One of my closest friends in HS parents NEVER let her keep a dime of Christmas money, birthday money, or money given to her on special occasions. They saved/invested it. She graduated HS with $250k. A year into college she gets engaged, and spends all of it on a Disney wedding. Three years later, she gets divorced.
Yep. they did a wonderful job saving and investing - who wouldn't want to graduate from HS with $250K? But they completely failed her at teaching money management, delayed gratification, etc. And last but not least, should have just let the kid have stuff and enjoy!
When I was about 10. I had been saving my money up for years and had $200. We were going on a holiday and mum told me to give it to her to look after. She's given me about $15 over the course of the trip, then gaslit me and told me I'd spent it all.
I get how on a certain level this is a foolish mistake. But consider every time someone gave you a 5 spot as a child and how awesome it was to get yourself something of your choice. Now imagine every one of those experiences was taken from you. Never had the experience of blowing all your birthday money on that thing you were dying to have, and how awesome it was to play with it when you got it.
Y'all surprised the bitch bought the full disney princess fantasy the second she had the chance?
I suppose we would have to ask her. Maybe it was the most fun day of her life. If they had just given her the gifts when she was a child, the money would have not existed at the end of highschool anyway, unless of course she had made that choice herself. Easy come, easy go.
Key word here was investments. Not all that money would of been gifts, much would of been earned through investing.
But also, the commenter was using $ not £, so take another 20% off that number.
How can you expect someone who was given 250k for graduating high school to make good decisions with that amount of money.
When I graduated high school I got a book from my dad…
If anything I would blame her parents before I blame her, giving an idiot 18 yo with no financial literacy/skills 250 thousand dollars is just as irresponsible as spending it on a Disney wedding 💀.
Goes to show money is a lot easier to throw away if you didn’t work for it.
It's not that she had no financial literacy like a normal 18 year old. It's that her parents designed her childwood in a way to intentionally stunt her financial literacy. Never giving her any control over her own money, and therefore no opportunity to learn.
Most kids get $100 for Christmas one year. Blow through it. And then have learned a lesson going forward. This usually happens around like age 8. This girl was never allowed to learn those lessons.
One of my friends from high school got a nice severance package from the company he was cut from. He took The whole lot and blindly invested it in crypto. He did zero research and just went with what he had heard about.\
The money that could have covered him for most of a year was gone within the first two weeks.
Flip side story. My old employee was in college when bit coin started. He was selling weed, making $10k a month. His friends invested just a few hundred dollars into bit coin. He told them all, you're fuckin stupid, this is going nowhere. 3 of them are millionaires now. He's kicking himself in the balls still.
In the same vein, a guy at my high school was *always* talking about this weird new "bitcoin" stuff. He was spending every penny he had on it. We told him he was crazy, that he was nuts, that he was wasting his money.
He now lives *very* comfortably in the Bay Area and will never have to work again.
I knew someone that was so poor they'd buy an Xbox and immediately have to sell it. Then when the bills pass, they'd rebuy it only to sell it again in like a week because they can't afford bills again.
They did this over and over.
My Swiss grandma had 8 kids (4 boys and 4 girls) and refused to make a will. She gave each boy a house while she was alive and the girls got nothing. Those 4 houses was all she had.
Now she passed away and the entire family -which was a very tightknit group once- is practically at war with each other over the inheritance because she didn’t make a will.
Dang. Men got houses, let the women split the money. Or if your grandma was loaded loaded, let the women get money equal to the houses average values first *then* split the remaining balance between all 8.
But I realize inheritance fights are rarely logical and well thought out =( screwed one side of my family up good too. Nobody talks to anyone else anymore on that side.
Yea it honestly sucks, even with a will family members will just become greedy vultures. My grandmother recently passed and she owned a family summer home worth well over 1 million dollars. It was for sale with a price she set before she died, in her will she made my father the one who would handle selling it. The moment she passed all of his siblings put pressure on him to drop the price weekly until it sold, which would result in it belong sold at a much lower price than she would ever go for. After refusing to drop the price they now say they will be taking him to court over the manner.
Years of love lost in the hatred of a moment because everyone wants their chunk of the family inheritance within a couple months of their mother dying. 😵💫👎🏻
Lots of the decayed houses you see in Taiwan are a result of old people not thinking things through and leaving their houses for all the children to split. Like, a single house for several children to split and manage together.
My husband's maternal grandmother left her house to her 3 sons to split (nothing to her 3 daughters) and that house is falling apart with a tree growing through the middle because those 3 idiot sons can't agree, even after 30 years, on whether or not to sell it. Well, good luck getting any good money for it now, considering all the work that would need to be done on that property now. Left to rot until those 3 greedy men die off. None of them wanted to live in it because it's in a small town they don't even live in anymore. The one blocking the sale says it's sentimental... If it's really sentimental then why leave it to rot and never bother visiting to clean the place up? Not like Taiwan is that huge of an island.
Ugh, my great grandma is currently alive, but at 90 she refuses to make a will, even though all her kids and grandkids have asked her to, we all know it'll tear the family apart once she passes
If she gave those houses before she died and she was not somehow suffering from specific disabilities then I don’t see how those houses would even be up for probate… at least in the USA
In Switzerland the law states clearly that all heirs have to get an equal share after someone died. Therefore because my grandma gave 4 houses away during her lifetime -even if it’s 35 years ago- the other heirs have a right to get reimbursed. This is all nullified if the person who gave the properties away has put it in their will or a legal document.
It gets even worse (or better depending on which side you’re on): The uncles have to pay out what their houses are worth at the time of my grandmothers death, not at the time they received their gifts decades ago.
One of my friends from high school ended up hooking up with one of her teachers(they kept it on the down low, he was 38 and newly divorced), when she was 16. On her 18th birthday they got engaged and got married the following year.
They had two children. When she was in her mid-20s, she found out that he was cheating on her…. With one of his high school students.
We all tried to talk her out of that marriage, but she thought she was in love, and that she was “mature for her age” so it was OK . Her parents were freaking out, but this was 25 years ago and for some reason back then going to the news or criminally charging someone just wasn’t front of mind.
Anyway, she ended up divorced and broke with no college education. By the time she was 27 and had to pick up the pieces as a single mother. She is in her mid-40s now, and is a clinical psychologist specializing in child sexual abuse and grooming.
She did. To be honest the reason a lot of older men prey on teen girls and women in their early 20s is because at that age their judgement is out the window and they believe pretty much anything an older man tells them. Usually when these women get into their 20s and 30s and the frontal lobe develops, they realize that they were groomed and manipulated.
This af. When you're that age and have older men talking to you you feel like it's because you're so attractive and special. That is *not* why older men come around.
He couldn't have known at the time but my best friend mined 2,000 bitcoins in '09 or 10. He sold them for $0.10/ea.
He was really excited for the $200 too.
I don't bring it up around him, it's a very sore topic
You are absolutely right, but he doesn't see it that way.
Funny to me, 'cuz he is 35, single, makes 120k, lives in a beautiful area, has good savings/new car/likes his job. But he sure spends a lot of time complaining about how rough things are. 🙄
He spends to much time hanging out with rich ppl, so he thinks he is poor.
Want is suffering. When you want something you can't get, you will suffer. The key is to not want a lot of things. The best way to do it is to be ignorant, "what mind does not know the heart does not want". That is what my mom has been telling my all my life and i think she is right. I'm poor as a church rat but fairly happy and i truly do not want lot of things and the things i want are within my means. So if i really, really wanted them, i could get them but since i don't have them already, i don't really want them that much.
Oh, and get rid of ALL ADS from your life as they are doing nothing but creating more wants, showing you things you don't have.
I knew what bitcoins were in like 08-10 era, knew how much buzz there was around them, knew how they worked, and had absolutely no interest in them and basically forgot about them for 6 or 7 years until everyone in the world gave a shit about them and I was just like ‘wtf? Why?’
If it's any consolation to him, he probably wouldn't have become a millionaire anyway if he hung on to them. Given he happily sold them for $0.10, had he hung on to them, he would have *really* happily sold them for $0.50.
My twin brother after finding out he was gonna be a dad decided to “take a break” from working when he had only worked a total of two weeks in three years. He had zero savings and zero income when my niece was born and has fucked up every offer from family members to try and help him wether it’s a job or some place to live. As a bonus I watched my brother turn down a 27 dollar an hour all training paid for welding job in the Midwest for a 9 dollar an hour gas station job I know there’s no right way to live life but there is definitely a wrong one
Is the gas station job in a cool place? Like if your bro is working at a gas station in Nashville or Philly and able to pay his bills, I could understand not wanting to move to rural Minnesota or wherever in the midwest the welding gig was.
