coming to usa, was earning 15k usd in india

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.

I don’t think that’s how brokerage transfers usually work

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

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.