We asked 10 everyday Americans for the best investment of their lives

Business Insider

26-05-2025

You don't have to be a Wall Street strategist or top fund manager to make your money work.
Business Insider asked 10 everyday Americans for the best investments they've made. Some stumbled into gains by serendipitously buying Magnificent Seven stocks before they took off. Others leaned into real estate or alternative investments. And yes, some struck it big on Reddit's r/WallStreetBets finds. All of this goes to show that there's no single path to investing success.
With their investments, these Americans have achieved various wealth-building milestones, including financial independence, early retirement, and an increased sense of security with their money. Business Insider has verified all investments.
Here's how they did it.
Bob Vanscoy, 54: Nvidia
Vanscoy, a full-time dad who manages his family's portfolios, isn't one to invest in flashy tech stocks. He describes his strategy as "conservative and focused on dividend growth."
Vanscoy's investment in Nvidia (NVDA) wasn't part of his usual portfolio management plan. Right before the pandemic, Vanscoy came across news articles and posts on forums about new video game developments.
"I asked my kids what was going on, and they said these Nvidia graphics cards are really popular and everyone's trying to get them. I did a little research, and I thought that might be a fun pick-and-shovel play," Vanscoy told Business Insider.
Vanscoy bought 80 shares of Nvidia in March 2020 for a total of $21,641.60. He's since taken profits twice, once in 2021 and again in 2023, which paid for his initial investment. Now, he holds 1,292 shares with a cost basis of $6.76 per share — a $151,000 position with an over 1,500% gain.
Natalie Fischer, 26: Buying a house
Fischer, a former data analyst turned finance content creator, bought a house with her now-husband before they got married in 2020. It seemed a little risky at the time but has since paid off majorly.
"At the time, interest rates were around 3%, and buying made just as much financial sense as renting after the initial down payment," Fischer said.
"It also gave us the chance to test living together before marriage and see what an integrated life looks like. If worst comes to worst and things didn't work out, we would just sell and split the equity in half," Fischer added.
The couple purchased their house for a little under half a million after the down payment. They refinanced their 3.3% mortgage rate down to 2.99% in 2021, right before mortgage rates shot up to 7%. Now, their monthly mortgage is $2,487 — which is comparable to local rent for a similar unit in the Seattle area.
Buying a house and locking down a low mortgage rate means Fischer doesn't have to worry about rising rents. "We're just incredibly grateful we were able to purchase our home when we did," Fischer said.
Nick Brinkman, 41: Apple and Tesla
Brinkman grew up helping his grandfather manage his personal accounts, which imbued him with a strong sense of financial responsibility.
"When I was in my 20s, I moved to LA and was very tight on money," Brinkman said. "I had very little to live off of at the time, but I still prioritized investing."
Between 2012 and 2013, Brinkman bought $4,000 of Apple (AAPL) and $5,000 of Tesla (TSLA), which he's held ever since. His investments have grown to roughly $43,000 and $167,000 since the initial buy-in, respectively.
Brinkman, who works at a production company that creates images of cars, got the idea to invest in Tesla when he began seeing more Tesla vehicles in the showroom at his job. Similarly, Brinkman liked Apple computers in the early 2000s and decided to invest in the company when he had enough disposable income. Nowadays, Brinkman has taken a less risky approach to investing and regularly buys index funds every two weeks.
Sherry Jiang, 33: Tesla and Palantir
Jiang, a former Google employee who now runs the personal finance platform Peek, enjoys investing in tech because it's an industry she's well-versed in.
Jiang bought into Tesla in 2015 after hearing her boss and many others bragging about owning one. She had seen a rise in electric vehicle popularity, but consumers' brand association with Tesla made it stand out to her.
"I was like, 'this is a category-defining company and I want to buy in,'" Jiang said. She grew her investment by 1,200%. She recently exited her position in the company, as she had achieved a substantial return and didn't like the volatility associated with CEO Elon Musk.
More recently, Jiang has bet big on Palantir (PLTR). She's been following the company since before it became public and believes the company has an edge thanks to its sticky government customers and innovations in AI. Jiang jumped in last year and snatched up the stock at just $23 a share. Since then, the stock has taken off, and Jiang's investment is up roughly 420%.
Jiang has no plans to sell her Palantir stock anytime soon: "My conviction is that it'll be as big as an Nvidia," she said.
Josh Nassif, 40: Nvidia and bitcoin
For 10 years before becoming a software engineer, Nassif was a full-time online poker player. It was common to be paid in bitcoin, which Nassif would then convert into cash to pay for living expenses.
Over the years, Nassif has inadvertently collected 0.8 bitcoin through this process — a hefty position as bitcoin hits an all-time high. Earlier in his poker career, up to 50% of his net worth was tied up in the cryptocurrency, but Nassif felt that was too high of a risk to be sustainable, so he started selling down to his current position.
Another one of his big wins was starting to purchase Nvidia stock 15 years ago. He now holds 342 shares with an over 3,000% gain. Nassif was influenced by his heavy bitcoin exposure, as he realized Nvidia's GPUs were in high demand for crypto mining. Similar to bitcoin, Nassif has also been gradually taking profits in the wake of the AI hype, as he doesn't want to have a large portion of his portfolio tied up in a single stock.
