What's the best investment you've made? - stock or otherwise

[FIREseeker]

The best investment I've made was probably buying a website that creates near passive income. My next best investment would have to be investing (nearly) all my liquid cash in the stock market after the 2008 crash. My third best investment was probably a car I owned for 5 years and sold for the price I paid.

The reason I'm asking this question is I just dumped a lot more moolah in the ol' stock market. But I'll give that a break for awhile. In the next few months, I'll hopefully earn about $10,000 to invest. Where should I invest it??

[rennigade]

Marrying my wife who has the same financial goals I do.

[97guns]

I can't say enough about the real estate investment that I'm in now but coming in a close second is my home depot stock investment when I worked there for 3 years in the dotcom days. I quickly gathered over 1000 shares in that time, thanks to 3 splits in the 3 or 4 years I was there, that investment really propelled my investing career

[bjl584]

Obtaining my graduate degree

[Fishindude77]

Buying a business.
Buying a farm.

[feh]

Best investment? Probably my college degree.

After that - I've done very well investing in my current and previous employers.

[FLA]

Best investment? Probably my college degree.

After that - I've done very well investing in my current and previous employers.

me, too. 403B and Roth in 4 index funds since age 22, was the best financial thing I did. I have a BSN nursing. Always thought of course I'd get my Master's, be a NP, go into management. But I really loved my job and it would've taken years when I had little kids as a single mom. I had some tuition reimbursement from my company but you had to work there a year for however much they gave you each year. So my friends became NPs but there were no jobs for them in the system so they could work the years they were required to do. So they ended up being regular old nurses until the time commitment was paid off.

So it was a no brainer in the end. And thank God I didn't, I got disabled and could never have paid back the time commitment or the students loans. I'd be disabled with a completely useless Master's that I'd still be paying for.

nursing and Vanguard have served me well

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Five dollars to lease a city-owned lot for five years. Planted 28 fruit and nut trees, plus berry bushes, wildflowers, winter squash, and garlic. Three years later, we're eating, canning, giving away fruit. I get tons of exercise, sunshine, happiness, and deliciousness. The lot turns out to be the most consistently breezy spot I've ever come across in this city, a real plus in summer. The next door neighbor loves me, because she hated living next door to a large vacant lot that she had to nag the city to mow more than once a year. Will renew that lease forever, as long as I'm healthy enough to do the work.

[bennkar]

Boy, that's a tough one. Some candidates are:

• Paying to divorce my wife (seriously worth it)
• Master's degree
• Bought my current house in 1998 using a fixer-upper loan with only 3% down.
• Bought 100 shares of WAB in 2010 - price has gone up X6 since then (and the dividend X16 as well ). Boy I wish I bought more of that.

The winner would be buying the house I think. Forced me to invest money outside of stock market. Paid off after 13 years, the last 4 years of no rent/mortgage has been fabulous.

[QuarterMillionMan]

My 1-bedroom condo in Hawaii. Bought it for $60,000 in 1999, the assessed value today is $190,000.

[Like2Plan]

For us, it was the prepaid tuition plan for our DS. It paid out more than double. I believe the first pay out was about 4 years after we made the investment. And, the earnings were tax free. It was a good deal for us. (And, DS got a job 2 weeks after college graduation--so, even better. )

[amarowsky]

Financially my home. Bought in 2010 for 75k , estimated value now in current conditions between 130-160k. Aside from that I was pretty fortunate investing in Google, amazon, and Netflix. 2 of them are between 50-80% return and Netflix is (as of today) just under a 100% return. Now bad for only a few year investment.

[Jluke]

Refinancing my 30-year mortgage I took out in 2006 to a 15-year mortgage just 2 years later. Then dumping extra on the principle over the next 5 years so that when I got to 10 years left in 2013, I was able to refi again at a lower rate for the remaining 10 years.

Interest saved ($163,000) and a lower monthly payment has allowed me to make other financial moves (401k, ROTH, etc). My goal is to have the house paid off by 2018.

I've done well in my taxable account that I started in 2004, then got into AAPL and GOOG around 2008.

[Nika]

That day in July when GOOGL surged. It is a freaking surreal feeling when the stock surges up almost $100 per share, and you are holding calls!

[gambler2075]

Definitely had to be Sophiris Bio (up 500% this year since I started buying)

So far it has been this $SPHS buy... I started buying at around 50c in Dec 2014, did about 200-500 hours of due diligence learning everything I could about BPH and injectables and loading many, many shares of the stock...

I thought they would have positive phase 3 results, and it turns out that I was proven right today.

I ended up selling about 50K shares this morning for about a 150,000$ profit today but I am still holding about 85% of my shares (about 330,000 shares worth, up about 800,000$ more on paper) because I think they will bring this to 7-10$ in the next year.

http://www.bilderload.com/daten/sphsbofafinallyRA93O.jpg

http://www.bilderload.com/daten/sphsfinallyMOYM6.jpg

NOTE: THIS IS NOT TRADING ADVICE.
Here are my thoughts on the stock, but DO NOT BUY BASED ON WHAT I SAY, DO YOUR OWN due diligence and decide if you want to buy. #enddisclaimer
Past performance does not guarantee future results. I could be wrong about my 7-10$ share price prediction and could sell shares at any time. I will also say that I have been trading biotechs basically fulltime for 14 years so I don't think that the average investor stands a chance when they start trading, and that the vast, vast majority of people would be better off just buying a mutual fund. I didn't stand a chance for the first 10 years I was trading and even doubt myself sometimes now. I did get lucky here on this huge $SPHS position but my luck could run out tomorrow.

http://www.bilderload.com/daten/sphsthoughtspt2RNOUT.jpg

Here is Dan Ward's article from Nov 2014 (before the failed interim analysis).

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2702535-sophiris-bio-upcoming-catalysts-present-very-attractive-upside

Good luck to all!
gambler2075