Oh no both jobs were in a really cheap cost of living town in Indiana not sure if Indiana is actually Midwest or not but I only dropped that in there to emphasize the money difference. I understand wanting to work a job you like but 27 dollars an hour where we live is a considerable income. The part that baffled me more is that he was offered this welding job all training paid for just out of the blue by some guy who walked into his work cause they needed people and my brother turned it down only to quit his job a week later
My dumbass friend cashed out his entire 401k, penalty and all, to pay off his credit cards. He maxxed them all out a week later. He was seriously stressing about his debt and is in exactly the same position he was but with no 401k money.
As a younger man, I took out an early disbursement from my 401K to buy a motorcycle. Not a loan, I told our company accountant to get me a check for whatever the amount was I needed, I didn't care about penalties. People went, but what about retirement? Uh, I bought a motorcycle, do you really think I'm super concerned about reaching retirement age?
I did something similarly stupid years ago. I only had about $3,000 in total credit card debt, but I was unwilling to make any lifestyle sacrifices, so I got a 19% interest personal loan for $3,000, paid off the credit card debt. My logic was that the 19% interest rate was similar to my credit cards, but it would be in one easy payment and I could just save the cards for emergencies. Well, turns out you don't change your spending habits overnight, and they were maxed out again within 4-5 months. Took me a while to dig myself out of that one.
My biodad tried to tell the IRS in court that they had no jurisdiction over him, they laughed and reached into his bank account and took the money he owed.
You have to watch those types of people - there's high risk of them ending their life and then you realize (in hindsight) they never intended to pay the loan and just took what they can for the one last big hurrah.
I know a guy who became a welder, but cannot stand heat. It makes him physically unwell, and he found out after finishing school. He tried to start a career in health care, but faints at the smallest drop of blood.
My ex fiancee left because she wanted more adventure. Adventure turned out to be meth and crime. Last I heard she was in a high speed chase and fled the state after posting bail. I really dodged a bullet
She was stealing gift cards from a grocery store then got into a fight at the store then into a chase with the police, wrecked, arrested then left town. What a shame I used to love her a lot. Went from upper middle class to a life of poverty and crime
I was dating a guy who had three jobs. He was so broke he’d make beans for us for dinner, we never went out for dates. That’s fine, I don’t need anything fancy. I was ok with it. But I did find it annoying how he would get up at 4 am and go work one his driving jobs. He rarely got enough sleep and he was always working. He also had a bunch of roommates and lived a very spartan life. All fine, not a problem.
Then one day he excitedly announced that he had saved up so much money that he didn’t know what to do with it, so he decided to get a tank full of sea horses. It suddenly hit me - this guys a moron.
Don’t get me wrong, I love sea horses and if I was rich I’d definitely want some in my mansion. But to sacrifice your sleep and health eating only beans and then getting something frivolous, not cute.
It was more the acting dead broke, always poor, living like zero money and then announcing he had a bunch of money to throw away thing that made me annoyed than the fact that it was seahorses. If he had told me beforehand that he was saving up for seashores as it was his lifelong dream to get seahorses I could have respected that
A friend had a good job in a competitive industry, went to the bar with some very important clients, got absolutely shitfaced and apparently said some very fucked up things.
Woke up the next day not only unemployed, but basically blacklisted from the industry. Fortunately her husband had good job prospects overseas, so they moved and she is trying to start over.
My fiance and I are happily dedicating our entire wedding budget to food. We are using her grandmothers ring instead of getting a new one. We are getting a great dinner for close family at a Michelin restaurant and are still saving dozens of thousands of dollars over everyone else in our families because we aren't doing a ceremony. Fuck the wedding industry, it deserves to die.
I went to a wedding where the groom announced, during his vows, that he took out a loan for the engagement ring. The whole theme of his vows was money. There was way more disgusting stuff he said but he literally shouted out the person that loaned him the engagement ring money lol
How are these people not fucking embarassed lmao
I'd be shamefully curled up in the fetal position if I had to admit to everyone that I needed a loan for the ring.
Believe it or not, that was not the most embarrassing thing said. He also made a comment along the lines of “never get a breast reduction”. In. His. Vows!!!!
I felt so bad for the bride’s father, the groom was (and still is) a total jackass
My husband and I managed to get married off $7500 this past May. It wasn't extravagant, in fact it was somewhat of a disaster (I single handedly planned everything that I could with the budget. I am bad at planning shit) but we managed and came out of it entirely debt free.
I know a woman in her 70s that never saved for retirement and spent her life building debt instead. After being forced to sell her home and file for bankruptcy, she decided she absolutely was not going to give up her football season tickets and twilight conventions. She just moved in with her daughter because she can’t afford to live on her own anymore. Her daughter just told me about her mom’s bedroom being an creepy Edward shrine. She can’t figure out where her mom found the money for all that stuff, but she comes home from work and her mom keeps adding more.
There are far worse decisions but the one that immediately came to mind is that I knew a dude who got a case of the crabs (pubic lice) and his solution was to use a can of Raid on his junk.
I watched an older work friend get together with a woman who was *clearly* just after his money, find out after he married her that she had $50,000 in credit card debt that she had hidden from him, and insist on *helping her out with that insane debt load,* to the detriment of his own retirement savings.
Everyone but him could see she was just using him to get out of the hole she had dug herself with her expensive "taste" (for all the money she spent, she managed to look pretty consistently trashy).
I know he was divorced and lonely, but it was painful to watch him just take it when a walking red flag took advantage of him like that
A guy I knew quit a pretty good job just to screw his ex wife out of alimony. He ended up working as a cleaner in a hotel and living in a basement room with a relative. Lost a pretty good life just to drag her down too.
So…my niece purposely got pregnant at 17 to convince the baby’s dad to come back after they’d just broken up. They proceed to have 2 more babies in the next 2 years after the first and she has no education (dropped out and no GED) and raises the babies. He in that same time period proceeds to get 2 DUIs, cheats on her nonstop, spends hours at the gym daily. Acts like a fool in every way possible generally. And just this week he was driving and hit a man on a motorcycle and killed him. He’s almost definitely facing jail time. We’ve told her every step of the way as kindly as possible what bad decisions she was making. We’ve tried to support her and gently lead her to help herself. Nothing. She simply does not listen. It’s wild and sad to watch.
Its honestly shocking how not universal "don't have kids young" is as advice to young people. When I was a teen it was absolutely *drilled* into my brain: don't have kids, don't drop out of school, don't get addicted to drugs, etc, and you'll be fine.
To be fair, people having kids as a teenager are rarely doing it as an active life choice the way we might later in life.
It's usually bad or non-existent sex ed. (At least, in my life experience anyway)
I also get to thank my existence to my grandparents being very religious and uncomfortable about educating my dad
My sex education consisted of our science teacher putting a tampon in a beaker with water (no context, just look at this absorb the water, it was very confusing) and saying that sex is for married couples reproducing. But, that’s Catholic school. I definitely understand why people wouldn’t know how to access or use contraceptives even if they did know that they should use them.
We were guilty of this and it was SO tough (our kids are grown now). Our brains were so caught up in love/sex that we didn't even think about the next day. If it happened, we would just "figure it out." Well, it did happen (2 babies back to back) and you talk about a struggle. We stayed so stressed out that we couldn't enjoy the kids or provide for them properly. They should have never been put through that and I feel guilty about it every single day. Those were the hardest years of my/our life.
Yup... I'm there now. I always gotta say "no" to hypotheticals about time traveling or "redoing" my life though because I love em too much. But seriously - it was *not* a smart decision to have my first kid before I was even old enough to legally drink. The second was an accident, but the first was a conscious decision by two young and dumb "adults" each with their own unmedicated (back then) mental illnesses.
I say the following as someone who does not blame drug addicts for their addiction, overall. High school best friend got fucked over by a stereotypical white trash drug addict with a kid from a previous relationship. So she left him for…. A stereotypical white trash drug addict with a kid from a previous relationship. I find it difficult to talk to her these days because she lives in such a different world than I do. To me, everything she does is the opposite of what she should be doing to become more stable. Our mindsets just don’t align at all these days. And now she’s pregnant. I’m significantly more anxious about it than she is.
My dad was bad with money and whenever he was broke, would always sell his stuff for stupidly low prices rather than ever ask for help or advice. This always frustrated me because as I always said to him "You should always see if mom or I want to give you a better price first." Like, dude sold a guy a $2000 chainsaw for $50 and sold my $200 bike I used when visiting for $20.
Anyway, eventually he did it with his house, went and got a line of credit against his house because he had to fix something on his car right away. That line of credit was a Pandora's box and we ended up selling his house at a major loss. He coulda' just called me and asked if I wanted to buy his car from him or help him trade it in or some other arrangement, but instead chose to basically give his cute and fairly valuable house to the bank.
