
Ask HN: What's been your best investment? - uptown
I'm curious what everyone here considers their best investment.  Not necessarily from a financial standpoint (thought it certainly could be, and that'd be interesting to hear too) ... but maybe your best investment has been the time you spent to learn something new, or the time you've spent with your family.  What's your best?
======
tricky
Invested in myself by doing things that scare the shit out of me - Around
junior year of HS I realized I had nothing to lose (I was pure white trash,
still am, really.) so if something looked impossible, I went for it. I wound
up in an ivy leagueish college, worked my ass off, I starved, went out with
beautiful girls, photocopied text books because I couldn't afford them, I
drove an old porsche I found in a junkyard, went on tour with my band, went to
europe with $80 in my pocket. Made a lot of mistakes, but god damn it was fun.

~~~
_Lemon_
> I drove an old porsche I found in a junkyard

This (along with a lot of other stuff you mentioned...) is interesting, what
happened? Were you just looking around a junkyard and stumbled across it? What
state did you get it in and how much did you know about cars when you got it?

I found this on your site but it didn't give much background info:
<http://trickykegstands.com/porsches.html>

~~~
tricky
Wait, What? Normal people don't know what kinds of cars are sitting in their
local junk yards? heh... somehow we knew it was there.

I grew up in a family of backyard mechanics and my brother had a 924 parts car
in the driveway. He graciously let me pick and pull parts for free and helped
a LOT.

Believe it or not, as long as it isn't wrecked too badly, you can probably get
almost any car back on the road with $100 craftsman tool set and a good sized
hammer. Or, better yet, find tools for really cheap at garage sales.

------
edw519
Writing a code generator. It was so difficult that every other programming
task since was easy in comparison.

Conventional wisdom advises not to try anything too hard because you might
fail. True, but that advice discounts the biggest dividend of all: who you
become in the process.

I didn't realize how important this was until I saw how easy it was for me to
do most ordinary programming gigs. It was like playing basketball with a
regulation hoop when I had already practiced with a smaller one. Other
programmers struggled because they hadn't seen that problem before and they
had never stretched themselves.

Building hard things on my own made me a much better programmer when I did
work for others. By far, my best investment ever.

~~~
ehsanul
I've seen you mention this code generator in a few comments. Can we get more
details about this project? I'm sure many here would be interested to know. If
you've written another comment on HN explaining it in more depth, or written a
blog post about it, I for one would love to check it out.

~~~
edw519
I wrote the original in Basic as a tool that we used in our service business.
We collected requirements and entered them into the app as "blueprints". File
layouts, form parameters, process parameters, etc. The generator read the
blueprints, then built the data base and wrote all the necessary custom
functions and routines. Most of the programs were already there as parameter
driven shells.

I rewrote it in Visual Basic, then in php.

This was a handy tool for systems analysts who knew what they were doing, but
not for the average user. There were 2 basic problems: collecting requirements
and entering them as parameters is hard and you still had to convert the data.

Now I'm working on a front end to the 3rd generation of the generator. It will
read existing data files and use an artificially intelligent process to build
the parameters then were previously collected by a human. It will also
populate the new data base. This is the basis of my start-up.

I will keep the community updated with my progress. I also got your email from
your profile and will give you (and anyone else who's interested) an update.
Thanks for your interest.

------
lionhearted
When I had cash[1], I mostly kept large cash positions, you'll pretty always
find something valuable to do with cash eventually. Whereas getting out of
bad/sub-optimal assets is trickier. I've had opportunities to invest cash
along with labor to get some pretty good stakes in a couple businesses that
turned out right. I also didn't realize this at first, so I tried to buy
stocks and mutual funds, thus missing out on a couple great deals later when I
didn't have the cash.

If you're good with money, don't be in such a hurry to get out of cash. If you
sit on cash for two years, then make a 60% return on it in year 3, you've
outperformed anyone making 10% each year. I'm sure there's a personality type
that goes crazy if they're sitting on a significant amount of cash for two
years that isn't doing anything, but that's not me. I'd rather be liquid than
to have money in bad or even just sub-optimal assets.

