35 People Share The Biggest “Money Mistakes” They’ve Made That Changed Their Life For The Worse
Interview
When you were a kid, did you ever play the game of “If I had a million dollars, here’s how I would spend it”? Casual conversations would ensue with your friends about mansion with spiral staircases, gorgeous homes on the beach in Hawaii, private jets that would fly in and out of your backyard and the ranches you planned to own and fill with exotic animals. Little did we know at the time that it takes a lot more than a million dollars to own those things, and that it’s much harder to accumulate funds than to lose them.
In the spirit of having a realistic view of money, Reddit users have recently been confessing the worst financial mistakes they’ve ever made, and we thought it might be useful to pass along their knowledge, if it'll help any of you pandas avoid making the same mistakes. From plunging themselves into debt with student loans to trusting that their spouses would be wise with money, we’ve gathered some of the most painful mistakes down below. Keep reading to also find interviews with Reddit user The_guy321, who sparked this conversation in the first place, financial advisor Michael Kitces, and Jen Smith, co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast.
Be sure to upvote any responses that hit home or that you’ll keep in mind for the future, and then feel free to share any financial faux pas that you’re guilty of in the comments below. Then, if you’re interested in checking out a Bored Panda article featuring tips that can help you save a little extra money, look no further than right here!
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43 years of buying and smoking cigarettes
For those still smoking here's some tips. First of all: Keep trying, even if you fail a few times, keep in mind that higher and difficult goals may require more than one attempt. I used zyban to quit and whereas it is not scientifically proven, I felt it made a difference. Try mindfulness to learn that you do not have to act upon all thoughts. Try to avoid situations in which you see other people smoking. Don't give up, you can do it too!! Oh also important: Do not think that now that you haven't smoked for a while, you can try one cigarette, because you can't. That is still addiction talking. You can do it! I am cheering for you!!
To hear what sparked this conversation in the first place, we reached out to Reddit user The_guy321. He told Bored Panda, "I recently have been focusing more on my financial health. I am nearly 38, and the weight of long term financial planning is setting in."
"I asked the question for two reasons. First, so I could learn from the collective mind that is Reddit on what to avoid. Second, entertainment value. Some of the answers had me laughing pretty good (hopefully with the commenter)." He added that, thankfully, he's never made any significant financial mistakes himself, but he does wish he had invested more earlier on.
Becoming a doctor. At the end of the day, it’s just a job. It wasn’t worth flushing my 20’s down the drain and accumulating a mountain of debt for this. I’m (finally) in a good spot in life now, but I don’t think the sacrifices I made to get here were worth it. Even from a less self-centered point of view, I don’t really do that much good for others with this job. Modern medicine is so much better at dragging out death than it is at improving life, and I’m tired of being a part of it.
A doctor told me, "Im trying to help you live longer." Woman, I have a chronic condition that puts me in pain every. Single. Day., will eventually cause one or more organs to fail and will be on my death certificate as contributing cause of death. That is my reality and I have learned to deal with it. For the love of God, can we stop trying to get me to live longer in agony and concentrate on quality of life instead of quantity. Thank You! This dr gets it!
We were also curious if The_guy321 learned anything from the responses to his post. "According to the comments, don't get married!" he shared. "I am too late to avoid that, but I have no complaints in making that decision."
He also shared a few tips for anyone who's recently made a financial faux pas or doesn't have the best track record managing their money. "Check out r/personalfinance on Reddit. Tons of great information and helpful people." Some of his top tips were, "Live within your means, avoid credit card debt, build up a 3-6 month emergency fund, then invest in index funds as early and as much as you can until you are nearing retirement age."
And if you make a mistake, don't beat yourself up about it. "Mistakes happen," The_guy321 told Bored Panda. "Learn from them, and move on. Dwelling on the negativity does no good."
Didn't contribute to my 401k for like 15 years. what a doof.
CheesyComestibles added:
I just this year started a retirement account. Nobody taught me about this s**t. I'm 12 years into working. I could have had 12 years of gains, but instead got like 10 bucks interest in my savings account.
Why is money management not mandatory for high school graduation? I was taught nothing. I still know very little and trying to teach myself is like pulling teeth.
I never even had the option of a 401K. Pretty sure I'm going to work until I die.
Agreed to take over my ex gfs bills so that she could pay off her debts. 5 years and over $100,000 of my money later she was in more debt than when we started and cheating on me. Don't ever do this, just make her be an adult or dump her a*s. It's never worth it
No, you tried to be a good partner. You just kept doing it too long. You should set your limit and if nothing was changing.. then yes leave.
