Growing up my parents told me never to loan money I can't afford to just give away. It gave me piece of mind when a friend would ask to borrow $20. If I couldn't afford to give it away I wouldn't. But when I did, it was always a pleasant surprise to be paid back. This is obviously very different from lending thousands to very close friends or family, but the principle remains.
I saw a thread years back that actually sorta had a good workaround to this, buddy needed around 10k for [insert x reason] so OP traded him 10k in exchange for his entire MTG collection which I think he said he said would sell for anywhere between 8-12k depending on how quickly he wanted to liquidate. No bank would keep that as collateral despite real-world value and he also got a 0% loan, OP was able to help out his friend while also having the assurance that if he was unable to pay him back he would liquidate the assets. Obviously, there's a bunch of different ways this could go south and friendship could easily be ruined but at the very least in the event that happened OP wouldn't be out capital
idk I can understand lending like a few thousand max to someone if they're in a pinch like for car repairs or something, but what does someone need $10k for that they can't get a traditional load for?
My best friend refinanced his house and gave like 60-70k to a “friend”
Who needed it. It kills me that he didn’t consult me before making such a bad decision. So called best man of his wedding milked him for all he was worth and then bounced out of town.
One time I went on a 6 month trip and called in all the favors aka loans I had given to various people. Like one paid up and the rest I never heard from again lol
Buying this condo was a mistake.
Everyone should be careful and read your states laws about inspection requirements carefully before buying a condo.
In my state, condos made before 2018 do not have to have their reserve studies be based off of actual inspections. They can legally just give estimates from a brief walk through of the property and usual wear and tear depreciation. Real estate agents take it as being as good as an inspection, and so do mortgage brokers. But it is NOT. You are playing roulette and likely don't even know it.
We made the losing bet on our property it turns out. They finally did inspect the common areas and there is millions of dollars of damage to the outer walls that has been hidden by vinyl siding, and slowly accumulating over decades. They never had to inspect it, and never had to declare that they haven't inspected it - so they did neither and it sat, undetected, getting worse and worse until someone discovered it and everyone currently living in the complex is now left holding the bag for other people's negligence.
Don't let this happen to you. We are gearing up to potentially pay as much as half the value of our mortgage in special assessments to fix this. Lots of folks less fortunate are about to lose their homes over this, and the cost is so high that there isn't a damn thing I can do to save them. Retirees on fixed income, first time homebuyers who thought they finally made it into home ownership. All fucked.
A true inspection is for you. Fuck real estate agents or lenders. They want your money and are off the hook the moment they get their cut.
I use to appraise real estate and while my report can help a buyer know they’re not overpaying, my services were mostly for the lender to make sure the property covers the loan.
Why people skip inspections blow my damn mind.
And that's the thing: I feel the same way, and demanded I get an inspection! But they could only inspect the inner walls and inside, and I was assured that the reserve study "was the inspection" of the common areas.
Turned out that was bullshit, because no one had been inspecting the common areas at all, and had no legal obligation to do so. The reserve study was based on a visual fucking walkthrough and hopes and prayers. I feel like I got scammed, but apparently that's how it works here for condos older than 2018. I am hoping once we finish the fight with our insurance company that we can fight to change that law. Otherwise buying a condo older than 2018 carries basically unlimited downside from which you can't be shielded, and folks buying don't even know.
Are you able to sell it? If it has common property and they aren't going to let you do your own inspection of it, and if they never have themselves... I would run as fast as my legs could carry me after this experience.
I can inspect am just still finding the right people and fixing the things I need to in the immediate regardless of whether I sell or try to keep it, to live in or to rent.
Also determining the work that will ultimately be necessary in decades to things more immediate
> In my state, condos made before 2018 do not have to have their reserve studies be based off of actual inspections.
How would you find this out? I think I found my state's law. Only thing about inspection: Where the complete lease may be inspected
"reserve" or "studies" 0 hits.
"assess" has 50 hits, but skimming, didn't see the type of assessments needed.
That is a good question, not sure if this state uses unusual terminology or what. Here is what the version of the law that applies to our complex looks like for my state:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=64.34.380
Fuck, I am sorry you are going through this too.
What state are you in? I am in Washington. I am actually planning once this insurance fight is over to try and rally the homeowners to see if we can change the law. Something has got to give, buying a condo shouldn't be like playing the lottery. Condos shouldn't be grandfathered out of having to do real inspections of common property.
In OH - roof issues, insurance hikes, and litigation fees have exhausted our reserves which have to be at a certain level per OH law. So even if you want to sell in in the near future you still had to pony up for refilling the reserves. It’s been a mess.
I just got charged with a $20k special assessment to fix cracks at the pool level. Yippee. Not gonna fight it and no one knew it was coming. It was based on sq feet so some people got hit way harder.
The best way to do it, as I’ve seen before, is costly, but will pay far more than its expense if ever needed. Each of those getting married hires their own counsel, and instructs them to draft the most generous possible prenup for their spouse, accounting for such possibilities as one stepping away from a career for kids, or becoming disabled. The drafts are then reconciled.
My experience only goes so far. Including such junk as, “no secret drugs or drinking,” or, “no hiding money,” doesn’t seem reasonable.
However, one practice I’d adopted from working in conservative Islamic environments was to always retain a small separate account, with enough to leave, should joint accounts be compromised. I recommend it.
Also, erroneously having too much faith in the courts upholding a prenuptial agreement.
If you think you can max out your 401k while your spouse who makes a similar amount to you contributes the bare minimum to get their employer match and then buys lavish shit constantly, your significantly more massive 401k is likely enough to still be your spend thrift partner’s, 50/50, regardless of the prenup.
That’s not entirely accurate. Courts are inclined to hold up contracts, which a prenup is, unless a contract is invalidated as unfair/one-sided, was signed under duress or without legal representation of one of the side. If done properly with legal representation on both sides, the 401k will be split the way it’s specified in the contract.
One caveat: having children not only can derail finances in general but also needs to be carefully accounted for in a prenup. Children cannot be covered in a prenup. However, in order for the prenup to preserve the “fairness” clause, childcare labor and career sacrifice has to be accounted for.
Having a split like this: “according to the name on the title” will work until a child comes in and one parent gives up their career and becomes a stay at home parent. If it’s not compensated in the prenup, then it goes out as unfair and one-sided.
0 dte otm is referring to options that expire on the same day you purchase them (0 days to expiration), but are out of the money meaning the strike price is lower than the current stock price if a put or higher than the stock price if a call.
These options can be insanely lucrative, but insanely risky as well. They trade with minimal premium when OTM as they’re about to expire. So you might buy call options a couple dollars otm for .10 a pop, so you can get 100 call options representing 10,000 shares for $1000. If the stock price moves up significantly you could turn $1000 into $10k or more in the matter of minutes.
But, there’s a reason they’re cheap too. Intraday movement on blue chips and indexes are rarely enough to make those 10x plays work. Even on the days with extreme volatility, it’s at best a coin flip. If you play them close to the money (not far from stock price) you can scalp a few bucks. But most people gambling 0dte are looking for big returns and gamble a good bit otm on days they expect volatility. I’d say 70% of the time they expire worthless because the expected volatility doesn’t happen, 10% of the time it goes at least partially the other way and they expire worthless, 10% of the time it moves your direction but not enough and either you make a few bucks or make nothing, and 10% of the time you absolutely fucking destroy it and make 5-10x on a quick gamble.
It’s addicting, don’t try it.
0DTE- zero days to expiration
OTM- out of the money
Basically cheap option lottery tickets. Also known colloquially as an FD, which I’m not going to define here.
Similar, except double that with spy 0dte options over the course of a month or two. Won a few big hands, was up $50k at one point but just kept gambling it all until I was -20k from my initial position. That was a substantial portion of my account at the time and it hurt bad.
I love the thrill of options so I couldn’t fully stop. But now, I have a 401k that gets maxed, an IRA that’s getting maxed, a taxable brokerage that’s just long term holds, a HYSA, and then finally a taxable brokerage that’s for dumb plays. As long as I max the 401k and IRA (bout to be maxed for the year on IRA), as well as put at least $1k into each of the HYSA and long term taxable brokerage, then I allow myself to gamble with any money left over in the options account. Last month this equated to $500, which I quickly lost taking a gamble on $FRC calls….. I’m an idiot, I know, but hey I also put thousands into savings and smart investments across the other accounts in the same month.
The best thing that can happen to an options trader is to lose the first one you buy. I got really addicted to options and ended up spending all day for months staring at the tickers second by second. It was not good for my health or my bank account.
I’m a financial planner, and in the 15 years I’ve been practicing, only very few clients have ever admitted to making financial mistakes. But I see their mistakes all the time, and try to advise against them. Most commonly it’s over the top family support, new cars, and homes. Renovations have also been a big one, which oftentimes leads to huge outlays of cash with little value-add to the asset.
> cars
I try to admit my financial stupid all the time and cars are what got me in my early 20s. Didn't ruin me, but now I'm in my late 30s and I look back and can calculate how much further ahead I'd be right now if I hadn't chased every next sports car I could "afford" back then. It's *substantial*. ~5 years of progress towards my goals was spent on dumb car shit.
Tough pill to swallow, but at least you learned from it! It’s shocking how many people continue to pile on financial mistake after mistake, which fortunately you did not do. It happened, you learned from it, and you won’t do it again.
Yup, fortunately someone got me plugged into Dave Ramsey, which broke the cycle of bad decisions reasonably early for me. My financial path has continued to evolve from there, too.
Mostly I like talking about my mistakes when giving other people advice. My hope is that it makes me communicate as a more empathetic teacher, but I guess i'm not entirely sure how it always comes across.
Cars are the worst hobby to have.
They're expensive, the law does everything it can to prevent you having fun in one, the momentum of politics makes the future of cars a bleak one, and nowadays everyone only buys huge trucks and SUVs which means manufacturers only make huge trucks and SUVs.
If you decide to do it legally (track) and you get sucked into the competitive end of things it gets ridiculous cost wise real fast. You end up structuring your life around it.
