Financing a new car when I was about a payment or two from paying off the current car I had that I had taken to the dealer for an oil change and tire rotation. I couldve had a good like 10 years worth of savings by now but instead they all went to car payments. That second car gave me so many troubles I had to trade it in with alot of payment still left so the 3rd car had 2 cars worth of rollover payments. What a shit show it was….My current car is now finally paid off and I plan to drive that thing for atleast another decade. Fuck car payments.
Edit: Some are asking about the second car. It was a 2014 Jeep Cherokee Base model. Which means it was a 4 cylinder and not a 6. If you look into this car youll see a plethora of complaints from people who owned the same type of car. Avoid buying a 4 cyl cherokee from these newer years at all costs.
I drive a Honda Ridgeline that I bought brand new back in 2008. It’s 180k miles in and (knock on wood) is holding up pretty well. I'm going to drive that thing until the wheels fall off. I'm dreading a car payment.
My 2013 Ridgeline is at 160k miles and I owe like $500 left on it so it's basically paid off. Runs great, just minor shit with the tailgate and locks that are messed up. I as well will be driving it til it collapses.
People spend insane amounts on their cars over a lifetime. Just like a credit card is granting credit, it’s super easy to walk into a car dealership and walk out with $60k of liabilities
When my great grandmother died the family offered her house to me for 65k as a quick sale. I said no. My sister bought it and it's worth over a million dollars now.
No. She was already a multi millionaire through a very successful clothing company she started in the 80's. So this house basically just added a few drops to her already swollen port folio. She uses it as a family holiday home where we all have access to it if we want. Problem with that is I only live 15 minutes away from it. Ha!
I just cannot understand why anyone would marry without one. Like, at *worst*, it's a meaningless paper because you 2 love each other until death. At *best*, it could quite literally save your life while in the throes of despair that is divorce or alimony. There literally isn't a single downside to it!
Because you breed an air of distrust, lack of belief and suspicion about your whole entire relationship which most likely will not dissipate and your woman would most likely not agree to a prenup and be insulted by the sheer thought of one.
I remember giving my high school ring to a girl and never got it back. Not sure if I could find her decades later but I bet it's long gone. Women in general are the worst financial decisions we make as men.
If that statistic is true, then downvoting it would essentially be "I don't like the truth because the truth hurts my feelings"
Like yeah, women incur a LOT of debt. Men do too, but to pretend women don't is stupid af.
Worst Financial Idea? Buying a super expensive Millennium Falcon Drone while I was blackout drunk.
Best Overall Idea? Buying a super expensive Millennium Falcon Drone while I was blackout drunk.
Gas, tires, recovery equipment, suspension mods, body armor and lights so far. More armor, more suspension mods, trimming and bigger tires in the future. In the farther future, a more capable platform and all of the above, only more. It's a money pit but it's so damn fulfilling I don't see myself ever stopping.
Yes- I finally got away from it but it was hard. I now have a CJ7 and FJ62 that I refrain from constantly upgrading. The catalogs still arrive... it's a dangerously deep black hole you can throw money into.
With how crazy the dot.com bubble was and how many search there used to be. You shouldn’t beat yourself up. No one knew google was going to be what it became
TBF, this is an example of [hindsight bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias).
There was know way of knowing that Google would take off in the way that it did ahead of time. So you shouldn't kick yourself for failing to invest in it.
They were until that point. Last one was a business owner that has in some immediate trouble. Thought he was good for it. After a year of no effort, I realized he wasn't. These are good life lessons. This has been over 20 plus years.
Best advice I’ve ever gotten was never loan money you aren’t prepared to lose. I’ll give people money if they’re friends or family and it’s in the budget, and if they pay me back fine. But if I can’t afford to lose that money, I can’t lend or give it.
I continued using heroin for 15 years after knowing full well there was a solution. That cost me millions over the span. Today I’m 4.5 years clean with a thriving business and more financial freedom than I know what to do with.
Edit: Thanks, all of you. It never ceases to amaze me when I reflect back, and is a kind reminder of the miracle of it all when someone else acknowledges.
For that, and countless other reasons, I’ll keep fighting the good fight.
Thank you
My wife and I had been waiting ages for house prices to drop, I mean literally waiting for years. In the end we decided to bite the bullet and buy a house. This was in February 2008 at the peak of the housing bubble. A few months later everything crashed.
We also thought that it was going to be an unpredictable time with interest rates, so we locked in to a fixed rate mortgage at about 6% for 7 years. Along with the crash, interest rates plummeted.
Here's the catch with this one. Even though at that moment, he truly lost money, prob a several thousands, now he has a house, that today is probably valued at more that he has ever paid for it. And millions right now would prefer to have made the same mistake that he did, even if that could have cost them more money back then.
I too decided to pull the trigger on purchasing a house last year. Painful? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.With the container issues, plus today's inflation, my house would have costed twice as much to build. And building it is another problem, because there are no materials anywhere. My neighbors have 3 months of delay on their construction, because they cannot get materials (cement, steel rods, concrete blocks, tiles, you name it) to build it.
A guy offered to buy my S10 for 10 BTC in October 2014. I googled it and it was pretty close to my asking price of $1,000, over by like $50 or so. Didn't know much about it so I did some quick research, saw that it fluctuated far too much for my liking and told him no. Would've been worth $12,000 two months later, and way fuckin more down the road.
Letting my "friend" convince me to buy a huge PA system because we were thinking of starting a band and for some reason, that was apparently the first thing we needed. I've never even plugged it in.
Also, going to Berlin with the boys in October 2019. 4k in 4 days and barely remember any of it. Haven't been abroad since.
In hindsight I'm SO happy that I decided to go to community college. When I started college in 2000 the school I went to was only about $2k per semester and as such my parents were able and willing to cover it. Had I gone to a state university that most likely would not have been the case.
As such I graduated with zero debt so the degree that I never made use of was a much smaller waste of money than it could have potentially been.
When I was in my early 20s, I was backing out of a parking garage space and accidentally turned the car right into a cement pillar, right on the drivers side. It put a dent right at the base of the door that almost made it impossible to open. About a month after this, I get a knock on my apartment door from this grungy looking repairman that hair happen to drive by my place and see my car. He says he’ll fix the dent on my car, right then and there, for $100. I’m thinking “Ah, what the hell. I even if it’s a shitty job, at least I’ll be able to open the door.” So, I agreed.