[1] After the crash, I had enough to live for ~3 years without working too
much. I wrote the first draft of a book, wrote some specs out on business
ideas to see if any of them really resonated, studied some rationality,
biochemistry, and the history of lots of different regions of the world. Did
some martial arts, read lots of books, and traveled in a pretty spartan way,
mostly slumming it through a dozen or so countries. A couple months ago I felt
like it was time to get back into things, my newest professional endeavor
soft-launches next Wednesday.

~~~
mkramlich
Reminded me of the rule I've developed when it comes to evaluating job,
contract or startup opportunities: cash is never wrong.

Because equity may or may not yield significant value for you. Because the
work may or may not be interesting. Because a project may succeed or fail.
Because you don't know how long the relationship will last, or whether it will
lead to better things via contacts and word of mouth, etc. (though it
certainly may.) But getting cash pay is never wrong.

Once you have cash, there are tons of other things you can do with it. It can
be used to buy you more free time later, more energy, more opportunities, more
convenience, more capital for your own startups, better health, more
happiness, more security, more toys, more tools, a bigger/healthier family,
and, perhaps indirectly, and despite what some people tell you, and _most
especially_ if you're a _man_ , money DOES help buy love.

Cash is never wrong.

------
mtkd
Best mattress, duvet, pillows and sheets I could afford - makes a massive
difference to the start and end of the day - no matter what else happens in-
between.

~~~
lukeschlather
Honestly, I've found I sleep best when I'm traveling and forced to sleep on my
foam mattress pad (not the inflatable variety) and sleeping bag.

Though it may be more traveling and being out in the world and doing things
that causes me to sleep soundly.

~~~
may
I do this voluntarily. It works pretty well, most of the time.

------
moultano
Learning Statistics. I never would have picked it, but was forced into it
thanks to my economics minor, and I've used it more than most of my CS
courses.

I've never met anyone who regretted learning more math. It's the safest
investment there is.

~~~
weaksauce
I found probability and statistics to be a very valuable thing to learn as
well. I wouldn't have done it on my own because it just seemed so boring
compared to the other maths(calc, linear algebra, etc...) but it really has a
lot of use in those disciplines that you now have the context to understand.
Thankfully my college had it as a requirement for cs.

------
mahmud
My underdog consulting "startup"; it cost me $10 for the domain and 3 days to
do the site html. I just wanted somewhere to document previous side gigs just
so I can have a line-item in my resume.

Holly crap! in the last 10 days it has been on FIRE. Three different B2B
projects and it's paying more than my last full time job, which was by every
measure a very posh gig.

It's such an specialized technical niche, the entire global search volume for
it is less than 5k annually. A fact I didn't even care to research before I
"sunk" 3 days into it. I just wanted something on my resume.

And this is all I have to say about it :-)

~~~
detst
So you put your previous work up and they found you?

Just out of my curiosity for how this could develop that quickly, are these
long-term projects or quick projects that you've already completed but pay
well because of their specialized nature?

Care to elaborate more on the type of work it is?

~~~
mahmud
_So you put your previous work up and they found you?_

Hah! I wish. No, I actively pushed it within its first 2-3 weeks and bid on
bucket-loads of projects and proposals. Even started blogging actively while
transitioning from being employed in Australia, to returning to the U.S. with
not much to do.However, I heard back from no one. For some reason I took
active interest in this random field and started reaching out to NGOs,
government agencies and academia; helping them make good use of this. I even
attended a few webinars, some boring shit, because I cared and wanted to make
sure these public institutions got this mundane application of technology
right.

This _does_ sound like a lot of work, but for me it was more like a game; I
would have my laptop on the kitchen counter while cooking or prancing around
the house, and ooh, a project! "typety typety type!". Mostly as a joke for me
and my girlfriend since we had a few weeks between finishing my work contact,
and actually taking the flight out of the country. It was just something we
did mostly as tongue in cheek "hey, we're important" sort of a thing.