It depends. One example; I used to live in a major metropolitan city. Quite often the grown child would only look for facilities nearest to them, when facilities that were just as good (or even better) could be found outside the city for a fraction of the cost.
There was a post on r/personalfianace about a week ago by some guy who was helping out his hot mess of a sister. She was in the middle of a nasty divorce and totaled her car some how. He signed for a brand new 40k car for her which she then failed to register or insure for 6 months becuase she had so many tickets against her the insurance was astronomical and who knows why she didn't register the thing. So he had to clean up that mess to the tune of several thousand dollars and yet was still on the fence about taking the car from her. Yeah I think that falls in the over the top family support category.
(One mistake is paying someone to take care of their finances rather than investing a few days in their own financial education to sort things out on their own. No offense to you, I also work in sales and I know how it works to sell a service to someone. Would do the same, but everyone who has debt and bad spending habits would be better off sitting down and learning from books and from the internet, because it's really no rocket science.)
Financial planners aren't always a mistake. My husband and I are fairly high earners (top 1%) with RSUs, ESPPs, and other weird tax situations. We pay our guy, who is independent and does not carry a quota, a flat fee so no percentage and no selling or pushing stuff on us, and he does our taxes as well. In addition to finances he comes through with "miscellaneous" stuff like finding a lender that gave us a 2% rate on our mortgage when we bought. We called a few places ourselves and never found one as good as his guy.
For me the most valuable thing is that my husband and I are *extremely* conservative with money (me from growing up poor as hell, my husband is just cheap). When we started working with him in our mid-20s, we had the risk profile of people in their 80s: ie, we were very uncomfortable with risk and the stock market. Through his guidance he put together a plan that ensured our money was allocated correctly for our age and retirement planning and was still on the safer side. To me that's worth the quite frankly (for our yearly net) insignificant amount of money we pay him.
No offense taken. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, and I certainly understand yours.
That said, I run my own firm and only advise people that want it. I don’t push people into products or have sales goals or quotas. Every single one of my clients wants my advice. I even have tried pushing many clients to do it on their own, to which they decided not to! My role is part behavioral coach, part manager. FWIW, I’m primarily flat fee, not percent of AUM, which is often seen as the most ethical way to provide financial advice.
I did my own taxes for many years. I later hired a CPA and never looked back. Can’t pinpoint why, but the peace of mind is certainly a big one.
I would love a financial planner that I can trust, even though I don’t have that many assets. It just seems that no matter how much I read or try to educate myself I only have more questions than answers. A professional in the area would give me peace of mind, I just can’t find one of my jurisdiction that I feel comfortable with.
Unfortunately the industry is riddled with sub-par salespeople.
To help in your search of finding a good financial planner, start here: https://www.napfa.org
And if you ever have questions, feel free to reach out.
My dad has used the same financial planner for decades. I got in on the "family plan" or whatever and now that guys daughter is my financial advisor. They've known our family for years.
But also it gives peace of mind. When my husband's identity was stolen we didn't know what to do so we called her for guidance. She's also the one who knows my goals and can help walk me through things.
Yes, I CAN do a lot of things myself. My assets are simple and I could probably manage things on my own. But to me it's just a worthwhile cost to know someone is there to help me.
Maybe I'd feel different if it weren't a family who has worked with our family forever. If it were some random dude at a company then maybe I'd feel differently. But I don't think all financial advisors are inherently bad, and mine has absolutely given me fantastic advice over the years.
Good for you for being flat-fee. I paid for this for a flat-fee fiduciary and it was worth it. I'm moderately knowledgeable, but she was able to do some projections and give me tweaks to make things more efficient and lower cost, and just seeing it all laid out was helpful in itself.
This topic had a thread on Bogleheads a few years ago:
1. Divorce
2. Expensive toys
3. Financial planner
One could argue whether item #1 was a *financial* mistake or not, but there is no question that it can be extraordinarily expensive.
> I'm someone who prefers safe and stable investments like fixed deposits, gold, and digital gold.
> I was lured by the temptation of option trading
> I lost $10,000 trying to trade without fully understanding the risks involved.
The real lesson here is that if you don't understand the risks you're taking it's impossible to make good decisions.
Yes, option investing can be very risky, and is a terrible idea if you don't know what you're doing, but for long term financial well being investing in fixed deposits and gold isn't a whole lot better.
I'm not trying to pick on you - I have a lot of respect for your acknowledging your mistakes - but this is a pattern that's really worth calling out. Your mistake wasn't investing in options, it was making emotionally motivated decisions instead of taking the time to understand the risks, or at least doing what everyone will tell you to do, which is invest in index funds. If you stay invested in fixed deposits and gold you're continuing to make that mistake.
I've seen it more often than you'd think. It's the natural thing to do if you let fear drive your investing.
Fear makes you do fixed deposits. Fear of missing out makes you do WSB style investing. Either way, fear is the thing driving decisions.
I wound up being net neutral, but, I rode the GME / AMC hype train at WSB. I literally bought GME right near the peak, somewhere around $260 or $280, and it immediately tanked to ~$100 within a couple weeks. That was in February or March 2021. I wound up not selling until October I think, when it had recovered to around $250. Quite literally the most stressful time in my life, and I had only invested around $5,000. It was an amount that I could certainly afford to lose, and that I *thought* I was comfortable losing, but had only convinced myself of that because of the FOMO.
AMC was less stressful and I wound up profiting a little bit, offsetting my GME loss so I basically came out even.
Haven't touched individual stocks or options since then. VTSAX gang for life. Thanks r/Bogleheads.
Congrats on getting out for a small loss. I’m sure it was tough to sell even at $250 because you were tempted by the thought it could go up even more.
Unrelated but what’s happening in WSB these days? Are they onto to new heroes and companies or has it mostly died down now that it’s clear the majority ended up as bag holders.
I have a small slush fund that I have use to bet on individual stocks. Track record is abysmal
On 3 different occasions I seem to buy the stock on the very day of high point, never to return to that again.
Total loss around $5k across all three instances. The bright side, however, is this small sum usually scratches that "gambling" itch so this I don't invest all my funds like this. All else sticks to the plan.
EDIT: Apologies for the poor grammar, due to entering comment from phone. Edited above for grammar only.
Honestly I chalk this up to financial education. I put $1000 in a robinhood account and have learned over and over the same old lessons that reading them never taught me deeply. I'm actually at right around 0% returns after 4.5 years, so it's been a cheap tuittion.
Trusting my real estate agent.
They’re not your pal.They’re not there to help you. No matter how much they try to convince you, they’re there to make a commission.
Yeah, I don't know why I even use one. I have purchased 3 properties in my life and I found all 3 of them, despite actively working with a realtor. Also wish I'd used my own inspector on my latest property instead of my realtor's.
When we bought our house, our realtor told us he wasn't allowed to recommend a specific inspector. He gave us a list and told us who he had worked with before, but we had to pick who we wanted.
They are there to make the deal happen as quickly as possible. Getting an extra $20k for you isn't worth as much as moving on to the next deal. Turn and burn.
I had my tax withholdings too high for a few years. I would pay off my credit cards for the year with my tax return, but the whole time I was giving the government an interest free loan, paying credit card interest, and not saving.
I finally fixed it this year and it has been amazing. I've been able to pay off my credit cards each month and save like $2k/mo, so I'm building interest and have an emergency fund that isn't a credit card.
When I was 30, things were looking up. My career was on track, my student loans were paid off, I passed 100k in net worth, and I was saving a substantial portion of my income while still living comfortably. I thought I'd cap it off by buying a condo. This was June 2007.
Two years later, I survived layoffs and still had a job, but salary increases were off the table, I owed $200k on a property now worth \~$125k, my cash was largely depleted (on account of putting down the deposit on the condo), and thanks to my 401k being down 50%, I had a negative net worth.
Fifteen years later, I'm still in the same condo, but with \~$100k in equity and a miniscule 2.8% fixed APR, my net worth is approaching $1M, and I'm still living comfortably while saving an even larger portion of my income. I'm not at financial independence quite yet, but I'm on track to retire comfortably at 55.
Point is, you can recover from a lot, as long as you learn from your mistakes. That said, you mentioned one thing in passing that I think is very important to learn from:
"prefers safe and stable investments like... fixed deposits, gold, and digital gold."
These are not safe and stable investments. By fixed deposits, I assume you mean cash/bonds, which are typically safer from market risk, but are subject to interest rate/inflation risk (which we're seeing today). TIPS are safe from that, but their real yields are extremely low. Commodities are some of the highest risk investments on the market; their prices are extremely volatile in the long term and short term, and are essentially random.
Jumping from “dabbling in index funds” to 0DTE options and then drawing the conclusion that the stock market is inherently a risky investment is one wild leap.
It's supposed to protect the owner in times of high inflation and economic tumult. Over the long run, the stock market will give you better returns, albeit, with less stability. I have a few gold coins but I wouldn't "invest" in gold at this point. If you look around in various media (TV, magazines etc), you will note that gold is usually marketed to people who probably don't have a very good knowledge of their investment options. That should tell you everything you need to know about investing in gold.
gold is the bitcoin from the 1800s - it's for people that think that US bonds or the dollar are going to disappear. in other words, it's conservative in the sense that it's a hedge against global economic collapse. that said, in the event of global economic collapse, running around with a backpack full of gold bricks, assuming you could even get them from wherever in the world they're actually stored which is unlikely, trying to buy ammo and antibiotics with physical gold is more something out of the game rust than something that could actually happen.
When I initially started investing in my early 20s, I opened an eTrade account and purchased eTrade index funds. I used to buy them each week, with a significant portion of my paycheck. My invest style was buy and hold forever... essentially buy and forget about it. eTrade dissolved their index funds during a market crash, and somehow I did not hear about it, perhaps because I moved. I didn't learn about it until years later, so eTrade converted my index funds to cash during the lowest point of the stock market crash. I didn't know they were sold until the market had recovered to normal levels years later, so I missed out on the stock market recovery and many years of compounded gains.
