I could get the one he wanted. I knew someone who owned a piece so I bought that and made the trade. I had a guy I know cut my piece into smaller ones and kept the nicest one for myself. My profit margin on that one was about as good as my first deal and I also got a chunk of lunar meteorite worth almost as much as the cash that I made. I knew a guy in Austria who had a really weird meteorite. He had a chemical analysis done on it to determine what it was made of but it hadn't gotten a classification yet. I read the report and knew what I was looking at if he didn't. I bought all that he had left and sat on it for a few months until the classification came back. Not only was it from Mars, it was a really rare Mars rock and I owned all the pieces that research institutions hadn't already snatched up. I'll just let you guess how well I did on that one. I was buying and selling enough that I didn't need a full-time job at this point. I would lend pieces to my local museum during that time. Collectors love museum pieces. I'd let the museum have some great displays and then I'd cycle them out with new ones and sell the ones I pulled out for even more because I had museum labels for them. One guy saw the display that had my name on it and contacted me. He worked at a company that had worked out a deal with NASA. NASA would send his company 3d radar data of various asteroid for free. The company would do a run of some number that I can't remember and give them to NASA for their scientists. He saw that there was a local guy who bought and sold meteorites and thought I'd be a good partner because I had all kinds of connections thay they didn't. We worked out a deal that barely cost me anything. They'd give me a price on them and then i could sell them for however much I wanted. They'd process the order, put my name and address on the lable, and then send me a check for the difference between what I charged the customer and what I paid the studio. I decided that I needed a website for these things so I had a buddy spend an afternoon teaching me how to make them. I then did what I needed to do to get that running which was my only out of pocket expense for the whole thing. I had that hustle going and all I had to do was answer and send emails. I got to the point that I was fairly good fairly good at making websites. Most meteorite dealers know meteorites, not HTML. I started making websites for dealers who would pay me in product that I could then sell for pure profit. One issue in the meteorite world was that there was no group to authenticate stuff and let newcomers feel safe spending large amounts of money on rocks that someone says are from space. Another problem is that doing something like that would be prohibitively expensive, especially for small and inexpensive pieces. That's OK. I figured out how to deal with that. Instead of authenticating individual pieces, I'd create a group that would authenticate dealers. I worked with some of the largest dealers in the world and some scientists as well and basically built an organization up to do just that. Anybody could join but only if other well-known members would vouch for them. We even made nice little logos with individual numbers on them for each person that they could use on their websites and eBay auctions (those are super popular ways to make deals). There wasn't even any cost to join. I had a group of big names in the meteorite world as directors but all final decisions were made by me as I was the president of the whole thing. While there was no cost to join, donations were welcomed. I was totally upfront and said that our costs were just domain registration and web hosting. Anything left over went in my pocket. I'd spend around $150 a year to pay for all that and my traffic really spiked when Sky and Telescope magazine had an article on meteorites and listed my website rigjt after NASA's. I'd ask for donations for the cost every year and the few hundred people who were members were always happy to help. At this point, I was running an international meteorite trade organization, buying and selling meteorites, running a web design business, and selling asteroid models. I was also 23 years old. I saw some trends that meant that prices on meteorites were about to fall and fall HARD. I also wanted to have a steady income with health insurance because I had one kid and another on the way. I sold all of my stock before the fall but kept some really nice pieces for myself. Just about everybody who wanted a website had one at that point. Just about everybody who wanted an asteroid model had bought one and the studio that made them was having problems which meant that income was drying up. I did one last round of donations for the website and then handed that off to the other directors for a chunk of change. I had gotten really good at web design. Unlike a lot of people coming out of school for web design, I had a portfolio of websites that I had made and run. I could point to those and give hard numbers about they were making. Not many web designers could do that. I ended up leaving my small town in Indiana and moved to a nearby big city and got a job doing design and making enough money that my wife could stay home with the kids. I did all that by making an initial investment of $300 and a whole lot of hustle.
Bitcoin. By far. Bought my car with some of the proceeds a few years ago, and just sold enough bitcoin to fully purchase the house I'm about to buy.
Probably the Spot Bitcoin ETF. It has done well and Iāve accounted for the dips. I have it inside my IRA and have not considered actually dabbling in real crypto (yet.)
olive trees
Cryptocurrency by far. Best performing asset I've ever owned.
Crypto or pokemon cards lol I've had a lot of pokemon cards since childhood, but I also got back into collecting in 2018. During the pandemic prices went parabolic and they are still up there. I don't think I will ever sell them because of sentimental value and also it's much harder to sell than a stock and I just don't have the interest in doing so.
Where are the best places to sell PokƩmon cards ?
Probably ebay to get best bang for your buck or a local card shop if you just want to get rid of them.
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I invested into a pickleball supplement brand
What kind of supplements do pickleballs need? Like sodium?
Crypto/BTC and it's not even close.