We also reached out to financial advisor Michael Kitces to gain more insight on this topic from an expert. Michael was kind enough to open up about some of the financial mistakes he made in the past that he's not particularly proud of. "I think the highlight is probably in my college years, back in the 1990s," he told Bored Panda. "I had been an avid player of Magic: The Gathering (in its early days!), and had a lot of the really rare unique cards from the early years."
"In 1999, I sold my Magic collection for $2,000 (back then, that was a lot of money!), so that I could put it into an online brokerage account to become a day-trader (the tech stock boom of the 1990s had a day-trading phenomenon similar to the Robinhood era of today!). Within 12 months, I had lost all $2,000," Michael confessed. "Nearly 25 years later, Magic The Gathering remains incredibly popular, and I was able to recently estimate that the cards would be worth well over $50,000 if I had just kept them instead of trying to day-trade stocks."
Getting married to the wrong partner.
People like to think about marriage as an emotional and physical commitment and tend to forget that it's a financial commitment as well.
If you get entangled with someone who has no clue how financial management works, you're in for a rollercoaster ride straight to hell.
can confirm. First girlfriend - I called off the marriage for this reason.
Bought a mobile home as a starter home. No one ever explained to me as a young adult the importance of investment and future planning. Mobile homes of course do not hold nor increase in value so you never build equity. It's akin to renting except you have to cover all your own repair costs too.
Terrible financial decision. Don't buy mobile homes kids. Just don't do it
Never buy a mobile home where you are renting the land. That is the biggest scam of them all. The homes are very expensive to move so you are at the whim of the landowners. There is a whole predatory investment class specifically for owning mobile home parks because the home owners are completely at the whim of the land owners.
If you've made some mistakes with your money, don't be too hard on yourself. Michael believes that this is an experience we all go through; sometimes, we just need to learn lessons the hard way. "This money stuff isn’t easy, it isn’t logical for a lot of us, and it has a lot of emotional ties," he told Bored Panda. "I don’t know how anyone will be able to fully learn how to overcome their impulses without some pain and hard lessons along the way."
"The faster/earlier we learn these lessons (the hard way), the more time we have to live a life with those lessons going forward! But the idea of 'you can have more wealth if only you didn’t make all those mistakes' may be literally true, but in practice, is an unrealistic idealistic dream. You can’t learn to build wealth without the learning that comes from mistakes along the way!"
Timeshare. I went to the seminar for a three nights stay at a beach resort. They got me. Phenomenal salesman, but they lie out of their asses. Spent thousands over a few years, only used the timeshare once, paid a lawyer to get us out of the contract (basically a mortgage). Now we’re free!
My wife and I went to a seminar for holiday apartments and the salesman showed us photos of him and his "girlfriend" at a similar timeshare to the ones they were selling. He was about five foot four, scrawny, and unremarkable. She was six foot , stunning and clearly a posing model. I did my best to stifle my laughter but gave in when my wife, splutter laughed at the obvious set up photos. He got up said something about losing his focus and left us sitting in the room giggling like a pair of kids. We finished our coffee and left quietly soon after.
I co-signed a loan for my girlfriend at the time. I was 20 and in love. She bought the car, then put it in her mothers name, filled for bankruptcy, and went to live with the guy she was cheating on me with.
F**k you Christine. Thank you for teaching me at such a young age how s****y people actually are.
Michael also told Bored Panda that the two biggest mistakes he sees most often are, "Those who spend too much time worrying about what they’re spending without focusing enough on what they’re earning (it’s a lot easier to build wealth by learning to get a raise than trying to cut your expenses to the bone!), and making spending decisions based on the perceptions of others (the most self-destructive spending decisions I see are those who try to buy what other people buy [even if they can’t afford it themselves], or buying what you believe will make you look good in front of others [the 'keeping up with the Joneses' phenomenon]) instead of just trying to spend money on the things that bring you enjoyment. Marie-Kondo your spending!"
Credit card debt. Finally paid everything off when we sold/bought our next house and made the promise to never carry any credit card debt. And we haven't.
Spending money on in-app purchases for mobile games. Bonuses, upgrades, special features…all so I can loose interest in the game a year later. It’s flushing money down the toilet.
If a game gives you enjoyment, if it's not *too* much money I think that's a fine investment. There aren't too many games I've played "forever" (Sotn, yes, and Minecraft to name a few that I've played for many years).
And even after making some financial faux pas, Michael is confident that there's always time to bounce back. "Perhaps the greatest example to me is Warren Buffett," he told Bored Panda. "Warren’s net worth today is over $100 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world. But he was 60 years old before he ever became a billionaire in the first place; which means it took him 60 years to get the first $1B, and the past 30 years to get the other $99 billion."