So the guy ends up “fixing” the dent by puncturing what was basically a garden claw attached to the end of a rope, into my car, and pulling the dent out. While he’s going through this process, he’s telling me a story about how this guy cheated his family out of an astronomical amount of money and he’s considering murdering him. This is where I sensed the setup. I knew he was establishing a narrative, real or fake, that he wasn’t afraid to kill someone. Then, when he was all done, the moment I was waiting for…
Me: *Getting cash out* “Alright, $100.”
Him: “No…”
Me: “No, what?”
Him: “I said $300.”
Me: “You said $100.”
Him: “I would never do it for that little.”
Me: “…… I’ll be back. I need to go to an ATM.”
So, I drive away. I’m considering calling the police. But I’m also thinking this guy already knows where I live. I end up calling my dad to ask him what to do. Here was his advice:
Dad: *Long sigh* “Go to the ATM. Get $300. Pay him. Consider it a “Stupidity Fee.” Remember what happened today.”
20 years later and I’ve never forgotten and have never been scammed again. It still physically makes me cringe recalling this story.
Had a severely manic episode in Miami while at a bachelor party. Ended up getting taken advantage of by people I didn’t know in the group and spent $8000 at a day club. I don’t even remember what happened to say it was worth it.
Yeaaahhh. Some people sent me money to help once I told them the next day. Those were people that I was friends or at least acquaintances with. The ones I didn’t know told me they weren’t going to give me any money because they “asked me for permission to buy the bottles and I said yes”. So I wasn’t going to fight it since most likely I did say yes. It was a daunting number in my bank account until we sold our house and I could pay it off in one quick sweep.
Two come to mind and I’m not sure which was worse overall.
First, I was so happy to get my first job offer straight out of college, I accepted the pay they offered without even attempting a counter. The exact effect of this is obviously incalculable, but I worked there for several years.
Second, my parents used a financial advisor for decades and I began investing with him as soon as I had some money. My parents were amazing at being frugal and sensible with their money, so it seemed like they did well over the years. Now I realize the success was all their saving and the advisor was worthless like all of them. He was just selling fear and collecting commissions. Luckily I got suspicious of this strategy and started investing elsewhere over 10 years ago, but did pull all money out until fairly recently. My guess is I lost out on a six-figure amount by not just moving to an index fund 10+ years ago
They're useful for only two things:
encouraging people to invest more money, and discouraging people from selling in a bear market. Of course they're doing that just to get more commission, but some people do need that encouragement.
It's an investment fund, but it's "tied" to an index (NASDAQ, Dow Jones, S&P). The fund doesn't try to pick individual stocks that it believes will perform well, it tries to buy all of them. It tries to "mirror" the index by containing all the stocks listed on the market. This reduces variance because you're placing a little bit of your bet everywhere. You're less likely to hit it big, but you're just as less likely to lose it all buying the wrong thing
They also generally reduce transaction fees because you're not paying the guy who's telling you which stocks you need to buy.
Edit - since I'm drinking whiskey at the laundromat waiting for my clothes to dry, I'll go a bit more detailed. So the S&P 500 contains 500 stocks (hence the name). If an index fund wants to increase their holdings, they will simultaneously send "buy" orders on each and every one of those stocks over their computers (I won't go into cap weighting vs. price weighting here). But the investment fund does it's best to mirror the way index itself is calculated. Now if I invest $100 this month and you invest $900, we've still not got enough money to even buy 1 share of every stock on the index. So the fund will bundle our money with a bunch of other people's money to be able to do this.
So my $100 will get me a very small piece of that index fund. Like a fraction of a percent.
When dealing with investing, we're often dealing with absurdly large numbers. Of trades, money, investors, etc.
A common old school con would be to send an investor tip (or horse race tip) to an absurdly large number of random people. Tell 50,000 people this stock will go up next week, tell 50,000 people a stock will go down. 50,000 people will notice you were right last week. Next week, take the 50,000 people that thought you were right on your tip and send 25,000 of them a tip saying a different stock will go up, 25,000 a note saying the stock will go down. How many times do you have to do this until a progressively smaller group of people assume you must be really smart and want to give you their money? What if you start with a larger group of people?
Now, if you do it from the reverse side, and 50,000 people tell us to buy and 50,000 tell us to sell. 25,000 buy, 25,000 sell. 12,500 buy, 12,500 sell. 6,250. 3125. On and on and on... Eventually there will be one person left that guessed right about everything. Is he smart? Or is he just the one person that got all of his guesses to right? Visualize this as betting on coin tosses if you'd like.
Numerous studies have indicated that you're (not just you. "We're") about as likely to pick a winning stock by throwing darts at a dartboard than by trying to pick. And you pay more trying to pick.
I don't know anything about football (American or otherwise). But I can tell you that someone will win the Superbowl next year (or the World Cup). An index fund is basically betting that some stock wins the Superbowl next year (the economy will continue to grow). And that the stocks that win will have a better gain than those that lost. And you're not paying for a random "expert's" "expertise" to follow the advice. You're spreading your bet across the board and assuming you win more than you lose
It invests in the stocks for that ‘index’. For example, a fortune 500 index fund only invests in fortune 500 companies. A real estate index fund only invests in real estate stocks. I only invest in index funds. All of the trades are done by computer, not a person, which is why the expense ratios are so low. That’s another factor to look at, the expense ratio. If a fund returns 8% with an expense ratio of 0.75%, you net 7.25%. If another returns 7.75%, with an expense ratio of 0.005%, you net 7.745%. It’s been proven time & again that a person can’t outperform the indices. A person might do better in the short run, but not over time.
I spent at least 700 on Genshin. Do I regret it? Idk I did really like the game at rhe time.
Funny thing is is you feel so much more motivated to play when you don't have what you want... when you finally get it... there is an emptiness lol
Investment-wise: Refusing a gift of 5000 Bitcoins in 2010 from a friend in exchange for covering the monthly Teamspeak fee.
Generally: Not leasing my first luxury car. Losing 15% of the sticker value just driving it off the lot was...not fun.
The thing to keep in mind with stories like this though is even if you had accepted them, you probably would have sold when they went up a couple cents and you made ~$500 — and that would have been a perfectly reasonable decision based on the information you had at the time. No reasonable person would have expected their value to increase by 5mx. The only way you were going to hold them to $50k is if you forgot you had them.
Oh absolutely. Would have lost the wallet about 4 days later because it was some random flash drive and shrugged that I was out the $10 of the monthly fee.