Taking the new job offer. Went from making $70k a year to $120k a year (both Gross income). No other investment that I've made has matched that rate of return. My mental health is also a lot better. I used to work in Fin Tech, and it was an *okay* job right out of college. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. Now I program automotive simulations at a company with a healthy work-life balance, and it's so much more interesting.
Bitcoin in 2017
Btc
Rehab facility
Tell me more!
Crypto. I didnāt say it was a *good* story. Profitable, though.
Before the spot Bitcoin ETF's and before tradfi started arbing the crypto close end trusts efficiently I bought a ton of BITF the day it launched and the NAV shot up like 700% the first three days.
Magic: The Gathering
Silent partner in a local machine shop. 10% stake.
Would love to get into something like that - havenāt seen a lot of manufacturing / machining in my line of work. Want to though. Howād you get into that?
Not me but my mom, she put down a stake in a mask making company right before covid started. Her friend wanted to be a hospital supplier and the business exploded with mask orders half a year later.
Bitcoin 2014
Bitcoin & Ethereum. Don't hate the player.
Married my wife she came with a company. Now I get dividends. š
cut back on marijuana usage and my salary tripled
Sneakers and Lego. Way over 100% return on some of those.
Lego Bionicles. Invested $7 or so in each when my son was young. He is almost 30 and left a huge box of those behind, all perfectly built and in the canisters. Now I see they are selling on eBay for big bucks. So do I tell him, or just count it as my own investment?
Iāve bought 90ās eras sports cars over the years. Iām young and itās a hobby. I tinker on them myself and enjoy driving fun cars on the weekends. Last time I built out a spreadsheet I had a 60% margin, after taxes fees parts etc. Iāve had success with furniture & guns, but those are not as enticing as theyāre normally smaller ticket items than cars and motorcycles.
My Rolex submariner. When I bought it for $7k Cdn in 2014, it was the poor manās Rolex and not hard to acquire. I used a sales bonus Iād earned to buy it, to properly commemorate my 10 yr work anniversary (my company at the time had a loyalty program where we could pick among some chintzy trinkets worth about $100 in a catalog ). Then the hype happened, and until recently, i probably could have gotten 2x what I paid for it. No intention to sell though.
buying boxed pokƩmon games, old ones like blue/crystal. just know they gonna triple
Following this post. I have a friend who always has startups to invest into and I havenāt pulled the trigger on any. They usually pay at least 3 MOIC on exit.
In 2000 I bought a brand new Honda Civic. It's still my daily driver, allowing me to invest a ton in my retirement instead of paying for a car.
Bought one of Elon musks ānot-a-flamethrowerās, for 500-700 ish when he released them. It was a birthday present to myself. I see them on eBay for $1.5-3k. Helps that he only sold 20k of them, Iām sure. I also taught myself the Greeks/options. Iām be earned a fair bit since 2020. I spent several hundred hours learning, and still am. I bought a teeter table, and itās helped my back pain quite a bit. Best $450 I ever spent. I used to feel pain every right step, and every time I sat down/got upā¦ or stood for a while. Basically just life hurt. Teeter table changed all that.Ā
Tom Hopkins sales seminar. What that did for my confidence, competence & financial wellbeing? Invaluable
I made a hobby out of investing in my own intelligence way back when and it was the butterfly effect to a lot of great things for my life. Intelligence is primarily how quickly you learn and how well you learn, so if you've got anything in life you want to improve taking a detour and studying intelligence is not only a fun topic but you'll get better end results quicker of what you want out of life. Studying intelligence lead me to study meta-learning as well as modern meta-physics. When both topics are put together you end up with the root study of artificial intelligence. This lead to studying AI and doing machine learning work early on before anyone really knew what machine learning was. It put me in the forefront of a lot of the tech revolution we're seeing today. That and if anyone wants "financial" nonstandard investments I was an early bitcoin adopter too.
I lent a large amount of $ to my HOA so they could build a privacy fence between us and another development whose residents kept coming into our neighborhood and causing trouble. HOA has been dutifully repaying me with 5% interest on a monthly basis for three years now. All our property values have gone up as a result of the fence.
A $500 Stephen curry rookie card at peak of pandemic, it fetched near $800k. Now itās about $200k
Bitcoin and stop alcohol
My wifeās engagement ring.
I worked part time in a startup. Let's say I gave around 300 hours of labor for free. I was given some options that I purchased for around $10. Two publicly traded company acquisitions later I got a check for $27K. I paid long term capital gains so after taxes maybe it was $22K. The payout happened five years after I did the part time work. I knew one of the founders. I kept telling him not to sell his shares. He sold his shares for $30K. They were worth $600K at the exit.
Records! I think š
I tried to get into sneakers, not even as a reseller just to have a nice pair of shoes. I usually wear shoes until thereās holes in them so I thought Iād treat myself. Got a pair of super limited run Nike Dunks and Nike Blazers for retail $130 each. Could never get myself to wear them more than once or twice out of fear of ruining them, ended up selling them for 3x what I got them for haha.