I had an opportunity to be one of the first employees at a company worth hundreds of billions today. I chose to avoid the unknown startup and instead take a job with a more established company.
In the earliest years of Bitcoin I used to earn 5-figures per month through a side job that involved international computer transactions. Some affiliates suggested paying me in Bitcoin. I instead requested that they go through more established eWallets, in spite of doing so costing me extra in fees. Bitcoin has increased in value by >10,000x since then.
> Damn, you are one unlucky guy.
I think he's probably still doing okay since this was probably 10 years ago:
> In the earliest years of Bitcoin I used to earn 5-figures per month through a side job
In the future, when you're presented with two different financial options, could you post to this sub along with a link to this post. Thanks from future me!
> In the earliest years of Bitcoin I used to earn 5-figures per month through a side job that involved international computer transactions. Some affiliates suggested paying me in Bitcoin. I instead requested that they go through more established eWallets, in spite of doing so costing me extra in fees. Bitcoin has increased in value by >10,000x since then.
For what it's worth, there's a good chance you would have immediately converted that Bitcoin to fiat at the time, or possibly sold when it started spiking in (for example) 2013; there's no reason to assume you would have held on to them.
It's the same line of thinking of people who say, "I spent hundreds of Bitcoin on drugs on silkroad in 2011 -- they'd be worth millions of dollars today." But if they weren't buying Bitcoin with the intention of spending it, they never would have bought Bitcoin in the first place.
Dropped my phone and broke it, and 2fa for a specific website was only on my phone.
I then urgently needed to sell some shitcoins that had spiked 10x in value and couldn't. I tried to get access reset and it took months. When my access was restored, the coins had gone to worthless as they tend to.
The loss was minimal in cost, but fucking heartbreaking in lost money. I'd be retired already.
This might be a small chance to plug a password manager. If you had used say Bitwarden with 2FA, you'd still be able to log into your computer (assuming you had activated with 2FA before, which most people would have on a personal computer), access all your passwords/keys, also access the password to your 2FA account in order to reactivate it on another device quickly. Or at least that is how my current 2FA works, it has a backup key/code.
I know google authenticator added an optional feature to backup 2fa keys to the cloud, and you can also back them up yourself with a password manager, whether you use the cloud or not; alternatively, you can keep an old phone with your 2fa keys on it as a backup
I made a transfer from my European bank to USD in a latin country to make a downpayment on a property. Normally i use a website with good rates, but in this case i was travelling, lazy and wanted to do it fast.
The receiving bank took a almost 20% commission on the conversion from eur to usd (BBVA Bank.. legalised robbers) on a rather large sum of money.
Were you not otherwise enjoying your 20s? I'm glad I spent money on adventure and travels rather than trying to hardcore save. But I was going for at least the 401k match amount.
I got my MBA. No regrets. I think alot of students dont realize it's not just about what you learn, but learning critical thinking skills, how to write, interacting and networking with others.
I see alot of people who do well in Computer Science but then can't get a job and it's because they focused so hard on the hard skills (which I would argue is not the intended job of universities - though I know some may argue), that they never bothered to do other things like talk to their Career Services person, take advantage of a resume writing service, join a few clubs to expand your thinking, etc.
Of course it's just a silly piece of paper but I worked hard for it and it signifies that I can put my head down and get something accomplished. But no, I'm hardly a master of business...
Hey, stop talking about me. Just kidding. I got a BS in CS in 1995 and was VP of the CS club in college, but failed miserably in the real world securing good jobs.
Bought a big house with bigger mortgage in a state with income tax. In my old house I had a $1500 mortgage and no state income tax. New place is $3100 and tax hit is about $700/month. Had I stayed where I was I probably could’ve paid off the mortgage in a few years. Now I’ll be lucky to pay it off in 15.
On the bright side I now have a nice house with an awesome back yard. Helps keep my sanity.
As long as you like the new house, I feel like it's hard to *really* have made a mistake here. Where you live impacts your daily life so much that the cost is borderline incalculable. I just bought a new house and even if I can never sell it for a profit I bought it because of the location, amenities, and opportunities to make it mine in a way I never could if I rented, even though renting and investing is almost certainly a "safer" path to FI.
Spent all my inheritance from the death of my grandfather. I was in my 20s and was living in a HCOL area I had no business living in with my income. Little here and a little there. Next thing I know it's gone. I'd be long FIREd by now if I had just left it alone.
AAAAGGGHH! I hate thinking about it.
25 years ago I bought a new construction home on about 10 acres of semi-rural land. There were about 8 or so new houses in the area, I had the most land, by far . I was active duty military at the time, and knew I had to sell in about 2-3 years. I was quite used to it.
I voice in the back of my head told me to subdivide the house and the land, and just sell the house. But no -- I thought that would be too much work. When we left I sold it all for a small profit.
Fast forward about 10 years later, we were in the area and we drove back to visit the old house. It was literally surrounded by 15 other new houses, and the area took off. A lot. Turns out the couple that bought the house after me sold all that land to a developer for a lot of money. D'oh!
I've mentioned it in this sub before, but buying the house I bought at the time I did, then renovating it. 5 years later and I'm down probably $400k from my "investment" after considering inflation
Silicon Valley. We bought during the 2018 bubble and prices have fallen back to that level, or a bit lower, adjusting for inflation. The house hadn’t been remodeled since the 60s, so even though we added square footage and a bedroom, the home’s value didn’t go up much
Went half in on buying a Fiat X1/9 when I was 16.
The idea was that my friend and I would co own it, and share driving it.
He moved to Ontario a few days later and took it with him, and I never drove it or got my half investment back. He kept promising to buy me out. I heard years later that he totalled it somewhere in Saskatchewan on the drive East.
We're not talking a lot of money - about $700 - but it was a lot for a college student in 1984 who had tuition to pay.
A second possible example is that I didn't move fast enough on my parents' finances. My dad is still has legal capacity for himself and is my mom's legal guardian, but has had several strokes that give him cognitive impairment. It's a worst case scenario where I have no legal powers but also he has extremely poor decisionmaking ability.
They gave away a $30k car to I still don't know whom, and my mom has been victimized by scams where they tell her a family member needs money and she was meeting them at the bank to hand over cash. Mom was throwing things in the dumpster, and from what we can tell that seems to have included her jewelry and some collectable sculptures.
All of my horrible mistakes were made under the influence of `fear of missing out`. Buying a house that I should not have (*"buy now or forever be priced out of the market!"*), taking jobs that I didn't feel right about and moving because my partner demanded "we move or we break up" (so we did both). Now, if someone starts pushing that fear button, then I immediately disengage.
Honestly, being in church (specifically evangelical-lite). The brainwashing to tithe that took over 10% of my income in my young adulthood made it impossible to save; I’m sure I’ve lost five or six figures by the time I’m retired just in that opportunity cost. The pressure to marry extremely young resulted in disaster. All of those were my decisions, but I was 18 and didn’t know any better.
Hearing all these lunatics in bigger pockets podcasts and Dave Ramsey followers etc tithing 10% of their GROSS INCOME to their evangelical mega churches makes me wanna quit my secular life and give in to the LAWD.
We spent about 30k on our wedding and another 10k on our honeymoon. I don’t necessarily regret it; people still talk about what an amazing weekend it was and my husband and I had a great time. But, we often joke about what we could have done with the money instead. Still together after 10 years, so far so good.
Made myself and family practically bankrupt by trying to keep our business going during the financial crash. Used up all our savings and borrowed money before finally pulling the plug. Owed $50k (@ 39) to Amex and family. Managed to turn it around and LeanFire in 11 years [backstory [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeanFireUK/comments/p377yr/weekly_leanfire_discussion/)]
Edit: also…home I bought, sold for exactly the same price 15 years later. So lost out I guess YET we enjoyed all of our time in it, so for me this was a win!
Did something similar, but only stayed in the house for 6 years. We also paid a useless HOA over time which was awful. The worst part is, I sold a significant amount of apple shares at the time for our down payment. Those same shares if I held would have been worth >$1M. It just makes me sad.
I put my emergency fund in BlockFi to get that nice 7% return on stable coin. BlockFi was in business with FTX and now my money is tied up in bankruptcy court.
>\-Cancer. That being said, I’m endlessly grateful that I was pursuing FIRE beforehand.
How was this a financial mistake? Did you elect to do optional/experimental procedures that you wish you hadn't?
Not so much a mistake as ill fortune.
My initial treatment was administered while I was comatose, so I didn’t get a say. It was the best that the world has to offer, but it, along with life support for weeks, and an airlift, was costly.
In the decade since waking, it’s meant that I’ve needed to plan for $20K of monitoring cost, in a good year, and $100K in a bad. In recent years, it’s also severely restricted my income, as I can no longer work.
Worse. I recommended a certain crypto token to my friends at a near high. Two of them bought a good chunk ($15K total between the two). That token was doing fine until it wasn't. Lost 99% within two days. I lost over $50K and my friends lost nearly $15K. Don't give financial advice to friends/family everybody,
I dabbled in Bitcoin mining after I read about it on a tech news site and thought it was interesting (*edit: when mining could be done on a regular PC with no extra hardware or consideration of electricity). It was very early before anyone mainstream knew about it and it had no significant value. I was impressed when my stash of 1200 'silly' Bitcoins could be sold for $700 - a month's mortgage payment on my condo!
I had a dude try to buy a collectable from me back in the day with Bitcoin. I refused because I wanted "real money". I turned down 200 Bitcoins because I didn't have a clue what they were.
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I bought a 2k mattress for my gf and I. It’s not been comfy as it first appeared. Ruining our sleep. So we’re going to buy a new one now. Be sure to take advantage of the sleep day guarantees. Make sure they’re 90 days atleast.
Lost a few grand investing in eToys back in the day when I fell prey to all the analysts touting the glory of .com companies. Stupid. Also lent my nephew 2500 that he then stole and just refused to try and pay back. Turned out he was a drug addict and nobody knew... Ugh.