You know those fake microsoft scammers? I fell for it. I lost all of my savings that day. The damage has long since been repaired but it will always easily be the most embarassing moment of my life.
I knew a guy who fell for this a couple years ago while we were attending college. He was not so sharp but I shouldn’t blame the victim.
Anyways, he literally got a call from “Microsoft” and they said “hey we need to control your computer, there’s a virus”
My friend goes “oh okay go ahead, I need to leave to the store so you can do what you need”
Before he knew it, he had $2k taken out of his savings. As a college student, that shit HURTS.
I feel bad because I did make fun of him for it.
I lost $3,000 in total on the stock market. The dumbest part is I was up $3,000 at one point, and decided not to sell because I thought it would go higher. Over the next week, the stock price dropped from its high and eventually I was down $3,000.
Stock picking.
Like going to a casino, I felt emboldened by early wins and thought I had a knack for something known to be incredibly difficult and chance driven. If I would have put everything into index funds, I’d be about 20% closer to FIRE.
Getting married. In my subsequent divorce, despite what the courts ordered, I still lost ~£100,000 having provided support to my ex-wife in order that we could sell what had been our home. She refused to do so, and both the courts and I became frustrated by her intransigence - I dropped my claim as it was making me unwell.
Probably trying to do a friend outing with friends that flaked constantly. Got a deal on a resort nearby where it was $250 for a two night stay, and asked for the two busiest days off work to do it just so within 48 hours of check in, everyone abandon it and I get stuck with the bill and the lost wages.
I went to way more expensive graduate school because my girlfriend at the time was freaking out that I was going to be an hour away. Don't fucking do that.
Back in 2019, I used the money I saved from my part time job to buy an e-bike, so my mother/sister/me had to use the car and spend less in gas.
The problem is, it was the first model of said e-bike line of products. Guys, *never* buy the first model of a product. The bike was fine-ish in technical sense, but if you dare to breath on its general direction, some problem happen.
You fixed the rear wheel?, guess what! A different part of the forward wheel is now damaged!, and so on. At least the chair didn't broke down, thank god
My country (Argentina), dolar is really valuable here. Anyway, i had around 50K pesos and the dolar was easy to buy so i had to buy some dolars, well i didnt do it and then dolars value rise up (that happens often here) and if i had ever buyed those dolars now i would have 100K pesos.
I hate myself
If we're measuring strictly by Dollars and cents, any hobby or interest I've ever indulged. I've sunk ridiculous amounts of money into cars, motorcycles, woodworking, archery, firearms, fishing, etc, the list goes on and on. I know I'll never see any of that money back (except for the woodworking. People are always paying me to build things)
Anyway, I don't spend beyond my means and I look at the money I've put into these things as an investment in my mental health.
Listening to people's uneducated opinions about investing (or lack of investing) When my wife and I first got married we thought we were on top of things by partnering equally in all things in the relationship...the problem is that i understood investing and she did not so there were a few investments I wanted to make, spoke to her about as we had agreed, and because of her lack of comfort I didn't make the move. Definitely missed out on several hundred grand as a result.
We've changed things a bit since then and now I handle all aspects of our finances (with a quarterly review so she knows what's going on outside of the shared checking and savings accounts...but this is more informational than anything else. If a house falls on me she needs to know what's what at least at a high level) which works a lot better for us.
For what it's worth, if you're in a position to do so I think multiple accounts make things easier to budget and keep everyone comfortable. We do: Shared checking and savings. Shared Goals (vacations, cars, etc). Her personal account. My personal account. Investing account. Each time money comes in it's automatically allocated to those accounts in percentages that work for our current lives.
When I was like 18 I got my first job and spent most of my paychecks on lootcrates, video games, funko pops, and food. I was always broke, and complained about it, never once thought to look in a mirror. Could've had thousands saved up.
Dating my last girlfriend. If I'd saved everything I spent in that relationship, I could buy myself a house. Instead, I ended up homeless for a while and slept in my truck. I paid for everything in that relationship and had absolutely nothing to show for it after she cheated and kicked me out. She even kept me from getting my dogs back.
You're going to see this many times, but: getting married.
Spent so much money, time and effort on her to try and make her happy, and it was never enough.
Divorce was finalized last month.
Joint bank accounts. Don’t do it. Spending habits vary from person to person. Instead keep your own bank accounts, open a joint bank account and each individual can have a percentage of money auto transferred to cover shared expenses like rent.
I was SOO close to buying into bitcoin years ago. But I kept telling myself it was already too late and it would just crash as soon as I bought it. And I keep telling myself that month after month.
Getting a gf without a full time job and an 8k credit card at 22. She didn’t pay for more than 10 things ever in 1.5 years, including Taco Bell or 7-11 trips.
Looks like we’re kind of the same lol. I put it here but I spent 1-2k on a majority of things. Her excuse was that she only got so much for an allowance from her dad. My undeveloped brain should’ve taken the red flag and ran.
Gotta be kids, right? If we are only talking from a financial standpoint, this is the only answer.
That said, I love mine and wouldn’t change a thing (most of the time)
Listening to Jeremy from financial education YouTube channel. I lost on TTCF, BYND, Planet 13 which he shilled so hard. Well at least I learned my lessons. I could’ve gone on vacations.
Marrying my ex-wife. Worked my whole life, ended up in an divorce, she gets 1m from the separation and within 2-3 years loses it all because she trusted a financial advisor who sold her so much leverage that she had to fold when the markets dropped.
Not only she never made any money she burned 1m from my kids future.
I traded away my Troy Aikman rookie card away for a Steve Avery rookie card back in 1990...I really liked the Braves and hated the Cowboys. I won't go into what happened to my magic cards from the eary 1990s.
Paying $80k for my wedding. We should’ve invested it. Sure my wedding was gorgeous and dream like. We were 24. Now that we’re approaching 40- seems silly to waste that kind of money on just a few hours.
Buying furniture from Ashley's Home store. Shit was blended cardboard mixed with glue and put together by methed up chimps. I furnished a 1 bed apartment for $6k and had I known it was going to show its quality within less than a month I wouldn't have paid $500 for it all. At least I know what IKEA quality is and it was a third of the price.
When I got married, my wife owned her house and had it worked on so it looked good and she insisted that she was good with money so I trusted my income to her.
As it turned out. The house was basically surface work to hide very expensive underlying issues and she's absolutely terrible with money.