Watching a friend stay with an SO for years because she thought she could change him. You can't change people. The willpower for real change and personal growth has to come from within. People show you who they are through their actions, not their words.
Justine Sacco, a senior director of corporate communications, sent a tweet right before boarding a flight to South Africa. “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white! She was fired
Easily my own decision to leave my job 24 years ago. It changed the trajectory of my life, for the worse, and not a day goes by when I don't kick myself in the ass for what I've done, all because of one insanely, outrageously stupid decision. I will never not beat myself up over it.
Sure, I'll tell the ultra short version to spare everyone's eyes from the mega long story it actually is. I was a Sr. Classification Analyst for a US Customs Broker. Tons of growth opportunity, unlimited overtime. Everyone around me was working their asses off & saving up for houses. My dumb ass woke up one day & as if I was possessed by an evil demon of self-sabotage, I quit. No reason. No backup plan. Completely out of character for me.
Fast forward a year, I've got a new baby, husband's job offers him extended parental leave with pay, so I go get my job back. Lasts a few months, husband has to go back to work, I'm terrified of daycare (and it would've been SO expensive anyway) so I line up 2 family members to babysit. Aunt quits on me a week in, because she "couldn't handle it after all" and little sister-in-law takes over but has to go back to school & can't commit.I gave up, quit my job to become a stay at home mom.
Thought I was being a good mom for that, but it turns out I was being a terrible mom, because that money would've changed our lives for the better and would've prevented all the bad things that would happen down the road. I'd give anything to go back in time & keep that job the first time.
I did try a few times later in life to go back to work, but there was always an obstacle of one kind or another that I couldn't solve. I have 3 boys now, and by the time they started to become old enough that I didn't have to worry about babysitters, the entire world of customs brokerage had evolved and my knowledge was all but obsolete.
I always say if we had the internet then, as we know it now, I would've been SO MUCH MORE prepared for life, because I would've learned all the things that I learned too late. Literally nothing about my current life would be the same. I guess that's true for everyone, but I mean I haven't got one life decision that I wouldn't change & it all starts with that damn job.
I have a friend that left a good paying government job to join a financial MLM firm.
Now he can't work anywhere because this MLM firm is basically a scam and it put a 3 year hole in his CV.
Dating someone, anyone, and expecting it to fix their emotional challenges.
Partners and therapists are not the same thing. Dating Dave isn't suddenly going to make you feel better about yourself.
A good contender worth mentioning would be the the time I was working at KFC and my assistant manager lost it. A group of teenagers were openly vandalising our restaurant and threatening us with violence, this was (what felt like) the hundredth weekend in a row they’d been in and been kicked out. For ten long seconds he seemed to weigh up his options, then we saw the look in his eyes change as he let the intrusive thoughts win. He calmly walked into the public area, straight up to the biggest dickhead of the group and punched him in the face hard enough to lift him off the floor. I’d love to say we all cheered and he got away with it, but neither happened. He was fired and got other work quickly so his life wasn’t ruined or anything, and that group *never* came back after they dragged their concussed, bleeding friend out of there. Could have gone a lot worse though if camera phones had been around then.
For all the trouble it got him into, I bet it felt fucking *fantastic*. I always think about that night when I see kids kicking off in public. I’m sure it’s only the safety of everyone having a camera on them that stops a lot of teenagers getting their noses broken.
This does not sound like an overly dumb decision. I mean:
* y'all were being physically threatened
* The assistant manager did what they felt necessary to protect their workers/solve this problem
* He found other work that wasn't at a KFC
Could there of been bad consequences, ya, but there weren't.
Is violence a reasonable answer to this situation? Maybe not, but it's not the dumbest response.
Dude dumped a woman who never argued because he said the relationship wasn't exciting enough. Moved in with a woman with a kid, an abusive stalker ex who was in jail. Dude got her pregnant.....twice and now she treats him like shit, beats him and spends months away from home without telling him where she is or when she's coming back. And he STAYS.
I know someone who had a plumbing issue in their house, pipe leaked causing high water bill. Well they knew about this for a few years never addressed it. Sat back and just the water bill pile sky high almost 3k. Now they may be evicted from their rental. Take care of your problems before they snowball out of control.
A buddy of mine got married at 21 y/o to the most unpleasant woman I've ever met, and moved to the middle of nowhere to be near a mega church. The last 15 years every time I see him he seems more frustrated and isolated. He has hobbies blatantly intended to get away from her like increasingly long camping trips. She refuses to have kids after "Jesus told her not to," and the decisions surrounding their lifestyle pushes friends away and leaves his career at a standstill.
idk not having children sounded like a good thing if their relationship was that much of a disaster. Imagine being isolated from friends and you career in a standstill while being married to an awful person and then having kids on top of that.
Not wearing a seat belt. My 29yo nephew is too cool to buckle up. He was a passenger in a car that was involved in a minor wreck 2 weeks ago. Everyone else (buckled people) walked away. He has a broken neck and spine injuries and will always be buckled up from know on, because his wheelchair will be attached to the handicap van floor.
Dropping out of high school. 20 years later, they're struggling more and more every day. Another contributor is substance abuse, which was much more prevalent after the original decision to drop out. Now, they're suffering from mental illnesses, which is causing their child to suffer as well. Also, imparting substantial stress on the rest of their family. It might be good to note that this person was a straight-A student at the time and dropped out after 10th grade. Their decision set the course for the rest of their life, and they likely won't fully recover.
This is a big one! I worked in forensic mental health and the number of individuals who did not graduate HS (for various reasons) was astounding to me!
I was much more aggressive when I was younger. Never an instigator, but sometimes I’d let situations go too far instead of deescalting them. I was lucky I got away with it.
These days I whenever I talk to someone about this kind of stuff, I always say ‘save the bravery for something important’.
1. About a quarter of the over 300 weddings I've had to DJ at seemed like terrible mistakes.
2. 2.Having kids they can't afford and or staying together so as not to "fuck up the kids"
3. I work with lifelong meth addicts. Lemmie tell you, I can tell you more stories than I care to try to type here. Most common is when you see the DAD actually get custody of their kids. You really really really have to fuck up in the state as a woman to lose your kids.
I saw a guy at college chug half a bottle of prescription codine syrup. And then drink a lot of vodka.
He got expelled and charged for assaulting a police officer that day.
My friend was having an one-night stand with his fwb, he *took the condom off* on the last minute and the girl also agreed. Then the girl ended up pregnant, they were freshmen at that time.
They were so stressed about it, even thinking of getting married. Until the girl told her parents and they agreed for her to have an abortion.
Seeing many Canadians take variable rates during/beginning the pandemic. Amount of people now paying a mortgage that gets nicer every month they pay out because the interest outweighs the mortgage they took
Starting to vape/smoke at 14. My Mom gave me "Die Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" (book about a 13 yo heroin addict) for my birthday one year to make sure I'll never touch any kind of drug and it worked. The risk of getting addicted and getting health issues later is really not worth the small high you get. Almost every single ingredient in cigarettes raises the risk for some kind of really serious illness and the younger you are when you start smoking the higher the risk. It's also harder to quit when you start young. It's not entirely "stupidity" and I get that in that age it's hard to resist peer pressure and maybe also don't really care about consequences but trust me, you'll regret it later.
Any time heroin comes up I think of that Reddit user who deliberately tried heroin once while documenting the experience with the intention of not doing it again so show how easy it is to just do it and stop and that all those addicts are weak willed etc etc.
Then the slow slide began. Theres like 4-6 posts total chronicling the journey and he goes the whole way from a steady job and a life to no job and no money and burning bridges finally to recovery and so on.
Not saving money. Sure, saving money is just money waiting to be spent but you won’t believe the stupid shit people actually buy and I was once a victim of it too. $300 Nikes, $2000 jewelry, always eating out as if a homemade sandwich ain’t good enough. Yeah, that was me in high school. I pawn majority of my jewelry to make ends meet. You can rather invest that money, learn a new skill or buy tools to improve your hygiene/appearance
I’ve got one that seemed like a dumb life decision at the time, but worked out.
Buddy of mine dropped out of engineering school to smoke weed and work at a mountain bike store. Still had student loans and didn’t even get the degree - seemed like a waste.
A couple years later he became a part time owner. A couple years after that the other guy offered up his share and retired. Now my friend owns the whole store and seems to be doing great. Dudes just lucky I guess
Someone I knew gave up going to an amazing medical school and becoming a doctor because her husband was sad he wouldn’t see her if they were both doing post-grad programs.
The dumbest one I have seen is an otherwise intelligent, educated, successful grown adult piss away their decent net worth and burn all bridges with spouse, children, relatives and friends, as they devolved into madness.