Out of the goddamn blue, almost 2 months later, here they are, private sector.

The work is best described as "research and analysis"; the deliverables are
usually a report, an spreadsheet, a simple "API", or in most extreme cases a
yes/no answer :-)

Come'on man ... this conversation ends here, I am not patio11.

~~~
Sukotto

       this conversation ends here, I am not patio11.
    

That's a real shame. (and I'm not being sarcastic)

I enjoy hearing about the successes and thought processes of people who are
doing well.

~~~
mkramlich
... and the industry/market and problem domain. So we can get in on it too. ;)

~~~
stakent
Competition is good.

As they say.

~~~
mahmud
For the consumer.

~~~
stakent
Exactly.

Contrary to the wisdom presented here by many.

------
patio11
Recently? Probably deciding to go downtown for coffee with Thomas (tptacek)
last Christmas break, which lead to a very enlightening conversation about
consulting. (Short version: "People will pay you money to consult for them." I
did not know this. For real.)

All time? I've got to go with the wee little project that was supposed to pay
for a video game or two, even though that is a pandering answer here. If not
that, working hard academically and financially to get into WashU, which
offers opportunities roughly equivalent to many schools _except_ the quality
of their Japanese program ended up being lifechanging for me.

Financially? I had a burrito at this new restaurant called Chipotle, read that
McDonalds was spinning them off, and bought a few hundred dollars worth of
stock over the next few years. Don't do that -- invest in index funds. That
said, burritos now make up a larger contributor to my net worth than anything
save bingo cards.

------
abyssknight
It's really hard to pin down just one thing, but I'll try. :)

The big thing for me, both personally and professionally, has been networking
socially. Whether that meant going to Defcon last year to get away from it all
(and meeting a ton of awesome people in the process), or utilizing my contacts
at work to get where I wanted and needed to be to do my best.

Learning how to effectively do that has been an incredible blessing. It's also
given me a ton of friendships I wouldn't have otherwise.

~~~
pgbovine
that's a great response! i think all too often, members of the hacker
community view 'social networking' as somewhat of a slimy, schmoozy 'MBA-type'
of necessary evil, but when done properly (like OP apparently has), it can
lead to true personal connections and friendships which can benefit both
parties

~~~
jpdbaugh
I am pretty sure they meant actually talking to and meeting people in real
life.

------
francoisdevlin
A couple friends & I pooled our cash and gave a buddy $150 for a week's
vacation. Our buddy ended up meeting his wife on that trip. Best money I ever
spent.

------
teej
Spending generously on a great wedding photographer is the single best
purchase I've ever made.

------
chadaustin
I used California's Paid Family Leave program to take the entirety of July off
work. My daughter just turned 4 months and every day she learns something new.
Even though I'm at a rapidly-growing company, I wouldn't trade time with
family for anything.

------
mmaunder
"The best investment you can make is in yourself." ~Warren Buffet

He's absolutely right. As long as you remain alive and able bodied, your
investment is protected and will yield a return and you will derive the
enjoyment and benefit from that return directly, without delay and
continuously.

I'll add one caveat: Before you go and spend $120,000 on an education, make
sure you are acquiring the knowledge and other assets you hope to gain in the
most efficient and cost effective way as possible.

~~~
prs
The quote is spot-on. Almost every investment in oneself will generate a
healthy ROI in the long run in my opinion.

Minor footnote: Maybe it is just a pet peeve of mine but I cannot count how
many times I have seen the name of Warren Buffett spelled as _Warren Buffet_.
(<http://www.google.com/search?q=warren+%2Bbuffet>)

------
Hexstream
I can't pick one so I'll say:

Learning Common Lisp;

Making my own (unreleased) web framework from scratch;

Learning the Rete algorithm (very fast matching of many patterns against many
data items). It's the most elaborate algorithm I can implement, it was hard to
learn mostly because of how incredibly abstract the descriptions of it are,
but it's applicable in many situations to make really cool features possible
so it was well worth it.

~~~
mahmud
Re: Rete, that's really good. I can only imagine the breadth of knowledge you
had to acquire just to grok it, much less implement it.

