Doesn’t have to be thousands of dollars. Just a thing you spent money on that turned out to be a complete waste.
Not being born rich.
Marriage
Changed major from civil engineering to computer science
The most recent was waiting for the 32GB RAM sticks I needed to max out my hypervisor to go on sale below $120.
Waiting for the bubble to burst before buying a house.
Anytime now…
It will the day I buy.
I was waiting too. Sorry buddy.
I bought a 2-metre mini-USB cable, once. In 2021. For €10. It may not be the worst in terms of pure monetary amount, but definitely worst in terms of use to cost.
Heat pump water heater by A.O. Smith. Failed in its first year, and now its warranty replacement is failing in the exact same way 13 months later.
Remains to be seen how well the installer will resolve this but given they’ve been largely ghosting me I’m pessimistic enough to have already written up an entire BBB complaint.
The concept of a heat pump water heater is great. And when it works it’s great. But this is some awful, awful, awful reliability.
I was conned into going into ITT Tech out of high school. I learned a lot but didn’t find out until later it was unaccredited so nothing would transfer to colleges and that they had lied heavily about their placement numbers. There were a few issues keeping from going after them: it was my parent’s money, the point in time I went wasn’t part of the lawsuit, and my parents were dead when the lawsuit came about. I cannot put ITT Tech on my resume because of everything related to it, it’s a literal black mark. So I have to stretch the truth of those two years because of it.
I doubt it’s the worst financial decision but I paid a lot of money during the iTunes era where you paid a buck for a song.
Buying shares in Superdry, J D Wetherspoon and Boohoo. All three lost me about £2k combined. I don’t know much about the fast fashion industry, and the purchase of Spoons’ shares was because I thought the hospitality industry was going to go through a post-COVID bounceback.
Second to that, investing in a few startups via Seedrs/Republic (crowd equity platform) that eventually folded. One was a dating app that only ever managed to get a few thousand users. One was a digital painting tagging company that seemed sus in the first place. Another was DeadHappy, a life insurance broker that lost all its business after running an offensive ad campaign referencing notorious British serial killer Harold Shipman.
AT the start of COVID, I bought shares in an airline because I figured that once lockdown was over, everyone would go crazy traveling everywhere and the airline stock would skyrocket (pun intended.)
It didn’t work lol
Biggest financial mistakes were mostly related to education, going into it without a clear goal/before I was ready, and paying for some courses that weren’t accredited by a university or association.
Same here. Went to school for music industry arts. Havent made a damn cent since.
I know an ~32 that is about 2 courses away from getting their BA in Fine Arts in music. They just stopped there. Haven’t used any of that study since.
If you’re talking strictly financial, getting married. I wouldn’t trade that part of my life, or the kids if got out of it, but strictly financially, I lost more than most people make in a lifetime.
I went into it with a sizeable emergency fund and well on track for an early retirement
Then I got laid off at the wrong time and used my emergency fund in a fancy wedding ceremony. I figured I could make it back pretty quickly, especially with the second income
But I quickly realized I wasn’t saving anything. When a medical emergency hit, my only recourse was a loan and emergency withdrawal from 401k
Fast forward 20 years and still no savings. While I had paid off the 401k loan, I made no contributions. Now I was way behind being able to retire. Then divorce happened. Lost half my house, half my 401k, but no savings to lose.
Now I’m living alone in the same house. I have a huge car loan. I have huge child support payments. I have college expenses for two kids. Yet I’ve been able to rebuild my emergency savings and max out 401k contributions. I’m in much better shape financially, just running out of time to save
Dude…if it has tits or tires it’s going to cost a lot of money
I used to sell plasma, and I used the funds on Robinhood to try investing without affecting my regular cash flow. Through sheer luck, in one day, my account went from around $200 to over $2500. I was overjoyed. I’d clearly made a genius-level decision that would only continue to pay out.
Anyway, I woke up the next day with less than I’d had to start. Should’ve taken the money and run. Or not tried to time the market. Either way, it felt like I’d lost $2300 instead of $50.
Need to read a random walk down wall street. Great book. The premise is no matter what news story hits the market, that information is already reflected in the stock price. Therefore, his theory is that you cannot out beat the market and it is in your best interest to dollar cost average a market tracker. That is investing. Myself I believe what you are describing is gambling.
Might want to check this out: Beat The Couch.
That’s an interesting game but it assumes the same amount either in or out all at once. Not what I’m describing where each month you invest a set amount into the market each time. This is what 401ks do. While the beat the couch is pretty cool it doesn’t take into account the dollar cost averaging aspect. It’s all in or all out. It’s not in, then buy more, then buy more, then buy more then buy more etc…you get the picture.
Having said that it is absolutely true that time in the market is better than timing the market.
This is why I don’t invest. I tried it for a relatively short span of time. It was a large company that isn’t a scam or anything but I can’t remember the name of it. They had three sort of options for investing…1. high risk/reward, 2. Medium risk/reward, and 3. Low risk/reward.
I either picked 2 or 3 or something. Can’t remember which. All that stupid thing did was lose money due to broker fees. I watched the money slowly drop over the span of around a year from “fees” with literally never earning a dime. I thought it was ridiculous so I pulled the rest of the funds.
I instead chose to place that money in a high yield savings account. Does it earn money quickly? No. But it isn’t wildly unpredictable like investing and it will never lose money unless I take money out. Investing isn’t for me.
Options trading when I was younger. Luckily I didn’t put too much into it and had a bump just before I pulled out so I didn’t lose much. It turned me into a modified boglehead, which worked out great over the next 20+ years, so lesson learned.
1981 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. Spent more on the transmission than I did on the car. Fucking cool though.
Paying my ex wife the money she wanted just to be rid of her
No no, getting married was the poor financial decision. After that, paying for the divorce to be rid of her was an investment in your sanity and happiness.