"When you recognize that even one of the richest people in the world started his first business delivering newspapers at age 14, but accumulated 99% of his wealth only after he turned 60, it gives an appreciation of just how long it takes to build wealth (and how much we can make up for in the later years)!"
If you'd like to gain more financial wisdom from Michael, be sure to check out his website right here!
Kept my money in a bank ($ 150,000) because they were offering high interest rates in a country with questionable economic condition where i lived at the time. The entire system crashed and i can't access my money since 2019 while the bank keeps charging me monthly fees, slowly draining my savings. Welcome to Lebanon.
Going to college right out of high school. College is great if you know why you're there, but not for someone who isn't yet sure.
I can't speak for everyone but when I was fixing to graduate high school back in 2000-2001, everyone thought college was the next step because literally no one ever told us anything different. Parents, teachers, school guidance counselors, and the culture. EVERYTHING was about pushing kids into the college pipeline."
Wolfbeckett added:
I literally thought everyone working trades were living in poverty until I was in like my mid-twenties because no one ever brought it up unless it was to disparage the whole idea of working for a living.
If I had it to do over again, I would have dropped out of high school when I was 16 and started attending community college. IMO the last two years of highschool and the first two years of college cover the same material. My BA was an absolute breeze, but it cost way more than it should have. In retrospect, I should have done two years high school, two years community college, and two years university. I'd have been done a lot faster.
You can do better in an apprenticeship. Get paid pretty good wages, work days, go to night school, and when you become a journeyman, start making damn good money. Or you can go to college, borrow a few hundred thousand, and spend the rest of your life trying to pay it off. Lot of people with BA's working at McDonalds, Door Dash, Uber, etc.
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I think we do young people a disservice by looking down on the trades. The world needs plumbers, electricians, medical technicians, heavy equipment operators, truck drivers, etc., etc.! We don't need a bunch of Art History graduates drowning in student loan debt who can't get jobs in their field! Technical school should be offered as an equally viable choice for after high school.
I pretty much have been saying this for years. However, I extend it to a lot of things people get degrees in. I never met a person with an MBA who could actually figure out why they were screwing up the company. It applies to a lot of things people get degrees for. They end up being hidebound by the thinking of the professors and then can't function realistically in the real world. Whereas, as you said, we need carpenters, plumbers, ditch diggers, etc. no matter what and they tend to be more able to figure things out.
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I graduated in 1985. Started college in 1990. Happened into a job I love that was not what I majored in. Brother 1 graduated high school in 1990 and started working manufacturing and always made more than me. Brother 2 dropped out of high school in 1992 and started running heavy equipment and made more money than the both of us.
Same here in Spain. I've even heard parents telling their kids to start any degree and they could change later. Hello???? Why waste time, money and energy doing some random, pointless activity? If you don't know what you want to do with your life, take a gap year, go and work in a foreign country, learn languages... Also, a lot of people despise "trades" and professional schools, but unless you can attend a good university and get very good marks, you will be an unemployed with a nice degree. The people I know working trades are faaaaaaaar better off than those with a regular university degree.
Or they need that degree for a job. A degree on IT, for example, opens many job opportunities
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I went straight to college after high school, because my mother told me....."Unless you want to work at McDonald's for the rest of your life, you're going to college." I had already worked at McDonald's (briefly because they wouldn't follow my availability I had in High School, so I quit before they were able to give me my 3rd and final warning for not showing up for a shift I couldn't work), I went to college and got a degree. I am not working in a field that has anything to do with my degree, but I am happy now.
My husband and I live a very comfy, cozy life because of the trades. The hours could be hard, though, but MAN when that overtime check hit.....
As long as overtime isn't constant. I worked one of those jobs a few times. Life vs work balance.
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The US understates the importance of the trades. Nothing wrong with the trades and some jobs can't be off-shored to China and India. My sons are firemen and welders. House on fire? China isnt putting it out. Need an electrician, plumber, welder? They need to be local. And you know what, they all make good money!
i think this is only an issue if you live in the States. Countries with subsidised or cheap higher education you must go straight into it because the fees increase annually and there's no point waiting, rather do a major you don't really want/need and add it to your credits than do nothing for a year.
I'd argue the opposite. I went to college right after high school for a subject I loved because of that whole "you can be whatever you want to be" rhetoric they spewed to us millennials. I haven't managed to land a single job in my field in the 7 years since I graduated because it's oversaturated. If I had taken a gap year and just worked a crappy cashier job for a while I would have learned a lot more about society and made smarter choices.