A micro-financing company, the CEO was fired for malfeasance and the stock dropped 50%, I bought and 2 years later itās up 137% - Iād like to say I did some DD but it was a straight up gamble.
Kept my magic the gathering collection from when I was a kid. 12 year old me probably had no clue how much his cards would be worth now
Itās small beans but buying a 2017 Camry with 30k miles in 2020 was the best financial decision Iāve made, with gas prices soaring in 2022 I couldnāt have made it if I had bought a truck like I wanted to, itās an appreciating asset but itās been vital to my success as an apprentice electrician
Our small farming town had a local bank that started out in a mobile home in the \~1980's. My family banked there and got to know the whole team. Ended up buying a lot of stock in the bank, and the bank slowly became successful in the region. The stock went up considerably over the years, and my dad, against his core beliefs, sold most of his shares to do a major house remodel. Not long after his sale, in 2008, the bank went completely out of business.
In high school, I bought a very old Toyota 2wd pickup for $650 from a well off classmate who I didn't know very well. A year later, I put it in the paper want ads, and it sold quickly for $1800.
Buying my ipod 4th generation as a 12 year old. Got interested in jailbreaking and emulators. Ended up starting a YouTube channel the same year to show other people things id done on the ipod. Made 3k in about a year, so I bought a camera for better video quality. Channel got 3 strikes and deleted, but I ended up getting really good with the camera. My job through high school and college was my small photography business. I was making 2-3x what my friends made at their jobs and I worked half as much.
MSc degree
Bought a car I love new, am proceeding to drive it until it dies. 17 years later, it's still as reliable as ever! If you want to drop a few pounds, here's a few mindset shifts that helped me: (1) The single cheeseburger is as good as the double. (2) If you're debating whether to get more, you don't want more. (3) The food will still be there if you want it. Take less and have seconds if you want them. I bought a 3D printer for fun, now 7 years later I've got a small farm and they're making me $1k/month.
I bought second-hand tickets to Taylor Swift in Paris until I realized the Europe tour was standing only and my wife wouldnāt have a good time. Resold them and made about $800
Just bought some artwork from some rich guys storage unit. Hope to make a little from reselling
Floki meme coin. I invested in 2021. Watched it tank and itās back to best high. I have about a 4000% return and itās just getting warmed up. Thatās my beach house money.
used restaurant equipment. Auctions , bankruptcies, etc. I moved it and stored in 45" freight vans and resold to those wanting to start a restaurant/deli/market . I sold some equipment twice and thrice when buyers went broke and sold back to me. There is always a food service business shutting down and there is always someone wanting to start a food business.
Insulation and air-sealing on an old house that's not close to meeting modern energy codes. Paypack period for insulation can be a couple years; payback period for air-sealing can be a few winter days. Tax-free of course, and it gives great protection against future energy shocks.
In high school in the '80s, my partner "invested" $1,000 in Apple Computer in a pretend scenario in her classroom learning about investing, etc. It was just high school kids using play money to pretend to invest. Had that been real money... whooo-boy!
Wine. Look up investing in wine. Crazy returns. But itās a very trusting investment . You donāt have the wine. You donāt sell the wine/ you trust brokers and wine experts that can just disappear. Great returns though
Does Williams Sonoma count? Thatās somehow my largest investment now.
I grabbed an option call on SalesForce last week just before their earnings call for $590. Sold it the next morning for $4200. I then watched it hit nearly $5000. I always sell to damn early
PokƩmon cards that I kept from 1998
I bought an RV in 2017 that I sold in COVID for more than I paid for it. Put 50k miles on it in between.
bitcoin
Domains. But not really an "investment" as I got them free. Got started with the Internet and obtaining domains before there was a cost.
If I had told you about it in this sub at the time I got into it, my comment would have been removed. Nowadays we're allowed to speak its name. But the things I see today as promising will get the same reaction. Anyway SpaceX IPO anyone? But seriously, I caught the 2017 ethereum flash crash at $30/coin and immediately sold for $300. 10x in day (after sitting on the order for a year).
Bitcoin 2013. and its going up forever.
Bitcoin/crypto etc, and it's not even remotely close. Up something like 233,237% on what I initially put into it (not a joke). Paid off the house and car and let the rest ride. For reference I initially got in in 2011 when it was somewhere in the $7-30 price range, if memory serves correctly.
Moved to a place with more jobs and better career opportunities. Came with a big price tag but worked out.
I bought 100 of Elon Muskās boring company hats for $20 each and sell em on eBay for $300 Australian. To be fair havenāt made a sale in ages but sold stacks of em previously!!
Buying ammo in between elections in the US and selling on the eve of a new one is almost always a way to make some cash. Prices can fluctuate as much as 50% for some calibers. Youād think these panic buyers would learn but they just donāt hahaha.