Nassif no longer makes any big bets on individual stocks. "In the last few years, I've been incredibly boring," Nassif said. "It's just been index funds."
Matt White, 33: Netflix
For the past eight years, White has divided his money between 60% index funds and 40% individual stocks.
When picking individual stocks, White considers himself a value investor and looks for companies at cheap entry points. White is a particularly big fan of "convenience-oriented" stocks that make life easier for consumers, and Netflix (NFLX) was a bet that paid off big for him.
In early 2022, Netflix stock plunged by two-thirds after the company reported losing subscribers and threatened to crack down on password sharing. White bought 45 shares in the company for a cost basis of $244 per share. Today, the stock is nearing $1,200, and White's investment has yielded around a 380% return.
"It was a very sound investment, very well-managed, very mature leadership team. So when public sentiment pushed the stock down, I believed that was an irrational action, and I decided to jump in and start a position," White said.
Tess Waresmith, 37: House hacking
Waresmith has been investing in real estate for over 10 years. She bought her first house, a single-family home in Tampa, in 2013 from savings she accumulated working as an aerial acrobat on a cruise ship.
Looking back, Waresmith's favorite real estate investment has been multi-family homes. She refinanced her property in Tampa and pulled out cash to buy a duplex in Massachusetts in 2020, securing a mortgage rate of 3.2%. Waresmith then house-hacked by living in one unit on the property and renting out the other. The mortgage at the time was around $2,300, and she rented out the other unit for $1,700, almost covering the monthly payment.
"I think house hacking is one of the single smartest financial decisions anyone can make, as long as you choose the right property," Waresmith said. "I would not have felt comfortable affording the mortgage on that house alone at the time."
Because her living expenses were so low from house hacking. Waresmith was able to invest and purchase another multi-family home in 2022. After moving out of the duplex, Waresmith now rents out both sides of the house, and her rental income is enough to easily cover the mortgage, as the rent on one side is now $2,500.
Brennan Schlagbaum, 33: Meta Platforms
Brennan Schlagbaum typically likes to invest in ETFs, but the one time he bought an individual stock, he struck it big.
"I focus on index funds primarily, but there are some obvious opportunities from time to time, and one of those was Meta," Schlagbaum said. He owns 36 shares of the company, which is his only single-stock investment.
In 2022, Meta Platforms (META) dropped from above $300 to under $90 after a series of weak earnings and a broader tech sell-off. Despite the negative sentiment, Schlagbaum, a CPA who runs the financial literacy company Budgetdog, felt like the company was in a good position according to its financial statements.
"They have great free cash flow, hardly any debt, tons of reinvestment," Schlagbaum said. He bought the stock in October 2022 at $97. The stock is now at $628 as of May 23, yielding a gain of almost 550%.
Austin Mark, 38: Co-owning a house
Last year, Mark and his husband were looking to move to Chicago from Salt Lake City. It just so happened that another couple they knew was also looking to move there — and so the four of them decided to team up and buy a house together.
Mark and his husband sold their Salt Lake City house, which they had bought right before the pandemic housing boom, in June 2024.
The two couples ended up purchasing a multi-family home last July for around $800,000. They decided to put down 40% for their down payment instead of the traditional 20%, as they wanted to minimize their monthly mortgage payments amid the current interest rate environment. For Mark, the proceeds from selling his Salt Lake City house covered the down payment.
The house has four floors and is set up as two apartments stacked on top of each other, and comes with six bedrooms and four kitchens. Mark and his co-owners are very pleased with the living arrangement, as it's helped them get much more bang for their buck.
"With what we are each paying, we never could have found something similar separately, even if each couple had something half the size of this house," Mark said.
Corey Forsythe, 35: AST SpaceMobile
Forsythe was scrolling through r/WallStreetBets in 2022 when a ticker caught his eye: AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), a satellite communications company pioneering a space-based cellular broadband network. The stock has a niche cult following on X dubbed the " SpaceMob", which Forsythe has been monitoring along with company news and earnings reports over the last few years.
Forsythe started with an initial holding of 2,500 shares at $10. From 2022 to 2024, the stock price plunged to under $2, and Forsythe actually sold his shares at a loss when the stock hit $2.15. But shortly after, in a classic WSB YOLO fashion, Forsythe bought back in with 35,000 shares at $2.88 per share.
"My thinking was, considering the due diligence and following the stock for two years, I would feel terrible giving up on it now, especially if it rebounded," Forsythe said of buying back in.
Forsythe's bet paid off — after buying back in, the company announced partnerships with AT&T and Verizon, sending the share price soaring. His investment sits at around $900,000 today. Even factoring in his initial loss on the first 2,500 shares, that's still a hefty 650% gain on his total invested capital.
"I don't plan on selling anything," Forsythe said. "I've diamond-handed it all the way from the ups and downs."