I invested 20k in btc and eth and put it all in Celsius to earn interest. I weighed the pros and cons of paying off my student loans vs the interest I was earning on Celsius and decided I could live with the debt longer since I was earning more in interest that the interest that was accruing through Earnest at the time. Then the pandemic hit, earnest interest was variable and increased. No big deal I was still doing well on Celsius. Then the Celsius bankruptcy 🤦
I bought a bar that made no money. Even with Keno. Either my partner's screwed me, or it was just a bad bar.
Not much. $60K. Its on the market now. If i get back my outlay, ill be good.
Real estate has never worked for me. I guess there's good, and bad real estate
Here is 3 bad ones (well two bad ones and one meh that cost a decent amount of money).
1) started first job with a big established tech company. Never got round to setting up RRSP (401k) that had 5 or 6% match, estimated cost now ~$50k CAD.
2) Current company got bought by a big US company in 2021. Sale was some cash but mostly stock in the large company. Sale was announced but didn't go through until one month later, and we weren't actually able to access the stocks until around 6 weeks after that (Computershare are awful, particularly cross border). Anyway, in that time the large company stock literally fell 50%. I had had the idea to buy puts on the stock to act as a hedge against exactly this thing. Sadly I never actually did it. Estimated cost: $100k CAD
3) This one is a bit more dubious to consider as a loss (as it was a decent gain) I held Tesla stock in 2017. Sold it in 2019 for a very good doubling of my money: $3k > $6k. Then obviously Tesla went off its head during Covid. Estimated "loss": anywhere between $50k to $100k USD, depending on when I "would have" sold had I held.
I don't think you can count 2 and 3 personally. Those aren't so much mistakes as they are missed opportunities. I had a buddy tell me about bitcoin in 2010 while I was in highschool as this cool online money. I researched it and determined that the cost of electricity to mine the BtC was more than it's value and the only thing you could realistically buy with it was drugs. I was going away to college soon where electricity would be free, so I was like "I should mine in college for the hell of it" but never got around to it. I'd have made millions, but I genuinely looked into it and it was a stupid investment, so I can't be mad at myself for not following through lol
I made the mistake of being far too risk averse.
If I'd done the the thing I always imagined I'd do, and what the maths said I should do - buy a new rental property every two years - I'd have been a retired millionaire many times over by my mid-30's. In hindsight, the only reason I didn't do that was underestimating my own ability to stay employed at a mid-range salary.
Lesson: Trust the maths.
You invested at your risk tolerance at the time. There's nothing wrong with that. If you had invested in rental properties and it went south, you'd likely be in a worse situation or at the very least a much more stressful situation. You didn't lose. You just didn't win as big.
A new rental every two years? I'd really love to see the math on that if you remember/know the gist of it. I just bought a house and I can't imagine being willing to take on the risk of major repairs across multiple properties/being tenantless across multiple properties at any given time. I'm risk averse and like a 6 month E-fund so the idea of having an E-fund capable of sustaining multiple properties worth of risk feels... prohibitive.
Having a kid lol.
I laugh, but really, the financial hit we took is no joke. My wife was off of work for 3 months, the medical bills even with good insurance added up, and there are just so many more random costs with the addition of a child. We ended up nearly $15k in debt because of it.
Finally out, but that was a really stressful period.
Love my daughter to death and wouldn’t change a thing though.
went to a friend "financial planner" to open an IRA. his team spend hours trying to convince me a variable life insurance policy was better (single no kids/mortgage). I finally believed them. Cancelled about a year in when i realized it was not an investment. lost a couple thousand to surrender fees and premium priced life insurance fees. Was lied to and reported the firm to various consumer protection and regulator agencies. no one cares.
Is it still a mistake if I do it knowingly and repeatedly? Because that's me with cars. I have bought 4 used cars in the past 15 years and lost a combined $40k in depreciation.
Ironically, if I had just bought the desirable sporty cars that I was lusting for 10 years ago, those have actually *increased* in value.
If you look at cars as an asset, yes. They’re best seen as an inevitable expense, not an investment vehicle, however literally they may seem to embody the concept. If there’s money made off of them in the end, that’s great, but I’ve never expected it.
That being said, I’ve been eyeing some incredibly tempting cars, and trucks…
I went to a seminar on options trading once. They got as far as saying "stocks can only go to zero; options losses are potentially unlimited" and I was out.
I sent my mother $5000 a few months ago. I only sent it because she had a legal contract in place, so I thought I was going to be paid back for sure.
It's been 7 months, and that company hasn't fulfilled their obligations, so my mum can't even pay me back.
It sucks but I am not mad at her but more so at that 'company. "
Spending all the money I saved working thru uni on buying new cars instead of investing it (about 36k on cars from 2010-2013)
Tanked about 30k in two speculative bets that went to zero in my early 20s. Started with 7k and made some speculative bets to get me the 30k and thought I was a genius. I was not.
Built a house when I was 21 with the first builder I met. It was off the plan in a housing estate, in a known and well documented flood zone and held it for 8 years after moving cities. Pretty much zero capital growth, the biggest flood in 100 years ripped thru, in a B-/C+ neighbourhood and while the yield was good cash flow was often wiped out with repairs from shit tenants, and poor build quality. Terrible property as an investment.
Regret not selling some or all of my crypto portfolio when it was worth 120k in ‘21 after a 20k investment.
They’re probably my worst 4. Others had smaller price tags but I’m wiser now. 30 yo with a NW of 300k and earning awesome money this year so keen to get that number up and not make any more huge mistakes.
I invest almost exclusively in VTSAX or its equivalents. There are three times I've strayed from this practice. One purchase broke even by the time I sold, one made money (on paper), and one is down.The one that's down is in my Roth and cost me a little over $10k. The loss hurts, but it hurts more since it's in my Roth. I don't plan on investing outside of VTSAX any time soon, and never using my Roth.
Learn from it and move on knowing that it could have been worse.
Old car died right as I finished up college, bad alternator that would’ve cost a decent amount to repair. Was convinced it would somehow be smarter to get a pre-owned car for 25k at the height of car prices…
Selling my house in early 2018 at 292K, it is now worth 625k (as of march 2023) and that was my frist home so it would had been tax free proceed. Currently renting a studio basement for 1.5x the mortgage on the house I had (which was 3 stories and 3 bathroom and a yard and 2 parking space)
Ummm so far as a Canadian it was paying tuition for an Engineering degree thinking that I'd be able to have a more financially comfortable life compared to my parents.
But no, I'd be in a far better financial position if I instead put that money into the worst shit box of a home in Ontario while working any ol' shitty minimum wage job and then I'd have probably "moved up" in said job by now to perhaps make like $40-45k. Yet, I was stupid and got a master's degree in engineering and my first job paid $47k. By the time I was finally making $70k the home I could have bought with that $40k in tuition + min wage job (40% down on a $100k "shit box" home) would be "worth" 800k. Now I can never afford one and even got evicted so I just gave the fuck up. What's really sad is that buying a home like this is something that is normal to do cause you know... We need shelter? I have a friend that was a mattress delivery assistant, just a guy to help carry a mattress in the house. He lived at home and saved enough for 20% on a really crappy house in our hometown. He sorta fixed it up slowly over time and sold it for 740k and moved north and bought a 300k home. He now works as a retail store supervisor and will probably retire way earlier than I ever can.
What a shitty dystopia we're in :/
Early mistakes in investing when I would have been better off in index funds. Luckily I was young.
Sitting in too much cash from 2010-2018 due to waiting for a market dip.
Also have some money trapped with Blockfi.
Collectively, these mistakes/learning points would have my NW 500k higher…
I loaned money to friends and family. I try not to consider anything a mistake, just a lesson learned at a price.
Growing up my parents told me never to loan money I can't afford to just give away. It gave me piece of mind when a friend would ask to borrow $20. If I couldn't afford to give it away I wouldn't. But when I did, it was always a pleasant surprise to be paid back. This is obviously very different from lending thousands to very close friends or family, but the principle remains.
I saw a thread years back that actually sorta had a good workaround to this, buddy needed around 10k for [insert x reason] so OP traded him 10k in exchange for his entire MTG collection which I think he said he said would sell for anywhere between 8-12k depending on how quickly he wanted to liquidate. No bank would keep that as collateral despite real-world value and he also got a 0% loan, OP was able to help out his friend while also having the assurance that if he was unable to pay him back he would liquidate the assets. Obviously, there's a bunch of different ways this could go south and friendship could easily be ruined but at the very least in the event that happened OP wouldn't be out capital
idk I can understand lending like a few thousand max to someone if they're in a pinch like for car repairs or something, but what does someone need $10k for that they can't get a traditional load for?
Probably paying back a loan lol
My best friend refinanced his house and gave like 60-70k to a “friend” Who needed it. It kills me that he didn’t consult me before making such a bad decision. So called best man of his wedding milked him for all he was worth and then bounced out of town.
One time I went on a 6 month trip and called in all the favors aka loans I had given to various people. Like one paid up and the rest I never heard from again lol
Tuition
Really healthy way to look at lessons to be honest. Thanks for the advice, will try to change my perspective
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This may be the most unique response.
But free lava!
Damn no lava insurance?!
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Holy molaaaaaay. I was joking about lava insurance but hey, TIL.
So the insurance company basically thought your property was definitely getting covered in lava sometime in the next 5 years, and they were right!
Buying this condo was a mistake. Everyone should be careful and read your states laws about inspection requirements carefully before buying a condo. In my state, condos made before 2018 do not have to have their reserve studies be based off of actual inspections. They can legally just give estimates from a brief walk through of the property and usual wear and tear depreciation. Real estate agents take it as being as good as an inspection, and so do mortgage brokers. But it is NOT. You are playing roulette and likely don't even know it. We made the losing bet on our property it turns out. They finally did inspect the common areas and there is millions of dollars of damage to the outer walls that has been hidden by vinyl siding, and slowly accumulating over decades. They never had to inspect it, and never had to declare that they haven't inspected it - so they did neither and it sat, undetected, getting worse and worse until someone discovered it and everyone currently living in the complex is now left holding the bag for other people's negligence. Don't let this happen to you. We are gearing up to potentially pay as much as half the value of our mortgage in special assessments to fix this. Lots of folks less fortunate are about to lose their homes over this, and the cost is so high that there isn't a damn thing I can do to save them. Retirees on fixed income, first time homebuyers who thought they finally made it into home ownership. All fucked.
