This idea was “borrowed” (okay, stolen) from a post by the Feral Irishman:
You wake up one morning and it’s 1995.
The past 30 years have just been a dream.
What’s the first thing you do?
Here are some ideas that could see you comfortably situated thirty years later, i.e. today.
Buy:
- Amazon.com shares, as many as you can afford
- ditto Apple
- other companies (specify)
- that cherry ’71 Dino 246GT for $15,000 (I remember seeing some for about that price back then, and thinking they were crazy to expect so much)
- a $100k house in Plano TX (which would be worth +/- $490K today) — pick your market
Your ideas in Comments.
Rent a room to Michael Dell and Elon Musk.
I’d prefer a 40 year rewind myself. Back to my High School days.
If I only got 30, I’d stop looking for a full-time job, apply to Home Depot, and go to a trade school. Probably welding or electrical. I’d also get rid of my television and start working out regularly while cutting down on the carbs and sugar significantly.
As for money, I’d invest what I could in index funds and buy a few individual stocks (Microsoft, Dell, Enron, Worldcom [selling the latter two in the fall of ’99). I didn’t pay attention to sports back then, so betting on sure-winners wouldn’t be an option. I *could* bet on various election outcomes.
Might see if I could score copies of the Obamas’ theses and dissertation before those became protected goods. A few anonymous tips regarding various DemonRat politicians would go out as well, though I doubt it would do any good.
Call in warnings on 9/10/01. I don’t recall the flight numbers, so I might not be able to give sufficiently specific into to prevent the attacks, but getting the Pentagon and the Towers evacuated would be a positive good.
To avoid the obvious Fed Poasting, I’ll just mention that it’s long been a staple of time travel to ask, if you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he became famous, would you?
In similar fashion, I’m sure there’s quite the list of people we could avoid discussing in this scenario. Fauci comes to mind. Obviously. Theoretical only, I would never advocate violence.
Otherwise, Enron stock seems like a surefire bet, just make sure to dump it before it dumps itself (circa 2000/2001). Amazon, Apple, other stocks of that nature are sure-fire wealth makers. Get a line on Pelosi and buy/sell whatever she bought/sold. Seems to be a winning move.
Get a good, solid, no electronics work truck. Something that’ll last a quarter-million miles, then can be rebuilt and last another quarter million miles. Buy a second and prep it for storage just in case. Also, any UJM motorcycles that can be had for dirt cheap. Inline air cooled 4’s used to be dirt cheap.
Get some land in the Texas Hill Country before Californians send the prices sky high. Some Gulf Coast bay area land would also be good, assuming you had the cash. Certain areas went from dirt cheap scrub to high end marinas over that time frame.
Buy a shit-ton of police trade-in revolvers. Smith 38’s and 357’s. By the fucking boatload. Most of that happened in the 80’s but they should still be available in the 90’s. Also a bunch of Winchester model 94’s. Used to see them all the time at gun shows for $200 or so. Clinton’s assault weapon bill was 1994, so bad luck there. Bolt action import rifles were still pretty cheap, if you’re in the mood for that.
There’s other stuff that comes to mind, but trying to store, protect, and preserve stuff for 30 years has a cost to it also. Even if it doubles in price, the storage costs alone will eat into that profit. Gold, silver and lead are far easier than any other trinkets for long term wealth. Says the poor man typing this.
I often think about this. Practically speaking I’d avoid Wife #1 like the plague, but I have two Daughters out of the arrangement I adore, so the pain was worth the reward.
Financially just bet heavily on the Super Bowl outcomes, since I already know the winners. It’d be too late to avoid the Bush gun ban.
A lot of the stuff already mentioned but the sports history is essential to start building the nest egg with gimbling.
Get a Class III FFL and buy every machinegun I can find.
I don’t comment on blogs much anymore, found its a waste of energy. But..
I see this question around the blogs regularly and always see the same answers. But sometimes there is at least 1 person who understands what must be done to save their kids and grandkids no matter what. While the rest or Conservatives wax poetically about buying stocks and cars and homes in soon to be high demand future. That’s why the kids hate us now and why the right’s so call conservatives always lose and are willing losers.
If I went back to 1995, as you say.. I’d invest as much as possible into the stocks of certain companies. I’d also know not to give my ex-wife the time of day upon meeting her in 1996.
Yeah, that would pre-emptively “kill” the 3 children I have with her, but I’d simply think of it as a new timeline and say to myself that they still exist in the other one, while in the new one I get to have other kids with a different woman. Or not. I might end up staying single in a new timeline. Or I might try the “passport bro” route and move to the Philippines or something. Who knows?
Since I was well under the age of majority in ’95, I’m gonna have to tweak the prompt a little bit and say I woke up in 1995, same age as I am currently with all of my memories and my current bank account.
My list would pretty much mirror yours:
-Buy stock in all the big companies
-Buy a house in my current area with a BIG basement to fit the HO scale model railroad I’ve wanted to build since I was a kid but have never had the budget or space for.
-Buy a ’89 Ferrari 238 GTB. I don’t think anyone really wanted them back when (they’d been supplanted by the 348 in ’89/90 and then the legendary F355 in ’95) so I could probably get a nice one for cheap.
-When budget allows, find and buy a Mannlicher-Schoenauer 1903 carbine with the full-length forestock and double-set triggers.