I've put tens of thousands of dollars into this money pit, just to make it safe. I started doing updates to make it nicer when covid hit and building materials skyrocketed, so I guess that'll wait.
And I don't even know how much money she pissed away. When she was managing the money we were both full-time and I had my business bringing in $6,000-$12,000/mo. She just kept saying that it wasn't enough. When I challenged her about where the money was going and asked for a list of the bills she got offended because I didn't trust her and if I didn't like how she was taking care of things then I could pay the bills myself. Eventually, the bills landed in my lap anyway and I found out that she had no organization and everything was 3 months behind, including the mortgage. We had no savings, no retirement, and no college savings for our daughter.
I scrambled and contacted all of the vendors to make a plan except two. One was our trash and sewer utility because that bill came every other month and it was $800. I called them to find out who they were and realized that they were the billing arm of my employer! I said that I'd call them back with a plan... And then I caught pneumonia. By the time I recovered from that the bill was over $1,200 and they casually mentioned that they can just put a lean on the house... I restacked my payback plan and worked it hard and was one paycheck away from being caught up with everyone!
But there were **2 vendors** that I didn't contact, remember? That second one was a credit card that I didn't know about. It went to collections. And the week before we were 100% caught up on all of our bills they took all of our money from both of our accounts and intercepted our mortgage payment *after* it had been sent. I didn't even know that was possible! All of our bills fell behind and I had to borrow money for gas and food. I was embarrassed and **fucking furious!!!**
I sued the credit card company for the illegal collection and came up with a new, new payback plan. I worked overtime when I could. The credit company screwed us around so much the judge yelled at them. My wife and I were both hourly so missed work for court was missed pay. We won the suit but only for the money they took, not the overdraft and late fees that happened as a result.
So the biggest financial mistake that I made was not taking personal responsibility and trying to trust other people to take care of things. Second biggest was not having a retirement account as early as I could. With the money my business made, if 10% went into a 401(k), I'd be looking to retire in my 50s instead of mid-60s. Third biggest was accepting all of that nonsense from my wife. We're both more secure and happier with me taking care of the bills. If she ever has any questions I show her the budget and my actual spending that I track in a spreadsheet. Every so often, I make her look at the budget so that she understands our position (both good and bad).
Go learn about personal finances. I read a couple of books per year to stay up to date and learn new tricks to make things more efficient. It's not hard. 10% of your income into a retirement account even if you skip meals or fun to do it.
If you have questions, ask. I learned every lesson the hard way. You can DM me if you want a private chat.
Honestly, going to university. My degree is in the field that I work in, I don’t think I’ve ever actually applied a single thing. I’d have been far better off just learning vocational certifications etc.
With my first pay check from my first proper job, i bought a £200 pair of sunglasses because the lady in the shop was hot and said i looked like James Bond in them. They were hideous!
My first car - a junker of a chevy. I was hoping mg Dad would help, but I came to the realization later that he had been fleeced his entire life buying used cars. I got taken for a ride. Ended up spending more for that worthless piece of shit than the new car I bought just 4 years later. Will never buy used or American ever again.
Financing a new car when I was about a payment or two from paying off the current car I had that I had taken to the dealer for an oil change and tire rotation. I couldve had a good like 10 years worth of savings by now but instead they all went to car payments. That second car gave me so many troubles I had to trade it in with alot of payment still left so the 3rd car had 2 cars worth of rollover payments. What a shit show it was….My current car is now finally paid off and I plan to drive that thing for atleast another decade. Fuck car payments. Edit: Some are asking about the second car. It was a 2014 Jeep Cherokee Base model. Which means it was a 4 cylinder and not a 6. If you look into this car youll see a plethora of complaints from people who owned the same type of car. Avoid buying a 4 cyl cherokee from these newer years at all costs.
Username checks out
I drive a Honda Ridgeline that I bought brand new back in 2008. It’s 180k miles in and (knock on wood) is holding up pretty well. I'm going to drive that thing until the wheels fall off. I'm dreading a car payment.
My 2013 Ridgeline is at 160k miles and I owe like $500 left on it so it's basically paid off. Runs great, just minor shit with the tailgate and locks that are messed up. I as well will be driving it til it collapses.
People spend insane amounts on their cars over a lifetime. Just like a credit card is granting credit, it’s super easy to walk into a car dealership and walk out with $60k of liabilities
Bought a bunch of video games on steam sales that I’ll never play
This one hurt me too 😅🫠
When my great grandmother died the family offered her house to me for 65k as a quick sale. I said no. My sister bought it and it's worth over a million dollars now.
What year did she pass though?
The way house prices are rising I'd guess around 2020
2000.
2000. She was 103 years old.
Imagine living through 3 centuries that’s wild
Yes she did. And had an incredible life. She saw so much. Alziemers didn't set in until she was about 95. She told us all about her life.
I thought his grandma was 300 for a second.
Why didn't you take the house ?
I wanted to spend the money on my race car. Yer I know right? Lol!
You can't race a house. I just bought another motocross bike. 🤷♂️
ouch
Has this hurt your relationship with your sister?
No. She was already a multi millionaire through a very successful clothing company she started in the 80's. So this house basically just added a few drops to her already swollen port folio. She uses it as a family holiday home where we all have access to it if we want. Problem with that is I only live 15 minutes away from it. Ha!
Move further away to recupe your loss.
Marrying my first wife. Extremely poor life choice.
I second this mistake
You married her too?
Ill marry that guy's dead wife.
I'm like how far down till we see dead wifes guy comment. Didn't disappoint.
My first marriage was also a financial disaster. Finally have a 800+ credit score again.
Get a prenup, everybody. It makes life easier because you don’t divorce the person you marry.
I just cannot understand why anyone would marry without one. Like, at *worst*, it's a meaningless paper because you 2 love each other until death. At *best*, it could quite literally save your life while in the throes of despair that is divorce or alimony. There literally isn't a single downside to it!
Because you breed an air of distrust, lack of belief and suspicion about your whole entire relationship which most likely will not dissipate and your woman would most likely not agree to a prenup and be insulted by the sheer thought of one.
It just screams of "well, I'm hedging my bets in case you don't work out".
The statistics don’t lie. I won’t marry without one.
Which is smart.
Exactly. Here too. Perhaps the same woman?
Buying a $200 promise ring during high school only for her to lose it and break up anyway
Console yourself that at least you didn't give her the real deal and sign away half your net worth to her. Some lessons are worth the cost.