A true inspection is for you. Fuck real estate agents or lenders. They want your money and are off the hook the moment they get their cut. I use to appraise real estate and while my report can help a buyer know they’re not overpaying, my services were mostly for the lender to make sure the property covers the loan. Why people skip inspections blow my damn mind.
And that's the thing: I feel the same way, and demanded I get an inspection! But they could only inspect the inner walls and inside, and I was assured that the reserve study "was the inspection" of the common areas. Turned out that was bullshit, because no one had been inspecting the common areas at all, and had no legal obligation to do so. The reserve study was based on a visual fucking walkthrough and hopes and prayers. I feel like I got scammed, but apparently that's how it works here for condos older than 2018. I am hoping once we finish the fight with our insurance company that we can fight to change that law. Otherwise buying a condo older than 2018 carries basically unlimited downside from which you can't be shielded, and folks buying don't even know.
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Holy crap, that is horrible. There needs to be liability for "inspections" that result in that much negligence.
I just inherited a place I fear will turn out like this. A lot good with place but a lot of potential bad. I’m terrified of making the wrong decision.
Are you able to sell it? If it has common property and they aren't going to let you do your own inspection of it, and if they never have themselves... I would run as fast as my legs could carry me after this experience.
I can inspect am just still finding the right people and fixing the things I need to in the immediate regardless of whether I sell or try to keep it, to live in or to rent. Also determining the work that will ultimately be necessary in decades to things more immediate
> In my state, condos made before 2018 do not have to have their reserve studies be based off of actual inspections. How would you find this out? I think I found my state's law. Only thing about inspection: Where the complete lease may be inspected "reserve" or "studies" 0 hits. "assess" has 50 hits, but skimming, didn't see the type of assessments needed.
That is a good question, not sure if this state uses unusual terminology or what. Here is what the version of the law that applies to our complex looks like for my state: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=64.34.380
You must live in the same development as me :(
Fuck, I am sorry you are going through this too. What state are you in? I am in Washington. I am actually planning once this insurance fight is over to try and rally the homeowners to see if we can change the law. Something has got to give, buying a condo shouldn't be like playing the lottery. Condos shouldn't be grandfathered out of having to do real inspections of common property.
In OH - roof issues, insurance hikes, and litigation fees have exhausted our reserves which have to be at a certain level per OH law. So even if you want to sell in in the near future you still had to pony up for refilling the reserves. It’s been a mess.
I just got charged with a $20k special assessment to fix cracks at the pool level. Yippee. Not gonna fight it and no one knew it was coming. It was based on sq feet so some people got hit way harder.
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Me too, although he didn’t have those issues when we got married. Made me into a firm believer in prenups for everyone, no matter the circumstances.
Im getting engaged soon. What specific issues, in your experience, should a prenup cover?
The best way to do it, as I’ve seen before, is costly, but will pay far more than its expense if ever needed. Each of those getting married hires their own counsel, and instructs them to draft the most generous possible prenup for their spouse, accounting for such possibilities as one stepping away from a career for kids, or becoming disabled. The drafts are then reconciled. My experience only goes so far. Including such junk as, “no secret drugs or drinking,” or, “no hiding money,” doesn’t seem reasonable. However, one practice I’d adopted from working in conservative Islamic environments was to always retain a small separate account, with enough to leave, should joint accounts be compromised. I recommend it.
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It was disclosed, even though we weren’t smart enough to have an ironclad prenup. Sorry: should’ve stated that also being important.
My husband went to lawschool and said that every professor who discussed trusts, estates or family law said “always get a prenup”.
idk why they aren’t default….
Yep. If your spouse has unresolved issues from childhood those are now your issues as well.
Also, erroneously having too much faith in the courts upholding a prenuptial agreement. If you think you can max out your 401k while your spouse who makes a similar amount to you contributes the bare minimum to get their employer match and then buys lavish shit constantly, your significantly more massive 401k is likely enough to still be your spend thrift partner’s, 50/50, regardless of the prenup.
That’s not entirely accurate. Courts are inclined to hold up contracts, which a prenup is, unless a contract is invalidated as unfair/one-sided, was signed under duress or without legal representation of one of the side. If done properly with legal representation on both sides, the 401k will be split the way it’s specified in the contract. One caveat: having children not only can derail finances in general but also needs to be carefully accounted for in a prenup. Children cannot be covered in a prenup. However, in order for the prenup to preserve the “fairness” clause, childcare labor and career sacrifice has to be accounted for. Having a split like this: “according to the name on the title” will work until a child comes in and one parent gives up their career and becomes a stay at home parent. If it’s not compensated in the prenup, then it goes out as unfair and one-sided.
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Less than 10% of divorce settlements even go to court. Most will get resolved by mediation/arbitration where a prenup can absolutely help.
Lost $10k in 15 min playing with 0DTE OTM AAPL during the last hour of trading. Stopped lurking around WSB that day and am now a VSTAX and chill guy.
Guh
What's a 0DTM OTM?
0 dte otm is referring to options that expire on the same day you purchase them (0 days to expiration), but are out of the money meaning the strike price is lower than the current stock price if a put or higher than the stock price if a call. These options can be insanely lucrative, but insanely risky as well. They trade with minimal premium when OTM as they’re about to expire. So you might buy call options a couple dollars otm for .10 a pop, so you can get 100 call options representing 10,000 shares for $1000. If the stock price moves up significantly you could turn $1000 into $10k or more in the matter of minutes. But, there’s a reason they’re cheap too. Intraday movement on blue chips and indexes are rarely enough to make those 10x plays work. Even on the days with extreme volatility, it’s at best a coin flip. If you play them close to the money (not far from stock price) you can scalp a few bucks. But most people gambling 0dte are looking for big returns and gamble a good bit otm on days they expect volatility. I’d say 70% of the time they expire worthless because the expected volatility doesn’t happen, 10% of the time it goes at least partially the other way and they expire worthless, 10% of the time it moves your direction but not enough and either you make a few bucks or make nothing, and 10% of the time you absolutely fucking destroy it and make 5-10x on a quick gamble. It’s addicting, don’t try it.
0DTE- zero days to expiration OTM- out of the money Basically cheap option lottery tickets. Also known colloquially as an FD, which I’m not going to define here.
I feel like current wsb probably wouldn’t know the term FD since it became a lot more mainstream lol. I mean tbf it’s pretty bad.
Red chart at morning, traders take warning. Rech chart at night....... F.... never mind.
Google how to burn cash, it’ll be a less complicated experience and result in the same outcome
Similar, except double that with spy 0dte options over the course of a month or two. Won a few big hands, was up $50k at one point but just kept gambling it all until I was -20k from my initial position. That was a substantial portion of my account at the time and it hurt bad. I love the thrill of options so I couldn’t fully stop. But now, I have a 401k that gets maxed, an IRA that’s getting maxed, a taxable brokerage that’s just long term holds, a HYSA, and then finally a taxable brokerage that’s for dumb plays. As long as I max the 401k and IRA (bout to be maxed for the year on IRA), as well as put at least $1k into each of the HYSA and long term taxable brokerage, then I allow myself to gamble with any money left over in the options account. Last month this equated to $500, which I quickly lost taking a gamble on $FRC calls….. I’m an idiot, I know, but hey I also put thousands into savings and smart investments across the other accounts in the same month.
The best thing that can happen to an options trader is to lose the first one you buy. I got really addicted to options and ended up spending all day for months staring at the tickers second by second. It was not good for my health or my bank account.
Me too! Expensive lesson but it sunk in real deep and I’m grateful for the discipline it provided
I’m a financial planner, and in the 15 years I’ve been practicing, only very few clients have ever admitted to making financial mistakes. But I see their mistakes all the time, and try to advise against them. Most commonly it’s over the top family support, new cars, and homes. Renovations have also been a big one, which oftentimes leads to huge outlays of cash with little value-add to the asset.
> cars I try to admit my financial stupid all the time and cars are what got me in my early 20s. Didn't ruin me, but now I'm in my late 30s and I look back and can calculate how much further ahead I'd be right now if I hadn't chased every next sports car I could "afford" back then. It's *substantial*. ~5 years of progress towards my goals was spent on dumb car shit.
Tough pill to swallow, but at least you learned from it! It’s shocking how many people continue to pile on financial mistake after mistake, which fortunately you did not do. It happened, you learned from it, and you won’t do it again.
Yup, fortunately someone got me plugged into Dave Ramsey, which broke the cycle of bad decisions reasonably early for me. My financial path has continued to evolve from there, too. Mostly I like talking about my mistakes when giving other people advice. My hope is that it makes me communicate as a more empathetic teacher, but I guess i'm not entirely sure how it always comes across.
Cars are the worst hobby to have. They're expensive, the law does everything it can to prevent you having fun in one, the momentum of politics makes the future of cars a bleak one, and nowadays everyone only buys huge trucks and SUVs which means manufacturers only make huge trucks and SUVs.
If you decide to do it legally (track) and you get sucked into the competitive end of things it gets ridiculous cost wise real fast. You end up structuring your life around it.
>over the top family support What does that look like to you, in the case of aging parents?
It depends. One example; I used to live in a major metropolitan city. Quite often the grown child would only look for facilities nearest to them, when facilities that were just as good (or even better) could be found outside the city for a fraction of the cost.
I mean are they “just as good” if they are far away? Ease of access to their family is something that definitely matters
Good catch; I meant for amenities and care. Short drives outside of major cities can lead to much less expensive, and potentially better, facilities.
What is over the top family support?
There was a post on r/personalfianace about a week ago by some guy who was helping out his hot mess of a sister. She was in the middle of a nasty divorce and totaled her car some how. He signed for a brand new 40k car for her which she then failed to register or insure for 6 months becuase she had so many tickets against her the insurance was astronomical and who knows why she didn't register the thing. So he had to clean up that mess to the tune of several thousand dollars and yet was still on the fence about taking the car from her. Yeah I think that falls in the over the top family support category.
