
Ask HN: What was your worst $1000 investment? - awiesenhofer
Similar to r0rbits thread, and inspired by SmellTheGlove. Let us learn from past mistakes and ask: What was your worst investment?
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amerkhalid
A few years ago decided I want to be part time photographer. Bought bunch of
gear mostly to look the part, then I realized I didn’t enjoy taking photos for
clients or especially at events. Sold everything a year later, lost about
$1,000. Though don’t regret it as I got some decent photos and some
interesting experiences from it.

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edmanet
Wedding ring. I could have spent $10k on it and the marriage still would have
failed.

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koolba
Fun fact: Spending more on engagement rings, the wedding itself, or a
honeymoney is correlated with higher rates of divorce[1].

[1]: [https://www.shape.com/blogs/sex-and-love/study-shows-
engagem...](https://www.shape.com/blogs/sex-and-love/study-shows-engagement-
ring-cost-linked-divorce)

~~~
muzani
I think this would also apply to most investments - if it costs much higher
than the average, it's likely to be bad.

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smartician
I made some "fun" investments during college: CHS Electronics[1], and
Met@box[2]. In CHS Electronics I was actually up 100% at some point and
entered a sell order, but changed my mind and cancelled it. Hours later the
stock tanked and ultimately became worthless.

With Met@box, I was actually 99% sure that it was a scam, but I thought I
could "ride the wave" and sell before it would collapse. Valuable lessons were
learned.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHS_Electronics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHS_Electronics)

[2]:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabox](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabox)

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SmellTheGlove
OK, I bit on the best investment thread. Now time to throw myself under the
bus. I challenge you to top this:

The summer between high school and college (or somewhere around that time), I
put most of my savings from my part time job into WCOM @ $25. I'm probably a
little older than the median HN demo, so I'll just leave this here for you.[1]

The good news is, I never did have to pay a commission to sell that stock.
Obviously, I didn't have a lot of money, but it was probably about $1000 that
I invested and promptly lost.

[1]:
[http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2002/Jun/30/world...](http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2002/Jun/30/worldcom.gif)

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muzani
About $6000 into a "MVP" for starting my own cafe.

I later found out that most people who start restaurants lose money. You'd
make something like $100k sales and $101k costs a month. The game is in trying
to change sales or costs by 5% or so.

A lot of restaurants don't shut down for this reason. They're all really close
to being rich and they all invest so much into it that it's worth trying out
another year.

That's why they're not killed by the free market. There's a lot more out there
than there should be.

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codegeek
I invested $1500 in my wife's company stock pre IPO and after multiple
dilutions and company failure, it is worth $5 today.

Lesson: don't invest in things you don't know.

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jetti
My first MVP. Blew through about 1.5 to 2k on it and had zero sales. Most of
the yhings I bought were unecessary at the time, such as a 5 year hosting
plan. Year by year would've been fine and I would have had extra money.

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gvajravelu
An LSAT prep class. My test scores stayed the same.

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efrafa
Altcoins, if I left it in btc I would have 5x more, now Im about even in
dollars :)

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tboyd47
Anytime I put more than $1,000 into repairs on a used car, I regretted it.

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segmondy
Why?

I have a used car. if I put $1,000 into repairs for it and get 12 months out
of it. I win.

Can I lease or buy an equivalent car for $1000/yr, $83 a month? Usually not.

If I could, how much would the value deprecate in a year? More than $1,000?
Most likely

$1,000 into a used car can be the wisest thing. I pretty much drive my cars
till I hit 250,000 miles. It takes another $4k to usually go from 200k-250k
usually because timing belt, valve cover and expensive routine maintenance
comes up. But $4k to drive 50k miles? Totally worth it.

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IpV8
Agreed. I bought an old volvo for $2000 about 7 years ago. I'd say I average
about $1000 in repairs every year. I'd call that a great investment.

~~~
tboyd47
Volvos are solid cars.

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g0thams-
College textbooks.

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SirLJ
Mutual Funds (the greatest scam ever) - why back when I was young and stupid
:-)

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Something1234
Wait what? How so? You really need to provide a story.

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hvd
GE stock.

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AnimalMuppet
Depends on your timing. In late 2008 or early 2009, I saw GE below $7/share,
and I _knew_ it was an insanely low number, but I didn't have any spare cash,
and I didn't have the guts to borrow money to buy it.

In retrospect, I should have put some of my IRA money into it - not a lot,
maybe a few percent.

