I just made a bonehead financial decision that is likely to cost me $15,000 or so over several years. I have no excuse for my poor decision making, it was just a stupid thing to do. It won’t break me, but it’s money If rather be using for something worthwhile.
Please make me feel better. What’s the dumbest financial move you’ve ever made? How did you recover?
Well this week I booked a house on AirBnB with a strict cancellation policy. Turns out I did it for the wrong dates and I might be out $1300 now. Not exactly what you were looking for, but it’s nevertheless rather boneheaded.
I put over $100,000 into a small business I started and which went under eventually. That was a hole that was hard to dig out of. Now that it’s ancient history, I can see some value in the endeavor.
Selling my Apple stock at $24…
Got in a car accident and found out I didn’t have collision coverage. Cost me around $1,400.
Gave hundreds of dollars to a friend. Shouldn’t have.
Wasted perhaps $2,000 in unnecessary spending over two years.
Ugh, sorry to hear - is there no way to cancel or terminate it before it reaches full damage?
When we decided to divorce, my then-wife suggested we wait to finalize the matter until after our kids were both out of high-school, at which time she would sign and walk away. I agreed.
I moved out and bought a house. I worked my ass off to pay my mortgage and to send her money equal to what my take home pay at the time was. After six years of this she got an attorney and fought tooth and nail to get all she could. Our oral agreement was worth nothing.
Final cost (not including legal fees) = $150,000.
My divorce is the most expensive thing I ever bought, but worth every penny.
When we were first married, we found a house that we really wanted. This was 1983/84 when mortgage rates were stupidly high, but we were sure we would manage. Less than 2 years later, we moved on to our boat, renting the house out at less than the mortgage amount, but enough that we could afford to hold on to it… barely. A year later, we decided to cut our losses and sell the place. We had to go to closing with about $4K in hand.
All thing considered, we wasted many thousands of dollars because we were being impulsive rather than smart. Had we stayed put in the first place, even tho it wasn’t nearly as nice a house, it was tons cheaper to operate and maintain, no HOA, and for two of us plus a baby, it would have been plenty. Not our proudest moment.
Couple years out of college + decent paying wall st. job + few expenses + dot-com bubble + ignorance of how amateur an investor I was (made worse by cockiness due to said wall st. job). ~30K in the red when all was said and done.
Took over a decade to write it all off as capital gains loss, which softened it a tiny little bit. Is it possible to mitigate your loss similarly?
Other than buying a Timeshare…
I was working for a company that got bought. As part of the deal, we were presented with a “Stay Bonus” - if we stayed with the new company for a year, we got a bonus of multiples of $10K. Also, the new company paid a yearly bonus too, and the pay was better. Well, it also happened to be HELL! So, I started looking for a new job in advance of the year expiring, hoping it all timed out right.
In my line of work, there are only a handful of employers, so jobs don’t come by much. So, I got the offer and they wanted me to start NOW. If I took the new job I would give up the Stay Bonus and the yearly bonus. I if didn’t take the job I would be stuck in HELL! for I don’t know how long. So, I took the job and walked away from a pile of money. Oh, and the new company didn’t pay as well, and didn’t have any yearly bonus.
While it may not have qualified as a mistake, per se, it did cost me bonus money, and probably continues to cost me earnings money.
Well, I (along with my wife) put about $200,000 into a small business that we owned, and which we are closing up at the end of this month. You could say that it was a costly “mistake”, but we stand to recoup the investment when we sell our house (soon, I hope). Plus, it gave us a year and a half of running a business, which led to a lot of networking, meeting great people, making excellent contacts, and learning a bunch about the administrative side of a business venture. I don’t think of it as a mistake, at all.
The costliest mistake, then, has probably been each time that I put $2 down on a powerball ticket. That’s a mistake with no dividends.
(Or, perhaps the Saturn Sky convertible I bought about 6 years ago, which I eventually traded in. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it immensely, but I was so enamored with the interest free financing that I didn’t do as good a job negotiating the price as I should have. I got the distinct impression, once I closed on the sale, that I had overpaid, even though I was comfortable with the payments).
But if the job was really making you miserable, it was worth the lost money. Seriously.
I have two, one is not contributing to my 401k during my first year of full time employment because I thought I need that extra 6%. Lord knows how much I lost out on if you figure the growth over time.
The second is we bought our house during the height of inflated real estate pricing. I mean if there was a worst possible week to buy a house, we nailed it. Within months, comp houses in our area were selling for just over half what we paid. So that was a bad investment.
I have a first cousin who is a stockbroker. My mistake was opening an account with him.
I should have taken better care of my teeth when I was younger (I brushed but didn’t visit the dentist regularly or handle minor issues in a timely fashion). Lord only knows what that’s cost me over the years.
Trusting my then-boyfriend when I was 22 years old and giving him a credit card on my account, which he proceeded to max out on tools and buying rounds at the bar after work. I had no idea until I went to pay for our dinner at his work’s Christmas party and my card was declined.
Which is why I hesitate to call it a mistake…
Spending about thirty thousand dollars fighting my employer. It turns out I couldn’t beat the State of New York in a dispute.
On the one hand, I’d have been better off financially to have just done what they wanted without a costly fight. On the other hand, I’d probably be miserable with the knowledge that I hadn’t made an effort, even if it was futile, to fight for what I thought was right.
I put my inheritance into my IRA…and now I’m getting charged taxes for what should have been “basis.” I’ll probably end up paying an accountant a grand to help me fix this.
I’m $150,000 into my small business plus I’ve spend another $60K living while my job paid me nothing. Right now I’m looking for another job if I or my wife find one the company will go under so I’m looking at 200+ down the drain but it’s been the best job I’ve ever had for the most part. Now if we can just to the corner to profitable before I find a job so the company doesn’t crumble without me I’ll be back to being a genius.