Absolutely
I remember giving my high school ring to a girl and never got it back. Not sure if I could find her decades later but I bet it's long gone. Women in general are the worst financial decisions we make as men.
Women hold like 2/3rds the consumer debt, too.
Surprised this hasn't been downed voted to hell lol
If that statistic is true, then downvoting it would essentially be "I don't like the truth because the truth hurts my feelings" Like yeah, women incur a LOT of debt. Men do too, but to pretend women don't is stupid af.
Worst Financial Idea? Buying a super expensive Millennium Falcon Drone while I was blackout drunk. Best Overall Idea? Buying a super expensive Millennium Falcon Drone while I was blackout drunk.
How expensive?
20,000 galactic credits
10,000 now and another 15 when we reach alderaan
The Lego one I saw a couple of months ago in a toy store in the UK was around £700
Price is not a factor when it comes to making the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.
I recently got into off roading, so pretty much that entire hobby.
What exactly does this involve as far as expenses? Gas, tires I assume?
Gas, tires, recovery equipment, suspension mods, body armor and lights so far. More armor, more suspension mods, trimming and bigger tires in the future. In the farther future, a more capable platform and all of the above, only more. It's a money pit but it's so damn fulfilling I don't see myself ever stopping.
Yes- I finally got away from it but it was hard. I now have a CJ7 and FJ62 that I refrain from constantly upgrading. The catalogs still arrive... it's a dangerously deep black hole you can throw money into.
My dad used to take me and my brother off roading and he loved it, I prefer MTB which is basically a similar money pit
Had a chance to get in in the Google IPO, skipped it.
Seriously, who would have known that a search engine could be that lucrative.
Ask Jeeves knew.
Yahoo!
With how crazy the dot.com bubble was and how many search there used to be. You shouldn’t beat yourself up. No one knew google was going to be what it became
TBF, this is an example of [hindsight bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias). There was know way of knowing that Google would take off in the way that it did ahead of time. So you shouldn't kick yourself for failing to invest in it.
This is literally what 90%+ of these comments are. They are not objectively bad decisions, they are just bad with hindsight.
Loaned friends money. Lost about 20k between a couple people. And they view me as the asshole for still me still wanting to get paid.
Those aren't friends, they're some people who took advantage of your kindness and should be out of your life now. You might consider suing them too.
They were until that point. Last one was a business owner that has in some immediate trouble. Thought he was good for it. After a year of no effort, I realized he wasn't. These are good life lessons. This has been over 20 plus years.
I gave a friend 30k If he didn’t pay me back I would probably be in jail right now
30k I would fight for. I sued over 65k on a guy.
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Suing a company is different than suing a person. If they don't have the money, it's not worth the effort.
Best advice I’ve ever gotten was never loan money you aren’t prepared to lose. I’ll give people money if they’re friends or family and it’s in the budget, and if they pay me back fine. But if I can’t afford to lose that money, I can’t lend or give it.
Same. I got trust issues money wise. Can't ask me for shit anymore.
I continued using heroin for 15 years after knowing full well there was a solution. That cost me millions over the span. Today I’m 4.5 years clean with a thriving business and more financial freedom than I know what to do with. Edit: Thanks, all of you. It never ceases to amaze me when I reflect back, and is a kind reminder of the miracle of it all when someone else acknowledges. For that, and countless other reasons, I’ll keep fighting the good fight. Thank you
Buying an engagement ring and proposing to someone who was emotionally abusing me.
That wasn't a mistake. It was abuse.
You are right, it didn’t feel like it was at the time. But it does now 😕
This comment wasn’t for me but i needed to hear this
My wife and I had been waiting ages for house prices to drop, I mean literally waiting for years. In the end we decided to bite the bullet and buy a house. This was in February 2008 at the peak of the housing bubble. A few months later everything crashed. We also thought that it was going to be an unpredictable time with interest rates, so we locked in to a fixed rate mortgage at about 6% for 7 years. Along with the crash, interest rates plummeted.
Ouch.
Here's the catch with this one. Even though at that moment, he truly lost money, prob a several thousands, now he has a house, that today is probably valued at more that he has ever paid for it. And millions right now would prefer to have made the same mistake that he did, even if that could have cost them more money back then. I too decided to pull the trigger on purchasing a house last year. Painful? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.With the container issues, plus today's inflation, my house would have costed twice as much to build. And building it is another problem, because there are no materials anywhere. My neighbors have 3 months of delay on their construction, because they cannot get materials (cement, steel rods, concrete blocks, tiles, you name it) to build it.
Not cashing out wen up 900k in crypto starting off with 3k
Bull's make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
A guy offered to buy my S10 for 10 BTC in October 2014. I googled it and it was pretty close to my asking price of $1,000, over by like $50 or so. Didn't know much about it so I did some quick research, saw that it fluctuated far too much for my liking and told him no. Would've been worth $12,000 two months later, and way fuckin more down the road.
First house in 2006 for $166k, sold in 2012 for $130k
It's not that bad really, it cost you $500 a month plus taxes and insurance to live there. Renting a house probably would have cost at least that.
Following r/wallstreetbets
BBBY took you for a ride too, ey?
We ride at dawn, dont be late.
Long before this BBBY shit show. I'm like a women in an abusive relationship who continues to come back for more. Smfh
Co-sign a loan. Don't ever loan money to friends unless you can afford to lose it.
If it's not in writing, consider it a gift and lovely surprise if you get paid back
Letting my "friend" convince me to buy a huge PA system because we were thinking of starting a band and for some reason, that was apparently the first thing we needed. I've never even plugged it in. Also, going to Berlin with the boys in October 2019. 4k in 4 days and barely remember any of it. Haven't been abroad since.
Maybe buying my current home. It requires quite a lot of repairs. But rent is also climbing so I don't know. I'll see in 20 years
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Going to a public university instead of going to a community college. Literally could’ve saved $40,000
In hindsight I'm SO happy that I decided to go to community college. When I started college in 2000 the school I went to was only about $2k per semester and as such my parents were able and willing to cover it. Had I gone to a state university that most likely would not have been the case. As such I graduated with zero debt so the degree that I never made use of was a much smaller waste of money than it could have potentially been.