~~~
Hexstream
There actually isn't a lot of prerequisite knowledge before you can learn
Rete, just general knowledge of graphs I think.

I did spend a lot of time trying to understand how it all works with pen and
paper, reading the original Rete description and the wikipedia article, it's a
bit annoying because it seems descriptions of Rete are very few AND they use
different terminology and approaches to explaining, AND there are really a lot
of implementation choices to make depending on the specifics of your problem,
so I had a lot of difficulty wrapping my head completely around the concept.

In fact, the first implementation I made was very contrived and I unknowingly
bypassed a lot of problems and I didn't even know my understanding was still
incomplete. It's only when I tried to make another implementation for a more
difficult problem that I realized and fixed my lackings.

Now that I really understand it though, it really doesn't sound that
complicated to me anymore, it's pretty "simple and intuitive". If I didn't
remember all the pain I had to go through to understand it, I might think that
it's in fact a pretty simple algorithm. I think the way too abstract and
obtuse descriptions of it are to blame for much of the difficulty because
there really isn't a lot to the fundamentals of the algorithm (though the
explosion of implementation choices can get messy to sort through).

I guess about now would be a great time for me to start a blog. ;)

------
sgoraya
Several good life investments, but I'll go with a monetary one...using all my
savings at the time (a shade under $6k) and convincing my Dad to lend me a bit
more cash so I could purchase Google's dutch auction IPO shares.

I have the confirmation email from Google laminated and framed in my office.
:-)

Plus I got to pay my Dad back with a nice bonus too!

------
cmarv
One of the best investments we've made has been in allocating time for family.

An example is finding a night nurse after we had our first child. It allowed
my wife to recover from a tough birth, both of us to have some quiet together
time, and it allowed me to get the rest I needed in order to keep working. The
nurse would show up around 9-10pm each night and took off at 6am, and would
wake my wife for the late night feedings as necessary.

It was pure gold and those 4 weeks allowed us to recover and adapt to the
strange new world of parenting (and it also gave us a bit more confidence to
handle novel situations as they arose).

------
adora
As soon as I realized I had to be involved with startups, I quit grad school,
bought a one-way plane ticket to California and haven't looked back since.
Best $500 spent ever.

You truly can't appreciate the pace, the spirit and the community that is
Silicon Valley without physically living in it. These past few years have been
the greatest and most fulfilling time in my life so far.

~~~
jessep
That's pretty badass :) How'd you realized you "had to be involved with
startups"?

~~~
adora
When I began to realize I was spending more time building random web apps with
a friend instead of doing my research. To be fair, my research was pretty
bland, so it wasn't that hard to get distracted :)

------
bkrausz
My college degree - partially for the name that led to great internships/jobs
that gave me insightful experience, but mostly for the friends (including my
cofounder), social experience, and general maturing that happens there.

3 years & $150k and I think it's paid for itself in the 1 year I've been out
of school.

------
geophile
Personal: Time with family.

Professional: Obsessive software hacking in my teens and 20s combined with PhD
in computer science. Basically, doing what I love and putting in my 10000
hours.

Financial: Time and money invested in startups.

~~~
pgbovine
looking back, what aspects of your Ph.D. training do you find most useful now?
was it deep expertise in one particular sub-field? was it a certain type of
work ethic or approach to problems? was it the doors it opened for you
professionally? etc.

~~~
geophile
The field certainly helped. I worked in databases, data structures and
algorithms, and the exposure to those ideas has been a huge benefit since I'm
still working in those areas. I'm constantly surprised at how things that are
just intuitively obvious to me are alien to many others. Grad school is when
much of that intuition was absorbed, I think.