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Yeah, I have family who does plumbing. Not too glamorous, but he does it up in Canada and sometimes works with pipeline. He bought a brand new Ford gt several years ago in cash. Trades and blue collar does not necessarily equal struggling. Hell, I've known a lot of high powered white collar folks who had big houses, several nice cars, and realized they had less at the end of the month to go eat dinner with than I did baking pastries because they were carrying just immense amounts of debt.
Have a look at Mike Rowe's site. He has scholarships for people who want to go into the trades. Tradespeople get well paid, even better paid these days because there is such a shortage of skilled people, they also graduate with a lot less debt, and own their own homes by the time they hit their late 20s. Unless you absolutely know what you want to do and be, and it includes university, then give the trades a try. There's a certain pride in getting your hands dirty (or not) for good money.
Former professor here. I agree that most people don't need to go to college. You definitely shouldn't go until you have an idea about what you want to study. Many life paths are better served by Community College or Trade Schools. Going to college or university is for those who either want to be teachers, law clerks, lab assistants.......or to go on to graduate school for advanced degrees in various fields.
I want to add that college is also a great place to get a general business education for those who have been given athletic scholarships.
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Graduated in 2000, can confirm literally every adult around me told me I needed to go to college. An alternative was never even mentioned - the whole attitude was you went to college or you wouldn't have a future. I had no real plan because I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but people made it seem like if I just had a degree, everything would work itself out. That is not how it works folks. I wound up in a career I love but only after years of aimless drifting, and I doubt I'll ever pay off my student loans (no one really warned me about debt, either - "you'll be able to pay it off with the kinds of jobs you'll be able to get with a degree").
This should be at the top. I fell into the same trap when I graduated high school in 2005. As did my husband. The difference is that my husband came to his senses after the first year and went into the trades. I did not. I muscled through it for a degree that hasn't done much for my financial situation other than put me in $80k worth of debt so that I can earn barely $70k a year. My husband? He cleared $110,000 last year. Don't fall for the college lie kids, it's a scam.
Yeah, they gutted vocational classes when I was in high school in the late 80s
After many years of abolishing/downplaying apprenticeships, Ireland is now finally including apprenticeship as an option worth exploring after school. We're really short of all the trades - plumbing, electrical, building, carpentry etc, but they've also introduced new areas such as ICT. The tradesmen are probably the ones making most money these days, if you don't count the obscene amounts paid to "top" execs.
Dropping out of college after 4 years was the biggest regret of my life.
Yep. I saw through the school system pretty quickly. I was in and out of school for most of my life and I never even considered furthering my education with collage. People who toiled through school always remark that they can't believe I didn't graduate. I may take some choice classes in the future, but most of the information I need to progress down my path is stuff I can learn on my own. So many of the really smart, successful people dropped out of school and paved their own way. I don't regret my decisions at all, I do wish I had progressed with my interests in place of school, that would have been a better start for me. I have hefty ambitions, and I more or less have the tools at my disposal to get there. Whether I succeed or fail is totally up to me.
Be a plumber, electrician or car mechanic if you want to make money!
I don't c**p on college, but really it's difficult unless you can see the future. I had no idea in the future I'd be moving to a small town that had no use for my degree. I'm glad I have it and was able to obtain it, but it's no longer needed.
I find it's more of an entitlement thing. Kids think they just automatically go to college after high school and deserve the whole live on campus college experience. I tried so hard to convince my step-daughter to have a career plan in place before she just blindly enrolled in college, but she wouldn't listen. Husband had to fund her poor choice by court order and now she's 40 doing odd jobs here and there with no savings and still living with several roommates. Glad that general liberal arts degree worked out for her.
Community college isn't always the answer either. I graduated from my cc in 1974 with a solid grounding in vaccuum tube technology, right as digital tech was reaching its peak. Useless! Plus experienced techs at the time earned $4/hr less than I earned loading truck at ups.
My high school schedule was insane. I had 0-8 periods (so 9) instead of the normal 7 since I was a music major in a School for the Creative and Performing Arts. I was also in all advanced classes. I also ran track and played volleyball and had marching band practice one a week from like 5pm-7pm. On top of homework and marching and orchestral competitions on the weekends. For 4 years, from 9th through 12th. Most of my friends who were just in the advances classes had super easy electives their senior year, like office aid and whatnot. So when I finally graduated and went to college I could not handle the freedom and free time I had. I did terribly and still do. I should've went to community college for two years to ease myself into it but there was such a stigma at my school about not going to a really good university. I STILL have anxiety dreams about college.