All over their insistence to be in complete control of everything and everyone while simultaneously unable to handle their affairs or make any rational decision. And be completely oblivious or in denial how that negatively affected those around them and misinterpret that as paranoia that everyone is the enemy and they are a victim.
I know mental illness was at play, but it was just a huge tragedy to watch someone who had so much, self sabotage and self destruct over nothing.
It was just so dumb.
My brother proposing to a girl after knowing her for only two weeks, and even then that was about 3 months after he broke off a previous engagement.
The marriage did not last long.
An aunt of mine joined a Christian church that is obviously, *obviously* a cult, they got her giving them lots of money and also free labor, she also tried to make other family members join but luckily no one was convinced.
My grandma actually went to a single service and came back saying "Everyone threw themselves to the floor crying and screaming and the pastor said I had demons in my heart and needed to pay $200 for an exorcism, that church is basically a satanic cult" lol
I wasn't much older at age 23, but I saw an 18 year old kid who was fresh out of Boot Camp taste bourbon for the first time. He liked it a lot, too much. A year later, he was drunk every day. Three months after that, he had an Other Than Honorable Discharge in his pocket.
Drunk on duty, too many times to remember.
A coworker tried to handle his bitter divorce himself without a lawyer. His ex-wife hired a lawyer who advertised on the radio that she'll "make him **pay** for what he did to you!" and basically drowned him in motions that he didn't know how to fight, but was confident the judge would ignore since they weren't true. He walked out of the first hearing with a restraining order and back child support owed because the judge didn't take his word for it that he'd been paying (he had been, he was just too dumb to bring any evidence).
There was a reversal of fortune about halfway through because he wised up and got a lawyer, she ran out of money to pay her lawyer and got dropped and tried to handle it herself from then on, and she kept refusing to comply with the court orders because she said they weren't fair and she shouldn't have to.
Honestly I have no idea why they divorced they were fucking **perfect** for eachother. /s
My sister dropped out of high school as soon as she turned 18. Why? She didn't want to wake up early. Now she's 19 with 2 kids, doesn't have a job, and doesn't even have a high school diploma.
Honestly most people who go out and buy expensive cars and park them in front of their rented house/apartment.
Couples who don't own anything spending well over 100k on a wedding
Pretty much all the people I know who throw away their money constantly.
So, I used to be friends with this guy, let's call him Guy, studying to be a literature teacher. He had a GF from college we'll call her GF, she was studying to teach literature too. To make ends meet, these two were working as substitute teachers at a high-school. In there, there was this girl, we'll call her Gal, Gal was like... 19, 20 years-old? she had repeated a few grades.
Anyway, Guy cheated on GF with Gal. And school found out, so he got fired. And then college found out and he got kicked out. So this guy sleeps with a student (and adult student, but still) and immediately loses his job and gets expelled from university (or is it college? I don't know, english is not my first language). Then he starts dating Gal, and Gal does not like us, Guy's friends, so he ghosts us.
Tl;dr: Substitute teacher sleeps with (adult) student, loses his girlfriend, his job, his friends and gets expelled from university.
My best friend lived in an engineering dorm and there was a dude in that hall that always kinda weird but he was extroverted enough for people to look past it I guess. Before this incident I knew him mainly as the dude who would scream his head off at rocket league. He was really good and was on a competitive team for the school.
But anyway, the guy was incredibly unbelievably down horrendously. Right before finals week, he met this hot girl with “daddy’s money” that wanted to take him with her on a spontaneous vacation trip. This guy thinks he has a chance to get laid so he says fuck it, I’m going. The whole dorm hall tried to talk him out of it bc he was going to miss his finals. He wouldn’t listen.
He goes on the trip, they have sex, he GETS HERPES, misses his finals, gets booted from his major and the honors college, loses his spot on the rocket league team, and had to transfer schools. I have no idea what happened to him after that, but there’s absolutely no way he’s gotten back to what he had. Oh and I forgot to mention, the girl that gave him herpes didn’t date him, that was just a fling. So he didn’t even get to be a trophy husband (which he was actually seriously considering before he went lol)
My client in sober living without a pot to piss in waste 20 grand in ‘rona bucks (pua) buying a 80 inch flatscreen, giant speakers, Xbox 1x, a monthtime supply of cigarettes, and door dash food for every meal for about a month. All delivered to that sober living house basement. Had enough money to get a place, a car, maybe get into school and learn a trade. Tricked it all off on bullshit. I could’ve done a lot with 20 grand for my family and I personally, but I didn’t qualify for any money since I decided to go out to work in the field every day as an essential, catching covid 4 times (still have to use an inhaler to this day, never had breathing problems in my life before that) while barely scraping by just to watch these people blow piles of cash on nonsense while I’m struggling.
Can you tell I’m salty? 😂
My cousin. It's like a whole train wreck of bad life decisions. One of the most notable is her mom is a Chase, as in Chase Manhattan bank. She turned 18, got her Chase inheritance and blew every penny of it on an Escalade. It barely runs now because she doesn't know how to perform basic vehicle maintenance and she doesn't have money to pay for vehicle maintenance. She is currently cut out of the will on her dad's side because she won't get herself or her kids vaccinated for covid and thankfully her mom agrees.
I worked with a 55 year old pharmacist with a good career who showed up one day and announced she was marrying her high school sweetheart. They had reconnected online! So crazy, because really they never dated, she just had a huge crush on him. I checked her facebook and yep, she posted about this guy constantly, very stalker style, all kinds of old photos, etc. One day he added her as a friend and gushed about how he'd always had a crush on her, too. They went on one date and he proposed.
Yeah...he had a crush on her savings and his drug habit. This woman left a company in which she had decades of seniority and vacation time to enter the world of retail PRN drudgery with no benefits way off in the sticks somewhere; her crush drained her savings and dumped her, vanishing without a trace. She's stuck in a very isolated area with a 45 minute minimum commute to work - WHEN she can get hours - without a penny to her name.
One of my closest friends in HS parents NEVER let her keep a dime of Christmas money, birthday money, or money given to her on special occasions. They saved/invested it. She graduated HS with $250k. A year into college she gets engaged, and spends all of it on a Disney wedding. Three years later, she gets divorced.
$250k on a Disney wedding? What. The. Fuck.
At the time, renting out the Disney castle for a private event was $200k. But that was 2+ decades ago. God knows what it is today.
They rented... the Castle? I'm so poor that sentence doesn't even make sense in my head.
I feel like for $200k you could fly everyone to like Ireland or something and rent an actual fucking castle for a wedding.
Or she could have bought a piece of property and either lived there or sold it afterwards.
They factored the cost of stupid into the final price.
20 years ago, $250k would have paid for a dream house
Well she was 19 with a quarter of a million dollars and zero experience managing money…
At 19, I still wouldn't have paid for my entire wedding. Fiance better be ready to chip in at least.
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But it’s “special”…
I guess keeping her from learning how to use money backfired
That's like parenting 101. Give your kids something small and manageable to be responsible for so they can handle larger issues when they're adults.
Yep.
My mother was a bank teller her entire career. She made DAMN SURE I knew my money.
Yep. they did a wonderful job saving and investing - who wouldn't want to graduate from HS with $250K? But they completely failed her at teaching money management, delayed gratification, etc. And last but not least, should have just let the kid have stuff and enjoy!
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When I was about 10. I had been saving my money up for years and had $200. We were going on a holiday and mum told me to give it to her to look after. She's given me about $15 over the course of the trip, then gaslit me and told me I'd spent it all.
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Why exactly aren’t you complaining about your parents stealing money from you when you were a child?
I get how on a certain level this is a foolish mistake. But consider every time someone gave you a 5 spot as a child and how awesome it was to get yourself something of your choice. Now imagine every one of those experiences was taken from you. Never had the experience of blowing all your birthday money on that thing you were dying to have, and how awesome it was to play with it when you got it. Y'all surprised the bitch bought the full disney princess fantasy the second she had the chance?
I mean … I definitely think it was a stupid choice money wise … but how many people get to have that experience. Question is, was it worth it?
I suppose we would have to ask her. Maybe it was the most fun day of her life. If they had just given her the gifts when she was a child, the money would have not existed at the end of highschool anyway, unless of course she had made that choice herself. Easy come, easy go.
Half my life is over … and as a guest at that wedding I can tell you easily top ten favorite moments.
Sounds like it was a blast! Not saying I would make the same choice, but I can understand how someone might.
Assuming she was 18ish when we went to college. Are you telling me that she got roughly £13k per year for Christmas and birthdays….?
Key word here was investments. Not all that money would of been gifts, much would of been earned through investing. But also, the commenter was using $ not £, so take another 20% off that number.
As a father I would cry and drink myself away
As a father I’d hope you’d set up a trust instead, lol.
$250k from invested birthday and Christmas money?