I think that "work ethic" (mine, at least) is just hardwired. Same for
approach to problems. I wouldn't say that grad school influenced these so much
as help me realize what they were. I actually goofed off quite a bit in grad
school. My work ethic (as in long hours, and job above all else) wasn't tested
until I joined my first startup.

Opening doors: not so much. My thesis adviser was not in the mainstream of our
field, and most of my friends were in other fields. My professional contacts
started developing when I joined my first startup. I was extremely lucky at
this startup in three ways: 1) working with world-class engineers, 2) in a
well-conceived and well-funded startup, and 3) they were willing to take me,
an academic who actually liked writing software, and give me a chance.

Having a PhD was a potential problem early on. I tried teaching/research after
grad school, and discovered that it wasn't for me. (This may have been the
transition from a Canadian school with easy access to small amounts of
funding, to a grant-writing powerhouse in the US, where professors seemed to
spend all of their time pursuing grants.) I was lucky in my transition to the
software industry -- I have friends who wanted to make that transition and
were not able to. And in fact, at my first startup, there was vague suspicion
of me just for having the degree. But now, years later, I think that it was
time well spent, better probably than what I'd get out of the usual first jobs
after college.

Another thing to keep in mind is what sort of PhD you do. A highly theoretical
focus is rarely good preparation for life in the software industry. A highly
applied focus is great preparation, (I'm thinking of the long list of
developers who have come out of UC Berkeley, and of course, there are the
google founders.)

------
eps
Aeron chair. Happy butt makes for long and productive coding hours :)

------
anamax
My best investment is telling my wife in front of other people that she's my
best investment.

------
tachibana
Personally: time with family.

Professional: trying to write an HA/clustered "Hello World" app. The knowledge
of the deployment and operational aspects has served me well in my software
career.

Financial: actively managing my own real estate investments.

The key differences between running one's own software business and actively
managing one's properties are:

\- it's a turn-key business where the "product" is so simple and in such high
demand that it is relatively hard to screw up by any reasonable person

\- a deeper understanding of the tax system; software consulting typically
touches either Schedule C _or_ Sched E (Part 2), while real estate involves
schedules A, C, _and_ E(part 1 and 2).

\- a deeper understanding of protecting myself legally

------
paulgb
I spent $600 on a train ticket from Halifax to Vancouver with stops along the
way, and did it by myself. Besides being a great trip, I was exposed to a
greater variety of people than I usually have a chance to interact with.

~~~
wallflower
The interesting thing I've found out about taking a train cross country (one
of those big double-decker Amtraks with observation deck) is that the people
on these trains are relaxed. And interesting. I met a couple of cute girls who
were doing something inscrutable - it turned out they were making their own
Sudoku puzzles by hand with pen and paper. Even the families are cool. Because
if you're traveling on the train from Chicago to New York, you're not in a
hurry.

The only drawback is if you don't pay for the expensive sleeper cars -
sleeping is difficult. To put it this way, there are times where I remember
not not sleeping.

~~~
paulgb
Definitely. One of my fellow passengers said it best: it's like a hostel on
wheels. I would do it again in a second.

I agree about sleeping being difficult, especially as a tall guy. At some
point though, rolling through the prairie provinces in the middle of the night
and looking up at the stars from the observation car while playing cards or
talking with new friends, sleep seems overrated anyway.

------
nkohari
My startup. It's hard to find a better investment for either time or money
than investing in yourself.

------
jamespitts
Early 1995: viewed source in Netscape, saved the file to my desktop, modified
the file, and opened the file back up in my browser.

Of course, I was (very luckily) ready for what I saw; I had been doing graphic
design at the time and had read Powershift and Neuromancer :)

------
arethuza
Good private education for our son - I'm not naturally a fan of private
education but it is _so_ much better than state education it's really quite
sad.