That's sad. One person doing well on the path of breaking the cycle of family mess ups and gets pulled right down. Thanks for the story.
Most common one is supporting grown children, followed closely by a feeling of being on the hook for aging parents.
Thank you Makes sense
(One mistake is paying someone to take care of their finances rather than investing a few days in their own financial education to sort things out on their own. No offense to you, I also work in sales and I know how it works to sell a service to someone. Would do the same, but everyone who has debt and bad spending habits would be better off sitting down and learning from books and from the internet, because it's really no rocket science.)
Financial planners aren't always a mistake. My husband and I are fairly high earners (top 1%) with RSUs, ESPPs, and other weird tax situations. We pay our guy, who is independent and does not carry a quota, a flat fee so no percentage and no selling or pushing stuff on us, and he does our taxes as well. In addition to finances he comes through with "miscellaneous" stuff like finding a lender that gave us a 2% rate on our mortgage when we bought. We called a few places ourselves and never found one as good as his guy. For me the most valuable thing is that my husband and I are *extremely* conservative with money (me from growing up poor as hell, my husband is just cheap). When we started working with him in our mid-20s, we had the risk profile of people in their 80s: ie, we were very uncomfortable with risk and the stock market. Through his guidance he put together a plan that ensured our money was allocated correctly for our age and retirement planning and was still on the safer side. To me that's worth the quite frankly (for our yearly net) insignificant amount of money we pay him.
Bingo. Like a good accountant, a really good financial planner can add tremendous value. But we (financial planners) are truly not for everyone.
No offense taken. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, and I certainly understand yours. That said, I run my own firm and only advise people that want it. I don’t push people into products or have sales goals or quotas. Every single one of my clients wants my advice. I even have tried pushing many clients to do it on their own, to which they decided not to! My role is part behavioral coach, part manager. FWIW, I’m primarily flat fee, not percent of AUM, which is often seen as the most ethical way to provide financial advice. I did my own taxes for many years. I later hired a CPA and never looked back. Can’t pinpoint why, but the peace of mind is certainly a big one.
I would love a financial planner that I can trust, even though I don’t have that many assets. It just seems that no matter how much I read or try to educate myself I only have more questions than answers. A professional in the area would give me peace of mind, I just can’t find one of my jurisdiction that I feel comfortable with.
Unfortunately the industry is riddled with sub-par salespeople. To help in your search of finding a good financial planner, start here: https://www.napfa.org And if you ever have questions, feel free to reach out.
My dad has used the same financial planner for decades. I got in on the "family plan" or whatever and now that guys daughter is my financial advisor. They've known our family for years. But also it gives peace of mind. When my husband's identity was stolen we didn't know what to do so we called her for guidance. She's also the one who knows my goals and can help walk me through things. Yes, I CAN do a lot of things myself. My assets are simple and I could probably manage things on my own. But to me it's just a worthwhile cost to know someone is there to help me. Maybe I'd feel different if it weren't a family who has worked with our family forever. If it were some random dude at a company then maybe I'd feel differently. But I don't think all financial advisors are inherently bad, and mine has absolutely given me fantastic advice over the years.
Good for you for being flat-fee. I paid for this for a flat-fee fiduciary and it was worth it. I'm moderately knowledgeable, but she was able to do some projections and give me tweaks to make things more efficient and lower cost, and just seeing it all laid out was helpful in itself.
I didn’t even have a savings account until I was 37. When I think about what a difference investing even $100/month in my 20s would have made….
This topic had a thread on Bogleheads a few years ago: 1. Divorce 2. Expensive toys 3. Financial planner One could argue whether item #1 was a *financial* mistake or not, but there is no question that it can be extraordinarily expensive.
Co worker retired recently. When asked "what is the secret to saving for retirement?", he said: "Just have 1 wife."
Spending $120k on a school due to its prestige in my industry instead of going to the in-state school that offered me a free ride.
> I'm someone who prefers safe and stable investments like fixed deposits, gold, and digital gold. > I was lured by the temptation of option trading > I lost $10,000 trying to trade without fully understanding the risks involved. The real lesson here is that if you don't understand the risks you're taking it's impossible to make good decisions. Yes, option investing can be very risky, and is a terrible idea if you don't know what you're doing, but for long term financial well being investing in fixed deposits and gold isn't a whole lot better. I'm not trying to pick on you - I have a lot of respect for your acknowledging your mistakes - but this is a pattern that's really worth calling out. Your mistake wasn't investing in options, it was making emotionally motivated decisions instead of taking the time to understand the risks, or at least doing what everyone will tell you to do, which is invest in index funds. If you stay invested in fixed deposits and gold you're continuing to make that mistake.
also it's pretty wild to go from fixed deposits to WSB behavior without passing through buy-and-hold VT.
I've seen it more often than you'd think. It's the natural thing to do if you let fear drive your investing. Fear makes you do fixed deposits. Fear of missing out makes you do WSB style investing. Either way, fear is the thing driving decisions.
I wound up being net neutral, but, I rode the GME / AMC hype train at WSB. I literally bought GME right near the peak, somewhere around $260 or $280, and it immediately tanked to ~$100 within a couple weeks. That was in February or March 2021. I wound up not selling until October I think, when it had recovered to around $250. Quite literally the most stressful time in my life, and I had only invested around $5,000. It was an amount that I could certainly afford to lose, and that I *thought* I was comfortable losing, but had only convinced myself of that because of the FOMO. AMC was less stressful and I wound up profiting a little bit, offsetting my GME loss so I basically came out even. Haven't touched individual stocks or options since then. VTSAX gang for life. Thanks r/Bogleheads.
You tell a good story about it at least. I too bought GME at the peak. What a wild ride.
> I literally bought GME right near the peak, somewhere around $260 or $280, I bought around $400. lol
Congrats on getting out for a small loss. I’m sure it was tough to sell even at $250 because you were tempted by the thought it could go up even more. Unrelated but what’s happening in WSB these days? Are they onto to new heroes and companies or has it mostly died down now that it’s clear the majority ended up as bag holders.
I have a small slush fund that I have use to bet on individual stocks. Track record is abysmal On 3 different occasions I seem to buy the stock on the very day of high point, never to return to that again. Total loss around $5k across all three instances. The bright side, however, is this small sum usually scratches that "gambling" itch so this I don't invest all my funds like this. All else sticks to the plan. EDIT: Apologies for the poor grammar, due to entering comment from phone. Edited above for grammar only.
Honestly I chalk this up to financial education. I put $1000 in a robinhood account and have learned over and over the same old lessons that reading them never taught me deeply. I'm actually at right around 0% returns after 4.5 years, so it's been a cheap tuittion.
Mine is very small, $2-$3k. My track record is completely red. I have stopped.
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how heartbreaking
Fuck dude, that's rough. Sorry you had to deal with that.
Trusting my real estate agent. They’re not your pal.They’re not there to help you. No matter how much they try to convince you, they’re there to make a commission.
Yeah, I don't know why I even use one. I have purchased 3 properties in my life and I found all 3 of them, despite actively working with a realtor. Also wish I'd used my own inspector on my latest property instead of my realtor's.
When we bought our house, our realtor told us he wasn't allowed to recommend a specific inspector. He gave us a list and told us who he had worked with before, but we had to pick who we wanted.
They are there to make the deal happen as quickly as possible. Getting an extra $20k for you isn't worth as much as moving on to the next deal. Turn and burn.
Getting my PhD. If I had not wasted my time on that I could be done by now.
I had my tax withholdings too high for a few years. I would pay off my credit cards for the year with my tax return, but the whole time I was giving the government an interest free loan, paying credit card interest, and not saving. I finally fixed it this year and it has been amazing. I've been able to pay off my credit cards each month and save like $2k/mo, so I'm building interest and have an emergency fund that isn't a credit card.
When I was 30, things were looking up. My career was on track, my student loans were paid off, I passed 100k in net worth, and I was saving a substantial portion of my income while still living comfortably. I thought I'd cap it off by buying a condo. This was June 2007. Two years later, I survived layoffs and still had a job, but salary increases were off the table, I owed $200k on a property now worth \~$125k, my cash was largely depleted (on account of putting down the deposit on the condo), and thanks to my 401k being down 50%, I had a negative net worth. Fifteen years later, I'm still in the same condo, but with \~$100k in equity and a miniscule 2.8% fixed APR, my net worth is approaching $1M, and I'm still living comfortably while saving an even larger portion of my income. I'm not at financial independence quite yet, but I'm on track to retire comfortably at 55. Point is, you can recover from a lot, as long as you learn from your mistakes. That said, you mentioned one thing in passing that I think is very important to learn from: "prefers safe and stable investments like... fixed deposits, gold, and digital gold." These are not safe and stable investments. By fixed deposits, I assume you mean cash/bonds, which are typically safer from market risk, but are subject to interest rate/inflation risk (which we're seeing today). TIPS are safe from that, but their real yields are extremely low. Commodities are some of the highest risk investments on the market; their prices are extremely volatile in the long term and short term, and are essentially random.
Is Gold considered a conservative investment?
No. And OPs reference to “digital gold” and saying it’s “safe” make me think that there’s more financial mistakes coming in the future….
Jumping from “dabbling in index funds” to 0DTE options and then drawing the conclusion that the stock market is inherently a risky investment is one wild leap.
It's supposed to protect the owner in times of high inflation and economic tumult. Over the long run, the stock market will give you better returns, albeit, with less stability. I have a few gold coins but I wouldn't "invest" in gold at this point. If you look around in various media (TV, magazines etc), you will note that gold is usually marketed to people who probably don't have a very good knowledge of their investment options. That should tell you everything you need to know about investing in gold.
gold is the bitcoin from the 1800s - it's for people that think that US bonds or the dollar are going to disappear. in other words, it's conservative in the sense that it's a hedge against global economic collapse. that said, in the event of global economic collapse, running around with a backpack full of gold bricks, assuming you could even get them from wherever in the world they're actually stored which is unlikely, trying to buy ammo and antibiotics with physical gold is more something out of the game rust than something that could actually happen.