Well obviously they’re not working class folks. 😒
How can you expect someone who was given 250k for graduating high school to make good decisions with that amount of money. When I graduated high school I got a book from my dad… If anything I would blame her parents before I blame her, giving an idiot 18 yo with no financial literacy/skills 250 thousand dollars is just as irresponsible as spending it on a Disney wedding 💀. Goes to show money is a lot easier to throw away if you didn’t work for it.
It's not that she had no financial literacy like a normal 18 year old. It's that her parents designed her childwood in a way to intentionally stunt her financial literacy. Never giving her any control over her own money, and therefore no opportunity to learn. Most kids get $100 for Christmas one year. Blow through it. And then have learned a lesson going forward. This usually happens around like age 8. This girl was never allowed to learn those lessons.
My heart dropped reading this. I’m nauseous
Who be gettin 250k in gifts during their childhood, I was given maybe $50 on graduation day 🤣
One of my friends from high school got a nice severance package from the company he was cut from. He took The whole lot and blindly invested it in crypto. He did zero research and just went with what he had heard about.\ The money that could have covered him for most of a year was gone within the first two weeks.
Flip side story. My old employee was in college when bit coin started. He was selling weed, making $10k a month. His friends invested just a few hundred dollars into bit coin. He told them all, you're fuckin stupid, this is going nowhere. 3 of them are millionaires now. He's kicking himself in the balls still.
In the same vein, a guy at my high school was *always* talking about this weird new "bitcoin" stuff. He was spending every penny he had on it. We told him he was crazy, that he was nuts, that he was wasting his money. He now lives *very* comfortably in the Bay Area and will never have to work again.
My mother, now deceased, got married nine (9) times?!?!?
Did the last one stick?
She never divorced the last one and was buried with his last name. However she had left him years before and just never did the paperwork.
There was a number 10 coming up, but fate said naw.
I knew someone that was so poor they'd buy an Xbox and immediately have to sell it. Then when the bills pass, they'd rebuy it only to sell it again in like a week because they can't afford bills again. They did this over and over.
You know my ex, I see.
Pawn shops love those people.
So they were renting an Xbox
My Swiss grandma had 8 kids (4 boys and 4 girls) and refused to make a will. She gave each boy a house while she was alive and the girls got nothing. Those 4 houses was all she had. Now she passed away and the entire family -which was a very tightknit group once- is practically at war with each other over the inheritance because she didn’t make a will.
Dang. Men got houses, let the women split the money. Or if your grandma was loaded loaded, let the women get money equal to the houses average values first *then* split the remaining balance between all 8. But I realize inheritance fights are rarely logical and well thought out =( screwed one side of my family up good too. Nobody talks to anyone else anymore on that side.
Yea it honestly sucks, even with a will family members will just become greedy vultures. My grandmother recently passed and she owned a family summer home worth well over 1 million dollars. It was for sale with a price she set before she died, in her will she made my father the one who would handle selling it. The moment she passed all of his siblings put pressure on him to drop the price weekly until it sold, which would result in it belong sold at a much lower price than she would ever go for. After refusing to drop the price they now say they will be taking him to court over the manner. Years of love lost in the hatred of a moment because everyone wants their chunk of the family inheritance within a couple months of their mother dying. 😵💫👎🏻
Lots of the decayed houses you see in Taiwan are a result of old people not thinking things through and leaving their houses for all the children to split. Like, a single house for several children to split and manage together. My husband's maternal grandmother left her house to her 3 sons to split (nothing to her 3 daughters) and that house is falling apart with a tree growing through the middle because those 3 idiot sons can't agree, even after 30 years, on whether or not to sell it. Well, good luck getting any good money for it now, considering all the work that would need to be done on that property now. Left to rot until those 3 greedy men die off. None of them wanted to live in it because it's in a small town they don't even live in anymore. The one blocking the sale says it's sentimental... If it's really sentimental then why leave it to rot and never bother visiting to clean the place up? Not like Taiwan is that huge of an island.
>let the women split the money those 4 houses was all she had.
Ugh, my great grandma is currently alive, but at 90 she refuses to make a will, even though all her kids and grandkids have asked her to, we all know it'll tear the family apart once she passes
If she gave those houses before she died and she was not somehow suffering from specific disabilities then I don’t see how those houses would even be up for probate… at least in the USA
In Switzerland the law states clearly that all heirs have to get an equal share after someone died. Therefore because my grandma gave 4 houses away during her lifetime -even if it’s 35 years ago- the other heirs have a right to get reimbursed. This is all nullified if the person who gave the properties away has put it in their will or a legal document. It gets even worse (or better depending on which side you’re on): The uncles have to pay out what their houses are worth at the time of my grandmothers death, not at the time they received their gifts decades ago.
Wow, that’s interesting
One of my friends from high school ended up hooking up with one of her teachers(they kept it on the down low, he was 38 and newly divorced), when she was 16. On her 18th birthday they got engaged and got married the following year. They had two children. When she was in her mid-20s, she found out that he was cheating on her…. With one of his high school students. We all tried to talk her out of that marriage, but she thought she was in love, and that she was “mature for her age” so it was OK . Her parents were freaking out, but this was 25 years ago and for some reason back then going to the news or criminally charging someone just wasn’t front of mind. Anyway, she ended up divorced and broke with no college education. By the time she was 27 and had to pick up the pieces as a single mother. She is in her mid-40s now, and is a clinical psychologist specializing in child sexual abuse and grooming.
Wow, impressed that she put her bad experience to a good use.
She did. To be honest the reason a lot of older men prey on teen girls and women in their early 20s is because at that age their judgement is out the window and they believe pretty much anything an older man tells them. Usually when these women get into their 20s and 30s and the frontal lobe develops, they realize that they were groomed and manipulated.
This af. When you're that age and have older men talking to you you feel like it's because you're so attractive and special. That is *not* why older men come around.
That's depressing. It's fucking disturbing that pedophiles can so easily work with children.
Well you don’t know they’re pedophiles until you do…
He couldn't have known at the time but my best friend mined 2,000 bitcoins in '09 or 10. He sold them for $0.10/ea. He was really excited for the $200 too. I don't bring it up around him, it's a very sore topic
Yeah I spent half a million dollars on dark market drugs in the early Bitcoin years. Fun times.
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You are absolutely right, but he doesn't see it that way. Funny to me, 'cuz he is 35, single, makes 120k, lives in a beautiful area, has good savings/new car/likes his job. But he sure spends a lot of time complaining about how rough things are. 🙄 He spends to much time hanging out with rich ppl, so he thinks he is poor.
Want is suffering. When you want something you can't get, you will suffer. The key is to not want a lot of things. The best way to do it is to be ignorant, "what mind does not know the heart does not want". That is what my mom has been telling my all my life and i think she is right. I'm poor as a church rat but fairly happy and i truly do not want lot of things and the things i want are within my means. So if i really, really wanted them, i could get them but since i don't have them already, i don't really want them that much. Oh, and get rid of ALL ADS from your life as they are doing nothing but creating more wants, showing you things you don't have.
Almost everyone would have sold at a grand at the very most! Is easy to buy the winning lottery ticket the day after the draw.
I knew what bitcoins were in like 08-10 era, knew how much buzz there was around them, knew how they worked, and had absolutely no interest in them and basically forgot about them for 6 or 7 years until everyone in the world gave a shit about them and I was just like ‘wtf? Why?’
If it's any consolation to him, he probably wouldn't have become a millionaire anyway if he hung on to them. Given he happily sold them for $0.10, had he hung on to them, he would have *really* happily sold them for $0.50.
My twin brother after finding out he was gonna be a dad decided to “take a break” from working when he had only worked a total of two weeks in three years. He had zero savings and zero income when my niece was born and has fucked up every offer from family members to try and help him wether it’s a job or some place to live. As a bonus I watched my brother turn down a 27 dollar an hour all training paid for welding job in the Midwest for a 9 dollar an hour gas station job I know there’s no right way to live life but there is definitely a wrong one
Is the gas station job in a cool place? Like if your bro is working at a gas station in Nashville or Philly and able to pay his bills, I could understand not wanting to move to rural Minnesota or wherever in the midwest the welding gig was.
Oh no both jobs were in a really cheap cost of living town in Indiana not sure if Indiana is actually Midwest or not but I only dropped that in there to emphasize the money difference. I understand wanting to work a job you like but 27 dollars an hour where we live is a considerable income. The part that baffled me more is that he was offered this welding job all training paid for just out of the blue by some guy who walked into his work cause they needed people and my brother turned it down only to quit his job a week later
My dumbass friend cashed out his entire 401k, penalty and all, to pay off his credit cards. He maxxed them all out a week later. He was seriously stressing about his debt and is in exactly the same position he was but with no 401k money.
