I’d probably use the money to build a small physical asset that serves a community — something like a coffee stand, a laundromat, or even a village solar charging station. Something low-maintenance, low-tech, and useful.

But honestly… I’m currently helping build a classroom in rural Tajikistan, where kids walk 5 km to school every day. Not exactly a revenue-generating asset — unless you count hope, literacy, and the occasional "thank you" as ROI.

So yeah, maybe not the most lucrative investment, but probably one of the most fulfilling

What works for me may not be a priority to others but the freeze dried food I purchased in the last few years has more than doubled in value. I could sell it and / or I can eat it. There is no volatility in the foreseeable future. It will be at least 97% the nutritional value and taste for the rest of my life and the lives of my family members. It's value only increases in war-time. It is protected from future biological warfare contaminants that may get into the food supply. It can not be zeroed out by network hacks. It is much harder to steal than cash or digital currency. It does not require the internet. It can be sold, traded or bartered locally even if the concept of money ceases to exist. That is good enough for me personally.

Machine tools.

A lot of people complain that China has made manufacturing cheap but they forget that manufacturing tooling is itself manufactured. These days you can construct a small factory for less than it costs to commute to one.

I'd probably also upgrade the machine I use for ML.

I would work a year for myself. Both to build a business and to focus on fitness. That's actually what I'm doing right now. Investing in myself, I would say.

With what you've said, the only options are you either invest it in something that will appreciate above the inflation rate with manageable risk, or you invest it in a small business with return cash flow. The idea is to diversify in risk managed assets.

Bonds are out. Commodities are out. Equity Securities, Index and ETFs are all out. All of these are overpriced, have unmanageable risk, and will lose people money; even the best traders out there will lose money on these.

The stock market is not an investment, its a casino where the PFOF house always wins. Price discovery failed when 25% of the exchange transactions started occurring in dark pools; its well over half now. Any investment in the stock market is burning money in effigy. Google Stop loss hunting, market manipulation (FRC/GME), PFOF, synthetic shares via options contracts, etc; to get an idea of how bad of an idea it is to do this.

Sectors that serve non-discretionary goods are usually more stable in down economies than other areas.

Given the massive list of restrictions on how the hypothetical $35,000 could be used, leads me to believe that it's come from illegal activities. In which case you'd want to launder it and then use it to pay your lawyer, as that would be an investment that might keep you out of jail :)

Elevator pitch: It's not well known that the diesel engine in a diesel locomotive does not mechanically drive the wheels to make the train go, it turns a generator that supplies power to electric motors that turn the wheels. I'd like to build a better hybrid by replacing an EV's battery with a (towable) generator. ~$5k for SmartForTwo EV with an 84kW motor would be my choice. The generator needed is unknown so budget an electrical engineer for $10k or so and that leaves $20k for the generator. (The towable requirement is only in case the research proves to be a failure I could still sell electricity to my neighbors in a grid-down situation :) Production targets would be busses, 18-wheeler tractors, Cybertrucks... If we could attain a multiple of current mpg at decent speeds it would be a startup.

Create a mini-cat shelter. I don't know about growing the money, but you will have a lot of cats.

Let's thinking through the problem... Basically you have a decent amount of money, but cannot invest/use it in the typical ways people might.

Given you're asking for something out of the box by definition you'll have to approach this from first principles and find some novel way to invest it which maximises risk-reward.

The most obvious place to start is to consider where you have unfair advantages. Small amounts of money are actually quite easy to invest with excess returns because you can exploit large misprices in small and inefficient markets.

A good example would be to look at your local Facebook marketplace, or better still garage / car boot sales. Find items which are pricey $5,000-$10,000, but you know could be sold for more... Knowledge of some kind of collectable could be useful here – vintage instruments, watches, jewellery, furniture, tools, etc.