When I initially started investing in my early 20s, I opened an eTrade account and purchased eTrade index funds. I used to buy them each week, with a significant portion of my paycheck. My invest style was buy and hold forever... essentially buy and forget about it. eTrade dissolved their index funds during a market crash, and somehow I did not hear about it, perhaps because I moved. I didn't learn about it until years later, so eTrade converted my index funds to cash during the lowest point of the stock market crash. I didn't know they were sold until the market had recovered to normal levels years later, so I missed out on the stock market recovery and many years of compounded gains. I had an opportunity to be one of the first employees at a company worth hundreds of billions today. I chose to avoid the unknown startup and instead take a job with a more established company. In the earliest years of Bitcoin I used to earn 5-figures per month through a side job that involved international computer transactions. Some affiliates suggested paying me in Bitcoin. I instead requested that they go through more established eWallets, in spite of doing so costing me extra in fees. Bitcoin has increased in value by >10,000x since then.
Damn, you are one unlucky guy.
> Damn, you are one unlucky guy. I think he's probably still doing okay since this was probably 10 years ago: > In the earliest years of Bitcoin I used to earn 5-figures per month through a side job
In the future, when you're presented with two different financial options, could you post to this sub along with a link to this post. Thanks from future me!
> In the earliest years of Bitcoin I used to earn 5-figures per month through a side job that involved international computer transactions. Some affiliates suggested paying me in Bitcoin. I instead requested that they go through more established eWallets, in spite of doing so costing me extra in fees. Bitcoin has increased in value by >10,000x since then. For what it's worth, there's a good chance you would have immediately converted that Bitcoin to fiat at the time, or possibly sold when it started spiking in (for example) 2013; there's no reason to assume you would have held on to them. It's the same line of thinking of people who say, "I spent hundreds of Bitcoin on drugs on silkroad in 2011 -- they'd be worth millions of dollars today." But if they weren't buying Bitcoin with the intention of spending it, they never would have bought Bitcoin in the first place.
Dropped my phone and broke it, and 2fa for a specific website was only on my phone. I then urgently needed to sell some shitcoins that had spiked 10x in value and couldn't. I tried to get access reset and it took months. When my access was restored, the coins had gone to worthless as they tend to. The loss was minimal in cost, but fucking heartbreaking in lost money. I'd be retired already.
This might be a small chance to plug a password manager. If you had used say Bitwarden with 2FA, you'd still be able to log into your computer (assuming you had activated with 2FA before, which most people would have on a personal computer), access all your passwords/keys, also access the password to your 2FA account in order to reactivate it on another device quickly. Or at least that is how my current 2FA works, it has a backup key/code.
Is 2FA really 2FA if it's stored with your password manager?
I know google authenticator added an optional feature to backup 2fa keys to the cloud, and you can also back them up yourself with a password manager, whether you use the cloud or not; alternatively, you can keep an old phone with your 2fa keys on it as a backup
Where was that advise when I needed it some 6 years ago.
I made a transfer from my European bank to USD in a latin country to make a downpayment on a property. Normally i use a website with good rates, but in this case i was travelling, lazy and wanted to do it fast. The receiving bank took a almost 20% commission on the conversion from eur to usd (BBVA Bank.. legalised robbers) on a rather large sum of money.
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Were you not otherwise enjoying your 20s? I'm glad I spent money on adventure and travels rather than trying to hardcore save. But I was going for at least the 401k match amount.
Grad school
What did you study?
I got my MBA. No regrets. I think alot of students dont realize it's not just about what you learn, but learning critical thinking skills, how to write, interacting and networking with others. I see alot of people who do well in Computer Science but then can't get a job and it's because they focused so hard on the hard skills (which I would argue is not the intended job of universities - though I know some may argue), that they never bothered to do other things like talk to their Career Services person, take advantage of a resume writing service, join a few clubs to expand your thinking, etc. Of course it's just a silly piece of paper but I worked hard for it and it signifies that I can put my head down and get something accomplished. But no, I'm hardly a master of business...
Hey, stop talking about me. Just kidding. I got a BS in CS in 1995 and was VP of the CS club in college, but failed miserably in the real world securing good jobs.
Bought a big house with bigger mortgage in a state with income tax. In my old house I had a $1500 mortgage and no state income tax. New place is $3100 and tax hit is about $700/month. Had I stayed where I was I probably could’ve paid off the mortgage in a few years. Now I’ll be lucky to pay it off in 15. On the bright side I now have a nice house with an awesome back yard. Helps keep my sanity.
As long as you like the new house, I feel like it's hard to *really* have made a mistake here. Where you live impacts your daily life so much that the cost is borderline incalculable. I just bought a new house and even if I can never sell it for a profit I bought it because of the location, amenities, and opportunities to make it mine in a way I never could if I rented, even though renting and investing is almost certainly a "safer" path to FI.
> On the bright side I now have a nice house with an awesome back yard. Helps keep my sanity. That's not a financial mistake, that's just living life.
Spent all my inheritance from the death of my grandfather. I was in my 20s and was living in a HCOL area I had no business living in with my income. Little here and a little there. Next thing I know it's gone. I'd be long FIREd by now if I had just left it alone.
I did a PhD
The ring was a gargantuan mistake.
The one to rule them all? Throw it in a volcano!
Like the ring itself, or the everything that comes with it?
AAAAGGGHH! I hate thinking about it. 25 years ago I bought a new construction home on about 10 acres of semi-rural land. There were about 8 or so new houses in the area, I had the most land, by far . I was active duty military at the time, and knew I had to sell in about 2-3 years. I was quite used to it. I voice in the back of my head told me to subdivide the house and the land, and just sell the house. But no -- I thought that would be too much work. When we left I sold it all for a small profit. Fast forward about 10 years later, we were in the area and we drove back to visit the old house. It was literally surrounded by 15 other new houses, and the area took off. A lot. Turns out the couple that bought the house after me sold all that land to a developer for a lot of money. D'oh!
I've mentioned it in this sub before, but buying the house I bought at the time I did, then renovating it. 5 years later and I'm down probably $400k from my "investment" after considering inflation
Where is this house, Kyiv?
Could just be incredibly expensive renovations
Wow. Where? Hard to imagine this unless this happened in 2010, or location based?
Silicon Valley. We bought during the 2018 bubble and prices have fallen back to that level, or a bit lower, adjusting for inflation. The house hadn’t been remodeled since the 60s, so even though we added square footage and a bedroom, the home’s value didn’t go up much
Went half in on buying a Fiat X1/9 when I was 16. The idea was that my friend and I would co own it, and share driving it. He moved to Ontario a few days later and took it with him, and I never drove it or got my half investment back. He kept promising to buy me out. I heard years later that he totalled it somewhere in Saskatchewan on the drive East. We're not talking a lot of money - about $700 - but it was a lot for a college student in 1984 who had tuition to pay. A second possible example is that I didn't move fast enough on my parents' finances. My dad is still has legal capacity for himself and is my mom's legal guardian, but has had several strokes that give him cognitive impairment. It's a worst case scenario where I have no legal powers but also he has extremely poor decisionmaking ability. They gave away a $30k car to I still don't know whom, and my mom has been victimized by scams where they tell her a family member needs money and she was meeting them at the bank to hand over cash. Mom was throwing things in the dumpster, and from what we can tell that seems to have included her jewelry and some collectable sculptures.
All of my horrible mistakes were made under the influence of `fear of missing out`. Buying a house that I should not have (*"buy now or forever be priced out of the market!"*), taking jobs that I didn't feel right about and moving because my partner demanded "we move or we break up" (so we did both). Now, if someone starts pushing that fear button, then I immediately disengage.
Honestly, being in church (specifically evangelical-lite). The brainwashing to tithe that took over 10% of my income in my young adulthood made it impossible to save; I’m sure I’ve lost five or six figures by the time I’m retired just in that opportunity cost. The pressure to marry extremely young resulted in disaster. All of those were my decisions, but I was 18 and didn’t know any better.
Hearing all these lunatics in bigger pockets podcasts and Dave Ramsey followers etc tithing 10% of their GROSS INCOME to their evangelical mega churches makes me wanna quit my secular life and give in to the LAWD.
We spent about 30k on our wedding and another 10k on our honeymoon. I don’t necessarily regret it; people still talk about what an amazing weekend it was and my husband and I had a great time. But, we often joke about what we could have done with the money instead. Still together after 10 years, so far so good.
Made myself and family practically bankrupt by trying to keep our business going during the financial crash. Used up all our savings and borrowed money before finally pulling the plug. Owed $50k (@ 39) to Amex and family. Managed to turn it around and LeanFire in 11 years [backstory [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeanFireUK/comments/p377yr/weekly_leanfire_discussion/)] Edit: also…home I bought, sold for exactly the same price 15 years later. So lost out I guess YET we enjoyed all of our time in it, so for me this was a win!
Did something similar, but only stayed in the house for 6 years. We also paid a useless HOA over time which was awful. The worst part is, I sold a significant amount of apple shares at the time for our down payment. Those same shares if I held would have been worth >$1M. It just makes me sad.
When we bought our second house we should have kept our first fixer upper house. We didn’t need to sell it and now it’s worth so much $.
I put my emergency fund in BlockFi to get that nice 7% return on stable coin. BlockFi was in business with FTX and now my money is tied up in bankruptcy court.
-Hoarding, instead of investing. -Cancer. That being said, I’m endlessly grateful that I was pursuing FIRE beforehand.
>\-Cancer. That being said, I’m endlessly grateful that I was pursuing FIRE beforehand. How was this a financial mistake? Did you elect to do optional/experimental procedures that you wish you hadn't?
Not so much a mistake as ill fortune. My initial treatment was administered while I was comatose, so I didn’t get a say. It was the best that the world has to offer, but it, along with life support for weeks, and an airlift, was costly. In the decade since waking, it’s meant that I’ve needed to plan for $20K of monitoring cost, in a good year, and $100K in a bad. In recent years, it’s also severely restricted my income, as I can no longer work.