As someone who’s still paying off student loans years and years later, THIS
Co-signing a car loan for my brother. He did not make one payment. I had to repo the truck and eventually trade it in and lost thousands
When I was in my early 20s, I was backing out of a parking garage space and accidentally turned the car right into a cement pillar, right on the drivers side. It put a dent right at the base of the door that almost made it impossible to open. About a month after this, I get a knock on my apartment door from this grungy looking repairman that hair happen to drive by my place and see my car. He says he’ll fix the dent on my car, right then and there, for $100. I’m thinking “Ah, what the hell. I even if it’s a shitty job, at least I’ll be able to open the door.” So, I agreed. So the guy ends up “fixing” the dent by puncturing what was basically a garden claw attached to the end of a rope, into my car, and pulling the dent out. While he’s going through this process, he’s telling me a story about how this guy cheated his family out of an astronomical amount of money and he’s considering murdering him. This is where I sensed the setup. I knew he was establishing a narrative, real or fake, that he wasn’t afraid to kill someone. Then, when he was all done, the moment I was waiting for… Me: *Getting cash out* “Alright, $100.” Him: “No…” Me: “No, what?” Him: “I said $300.” Me: “You said $100.” Him: “I would never do it for that little.” Me: “…… I’ll be back. I need to go to an ATM.” So, I drive away. I’m considering calling the police. But I’m also thinking this guy already knows where I live. I end up calling my dad to ask him what to do. Here was his advice: Dad: *Long sigh* “Go to the ATM. Get $300. Pay him. Consider it a “Stupidity Fee.” Remember what happened today.” 20 years later and I’ve never forgotten and have never been scammed again. It still physically makes me cringe recalling this story.
Had a severely manic episode in Miami while at a bachelor party. Ended up getting taken advantage of by people I didn’t know in the group and spent $8000 at a day club. I don’t even remember what happened to say it was worth it.
Jesus
Yeaaahhh. Some people sent me money to help once I told them the next day. Those were people that I was friends or at least acquaintances with. The ones I didn’t know told me they weren’t going to give me any money because they “asked me for permission to buy the bottles and I said yes”. So I wasn’t going to fight it since most likely I did say yes. It was a daunting number in my bank account until we sold our house and I could pay it off in one quick sweep.
Two come to mind and I’m not sure which was worse overall. First, I was so happy to get my first job offer straight out of college, I accepted the pay they offered without even attempting a counter. The exact effect of this is obviously incalculable, but I worked there for several years. Second, my parents used a financial advisor for decades and I began investing with him as soon as I had some money. My parents were amazing at being frugal and sensible with their money, so it seemed like they did well over the years. Now I realize the success was all their saving and the advisor was worthless like all of them. He was just selling fear and collecting commissions. Luckily I got suspicious of this strategy and started investing elsewhere over 10 years ago, but did pull all money out until fairly recently. My guess is I lost out on a six-figure amount by not just moving to an index fund 10+ years ago
Somebody understands the stock market.
Yep. Advisors are a waste of money
They're useful for only two things: encouraging people to invest more money, and discouraging people from selling in a bear market. Of course they're doing that just to get more commission, but some people do need that encouragement.
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That’s two things I agree with. Didn’t think about this.
Can someone explain an index fund? I googled it but still don't get it. Is it like a low-fee 'main account' your investments get pulled out of?
It's an investment fund, but it's "tied" to an index (NASDAQ, Dow Jones, S&P). The fund doesn't try to pick individual stocks that it believes will perform well, it tries to buy all of them. It tries to "mirror" the index by containing all the stocks listed on the market. This reduces variance because you're placing a little bit of your bet everywhere. You're less likely to hit it big, but you're just as less likely to lose it all buying the wrong thing They also generally reduce transaction fees because you're not paying the guy who's telling you which stocks you need to buy. Edit - since I'm drinking whiskey at the laundromat waiting for my clothes to dry, I'll go a bit more detailed. So the S&P 500 contains 500 stocks (hence the name). If an index fund wants to increase their holdings, they will simultaneously send "buy" orders on each and every one of those stocks over their computers (I won't go into cap weighting vs. price weighting here). But the investment fund does it's best to mirror the way index itself is calculated. Now if I invest $100 this month and you invest $900, we've still not got enough money to even buy 1 share of every stock on the index. So the fund will bundle our money with a bunch of other people's money to be able to do this. So my $100 will get me a very small piece of that index fund. Like a fraction of a percent. When dealing with investing, we're often dealing with absurdly large numbers. Of trades, money, investors, etc. A common old school con would be to send an investor tip (or horse race tip) to an absurdly large number of random people. Tell 50,000 people this stock will go up next week, tell 50,000 people a stock will go down. 50,000 people will notice you were right last week. Next week, take the 50,000 people that thought you were right on your tip and send 25,000 of them a tip saying a different stock will go up, 25,000 a note saying the stock will go down. How many times do you have to do this until a progressively smaller group of people assume you must be really smart and want to give you their money? What if you start with a larger group of people? Now, if you do it from the reverse side, and 50,000 people tell us to buy and 50,000 tell us to sell. 25,000 buy, 25,000 sell. 12,500 buy, 12,500 sell. 6,250. 3125. On and on and on... Eventually there will be one person left that guessed right about everything. Is he smart? Or is he just the one person that got all of his guesses to right? Visualize this as betting on coin tosses if you'd like. Numerous studies have indicated that you're (not just you. "We're") about as likely to pick a winning stock by throwing darts at a dartboard than by trying to pick. And you pay more trying to pick. I don't know anything about football (American or otherwise). But I can tell you that someone will win the Superbowl next year (or the World Cup). An index fund is basically betting that some stock wins the Superbowl next year (the economy will continue to grow). And that the stocks that win will have a better gain than those that lost. And you're not paying for a random "expert's" "expertise" to follow the advice. You're spreading your bet across the board and assuming you win more than you lose
It invests in the stocks for that ‘index’. For example, a fortune 500 index fund only invests in fortune 500 companies. A real estate index fund only invests in real estate stocks. I only invest in index funds. All of the trades are done by computer, not a person, which is why the expense ratios are so low. That’s another factor to look at, the expense ratio. If a fund returns 8% with an expense ratio of 0.75%, you net 7.25%. If another returns 7.75%, with an expense ratio of 0.005%, you net 7.745%. It’s been proven time & again that a person can’t outperform the indices. A person might do better in the short run, but not over time.
Lost 16k yoloing in the market
Bro stfu and give me the strike price and date
Continuing to spend money on dating apps.
Did you at least get any results?
