You're free to invest in anything you want - short of a court order or some specific law about where your money is spent (i.e. no helping those on certain bad-b

You're free to invest in anything you want - short of a court order or some specific law about where your money is spent (i.e. no helping those on certain bad-boy lists of the US government), no one can stop you. The difference is that those seeking investment are limited in how they may approach non-accredited investors, ostensibly for the protection of the "little people", to use a phrase recently in the news. Much of this is driven by a (valid) concern for liability. I've personally been a part of a company that had accepted investments from non-accredited investors in its early days. One of those investors decided he wanted out early, before the stock had become liquid (i.e it was still privately held). He took the approach of arguing that he'd been taken advantage of in his ignorance of risk, and the company took the probably wise step of finding a way to undo his investment. Accreditation is not strictly a net-worth evaluation. If you are very knowledgeable person in a given area of expertise, a company may be comfortable with accepting your investment even with your lower net worth/ Your net worth is not strictly your cash in hand - if a reasonable person would value your forthcoming payout as worth $1 MM, then the corporate attorney for whomever you're interested in would likely be comfortable enough to advise his client to accept your money.