If you're really ballsy you could actively seek out people with valuables who are ideally in desperate situations and offer them cash for their valuables. So for example, if you see a vintage car on someone's drive you could send them a letter with a low-ball cash offer. Most of the time they'll ignore it but do it 100 times and you'll likely get a hit. Buy for 20% under market price and sell for 5% more, and you're making around a 30% return per transaction. Do this a couple of times a year and you'll probably be able to replace your income. The issue is it's a lot of work and it doesn't scale well because you're exploiting very small local markets.

Classic cars, if you're into cars. Think older Porsche 911, muscle cars, Broncos, old pickup trucks, etc. This is not mine, and probably not $35k, but it can be an investment that you can have a lot of fun with. https://ibb.co/Vcby0WXC

In the past? Take some time off, do some reading, attend a couple college courses, fart around and see where the winds take me. Now? I would probably buy a bunch of musical equipment and start a music production company. But, in reality, I am attempting to acquire a business so this would make for a down payment on a loan.

Buy a minimal set of tools and start flipping cars. Then try to get a dealership license in your state. Start with small fixups and detailing work, flip one car, use the proceeds to get something a little more valuable, repeat.

Be honest with people when selling, no slimy sales tactics, ask for referrals. Maybe every few cars find someone who is in desperate need and sell it at cost, ask for referrals. Buy some more tools, repeat. Maybe get a small shop with a lift. Maybe hire a certified tech for really tough problems, someone who values integrity and doing a job right, like a semi-retired person that knows a lot.

Grow that $35k into a viable, honest, local, AI-proof business.

I know you said "you can't say startups", but I'll interpret that to mean "startup" as meant by SV types. Given the restrictions you list, the only investment that would interest me is funding my own small business.

Real estate. always.

35k is enough for a down payment on a small apartment. If you have a job, you can usually get a loan from most banks.

With good preparation and patience, you can cover all your costs by renting out your property and generate a monthly profit.

Invest in yourself somehow - fly to a city full of opportunity and rent an airbnb, a few outfits you like, host a small event every week, hire tutors, that kinda thing.

I think your question is really what business do you start, given you can't really invest it.

For me that would be a tech or tech education business.

- collectible things like art

- other reserve assets like gold

- small businesses like a car wash or ice cream truck

- things you rent out: big tools, cars, parking lot

I would put it in a mattress. Because

  We must do something
  This is something
  Therefore we must do it

Is poor decision making, preservation is a very good way to handle wealth, and I don’t have a good idea.

Sure, I have lots of dubious ideas…$35k will buy a nice synthesizer, but wealth is not needing to grow your money and being wealthy is the ability to wait for appropriate investments.

The question is how active so your want to be with this? If you just want to buy something and sit on it and then sell it down the road for a decent amount of profit, you didn't exclude commodities, and while they wouldn't be my first choice of what to invest into (aka don't do this, this is not financial advice), but gold is a very traditional one that has appreciated enough in the past couple of years so as to not be totally ridiculous an investment. Assuming that $35k isn't a large fraction of your portfolio, that is. Diversification is the name of the game, so something not in the stock market that shows some history is enough to consider under the confines of this question.

But seriously, if there were some secret investment vehicle that wasn't so secret so as to actually be a secret, and that wasn't a scam half the time, people would know about it and talk about it as a real option. There's a reason that index funds in the stock market are the default advice for non-professional investors. If you're an active investor and have access to good deals, there are good deals out there, but not if you only have $35k. If you do have access to secret private equity deals, that would be investing into companies, but for the most part, ones that aren't start-ups.

Back to the question of how active you want to be with the money though. If you want to quit your day job and be actively doing something with the money, there's things you can buy and then maybe fix up, and then sell for a small profit. do that enough times and you've made a tiny bit of profit. At that price point, used cars that need work come to mind. How much you'd net isn't going to be all that large, and there's a large investment in tools and of time into it, but there's that. Getting a car and renting it out on Turo/Get around might be viable, or driving for Uber/Lyft but that's not a hands off money generator.

Buy gold bullion.

Food.

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