What is the best investment you've ever made?

I didn't think of it as an investment at the time, but cutting most of my last two years of high school to learn programming 24/7 paid off with a lucrative career. I managed to graduate and get a HS diploma despite rarely showing up. I borrowed $2,000 from my grandparents to buy an ADM-3a dumb terminal and modem so I could program from home as a teenager. I got hired f/t at Nike at 19, was making more than my parents combined a couple of years later.

In no particular order:

* $75 off craigslist - my dog :) (this is mostly sentimental obv, but actually my best investment)

* ~A few thousand dollars - A minor in CS when I was majoring in something much less pragmatic

* $125 from Home Depot - a water transfer pump I wasn't sure I needed that likely saved me tens of thousands of dollars of water damage. I went back and bought another one.

* ~$120,000 - Invested after covid and pulled right before the crash these past few months

* ~$200,000 - Bought a couple houses

Not me, but someone I know 20ish years ago got mad at his broker and told him to sell everything (converting everything to cash so he could find a new broker and transfer it to a new account).

While he was sitting on all cash the dotcom bubble burst and the NASDAQ crashed.

He was quite happy he happened to be in all cash right then.

coming to usa, was earning 15k usd in india