My nephew got a degree in a field he found out didn’t pay as advertised and really ended up not doing what he is educated to do. Went to community college, learned a trade. Making more money. Really happy at what he does. So is the company. They see his potential and want to make a way for him to use it. Also opened a pressure washing business. Buildings. Tractor trailers. Started out just him with his dad helping out. Now has three employees and some really great contracts for businesses. College really a waste of his time and his parent’s money.
This was exactly me. I was considered the smartest kid in the class but had absolutely no ambition and no idea as to what I wanted to do with my life. Picked a major at random because I was good at it, but sadly they don't just hand out jobs when you get a degree, especially when apparently you need a Masters as well. Should have just gone for a two-year certificate in the same area, but it was just assumed that university was the next step. Never did use that degree, though it looks good on resumes!
Big fat Indian wedding feeding nearly a 1000 judgmental semi-strangers I'll never hear from again!
Sorry I have zero sympathy for people who comply with cultural edicts. My own wedding had 80 people, and in Africa we also traditionally invite hundreds. F**k them. If you do not speak to a person every month, they do not deserve an invitation. Same for funerals. We don't bother in our family. We just burn and discard.
We also reached out to Jen Smith, co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast, to hear her thoughts on this topic. Jen shared with Bored Panda that her biggest financial mistake that she made in the past was maxing out her credit cards. "Thankfully they had low limits, $500 and $2,000, but I didn't have the self-control to not max them out. If the 'money' was available, I was going to spend it," she explained. "Once I maxed out both cards at the same time, I knew I needed to get rid of one. My way out was someone backing into my car in a parking lot. The damage was minor enough that I could still drive the car and use the insurance money to pay off the $2,000 card and cancel it. That dent was a constant reminder of that card."
As f**ked as it is, the financial expense is what got me to quit nicotine. I realized that I was spending $150 a month on disposable vapes and started comparing it to my other bills.
I was paying more for my unhealthy addiction than my car insurance, or my utilities. Kinda hard to justify when you look at it like that.
Yet some people still manage to justify it. Look, I don't care about people smoking, it's none of my business. But what absolutely infuriates me is if people complain about their money problems and that they don't have money for essentials... while they're spending a shitton of money on cigarettes.
Took a job way up North in Canada. Quit my old job, got rid of tons of stuff, had my dad help sell my house, etc. This was in 2019/early 2020 just before COVID hit big. I ended up hating the job up North; it was terrible. Went back home, somehow managed to get my old job back, but my house is gone and I can’t afford a new one in the current market. Stupid, idiotic decision on my part, and it keeps me up at night. I hate where I am in life right now. Stupid big expensive mistake that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can push on through these things. COVID rocked me too. I'm down about 16 grand from where I was in 2020. Right now I have a little over $1000 in savings. It's rough, but I'm climbing my way back up again. $100 per week.
"Whether you learned about money from your parent, school, or nobody at all, everyone makes mistakes with money," Jen told Bored Panda. "And those mistakes teach you more about money than anyone in your life could. Count yourself lucky if you make mistakes when you're young because the stakes are usually lower and the fallout is much less expensive than money mistakes made later in life."
Sold my signed Banksy prints for a couple of grand to fund a new kitchen. Saw the same prints a couple of years later selling for £80,000.
Blurgh. Just swallowed another mouthful of sick thinking about it (and they did a s**t job of the new kitchen floor).
At the height of the pandemic, I had a pretty severe "hidden" mental breakdown due to the trauma of isolation/quarentine and general terror over the whole thing. Combined with my own long-standing battle with Bipolar Disorder, I wound up withdrawing €4,000 from my savings account and going on a massively impulsive shopping spree.
Initially I told myself that the money was for a PC/laptop upgrade but as my mental health tanked the further the quarentine went on, I just kept spending in a desperate bid to feel something other than the crushing terror and uncertainty, chasing the fleeting dopamine hits that come from impulse purchases.
That was nearly 3 years ago and I'm still trying my damndest to build up my savings again. I hope I ever have another breakdown that bad as it was so embarassing when I eventually told my parents the full extent of the spree.
To add insult to injury, I also got an ill-advised Mohawk so I was both broke and (semi) bald.
Nowadays I've grown my hair out but I'm still struggling to recover my savings. Squirelling a away a few bob each week and hoping for the best. Thankfully, I'm on better medication now but yeah, things were bad for a while.
Oof I feel this one, I've been paying off debt for the past 6 years from reckless overspending when I was in a terrible place mental health wise (BPD, reckless and impulsive behaviour)
Jen also noted that getting into consumer debt is one of the most common financial errors for people to make. "When you're not making enough to afford the lifestyle social media is telling you you need, then people will use credit cards, student loans, or finance necessary things like cars to buy more stuff," she explained. "The only solution is to learn how to discern what it is you want from what advertisers and influencers are telling you to want."