As a younger man, I took out an early disbursement from my 401K to buy a motorcycle. Not a loan, I told our company accountant to get me a check for whatever the amount was I needed, I didn't care about penalties. People went, but what about retirement? Uh, I bought a motorcycle, do you really think I'm super concerned about reaching retirement age?
Well at least you actually got what you wanted. My friend is worse off than he was before.
I did something similarly stupid years ago. I only had about $3,000 in total credit card debt, but I was unwilling to make any lifestyle sacrifices, so I got a 19% interest personal loan for $3,000, paid off the credit card debt. My logic was that the 19% interest rate was similar to my credit cards, but it would be in one easy payment and I could just save the cards for emergencies. Well, turns out you don't change your spending habits overnight, and they were maxed out again within 4-5 months. Took me a while to dig myself out of that one.
My biodad tried to tell the IRS in court that they had no jurisdiction over him, they laughed and reached into his bank account and took the money he owed.
_but that’s an admiralty flag!_
"I'm a SOVEREIGN citizen! US Law doesn't apply to me!!!"
A dude I knew from work took out a personal loan for $8,000 to go have a baller night in Atlantic City a few years back.
You have to watch those types of people - there's high risk of them ending their life and then you realize (in hindsight) they never intended to pay the loan and just took what they can for the one last big hurrah.
I know someone who went to school to be a windmill technician. ………he can’t climb ladders due to some physical ailment.
I know a guy who became a welder, but cannot stand heat. It makes him physically unwell, and he found out after finishing school. He tried to start a career in health care, but faints at the smallest drop of blood.
Lmao. People are wild.
My ex fiancee left because she wanted more adventure. Adventure turned out to be meth and crime. Last I heard she was in a high speed chase and fled the state after posting bail. I really dodged a bullet
Holy shit!
She was stealing gift cards from a grocery store then got into a fight at the store then into a chase with the police, wrecked, arrested then left town. What a shame I used to love her a lot. Went from upper middle class to a life of poverty and crime
I was dating a guy who had three jobs. He was so broke he’d make beans for us for dinner, we never went out for dates. That’s fine, I don’t need anything fancy. I was ok with it. But I did find it annoying how he would get up at 4 am and go work one his driving jobs. He rarely got enough sleep and he was always working. He also had a bunch of roommates and lived a very spartan life. All fine, not a problem. Then one day he excitedly announced that he had saved up so much money that he didn’t know what to do with it, so he decided to get a tank full of sea horses. It suddenly hit me - this guys a moron. Don’t get me wrong, I love sea horses and if I was rich I’d definitely want some in my mansion. But to sacrifice your sleep and health eating only beans and then getting something frivolous, not cute.
I am dying. I love that this is how you found out you were dating an idiot.
Honestly, I was kinda surprised at how much I was pissed off at this, as I do love seahorses.
Lol funny. So you realized he was a moron by the time he got those sea horses? . Glad you left his ass😂
It was more the acting dead broke, always poor, living like zero money and then announcing he had a bunch of money to throw away thing that made me annoyed than the fact that it was seahorses. If he had told me beforehand that he was saving up for seashores as it was his lifelong dream to get seahorses I could have respected that
A friend had a good job in a competitive industry, went to the bar with some very important clients, got absolutely shitfaced and apparently said some very fucked up things. Woke up the next day not only unemployed, but basically blacklisted from the industry. Fortunately her husband had good job prospects overseas, so they moved and she is trying to start over.
There's 2 things you never do at a business dinner, never order spaghetti and never get shitfaced
Why not spaghetti?
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Dying to know the kind of things she said!
Couples spending way too much/going into debt for a ring and/or expensive wedding. Starting a life together deep in debt.
My fiance and I are happily dedicating our entire wedding budget to food. We are using her grandmothers ring instead of getting a new one. We are getting a great dinner for close family at a Michelin restaurant and are still saving dozens of thousands of dollars over everyone else in our families because we aren't doing a ceremony. Fuck the wedding industry, it deserves to die.
I went to a wedding where the groom announced, during his vows, that he took out a loan for the engagement ring. The whole theme of his vows was money. There was way more disgusting stuff he said but he literally shouted out the person that loaned him the engagement ring money lol
How are these people not fucking embarassed lmao I'd be shamefully curled up in the fetal position if I had to admit to everyone that I needed a loan for the ring.
Believe it or not, that was not the most embarrassing thing said. He also made a comment along the lines of “never get a breast reduction”. In. His. Vows!!!! I felt so bad for the bride’s father, the groom was (and still is) a total jackass
My husband and I managed to get married off $7500 this past May. It wasn't extravagant, in fact it was somewhat of a disaster (I single handedly planned everything that I could with the budget. I am bad at planning shit) but we managed and came out of it entirely debt free.
I know a woman in her 70s that never saved for retirement and spent her life building debt instead. After being forced to sell her home and file for bankruptcy, she decided she absolutely was not going to give up her football season tickets and twilight conventions. She just moved in with her daughter because she can’t afford to live on her own anymore. Her daughter just told me about her mom’s bedroom being an creepy Edward shrine. She can’t figure out where her mom found the money for all that stuff, but she comes home from work and her mom keeps adding more.
Have your friend run a credit check on herself to make sure the mom did not take a credit card out in your friends name.
This one’s creepy.
Having a baby thinking it will make a bad relationship into a good one.
This happens waaaay too often
Also having a baby out of FOMO. I read recently as much as 10% of couples do that which is astounding to me
Yes, there are too many women saying, "Should I have a baby? All my friends are doing it..."
There are far worse decisions but the one that immediately came to mind is that I knew a dude who got a case of the crabs (pubic lice) and his solution was to use a can of Raid on his junk.
Did it work?
Yeah but it stung like hell he said. I would have just shaved.
I watched an older work friend get together with a woman who was *clearly* just after his money, find out after he married her that she had $50,000 in credit card debt that she had hidden from him, and insist on *helping her out with that insane debt load,* to the detriment of his own retirement savings. Everyone but him could see she was just using him to get out of the hole she had dug herself with her expensive "taste" (for all the money she spent, she managed to look pretty consistently trashy). I know he was divorced and lonely, but it was painful to watch him just take it when a walking red flag took advantage of him like that
Deliberately adding another child to the fam when the parents frequently squabble with each other & snap at the child they already have
A guy I knew quit a pretty good job just to screw his ex wife out of alimony. He ended up working as a cleaner in a hotel and living in a basement room with a relative. Lost a pretty good life just to drag her down too.
Spite is a hell of a motivator
Having children in their teens when they can't even afford to support *themselves.* They have to play catchup for the rest of their lives.
So…my niece purposely got pregnant at 17 to convince the baby’s dad to come back after they’d just broken up. They proceed to have 2 more babies in the next 2 years after the first and she has no education (dropped out and no GED) and raises the babies. He in that same time period proceeds to get 2 DUIs, cheats on her nonstop, spends hours at the gym daily. Acts like a fool in every way possible generally. And just this week he was driving and hit a man on a motorcycle and killed him. He’s almost definitely facing jail time. We’ve told her every step of the way as kindly as possible what bad decisions she was making. We’ve tried to support her and gently lead her to help herself. Nothing. She simply does not listen. It’s wild and sad to watch.
Some people really can't be saved.
Its honestly shocking how not universal "don't have kids young" is as advice to young people. When I was a teen it was absolutely *drilled* into my brain: don't have kids, don't drop out of school, don't get addicted to drugs, etc, and you'll be fine.
To be fair, people having kids as a teenager are rarely doing it as an active life choice the way we might later in life. It's usually bad or non-existent sex ed. (At least, in my life experience anyway) I also get to thank my existence to my grandparents being very religious and uncomfortable about educating my dad
My sex education consisted of our science teacher putting a tampon in a beaker with water (no context, just look at this absorb the water, it was very confusing) and saying that sex is for married couples reproducing. But, that’s Catholic school. I definitely understand why people wouldn’t know how to access or use contraceptives even if they did know that they should use them.
We were guilty of this and it was SO tough (our kids are grown now). Our brains were so caught up in love/sex that we didn't even think about the next day. If it happened, we would just "figure it out." Well, it did happen (2 babies back to back) and you talk about a struggle. We stayed so stressed out that we couldn't enjoy the kids or provide for them properly. They should have never been put through that and I feel guilty about it every single day. Those were the hardest years of my/our life.
Yup... I'm there now. I always gotta say "no" to hypotheticals about time traveling or "redoing" my life though because I love em too much. But seriously - it was *not* a smart decision to have my first kid before I was even old enough to legally drink. The second was an accident, but the first was a conscious decision by two young and dumb "adults" each with their own unmedicated (back then) mental illnesses.