------
AndrewDucker
Leaving a dead-end job and taking one that paid less but had far more
opportunities for learning and growth. I'm now paid twice as much as I was
then.

RBS shares. Bought when they dropped from £7.00 to £0.10, now back up to
£0.43. Profit!

~~~
tocomment
Was it hard taking the lower paying job at the time? Did you feel like you
were letting yourself down?

How long did it take for your salary to come back up?

~~~
AndrewDucker
It took it about two years to come back up, and another 6 to get me where I am
now.

I didn't feel I was letting myself down, but then it helped that I hated the
job I had at the time, and because of that I wasn't very good at it :->

------
samratjp
Learning to shut up (both mouth and mind) when it matters - i.e. listening
more than I talk. There are no refunds on what you've said.

------
waterside81
I might get knocked on the head by HN for saying this, but .... my MBA. Wait,
wait, before you hit me, let me explain. My undergrad major was in CS and I
did a minor in economics, but I never took marketing classes, I never took a
class in organizational behaviour, in pricing theory, accounting etc. I was
exposed to a lot of this during my MBA program and it has helped me immensely
in the startups I've done since finishing my MBA.

I find that people who have always been entrenched in technical fields have a
hard time stepping back and it seeing issues through the eyes of the "average"
person - for some definition of average.

But a close second in terms of investment, a second monitor. For programming,
having two screens is essential I find. I'd say my productivity increased by
20% (e.g. being able to iteratively prototype more readily, leading to quicker
turnaround)

------
simonreed
Learning English as my second language.

------
1tw
From a financial standpoint, buying Apple shares in 1998.

Careerwise, spending all my time at university working on the uni newspaper
instead of working on my degree.

~~~
bl4k
I can give you a horrible APPL-related investment. I bought AAPL in '02 when
it was $12-13 and sold 6 months later because I needed the funds. Purchased a
hedged position via a CFD, was worth $400k, which would be worth $10M+ today

Lesson: do buy stock in companies whose products you use and like, and
companies who are actually doing something new and interesting. I bought the
stock on the back of OS X, which I was a beta tester of, and also on the iPod
becoming an entire platform, hence Apple moving into consumer electronics and
taking out Sony. Second part of the lesson would be to stick to your initial
instincts and not doubt yourself. I ended up making some money from it, but
sold far too early because a lot of people whose opinions I valued at the time
told me I was crazy for investing so much in a 'tech stock'.

~~~
d2viant
The "buy what you know" mantra will get you in serious trouble if you only
take it at face value. Its important to know and like the product(s), but that
will only get you so far, it won't necessarily make for a sound investment
decision.

Knowing and liking the companies products is a nice bonus at best. If your
primary motivation for investing in a company is any reason other than a
stellar financial outlook, you're not investing wisely. Some horribly despised
products have made some of the best investments (cigarettes), while some truly
loved products (General Motors) have made terrible investments.

The two ideas aren't completely detached from one another, but when it all
boils down, the most important reason is always about the financials of a
company and their ability to make money.

~~~
philwelch
Your examples aren't very good. Cigarettes are a politically incorrect
product, and GM cars are a more politically correct product, but I can't
imagine many people who know better to actually prefer GM cars over the
competition. Likewise, if an enthusiastic smoker wanted to invest in his
favorite tobacco company, maybe that would work out.

A better example than GM might be Krispy Kreme, which was a terrible
investment even though the doughnuts are delicious.

~~~
d2viant
That's exactly my point though. Whether the product is good or not has little
or no bearing on whether the stock is a good buy. It's all about the
underlying financial fundamentals of the company.

~~~
philwelch
I gave you a decent example of your point, but I'm still not sure the point is
good in the general case. GM was a bad investment _and_ a bad bunch of cars.

~~~
d2viant
Then I don't understand what the general case is that you're referring to.
That overall if people invest in products they like then overall they'll get
good investment returns?