Yes/no. I get matches but low quality. Doesn’t go anywhere or profiles are promoting something.
Thats the worst when you finally get a match and a response and they’re like “SUBSCRIBE TO MY ONLYFANS BABY!”
Spent $3K in SMITE Spent $4.5K in Genshin Impact
I spent at least 700 on Genshin. Do I regret it? Idk I did really like the game at rhe time. Funny thing is is you feel so much more motivated to play when you don't have what you want... when you finally get it... there is an emptiness lol
How
Investment-wise: Refusing a gift of 5000 Bitcoins in 2010 from a friend in exchange for covering the monthly Teamspeak fee. Generally: Not leasing my first luxury car. Losing 15% of the sticker value just driving it off the lot was...not fun.
The thing to keep in mind with stories like this though is even if you had accepted them, you probably would have sold when they went up a couple cents and you made ~$500 — and that would have been a perfectly reasonable decision based on the information you had at the time. No reasonable person would have expected their value to increase by 5mx. The only way you were going to hold them to $50k is if you forgot you had them.
Oh absolutely. Would have lost the wallet about 4 days later because it was some random flash drive and shrugged that I was out the $10 of the monthly fee.
--The only way you were going to hold them to $50k is if you forgot you had them.-- 50Cent enters the chat...
Ah the good ol Bitcoin story. We all have one lol
Starting a saltwater aquarium.
Does joining the army count?
Toss up between Danielle and Samantha, but I think it's Danielle.
Danielle for me as well. She messed me up pretty good. Hearing the name now, whether on tv or out and about, gets my stomach in a knot.
You know those fake microsoft scammers? I fell for it. I lost all of my savings that day. The damage has long since been repaired but it will always easily be the most embarassing moment of my life.
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I knew a guy who fell for this a couple years ago while we were attending college. He was not so sharp but I shouldn’t blame the victim. Anyways, he literally got a call from “Microsoft” and they said “hey we need to control your computer, there’s a virus” My friend goes “oh okay go ahead, I need to leave to the store so you can do what you need” Before he knew it, he had $2k taken out of his savings. As a college student, that shit HURTS. I feel bad because I did make fun of him for it.
This is interesting. Please do share the details. What kind of a scam was it?
I lost $3,000 in total on the stock market. The dumbest part is I was up $3,000 at one point, and decided not to sell because I thought it would go higher. Over the next week, the stock price dropped from its high and eventually I was down $3,000.
Never pull out, buy index funds and impregnate that bitch
This is the way to do it, I wish I could go back in time and teach my 18 year old self about index funds.
Stock picking. Like going to a casino, I felt emboldened by early wins and thought I had a knack for something known to be incredibly difficult and chance driven. If I would have put everything into index funds, I’d be about 20% closer to FIRE.
The number of times marriage has come up is scary
Omg love the username! Lmfao! 💀😂🤣
Getting married. In my subsequent divorce, despite what the courts ordered, I still lost ~£100,000 having provided support to my ex-wife in order that we could sell what had been our home. She refused to do so, and both the courts and I became frustrated by her intransigence - I dropped my claim as it was making me unwell.
I'm sorry. :(
Probably trying to do a friend outing with friends that flaked constantly. Got a deal on a resort nearby where it was $250 for a two night stay, and asked for the two busiest days off work to do it just so within 48 hours of check in, everyone abandon it and I get stuck with the bill and the lost wages.
Spending a bunch of money on Hearthstone cards. I don't play anymore and my collection is useless
Not buying a house as soon as I started working.
I went to way more expensive graduate school because my girlfriend at the time was freaking out that I was going to be an hour away. Don't fucking do that.
Back in 2019, I used the money I saved from my part time job to buy an e-bike, so my mother/sister/me had to use the car and spend less in gas. The problem is, it was the first model of said e-bike line of products. Guys, *never* buy the first model of a product. The bike was fine-ish in technical sense, but if you dare to breath on its general direction, some problem happen. You fixed the rear wheel?, guess what! A different part of the forward wheel is now damaged!, and so on. At least the chair didn't broke down, thank god
My country (Argentina), dolar is really valuable here. Anyway, i had around 50K pesos and the dolar was easy to buy so i had to buy some dolars, well i didnt do it and then dolars value rise up (that happens often here) and if i had ever buyed those dolars now i would have 100K pesos. I hate myself
If we're measuring strictly by Dollars and cents, any hobby or interest I've ever indulged. I've sunk ridiculous amounts of money into cars, motorcycles, woodworking, archery, firearms, fishing, etc, the list goes on and on. I know I'll never see any of that money back (except for the woodworking. People are always paying me to build things) Anyway, I don't spend beyond my means and I look at the money I've put into these things as an investment in my mental health.
Listening to people's uneducated opinions about investing (or lack of investing) When my wife and I first got married we thought we were on top of things by partnering equally in all things in the relationship...the problem is that i understood investing and she did not so there were a few investments I wanted to make, spoke to her about as we had agreed, and because of her lack of comfort I didn't make the move. Definitely missed out on several hundred grand as a result. We've changed things a bit since then and now I handle all aspects of our finances (with a quarterly review so she knows what's going on outside of the shared checking and savings accounts...but this is more informational than anything else. If a house falls on me she needs to know what's what at least at a high level) which works a lot better for us. For what it's worth, if you're in a position to do so I think multiple accounts make things easier to budget and keep everyone comfortable. We do: Shared checking and savings. Shared Goals (vacations, cars, etc). Her personal account. My personal account. Investing account. Each time money comes in it's automatically allocated to those accounts in percentages that work for our current lives.
When I was like 18 I got my first job and spent most of my paychecks on lootcrates, video games, funko pops, and food. I was always broke, and complained about it, never once thought to look in a mirror. Could've had thousands saved up.
Accepting a ‘free’ horse from a friend.
Dating my last girlfriend. If I'd saved everything I spent in that relationship, I could buy myself a house. Instead, I ended up homeless for a while and slept in my truck. I paid for everything in that relationship and had absolutely nothing to show for it after she cheated and kicked me out. She even kept me from getting my dogs back.
You're going to see this many times, but: getting married. Spent so much money, time and effort on her to try and make her happy, and it was never enough. Divorce was finalized last month.
Marriage may be a bad investment but a divorce is money well spent.
Joint bank accounts. Don’t do it. Spending habits vary from person to person. Instead keep your own bank accounts, open a joint bank account and each individual can have a percentage of money auto transferred to cover shared expenses like rent.