"Nobody wants to believe they're easily influenced, but we all are," Jen added. "But when you know what you value, what your goals are worth to you, and what purchases truly make you happy, you can more easily say no to the things you don't really need or want."
Hate to admit it, but I got nailed by a crypto scam. So dumb.
Crypto is pure gambling, nothing else. Everyone who invests in Crypto should know this or already knows and still invest in hope of getting quick bucks. There is no shortcut to money ever, if there is one, its definitely a fraud or pure luck like lottery
When I turned 21, I gained full control over my inheritance account. It was how it was written in my grandparents will. At that time, it was only worth $15k.
It was the only time my financial advisor ever met with me. I said I wanted to invest all of it in AAPL.
I still remember the face he made in disgust. "Why would you want to invest in Apple?" I explained that I had just done a college paper on Steve Jobs and I truly believed that now that he was back in charge of the company, he'd turn the stock around. (valued around $1/share at the time, it has split many times since)
He convinced me to stay the course and keep the same investments my parents already had my brokerage invested in. At its peak, it grew to about $70k in value. (I still have the investment today). If I had invested in AAPL at that time like I wanted to, I'd have a cool 10M, and I could retire today.
Trust your gut people.
And if you've recently made any financial mistakes that are haunting you, don't be too hard on yourself. "Remember that you're not alone. No matter what mistake it is, someone before you has definitely made the same one," Jen told Bored Panda. "You may want to forget that it happened and move on as quickly as possible, but every mistake is an opportunity to learn and grow. Reflect on what triggered the choice, what you wanted to get out of it, and how it was a mistake, and consider how you'll handle similar situations differently in the future. Don't miss the opportunity to grow and do better."
If you'd like to hear more encouraging words from Jen about how to use your finances wisely, be sure to check out her podcast Frugal Friends right here! And if you're interested in some reading on the topic, you can find Jen's book The No-Spend Challenge Guide right here and her book Meal Planning on a Budget right here!
5 years ago I bought plane tickets for my ex to come and see me, he cancelled on me 3 days before saying his grandma was on her deathbed (she is currently still alive) I was 16 and I wasted 3 years worth of savings
When you buy plane tickets check if they have a cancellation option and what the clauses are. Our airlines let you pay a little extra for a cancellation option so that you can cancel last minute if you have to.
Nearing the end of the dotcom boom (it hadn't busted yet) I had a about s**t ton of stock options to exercise. I was about to do it, when I heard that my Dad was entering the hospital for a cancer operation. I put the stock options exercise on hold for a week and went to be with my Dad (and Mom).
While my Dad was in the hospital, my company released an earnings warning and our stock price got annihilated. When I did eventually exercise my options, I was down about $1,000,000 from where I was before my Dad entered the hospital.
For the record, my Dad is OK. And if faced with the same situation I would make the same decision. It might have been a big *money* mistake, but it was not a mistake.
I sincerely hope all of you pandas are in a secure place financially, but if you're looking to save a little bit more or start spending more wisely in this new year, I'm sure you can gain some knowledge from the responses on this list. Keep upvoting the answers that might spare you or someone else from making the same mistakes, and let us know in the comments any other financial lessons you've had to learn the hard way. Then, if you're interested in checking out another Bored Panda article that might help you save some extra cash, you can find that right here!
I paid for my ex-girlfriend's college tuition for three semesters as she 'just one semester left'-ed me for all three. That was AFTER she got a letter stating she was no longer eligible for the Pell Grant or further loans. So, the banks said, 'No more,' but I paid for another year and a half, while also paying all the household bills and supporting her kid.
We broke up, and she had the nerve to talk about what I supposedly OWE her.
i went to america for 10 days to visit a buddy of mine. cost me a fortune and i arrived to find he had been absorbed into his new girlfriend and was not the guy who left. Anytime he was away from her he was miserable and didnt want to do anything when he was with her all they wanted to do was have sex so they tried to get rid of me. massive waste of money and the loss of a friendship
Student loans
For some this is the only way to get into college. I could never get a job in my chosen profession without a Bachelors degree, so there was no question about me going. In high school I made sure to get as many scholarships as I could to make sure my loan amount was as low as possible, but there was no way to avoid taking out a loan.
Not mine, but my dad's. He bought like $500 worth of collectable Star Trek dinner plates in the 80's thinking they'd be worth a ton of money in a few years. They're not.
When I was younger I invested in beer and parties. Payoff was very bad.
Procrastination.
