# What's the costliest financial mistake you've made? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 8, 2015, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838 "2015-12-08T19:05:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/41 "2015-12-09T06:18:32Z")
$230,000 Invested in developing several properties. 2 office condos, fourplex. The the crash came bank stopped lending building money and demanded payments. Projects were not completed so could not sell any of the units to pay the banks. The LLC went bankrupt. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/42 "2015-12-09T06:36:49Z")
> [@skdo23](#): > > I took my Star Wars action figures out of their original packaging and played with them when I was a kid. I stuck my Hank Aaron baseball card into my pocket for a day and ruined it. ---
**Author:** ![Mona\_Lott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ee7513/32.png) [@Mona\_Lott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mona_Lott)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/43 "2015-12-09T10:38:34Z")
I co-signed loans for two “friends”, both of whom proceeded to cease making payments to the bank. The total amount was $33,000. This was 14 years ago. I had to re-finance my paid for house. I am just now seeing the end of this nightmare. Never again will I lend anyone so much as a quarter. ---
**Author:** ![BrightSunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b3f665/32.png) [@BrightSunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightSunshine)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/44 "2015-12-09T11:31:33Z")
Got a loan to help my brother get out of credit card debt charging 30% interest. He stopped paying me back after 2 payments. With inflation it’s probably worth about $20k now. Since I learned not to trust him again, however, it was a comparatively cheap lesson. My brother is a very good conman and other relatives had it much worse. My aunt and uncle lost a significant chunk of their retirement funds on one of his scam “businesses.” ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/45 "2015-12-09T11:59:14Z")
> [@glowacks](#): > > All those cards that I sold are worth ten to twenty (maybe more, I haven’t looked recently) as much now. Remember that it’s never wrong to sell at a profit. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/46 "2015-12-09T12:13:36Z")
My financial advisor presciently recommended selling off all my regional-bank stocks just as the first rumblings on the 2008 crisis were starting to appear, but I told him I didn’t want to take a big capital gains tax hit in a single year. That mistake probably cost me about $50,000. More recently, I fell for a Craigslist scam, and that cost me about $1,500. That one wasn’t totally my fault, though – the young bank teller should have been known, and told me, what a “check clearing” _doesn’t_ mean – but I really should have known better (I was in a hurry). ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/47 "2015-12-09T12:21:36Z")
15 Years ago, I ummed and aah’d over the purchase of a loft-style apartment in the regenerating ‘Shoreditch’ area of east London. It was £250k for close to 2000 square feet. I decided the area was still too lacking in amenities. Those apartments now go for well over £4million :smack::smack::smack: ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/48 "2015-12-09T12:30:24Z")
When I was 22, I paid $700 for an old Fiat Spider to a friendly old couple. They said they didn’t have the title handy, but would send it along when they found it. Ebery time I called about it, they were still looking. Maybe six months later the car died on me and I left it parked on a residential street. It was impounded before I got back to it, and the city said it had been towed from impounded by the lienholder, who had to be notified. Yep, they’d filed the title months before but put themselves on it as lienholders supposedly because “I didn’t give them the money to file for a new title.” (They’d also hurried to get the car out of impound out of concern for me.") I never asked them to, of course, but that started a rigamarole where it became apparent I’d never get the car back without paying more than I’d paid for it originally. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/49 "2015-12-09T13:35:59Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In 1997, I was visiting the computer science dept at Stanford and a young graduate student gave a seminar talk on his idea for a new browser. I though at the time that I should have gone up to him and said something like, “Sergey, if you ever start a company based on this browser let me invest in it.” I thought to say it, but I didn’t. His advisor–a good friend of mine–did invest. I can only assume he made hundreds of millions on it. What would a $10K investment be worth. i can only speculate. Reminds me of a story my dad told me when he was in college (in the 1920’s) of a friend urging him to invest in a company that was growing, and he passed it up…so he never did get stock in 3M… As for me, I’ve loaned about $5,000 to various people over the years that I never got back; but to be fair, I knew it was a poor risk from the start and had the money to give without seriously damaging my financial situation. Probably my costliest mistake was letting the merchant in Jerusalam in 2013 talk me into buying a short sword and dagger set for $5,000…still have no idea why I did something that stupid, I don’t collect items like that and I can’t believe that they would be worth that much anywhere else. Dumb. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/50 "2015-12-09T16:12:42Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > 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. That would be an education, not a mistake. And it will probably be more useful than any college degree you could get. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/51 "2015-12-09T16:14:59Z")