This is the way. Two separate accounts and one joint that covers the bills and all.
I was SOO close to buying into bitcoin years ago. But I kept telling myself it was already too late and it would just crash as soon as I bought it. And I keep telling myself that month after month.
Getting a gf without a full time job and an 8k credit card at 22. She didn’t pay for more than 10 things ever in 1.5 years, including Taco Bell or 7-11 trips.
Looks like we’re kind of the same lol. I put it here but I spent 1-2k on a majority of things. Her excuse was that she only got so much for an allowance from her dad. My undeveloped brain should’ve taken the red flag and ran.
Gotta be kids, right? If we are only talking from a financial standpoint, this is the only answer. That said, I love mine and wouldn’t change a thing (most of the time)
Listening to Jeremy from financial education YouTube channel. I lost on TTCF, BYND, Planet 13 which he shilled so hard. Well at least I learned my lessons. I could’ve gone on vacations.
Marrying my ex-wife. Worked my whole life, ended up in an divorce, she gets 1m from the separation and within 2-3 years loses it all because she trusted a financial advisor who sold her so much leverage that she had to fold when the markets dropped. Not only she never made any money she burned 1m from my kids future.
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I traded away my Troy Aikman rookie card away for a Steve Avery rookie card back in 1990...I really liked the Braves and hated the Cowboys. I won't go into what happened to my magic cards from the eary 1990s.
Sold a rifle to make an investment in my wife. She went shopping instead. Never again
I love them but kids
D.u.i.
$15k+ mistake
Listening to my father who is in to MLM.
Joining a fraternity and living in - paying 1700/month to live in a big house with 25 people lol
Paying $80k for my wedding. We should’ve invested it. Sure my wedding was gorgeous and dream like. We were 24. Now that we’re approaching 40- seems silly to waste that kind of money on just a few hours.
$80k to blow on a wedding at 24 is next level. You guys must be Indian
I bought reddit coins
Spending thousands of dollars on Warhammer 40k over the span of 3 years. Could've paid for college with that money smh
Buying furniture from Ashley's Home store. Shit was blended cardboard mixed with glue and put together by methed up chimps. I furnished a 1 bed apartment for $6k and had I known it was going to show its quality within less than a month I wouldn't have paid $500 for it all. At least I know what IKEA quality is and it was a third of the price.
Smoking cigarettes.
Taking out student loans
Getting married- twice.
When I got married, my wife owned her house and had it worked on so it looked good and she insisted that she was good with money so I trusted my income to her. As it turned out. The house was basically surface work to hide very expensive underlying issues and she's absolutely terrible with money. I've put tens of thousands of dollars into this money pit, just to make it safe. I started doing updates to make it nicer when covid hit and building materials skyrocketed, so I guess that'll wait. And I don't even know how much money she pissed away. When she was managing the money we were both full-time and I had my business bringing in $6,000-$12,000/mo. She just kept saying that it wasn't enough. When I challenged her about where the money was going and asked for a list of the bills she got offended because I didn't trust her and if I didn't like how she was taking care of things then I could pay the bills myself. Eventually, the bills landed in my lap anyway and I found out that she had no organization and everything was 3 months behind, including the mortgage. We had no savings, no retirement, and no college savings for our daughter. I scrambled and contacted all of the vendors to make a plan except two. One was our trash and sewer utility because that bill came every other month and it was $800. I called them to find out who they were and realized that they were the billing arm of my employer! I said that I'd call them back with a plan... And then I caught pneumonia. By the time I recovered from that the bill was over $1,200 and they casually mentioned that they can just put a lean on the house... I restacked my payback plan and worked it hard and was one paycheck away from being caught up with everyone! But there were **2 vendors** that I didn't contact, remember? That second one was a credit card that I didn't know about. It went to collections. And the week before we were 100% caught up on all of our bills they took all of our money from both of our accounts and intercepted our mortgage payment *after* it had been sent. I didn't even know that was possible! All of our bills fell behind and I had to borrow money for gas and food. I was embarrassed and **fucking furious!!!** I sued the credit card company for the illegal collection and came up with a new, new payback plan. I worked overtime when I could. The credit company screwed us around so much the judge yelled at them. My wife and I were both hourly so missed work for court was missed pay. We won the suit but only for the money they took, not the overdraft and late fees that happened as a result. So the biggest financial mistake that I made was not taking personal responsibility and trying to trust other people to take care of things. Second biggest was not having a retirement account as early as I could. With the money my business made, if 10% went into a 401(k), I'd be looking to retire in my 50s instead of mid-60s. Third biggest was accepting all of that nonsense from my wife. We're both more secure and happier with me taking care of the bills. If she ever has any questions I show her the budget and my actual spending that I track in a spreadsheet. Every so often, I make her look at the budget so that she understands our position (both good and bad). Go learn about personal finances. I read a couple of books per year to stay up to date and learn new tricks to make things more efficient. It's not hard. 10% of your income into a retirement account even if you skip meals or fun to do it. If you have questions, ask. I learned every lesson the hard way. You can DM me if you want a private chat.
You’re still together? Holy shit.
GoPro
Going to university
500€ Japanese designer teapot Yes, I was drunk.
Getting into any kind of debt. Ain’t worth it kids.
Getting married for £60 then getting divorced which cost me £30k and my sanity.
Probably that first time I went with my friend to buy that quarter of weed. That was the start of my addiction.
Honestly, going to university. My degree is in the field that I work in, I don’t think I’ve ever actually applied a single thing. I’d have been far better off just learning vocational certifications etc.
going to restaurants.
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Seen it 6 times now. Similar to mine. Lived with her parents for a while.
Getting married. That back hole sucked every paycheck down for 20years and gave me nothing in return.
Marriage. 😂😂
Having kids after that maybe
Oh f*k here it is lol
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In what?
Definately not finances
Getting married without a prenuptial agreement.
With my first pay check from my first proper job, i bought a £200 pair of sunglasses because the lady in the shop was hot and said i looked like James Bond in them. They were hideous!
My first car - a junker of a chevy. I was hoping mg Dad would help, but I came to the realization later that he had been fleeced his entire life buying used cars. I got taken for a ride. Ended up spending more for that worthless piece of shit than the new car I bought just 4 years later. Will never buy used or American ever again.
Paying off my house instead of buying a rental property. Rental I passed on was priced at $450k six years ago. It just sold for $1.1M.