Almost exactly 25 years ago, Forest Gump was released. It had the quote, "[Lt. Dan] got me invested in some kind of fruit company. And so then I got a call from him saying we don't have to worry about money no more and I said, 'That's good. One less thing'."
I've owned the stock off and on since that time, including my first custodial brokerage account I opened with $1000 from mowing yards and Christmas gifts. If I'd kept that $1,000 in AAPL since Forest Gump came out, and never added to it (except DRIP), it's be worth $530,000 today.
I was a somewhat early adopter of Amazon, using it to buy text books in undergrad and grad school. If instead of spending the approximately $7,000 on textbooks 16 years ago, I had instead bought shares of AMZN, I'd have $325,000 today.
I did my senior-level business negotiations project in 2004 on the likely fall of Blockbuster and the rise of Netflix and RedBox. Had I spent the $500 graduation gift from grandma on NFLX instead of apartment rent in Midtown, I'd have $50,000 today.