I'm saying that someone liking or not liking a product and investing for that
reason is irrelevant to the investment returns they can expect, because that
decision is based entirely on preference -- the movement of the stock on the
other hand is driven entirely by the financials.

~~~
philwelch
See, that's not true at all. Someone liking or disliking a product is based
largely on whether the product is crap or not, _just like the success of the
company_.

~~~
d2viant
No it's not. Someone liking or disliking a product is based on their own
perception of it's value. There will never be universal agreement on whether a
product is good. Who's to say you're right vs. your neighbor who says the
product is crap? How can you possibly use that as the basis for an investment
decision?

I wish you the best of luck with that investment strategy. To look at a
company and say "Hmmm, I like their product. I'll buy the stock!" is horrible
advice to give. That's what amateurs do. You haven't looked at the underlying
fundamentals of the company. You haven't looked at the management team. You
haven't looked at it's current valuation. You have no basis to say that
investment is going to succeed -- it could be wildly overvalued, but you
wouldn't know because you're investing based on emotion and feelings, not
based on facts.

~~~
philwelch
You're saying there's no such thing as an objectively good product, simply
because people disagree on the matter of which products are good and which are
bad. But disagreement isn't any sign that there's no fact to the matter--
people disagree about matters of fact all the time.

A good product might not be sufficient or necessary to make a good stock, but
it seems like a major influence--and I would be very reluctant to invest in a
company which pathologically produces poor products (GM, Microsoft, Dell, HP).
Of course there are other factors to consider, and investing in individual
stocks is a fool's errand anyway.

------
dejv
Travelling.

Especially when I was 19 I finished high school (standard time at Czech
Republic) and move to UK for few months. I was quite young, barely speak
English, have very little money (like 500 pounds) and don't know anybody
there.

These few months learn me a lot about independence and such.

------
jsz0
The best investment I ever made was education. In the form of quitting school
and learning on my own. Classroom learning never worked for me. My only regret
is not being able to do it earlier in life.

------
gte910h
HTML Brochures. People Love Them and respond almost 2x as often.

~~~
tptacek
What do you mean by "HTML brochures" and what are you comparing them to to get
the 2x uplift number from? Curious.

~~~
gte910h
Typical boilerplate email response letters using plain text vs HTML email
response using brochure type format, they even respond better to the generic
HTML than to the customized plain text email.

These are emails to people posting job work available on any site, or "friends
of customers wondering what we've done".

These brochures are based off email list type designs, such as would be used
to solicit donations for a charity or to keep past customers informed of
happenings at a retail outlet.

~~~
Timothee
I'm not quite sure in what kind of context and what kind of audience: is it
for contract/freelance kind of jobs to present yourself? (or your company)

Your comment made me wonder how that would work for full-time job applications
and at first thought, I'd think it would annoy people more than anything
because you'd be more likely to send them to your peers. (and the HN-type tend
IMO to prefer plain text)

But, I'm ready to challenge that idea. If people have used HTML emails for job
applications/cover letters with success, I'd be very interested to read about
it because it sounds like it's not the right place to do so, but it would
still make one pop out of the pile.

------
rrhyne
I don't spend time working on paying gigs so I could put money in other
people's businesses.

Instead, I take as few of those jobs I can and invest my time in me.

------
angelia2041
Life is time machine. My best investment is that I spend almost half and one
year to do what I love and love what I do. It's really amazing to be myself
and Be truely myself. I love my unique life no matter what happened but only
precious memory and I learned why once the poor stranger man wanted to
frighten me , even wanted to bully me and he really wanted to steal my money
to just have a meal. In other words, I really hope he can have a decent life.
I was totally shocked by this big gap between the rich and the poor. I am also
one of the poor.

and What's more? In this free and care-free, happy year, I know TED talks and
I join the big Global communities to share the ideas worth spreading and
Sharing in actions. I know what's my great interest and my passion and I can
do better and improve daily. I deserve what I give. So I am lucky dog.
Certainaly, my very precious inverstment is include the family and friends too
in this half and one year. More and more precious things in this Gap Year.
okay.