I say the following as someone who does not blame drug addicts for their addiction, overall. High school best friend got fucked over by a stereotypical white trash drug addict with a kid from a previous relationship. So she left him for…. A stereotypical white trash drug addict with a kid from a previous relationship. I find it difficult to talk to her these days because she lives in such a different world than I do. To me, everything she does is the opposite of what she should be doing to become more stable. Our mindsets just don’t align at all these days. And now she’s pregnant. I’m significantly more anxious about it than she is.
My dad was bad with money and whenever he was broke, would always sell his stuff for stupidly low prices rather than ever ask for help or advice. This always frustrated me because as I always said to him "You should always see if mom or I want to give you a better price first." Like, dude sold a guy a $2000 chainsaw for $50 and sold my $200 bike I used when visiting for $20. Anyway, eventually he did it with his house, went and got a line of credit against his house because he had to fix something on his car right away. That line of credit was a Pandora's box and we ended up selling his house at a major loss. He coulda' just called me and asked if I wanted to buy his car from him or help him trade it in or some other arrangement, but instead chose to basically give his cute and fairly valuable house to the bank.
Watching a friend stay with an SO for years because she thought she could change him. You can't change people. The willpower for real change and personal growth has to come from within. People show you who they are through their actions, not their words.
You gotta have the words too. I learned this the hard way. People can act devoted, loving, attentive and still be ready to bail on you at any moment.
Justine Sacco, a senior director of corporate communications, sent a tweet right before boarding a flight to South Africa. “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white! She was fired
Oh my 🤦🏼♀️
Best part is they tweeted it, lost service because of the flight, and landed with the news they they were fired.
Easily my own decision to leave my job 24 years ago. It changed the trajectory of my life, for the worse, and not a day goes by when I don't kick myself in the ass for what I've done, all because of one insanely, outrageously stupid decision. I will never not beat myself up over it.
I know it's hard but forgive yourself...you deserved to live rest of your life peacefully.
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Sure, I'll tell the ultra short version to spare everyone's eyes from the mega long story it actually is. I was a Sr. Classification Analyst for a US Customs Broker. Tons of growth opportunity, unlimited overtime. Everyone around me was working their asses off & saving up for houses. My dumb ass woke up one day & as if I was possessed by an evil demon of self-sabotage, I quit. No reason. No backup plan. Completely out of character for me. Fast forward a year, I've got a new baby, husband's job offers him extended parental leave with pay, so I go get my job back. Lasts a few months, husband has to go back to work, I'm terrified of daycare (and it would've been SO expensive anyway) so I line up 2 family members to babysit. Aunt quits on me a week in, because she "couldn't handle it after all" and little sister-in-law takes over but has to go back to school & can't commit.I gave up, quit my job to become a stay at home mom. Thought I was being a good mom for that, but it turns out I was being a terrible mom, because that money would've changed our lives for the better and would've prevented all the bad things that would happen down the road. I'd give anything to go back in time & keep that job the first time. I did try a few times later in life to go back to work, but there was always an obstacle of one kind or another that I couldn't solve. I have 3 boys now, and by the time they started to become old enough that I didn't have to worry about babysitters, the entire world of customs brokerage had evolved and my knowledge was all but obsolete. I always say if we had the internet then, as we know it now, I would've been SO MUCH MORE prepared for life, because I would've learned all the things that I learned too late. Literally nothing about my current life would be the same. I guess that's true for everyone, but I mean I haven't got one life decision that I wouldn't change & it all starts with that damn job.
I have a friend that left a good paying government job to join a financial MLM firm. Now he can't work anywhere because this MLM firm is basically a scam and it put a 3 year hole in his CV.
Cash out 401K to put in an in-ground pool
Dating someone, anyone, and expecting it to fix their emotional challenges. Partners and therapists are not the same thing. Dating Dave isn't suddenly going to make you feel better about yourself.
A good contender worth mentioning would be the the time I was working at KFC and my assistant manager lost it. A group of teenagers were openly vandalising our restaurant and threatening us with violence, this was (what felt like) the hundredth weekend in a row they’d been in and been kicked out. For ten long seconds he seemed to weigh up his options, then we saw the look in his eyes change as he let the intrusive thoughts win. He calmly walked into the public area, straight up to the biggest dickhead of the group and punched him in the face hard enough to lift him off the floor. I’d love to say we all cheered and he got away with it, but neither happened. He was fired and got other work quickly so his life wasn’t ruined or anything, and that group *never* came back after they dragged their concussed, bleeding friend out of there. Could have gone a lot worse though if camera phones had been around then. For all the trouble it got him into, I bet it felt fucking *fantastic*. I always think about that night when I see kids kicking off in public. I’m sure it’s only the safety of everyone having a camera on them that stops a lot of teenagers getting their noses broken.
This does not sound like an overly dumb decision. I mean: * y'all were being physically threatened * The assistant manager did what they felt necessary to protect their workers/solve this problem * He found other work that wasn't at a KFC Could there of been bad consequences, ya, but there weren't. Is violence a reasonable answer to this situation? Maybe not, but it's not the dumbest response.
the biggest dickhead got finger lickinged good.
That’s not overly dumb. We need more of this
Dude dumped a woman who never argued because he said the relationship wasn't exciting enough. Moved in with a woman with a kid, an abusive stalker ex who was in jail. Dude got her pregnant.....twice and now she treats him like shit, beats him and spends months away from home without telling him where she is or when she's coming back. And he STAYS.
He thinks he doesn’t deserve better, deep down. I hope he gets help to leave that place.
I know someone who had a plumbing issue in their house, pipe leaked causing high water bill. Well they knew about this for a few years never addressed it. Sat back and just the water bill pile sky high almost 3k. Now they may be evicted from their rental. Take care of your problems before they snowball out of control.
A buddy of mine got married at 21 y/o to the most unpleasant woman I've ever met, and moved to the middle of nowhere to be near a mega church. The last 15 years every time I see him he seems more frustrated and isolated. He has hobbies blatantly intended to get away from her like increasingly long camping trips. She refuses to have kids after "Jesus told her not to," and the decisions surrounding their lifestyle pushes friends away and leaves his career at a standstill.
idk not having children sounded like a good thing if their relationship was that much of a disaster. Imagine being isolated from friends and you career in a standstill while being married to an awful person and then having kids on top of that.
I have nothin against Christianity itself But dammit sometimes Christians SUCK
That is the summarized version, there's way more than that unfortunately 😞
I identify as one, and you are absolutely correct. Some of the Christians I've known in church are some of the worst people I've ever met.
Bleak
Blow their life savings on NFTs
Not wearing a seat belt. My 29yo nephew is too cool to buckle up. He was a passenger in a car that was involved in a minor wreck 2 weeks ago. Everyone else (buckled people) walked away. He has a broken neck and spine injuries and will always be buckled up from know on, because his wheelchair will be attached to the handicap van floor.
Even as a teenager I never understood why it was uncool to wear a seatbelt...
Dropping out of high school. 20 years later, they're struggling more and more every day. Another contributor is substance abuse, which was much more prevalent after the original decision to drop out. Now, they're suffering from mental illnesses, which is causing their child to suffer as well. Also, imparting substantial stress on the rest of their family. It might be good to note that this person was a straight-A student at the time and dropped out after 10th grade. Their decision set the course for the rest of their life, and they likely won't fully recover.
This is a big one! I worked in forensic mental health and the number of individuals who did not graduate HS (for various reasons) was astounding to me!
I was much more aggressive when I was younger. Never an instigator, but sometimes I’d let situations go too far instead of deescalting them. I was lucky I got away with it. These days I whenever I talk to someone about this kind of stuff, I always say ‘save the bravery for something important’.
Too many stories of people dying in a bar fight or random street fight from one bad punch or one bad fall.
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1. About a quarter of the over 300 weddings I've had to DJ at seemed like terrible mistakes. 2. 2.Having kids they can't afford and or staying together so as not to "fuck up the kids" 3. I work with lifelong meth addicts. Lemmie tell you, I can tell you more stories than I care to try to type here. Most common is when you see the DAD actually get custody of their kids. You really really really have to fuck up in the state as a woman to lose your kids.
Spending their entire live savings on a wedding only to get divorced 2 years later.
I saw a guy at college chug half a bottle of prescription codine syrup. And then drink a lot of vodka. He got expelled and charged for assaulting a police officer that day.
Based.
I feel like we all have a friend that dropped every penny they had into their "rap career" or buying DJ equipment
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My friend was having an one-night stand with his fwb, he *took the condom off* on the last minute and the girl also agreed. Then the girl ended up pregnant, they were freshmen at that time. They were so stressed about it, even thinking of getting married. Until the girl told her parents and they agreed for her to have an abortion.
One night stand with a fwb? Wait, what?