I have paid so many procrastination fees for late bills, and missed opportunities that the mind boggles.
thought i was just being a generous and kind person helping people out and never really expected them to pay me back. i was an IDIOT
That's ok, no one pays back. So either consider money you hand over to be a gift, or turn it around and ask them for money. That's what I do. If you have someone contact you and they're reluctant to start talking about what they really want, they really want money. So you steer the convo that way and start saying how broke you are etc etc. They will get the hint and go away.
Sports betting losses have cost me about a year's salary
I was not good at checking my company email inbox, nothing important came through there anyway (we mostly used Slack). And that is how I missed the deadline for my company’s IPO. They offered us stock at $10 and it opened at $40.
Now I read my emails.
I discover bitcoin very early: I bought 100 of them at 63 cents a piece.
Sold the whole bunch for 300 dollars.
i.. never really bothered understanding all the crypto cash stuff so correct me if i’m wrong, but i’m guessing they sold it too early and could’ve sold it for a lot more later on? or the title of the article doesn’t apply to this one and they ended up making a profit?
Spending all my student loan refund checks instead of saving those f*****s to, oh, I don't know - PAY OFF MY STUDENT LOANS.
This! And if they've put your loans on hold, pretend you have to pay them back now anyway --take your "payment" and save it in case you DO have to pay it back someday, or if you don't you'll have money to get on your feet when you graduate.
I invested $890 into a stock and it later became a little over 1.5 million dollars. I did not take the money out because I thought it would go up. I quit my job because I thought I was going to be rich. My stock crashed to worthless, I’m struggling to get by. I could’ve had a house, started a business. Now I have nothing
Sold my MTG collection in 1998. Almost full power9, 40 revised duals, all the playable cards from beta, legends etc. Sold them for $1000 and bought booze and meth.
Would be able to pay for a house with those cards now.
same here, but I sold all mine to pay for a divorce.............worth it!
Bought a condo in July of 2007. The timing literally could not have been worse. Could have bought it for virtually half the price if I waited a year. Sold it just last year for less than I bought it (after inflation).
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Spent $88,000 on Twitch in the past 2 years. Downvote me all you want. I have an addiction and I wanted to be real with you.
That’s rough…hopefully you can get to a better place!
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Never loan anyone anything without a safety. Never. Lending someone money for a car? Ok but the title will be in my name and you'll have insurance tied to it and we'll make a contract how the money has to be paid back and when you'll get the title. Loaning money for playing the stock market? Hell no.
I don't buy them myself but I imagine buying lottery tickets can add up after a while. Especially if you never win anything but keep playing.
My mom took out a loan for my stepdad, so he could continue playing the stock market. His only other job was doing random IT work whenever he could get it. Things went to s**t, they broke up. She was trying to get him to pay her back but he started threatening her and now he’s blocked and she has the loan.
Very important warning lessons in these posts. Really useful post, thanks.
To me a big financial mistake is one I never saw coming and really wish I had seen the future. I had gotten a major inheritance from my grandfather when he passed away. It came just in time, hubby had just been fired from his job. It should have been a red flag at the time when he said he wanted to take time before looking for a new job as he had been working for 15 years and wanted a break. It made sense. In reality I ended up supporting both of us, developing a spending habit that I never had before and he took too long of a break. As a result we had to move to a small town where he found a good paying job, now he has a spending habit and our marriage has fallen apart and I no longer want to save it. In hindsight, I wish I had taken that money and moved to another country where nobody would find me again. As it is I'm trying to save so i can move to the other end of the province.
I wish we would not have bought our house. It will probably be nice, when it is done, but with our current progress and financial status, this will take at least 5 years, if not 10. By then the children will be out of the house….. the massive house, we bought, because we wanted 3 children, a room for everyone and a playroom and whatnot. We left friends and family behind for this. This house is a lot of more work then we anticipated. Don‘t get me wrong, we are very hands on, but we planned „only“ to do new floors and plastering. Instead we need to have new plumbing, electricity, a new heating system and screed (floor pavement), so basically we had to strip the house to it‘s core and start from there…. We were comfortable when we rented. After covid and this house our savings are below zero. The only upside is the school and Kindergarten (preschool for you US readers) here. Those are really good and I‘m happy for our kids.
For me, it's not getting a cat earlier, like when I'm just starting to be a professional. Having a cat made me realize I want to buy a house, get a better paid job, be more careful with my finance etc so I can provide a better life for my cat--yes, not for me but for my cat. Well, we get our life goals from different places, what can I say?
If you make loan to a friend or family member, consider it a gift, since you will likely never see it again. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." In 1990 I decided to try an experiment and bought complete sets of that year's baseball cards, to see what they would be worth. Of course, now, over 30 years later, they aren't even worth the paper they're printed on. I did get out of crypto in time, though, and doubled my money!