------
Sindrome
Going to college. It paid for itself after about 1.5 years. If I didn't go to
college, I probably never would have believed that I could start a successful
business. I went to college hoping for a good job when I got out. I left
college hoping to retire at an early age.

------
yason
Finding and seeing a good therapist.

------
mx12
Here is my best and worst investments. When I was around 14, I wanted to get
into the stock market. So, I heard that AMD had beat Intel to the punch with
x86-64 chips and Intel was planning on licensing the technology. So I invested
in AMD at around 10 and I ended up selling it at around 18. Then took that
money and invested in a treasure hunting company at .70 a share and it dropped
to .10 a share. They had claimed to have a new technology for finding gold
that did not disrupt the reefs, so they would be able to get permits to look
for sunken Spanish galleons. Didn't really work out for me, but I was young
and I thought it was cool to say that I invested in a gold mining company.

------
kreek
1\. I used to be a graphic designer so teaching myself programming literally
doubled my salary.

2\. My safari.oreilly.com account, see #1. $40/m for access to almost every
dev book ever written is a steal.

~~~
dotBen
No, technically downloading every dev book ever written in pdf via bit torrent
is 'a steal'.

------
samdk
I spent a taking English classes at a local community college so I could
graduate a year early from high school. I consider the decision to graduate
early one of the best I've ever made. Staying there a year longer would have
been a complete waste of time, and life since then has been so much better.

In terms of programming, my best investment has definitely been learning Vim.
I sacrificed a little productivity for a week or so, and now I'm way more
productive than I was before.

------
soc
Probably learning a new language. Wanted to develop a JP site so after 2 years
and lots of studying starting to get a handle on the lang, and having lots of
fun doing it. Very rewarding so far.

Financially, probably China. Only problem is can't convert RMB -> USD so it's
like monopoly money. Maybe one day can buy gold and send it over on a
container vessel :)

~~~
mrtron
Getting money out of China is pretty easy and it seems everyone with a lot of
RMB does it.

------
morallybass
The best investment I've made has been quitting a well-paid, big company job
to work for an early Rails software startup.

I worked many more hours and was paid less money (the investment).

I had an amazing time, learned very valuable skills, and am in a much better
place in my career because of it.

This will continue paying dividends in salary and enjoying my work for the
rest of my life.

------
mxyzptlk
"Programming Perl" (the first edition) by Wall and Schwartz. Reading that book
helped me land my first programming job.

------
Mz

      1) My kids.
      2) My health (and I couldn't have gotten well without the help of my kids).
      3) Time spent getting to know some really interesting people who broadened my horizons.
      4) "Travel" (well, more accurately, living different places).

------
mfalcon
Reading "Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill" from
Matthieu Ricard.

~~~
kreek
Couldn't agree more, this book opened my eyes (or mind). The Mingyur Rinpoche
books are great too.

------
michaelfairley
A second monitor.

------
todayiamme
Unconditionally loving people for who they are, _not_ who I want them to be.

------
shughes
This is financial, but good move on my part. I invested in Apple the day
before the release of the first iPhone ($120 a share). I then recently used
some of it to buy a car way out of my league ($270 a share).

~~~
javery
AAPL has been very good to me as well, I bought in at $73.25 in 2006. I bought
more in 2009 right around the 3gs announcement at $140.66. Then in 2010 when
the iPad was announced I bought a couple of times (especially when it went
below 200 at an average price of $201)

I have found it tends to dip right around or after announcements, there are
usually good chances to buy especially if the announcement doesn't blow
everyone out of the water.

------
Grinnmarr
LASER eye surgery. Best money I ever spent.

------
T_S_
Land. By far.

But I have high hopes for learning Haskell.

------
Qz
Anything I end up giving away.

------
sabj
Education and friendships.

------
quizbiz
My education.

------
ww520
Real estate.

------
47
education

------
xaine
attending university