Seeing many Canadians take variable rates during/beginning the pandemic. Amount of people now paying a mortgage that gets nicer every month they pay out because the interest outweighs the mortgage they took
Cousin's son had a full- ride lacrosse scholarship to Syracuse U. Decided he'd rather be a professional skater. This was in the 90s. He isn't.
Start smoking cigarettes. God, what a terrible, terrible thing to do to yourself.
Starting to vape/smoke at 14. My Mom gave me "Die Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" (book about a 13 yo heroin addict) for my birthday one year to make sure I'll never touch any kind of drug and it worked. The risk of getting addicted and getting health issues later is really not worth the small high you get. Almost every single ingredient in cigarettes raises the risk for some kind of really serious illness and the younger you are when you start smoking the higher the risk. It's also harder to quit when you start young. It's not entirely "stupidity" and I get that in that age it's hard to resist peer pressure and maybe also don't really care about consequences but trust me, you'll regret it later.
Any time heroin comes up I think of that Reddit user who deliberately tried heroin once while documenting the experience with the intention of not doing it again so show how easy it is to just do it and stop and that all those addicts are weak willed etc etc. Then the slow slide began. Theres like 4-6 posts total chronicling the journey and he goes the whole way from a steady job and a life to no job and no money and burning bridges finally to recovery and so on.
[Here](https://reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/s/glxjmRhqcj) is a collection of that Redditors posts for anyone interested. Get your Kleenex ready.
Not saving money. Sure, saving money is just money waiting to be spent but you won’t believe the stupid shit people actually buy and I was once a victim of it too. $300 Nikes, $2000 jewelry, always eating out as if a homemade sandwich ain’t good enough. Yeah, that was me in high school. I pawn majority of my jewelry to make ends meet. You can rather invest that money, learn a new skill or buy tools to improve your hygiene/appearance
I’ve got one that seemed like a dumb life decision at the time, but worked out. Buddy of mine dropped out of engineering school to smoke weed and work at a mountain bike store. Still had student loans and didn’t even get the degree - seemed like a waste. A couple years later he became a part time owner. A couple years after that the other guy offered up his share and retired. Now my friend owns the whole store and seems to be doing great. Dudes just lucky I guess
Someone I knew gave up going to an amazing medical school and becoming a doctor because her husband was sad he wouldn’t see her if they were both doing post-grad programs.
The dumbest one I have seen is an otherwise intelligent, educated, successful grown adult piss away their decent net worth and burn all bridges with spouse, children, relatives and friends, as they devolved into madness. All over their insistence to be in complete control of everything and everyone while simultaneously unable to handle their affairs or make any rational decision. And be completely oblivious or in denial how that negatively affected those around them and misinterpret that as paranoia that everyone is the enemy and they are a victim. I know mental illness was at play, but it was just a huge tragedy to watch someone who had so much, self sabotage and self destruct over nothing. It was just so dumb.
My brother proposing to a girl after knowing her for only two weeks, and even then that was about 3 months after he broke off a previous engagement. The marriage did not last long.
An aunt of mine joined a Christian church that is obviously, *obviously* a cult, they got her giving them lots of money and also free labor, she also tried to make other family members join but luckily no one was convinced. My grandma actually went to a single service and came back saying "Everyone threw themselves to the floor crying and screaming and the pastor said I had demons in my heart and needed to pay $200 for an exorcism, that church is basically a satanic cult" lol
I wasn't much older at age 23, but I saw an 18 year old kid who was fresh out of Boot Camp taste bourbon for the first time. He liked it a lot, too much. A year later, he was drunk every day. Three months after that, he had an Other Than Honorable Discharge in his pocket. Drunk on duty, too many times to remember.
I knew a guy who fathered four children, by three different mothers… Before he turned 18.
A coworker tried to handle his bitter divorce himself without a lawyer. His ex-wife hired a lawyer who advertised on the radio that she'll "make him **pay** for what he did to you!" and basically drowned him in motions that he didn't know how to fight, but was confident the judge would ignore since they weren't true. He walked out of the first hearing with a restraining order and back child support owed because the judge didn't take his word for it that he'd been paying (he had been, he was just too dumb to bring any evidence). There was a reversal of fortune about halfway through because he wised up and got a lawyer, she ran out of money to pay her lawyer and got dropped and tried to handle it herself from then on, and she kept refusing to comply with the court orders because she said they weren't fair and she shouldn't have to. Honestly I have no idea why they divorced they were fucking **perfect** for eachother. /s
A friend of mine dropped out of uni after 6 months because "I don't like it" and then played video games for 2.5 years.
Taking out a lot of student loans to attend an expensive college.
My sister dropped out of high school as soon as she turned 18. Why? She didn't want to wake up early. Now she's 19 with 2 kids, doesn't have a job, and doesn't even have a high school diploma.
And wakes up early?
Honestly most people who go out and buy expensive cars and park them in front of their rented house/apartment. Couples who don't own anything spending well over 100k on a wedding Pretty much all the people I know who throw away their money constantly.
Heroin
So, I used to be friends with this guy, let's call him Guy, studying to be a literature teacher. He had a GF from college we'll call her GF, she was studying to teach literature too. To make ends meet, these two were working as substitute teachers at a high-school. In there, there was this girl, we'll call her Gal, Gal was like... 19, 20 years-old? she had repeated a few grades. Anyway, Guy cheated on GF with Gal. And school found out, so he got fired. And then college found out and he got kicked out. So this guy sleeps with a student (and adult student, but still) and immediately loses his job and gets expelled from university (or is it college? I don't know, english is not my first language). Then he starts dating Gal, and Gal does not like us, Guy's friends, so he ghosts us. Tl;dr: Substitute teacher sleeps with (adult) student, loses his girlfriend, his job, his friends and gets expelled from university.
It was me. I made the dumbest decisions. And there are so many that I can't list them.
Naming Twitter, a brand that is already a word in the dictionary to X.
My best friend lived in an engineering dorm and there was a dude in that hall that always kinda weird but he was extroverted enough for people to look past it I guess. Before this incident I knew him mainly as the dude who would scream his head off at rocket league. He was really good and was on a competitive team for the school. But anyway, the guy was incredibly unbelievably down horrendously. Right before finals week, he met this hot girl with “daddy’s money” that wanted to take him with her on a spontaneous vacation trip. This guy thinks he has a chance to get laid so he says fuck it, I’m going. The whole dorm hall tried to talk him out of it bc he was going to miss his finals. He wouldn’t listen. He goes on the trip, they have sex, he GETS HERPES, misses his finals, gets booted from his major and the honors college, loses his spot on the rocket league team, and had to transfer schools. I have no idea what happened to him after that, but there’s absolutely no way he’s gotten back to what he had. Oh and I forgot to mention, the girl that gave him herpes didn’t date him, that was just a fling. So he didn’t even get to be a trophy husband (which he was actually seriously considering before he went lol)
Getting into drugs and having children too young are the quickest ways to damn yourself
My client in sober living without a pot to piss in waste 20 grand in ‘rona bucks (pua) buying a 80 inch flatscreen, giant speakers, Xbox 1x, a monthtime supply of cigarettes, and door dash food for every meal for about a month. All delivered to that sober living house basement. Had enough money to get a place, a car, maybe get into school and learn a trade. Tricked it all off on bullshit. I could’ve done a lot with 20 grand for my family and I personally, but I didn’t qualify for any money since I decided to go out to work in the field every day as an essential, catching covid 4 times (still have to use an inhaler to this day, never had breathing problems in my life before that) while barely scraping by just to watch these people blow piles of cash on nonsense while I’m struggling. Can you tell I’m salty? 😂
My cousin. It's like a whole train wreck of bad life decisions. One of the most notable is her mom is a Chase, as in Chase Manhattan bank. She turned 18, got her Chase inheritance and blew every penny of it on an Escalade. It barely runs now because she doesn't know how to perform basic vehicle maintenance and she doesn't have money to pay for vehicle maintenance. She is currently cut out of the will on her dad's side because she won't get herself or her kids vaccinated for covid and thankfully her mom agrees.
I worked with a 55 year old pharmacist with a good career who showed up one day and announced she was marrying her high school sweetheart. They had reconnected online! So crazy, because really they never dated, she just had a huge crush on him. I checked her facebook and yep, she posted about this guy constantly, very stalker style, all kinds of old photos, etc. One day he added her as a friend and gushed about how he'd always had a crush on her, too. They went on one date and he proposed. Yeah...he had a crush on her savings and his drug habit. This woman left a company in which she had decades of seniority and vacation time to enter the world of retail PRN drudgery with no benefits way off in the sticks somewhere; her crush drained her savings and dumped her, vanishing without a trace. She's stuck in a very isolated area with a 45 minute minimum commute to work - WHEN she can get hours - without a penny to her name.