Okay, I do get the mobile home one, I do. But when someone is moving out of their parents for the first time , you can't expect them to be able to afford a full actual house in this market. Depending on the area of the mobile home, it actually CAN be worth more depending on the market. A fixer upper type whose been basically trying to buy up all the trailers in the park offered me 20,000 more for mine then what I paid for it 8 years ago. I didn't consider it, because my trailer is my home, I've spent the last few years making it everything that I've wanted since I was a child. Not to mention even an additional 20,000 isn't gonna put me anywhere near the price of an actual house right now.
We bought our mobile home because of the property it’s on. Two acres of beautiful land far enough outside the city but still close enough to be desirable; we paid more for the land than the house. Next year, only 7 years later, our mortgage will be paid off. At which point, we start saving and then will build brand new on the land we own. It’s not totally ill-advised to buy a mobile home, but typically, it’s not a wise investment.
Load More Replies... Spent $88,000 on Twitch in the past 2 years. Downvote me all you want. I have an addiction and I wanted to be real with you.
That’s rough…hopefully you can get to a better place!
Load More Replies... Never loan anyone anything without a safety. Never. Lending someone money for a car? Ok but the title will be in my name and you'll have insurance tied to it and we'll make a contract how the money has to be paid back and when you'll get the title. Loaning money for playing the stock market? Hell no.
I don't buy them myself but I imagine buying lottery tickets can add up after a while. Especially if you never win anything but keep playing.
My mom took out a loan for my stepdad, so he could continue playing the stock market. His only other job was doing random IT work whenever he could get it. Things went to s**t, they broke up. She was trying to get him to pay her back but he started threatening her and now he’s blocked and she has the loan.
Very important warning lessons in these posts. Really useful post, thanks.
To me a big financial mistake is one I never saw coming and really wish I had seen the future. I had gotten a major inheritance from my grandfather when he passed away. It came just in time, hubby had just been fired from his job. It should have been a red flag at the time when he said he wanted to take time before looking for a new job as he had been working for 15 years and wanted a break. It made sense. In reality I ended up supporting both of us, developing a spending habit that I never had before and he took too long of a break. As a result we had to move to a small town where he found a good paying job, now he has a spending habit and our marriage has fallen apart and I no longer want to save it. In hindsight, I wish I had taken that money and moved to another country where nobody would find me again. As it is I'm trying to save so i can move to the other end of the province.
I wish we would not have bought our house. It will probably be nice, when it is done, but with our current progress and financial status, this will take at least 5 years, if not 10. By then the children will be out of the house….. the massive house, we bought, because we wanted 3 children, a room for everyone and a playroom and whatnot. We left friends and family behind for this. This house is a lot of more work then we anticipated. Don‘t get me wrong, we are very hands on, but we planned „only“ to do new floors and plastering. Instead we need to have new plumbing, electricity, a new heating system and screed (floor pavement), so basically we had to strip the house to it‘s core and start from there…. We were comfortable when we rented. After covid and this house our savings are below zero. The only upside is the school and Kindergarten (preschool for you US readers) here. Those are really good and I‘m happy for our kids.
For me, it's not getting a cat earlier, like when I'm just starting to be a professional. Having a cat made me realize I want to buy a house, get a better paid job, be more careful with my finance etc so I can provide a better life for my cat--yes, not for me but for my cat. Well, we get our life goals from different places, what can I say?
If you make loan to a friend or family member, consider it a gift, since you will likely never see it again. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." In 1990 I decided to try an experiment and bought complete sets of that year's baseball cards, to see what they would be worth. Of course, now, over 30 years later, they aren't even worth the paper they're printed on. I did get out of crypto in time, though, and doubled my money!
Okay, I do get the mobile home one, I do. But when someone is moving out of their parents for the first time , you can't expect them to be able to afford a full actual house in this market. Depending on the area of the mobile home, it actually CAN be worth more depending on the market. A fixer upper type whose been basically trying to buy up all the trailers in the park offered me 20,000 more for mine then what I paid for it 8 years ago. I didn't consider it, because my trailer is my home, I've spent the last few years making it everything that I've wanted since I was a child. Not to mention even an additional 20,000 isn't gonna put me anywhere near the price of an actual house right now.
We bought our mobile home because of the property it’s on. Two acres of beautiful land far enough outside the city but still close enough to be desirable; we paid more for the land than the house. Next year, only 7 years later, our mortgage will be paid off. At which point, we start saving and then will build brand new on the land we own. It’s not totally ill-advised to buy a mobile home, but typically, it’s not a wise investment.
Load More Replies...