I lent $15,000 I can prove (and a lot more than that, but I can only find paperwork on that much) out of my home equity loan to my ex. Well, he wasn’t my ex at the time. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/52 "2015-12-09T16:22:27Z")
> [@glowacks](#): > > I bought a collection of Magic: The gathering cards around 2001 for around $2000, all the cash I had in my savings, because I knew I could sell it piecemeal for at least that much, most likely more. … > … > > All those cards that I sold are worth ten to twenty (maybe more, I haven’t looked recently) as much now. Deciding to cash out of both of them instead of further speculating on their rise in price is the worst investment decision I ever made. And it was an investment decision: all the proceeds went to paying off student loan debt faster while maintaining emergency cash reserves. The interest I saved on those loans is paltry compared to what might have been. On a related note, I sold off my video game collection in the mid-90’s on the notion that adults don’t play video games and didn’t get into the hobby again until about 2010, missing the entire golden age of retro video game collecting, mid-90’s to mid-00’s. ---
**Author:** ![stillownedbysetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/41988e/32.png) [@stillownedbysetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stillownedbysetters)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/53 "2015-12-09T16:36:33Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > It’s a grim story, but I have to ask – if your son got the life insurance, was he not able to help you? Had I gotten absolutely desperate, I would have asked him. But while I had to radically downsize, I was never at the point of desperation. I’ll see where I am come retirement time. If I need some help then, he and I have discussed it and he’ll provide it if needed. I’m a really tough independent old cuss, which is probably serving me well in this instance. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/54 "2015-12-09T17:20:36Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I stuck my Hank Aaron baseball card into my pocket for a day and ruined it. I had 3 Wayne Gretzky rookie cards when I was kid. Left them behind (with the rest of my childhood things) in the attic of our apartment when I was 13. In my defense I was only 13 and moving into a bachelor apt. shared with my mom and only took what I could carry. When my dad moved out of that apartment he left everything in the attic behind. 30 years later I’m still pissed off about it. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/55 "2015-12-09T17:41:43Z")
I was working for a company who got acquired. About six months later, my manager quit suddenly. I met him for lunch a couple of weeks later. He told me, “If the company ever promises you anything, get it in writing.” I didn’t listen. I also let my father talk me out of buying some stock with money I earned in high school. My father is a wonderful guy, but he is not a shrewd investor. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/56 "2015-12-09T17:50:20Z")
Co-signed a vehicle loan for my brother. Vehicle was repossessed. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/57 "2015-12-09T19:21:15Z")
I once paid $7.48 for a membership to a free message board, several years in a row. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/58 "2015-12-09T19:38:09Z")
Bought £1,000 of shares that then rose to about £30,000 in value. I had bought through a friend because he already had a brokerage account so I called him and asked him to sell my amount. He said he didn’t want to get pushed into the higher tax bracket (he didn’t understand the concept of marginal tax) and couldn’t find the share certificate. I decided to be polite and not push the matter and hey they’d probably rise even higher. Then the dotcom bubble burst and they’re now worth 80p in total. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/59 "2015-12-09T19:46:21Z")
If I could go back in time to 2004 and tell us not to buy a house two months before the bubble popped… Bought for $560,000, gave it back to the bank after they wouldn’t negotiate with us after my husband was unemployed for over a year, and they sold it to someone else in 2009 for $220,000. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838/60 "2015-12-09T19:51:20Z")
Actually, I take it back. By far the costliest mistake I made was saying “OK” when my wife said she was thinking of quitting her city job. Not only did we lose that income, but also the cushy government health insurance. Probably cost over $300K, that “OK.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-costliest-financial-mistake-youve-made/739838.md?page=4)