First two key points about my background: (1) My father owned his own one-man European auto repair shop for 40+ years in Minnesota. After high school I went on to a two-year auto mechanic program at my local technical college. So I've always had some interest/experience/knowledge about autos. (2) I've been a competitive endurance athlete most of my life, started cross-country ski racing at 8, and was a professional cross-country mountain biker for a few years. Needless to say, health and wellness have been central fixations/obsessions for a long time, so much so that when I finally went to university in my late-20s I got a degree in biology with the intention to work on environmental sustainability.
In 2016 I got my first healthcare travel assignment in California, near Monterey (I live in Arizona). Long story short, there were 3 lab techs that greatly influenced me to buying TSLA: one who owned a Nissan Leaf, one who bought a house trading on margin, and another who was an investor who followed Warren Buffet's investing philosophy.
Understand, I had never bought a share of anything up to this point. In fact, after living through the dot-com bubble, and 2008 financial crisis, I swore I'd never put my money in the smoke-and-mirrors that is the stock market. I've always had a strong conviction the whole thing was rigged and fake. Anyway, so the guy with the Leaf taught me about EVs in general, and I was immediately intrigued, since I had never heard of EVs at all up to this point. He put me on to Electrek, and I got most of my knowledge about Tesla and other EVs from that one website. The other two techs got me into investing. So in 2016 I bought my first stock ever: TSLA. I rolled over a 401k from a previous employer, and opened a Roth so I could better keep track of my money. But I never invested much, had a "diversified" portfolio as they say, and only held long in my Roth that I paid the maximum into each year.
Fast forward to 2019. Lots of bad news on Tesla (I didn't know then it was all engineered FUD, didn't learn about these sorts of things until stumbling on to this forum). I felt really sad for Tesla. I felt, and still do, that Tesla is one of the rare pro-environment companies in a world collapsing into an environmental abyss. So I pulled the trigger and bought a SR+ M3, just to help the company out, nothing more (up to that point I had never spent more on a car than I have for a quality racing bicycle and had a personal rule never to do so). In Dec. of last year when the stock popped, I could see Tesla was finally gaining significant traction, so I sold all my other holdings and dumped it into TSLA. In February of this year, after my Roth more than doubled, I dumped my entire life's savings (down payment for a home) into TSLA because of what I've learned mainly through this investor forum and my own reading.
It's crazy what a difference a few months make. Never thought I'd be this close to retirement at 41. Even if the stock dropped by 75% now it wouldn't matter, I'm sitting very very well.
Thank you to so many on this forum, I'd never be where I am today without you guys/gals and a ton of luck. I've been homeless and lived intermittently in my vehicles chasing my dreams for more years than I'd care to admit, so this new chapter in my life feels especially sweet.