Ask HN: What was your best $1000 investment?

27 points by r0rbit ↗ HN
What is the best investment you have done or are planning to do under $1000?

80 comments

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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.
It feels like this question wants to be saying "what price did you buy bitcoin"? :-)
He said best investment, not luckiest :^)
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.

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.
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.
Joining a dating site. Met my wife a week later!
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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) ?
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 ?
AAPL at ~$12/share in 2000 (price not adjusted for splits).
1,000 BTC at 0.70 in 2011...
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.
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Saving in a savings account at DCU - Digital Federal Credit Union. They give 5.1% interest rate for the first $1000

Risk free investment:-)

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.
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.
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 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.

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!
the first $1000 we saved for the down payment on our house