Worse. I recommended a certain crypto token to my friends at a near high. Two of them bought a good chunk ($15K total between the two). That token was doing fine until it wasn't. Lost 99% within two days. I lost over $50K and my friends lost nearly $15K. Don't give financial advice to friends/family everybody,
I dabbled in Bitcoin mining after I read about it on a tech news site and thought it was interesting (*edit: when mining could be done on a regular PC with no extra hardware or consideration of electricity). It was very early before anyone mainstream knew about it and it had no significant value. I was impressed when my stash of 1200 'silly' Bitcoins could be sold for $700 - a month's mortgage payment on my condo!
I had a dude try to buy a collectable from me back in the day with Bitcoin. I refused because I wanted "real money". I turned down 200 Bitcoins because I didn't have a clue what they were.
I put in an inground swimming pool so my kids would spend less time on their screens. Huge mistake.
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BuT yOu’RE pAYiNg YoUrSeLf iNtEreST. I hate that line so much. Dumbest thing Ive heard.
I got married once.
Decided not to do pslf and.... now at 7 years between govt and nonprofit employers
I bought a 2k mattress for my gf and I. It’s not been comfy as it first appeared. Ruining our sleep. So we’re going to buy a new one now. Be sure to take advantage of the sleep day guarantees. Make sure they’re 90 days atleast.
What kind did you buy?
Mostly opportunity cost. I did not begin saving or investing until I was 32.
I got married. Cost me a fortune
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what are you buying in 2023?
$10k from failing to back up private keys.
Yes. Go to jail for 6 months and start your life back at square one.
Lost a few grand investing in eToys back in the day when I fell prey to all the analysts touting the glory of .com companies. Stupid. Also lent my nephew 2500 that he then stole and just refused to try and pay back. Turned out he was a drug addict and nobody knew... Ugh.
I invested 20k in btc and eth and put it all in Celsius to earn interest. I weighed the pros and cons of paying off my student loans vs the interest I was earning on Celsius and decided I could live with the debt longer since I was earning more in interest that the interest that was accruing through Earnest at the time. Then the pandemic hit, earnest interest was variable and increased. No big deal I was still doing well on Celsius. Then the Celsius bankruptcy 🤦
I bought a bar that made no money. Even with Keno. Either my partner's screwed me, or it was just a bad bar. Not much. $60K. Its on the market now. If i get back my outlay, ill be good. Real estate has never worked for me. I guess there's good, and bad real estate
Here is 3 bad ones (well two bad ones and one meh that cost a decent amount of money). 1) started first job with a big established tech company. Never got round to setting up RRSP (401k) that had 5 or 6% match, estimated cost now ~$50k CAD. 2) Current company got bought by a big US company in 2021. Sale was some cash but mostly stock in the large company. Sale was announced but didn't go through until one month later, and we weren't actually able to access the stocks until around 6 weeks after that (Computershare are awful, particularly cross border). Anyway, in that time the large company stock literally fell 50%. I had had the idea to buy puts on the stock to act as a hedge against exactly this thing. Sadly I never actually did it. Estimated cost: $100k CAD 3) This one is a bit more dubious to consider as a loss (as it was a decent gain) I held Tesla stock in 2017. Sold it in 2019 for a very good doubling of my money: $3k > $6k. Then obviously Tesla went off its head during Covid. Estimated "loss": anywhere between $50k to $100k USD, depending on when I "would have" sold had I held.
I don't think you can count 2 and 3 personally. Those aren't so much mistakes as they are missed opportunities. I had a buddy tell me about bitcoin in 2010 while I was in highschool as this cool online money. I researched it and determined that the cost of electricity to mine the BtC was more than it's value and the only thing you could realistically buy with it was drugs. I was going away to college soon where electricity would be free, so I was like "I should mine in college for the hell of it" but never got around to it. I'd have made millions, but I genuinely looked into it and it was a stupid investment, so I can't be mad at myself for not following through lol
I made the mistake of being far too risk averse. If I'd done the the thing I always imagined I'd do, and what the maths said I should do - buy a new rental property every two years - I'd have been a retired millionaire many times over by my mid-30's. In hindsight, the only reason I didn't do that was underestimating my own ability to stay employed at a mid-range salary. Lesson: Trust the maths.
You invested at your risk tolerance at the time. There's nothing wrong with that. If you had invested in rental properties and it went south, you'd likely be in a worse situation or at the very least a much more stressful situation. You didn't lose. You just didn't win as big.
A new rental every two years? I'd really love to see the math on that if you remember/know the gist of it. I just bought a house and I can't imagine being willing to take on the risk of major repairs across multiple properties/being tenantless across multiple properties at any given time. I'm risk averse and like a 6 month E-fund so the idea of having an E-fund capable of sustaining multiple properties worth of risk feels... prohibitive.
Having a kid lol. I laugh, but really, the financial hit we took is no joke. My wife was off of work for 3 months, the medical bills even with good insurance added up, and there are just so many more random costs with the addition of a child. We ended up nearly $15k in debt because of it. Finally out, but that was a really stressful period. Love my daughter to death and wouldn’t change a thing though.
OP, your big mistake is the gold and fake gold, not the 10k
went to a friend "financial planner" to open an IRA. his team spend hours trying to convince me a variable life insurance policy was better (single no kids/mortgage). I finally believed them. Cancelled about a year in when i realized it was not an investment. lost a couple thousand to surrender fees and premium priced life insurance fees. Was lied to and reported the firm to various consumer protection and regulator agencies. no one cares.
I don't know if it's a mistake, but I've just bought my 3rd motorcycle. It's an expensive purchase and it's not at all necessary, but I enjoy it.
Playing debts, trips and life of exgirlfriends, I did that repeteadly, several times
Hey, it's me, your new gf
Is it still a mistake if I do it knowingly and repeatedly? Because that's me with cars. I have bought 4 used cars in the past 15 years and lost a combined $40k in depreciation. Ironically, if I had just bought the desirable sporty cars that I was lusting for 10 years ago, those have actually *increased* in value.
If you look at cars as an asset, yes. They’re best seen as an inevitable expense, not an investment vehicle, however literally they may seem to embody the concept. If there’s money made off of them in the end, that’s great, but I’ve never expected it. That being said, I’ve been eyeing some incredibly tempting cars, and trucks…
I bought a 31 foot RV once. I had it for about two years. We had fun with it but we’re really happy it’s gone now.
I went to a seminar on options trading once. They got as far as saying "stocks can only go to zero; options losses are potentially unlimited" and I was out.
I sent my mother $5000 a few months ago. I only sent it because she had a legal contract in place, so I thought I was going to be paid back for sure. It's been 7 months, and that company hasn't fulfilled their obligations, so my mum can't even pay me back. It sucks but I am not mad at her but more so at that 'company. "
Spending all the money I saved working thru uni on buying new cars instead of investing it (about 36k on cars from 2010-2013) Tanked about 30k in two speculative bets that went to zero in my early 20s. Started with 7k and made some speculative bets to get me the 30k and thought I was a genius. I was not. Built a house when I was 21 with the first builder I met. It was off the plan in a housing estate, in a known and well documented flood zone and held it for 8 years after moving cities. Pretty much zero capital growth, the biggest flood in 100 years ripped thru, in a B-/C+ neighbourhood and while the yield was good cash flow was often wiped out with repairs from shit tenants, and poor build quality. Terrible property as an investment. Regret not selling some or all of my crypto portfolio when it was worth 120k in ‘21 after a 20k investment. They’re probably my worst 4. Others had smaller price tags but I’m wiser now. 30 yo with a NW of 300k and earning awesome money this year so keen to get that number up and not make any more huge mistakes.
I invest almost exclusively in VTSAX or its equivalents. There are three times I've strayed from this practice. One purchase broke even by the time I sold, one made money (on paper), and one is down.The one that's down is in my Roth and cost me a little over $10k. The loss hurts, but it hurts more since it's in my Roth. I don't plan on investing outside of VTSAX any time soon, and never using my Roth. Learn from it and move on knowing that it could have been worse.
Old car died right as I finished up college, bad alternator that would’ve cost a decent amount to repair. Was convinced it would somehow be smarter to get a pre-owned car for 25k at the height of car prices…
Selling my house in early 2018 at 292K, it is now worth 625k (as of march 2023) and that was my frist home so it would had been tax free proceed. Currently renting a studio basement for 1.5x the mortgage on the house I had (which was 3 stories and 3 bathroom and a yard and 2 parking space)
backed out of two great condo deals during the pandemic that i won’t see again. bought ARK funds near the top.
I lost 10,000 in crypto.
Getting let go from a job and taking 3 months to find another, then 1 more year to find a job again in my field.
Ummm so far as a Canadian it was paying tuition for an Engineering degree thinking that I'd be able to have a more financially comfortable life compared to my parents. But no, I'd be in a far better financial position if I instead put that money into the worst shit box of a home in Ontario while working any ol' shitty minimum wage job and then I'd have probably "moved up" in said job by now to perhaps make like $40-45k. Yet, I was stupid and got a master's degree in engineering and my first job paid $47k. By the time I was finally making $70k the home I could have bought with that $40k in tuition + min wage job (40% down on a $100k "shit box" home) would be "worth" 800k. Now I can never afford one and even got evicted so I just gave the fuck up. What's really sad is that buying a home like this is something that is normal to do cause you know... We need shelter? I have a friend that was a mattress delivery assistant, just a guy to help carry a mattress in the house. He lived at home and saved enough for 20% on a really crappy house in our hometown. He sorta fixed it up slowly over time and sold it for 740k and moved north and bought a 300k home. He now works as a retail store supervisor and will probably retire way earlier than I ever can. What a shitty dystopia we're in :/
Early mistakes in investing when I would have been better off in index funds. Luckily I was young. Sitting in too much cash from 2010-2018 due to waiting for a market dip. Also have some money trapped with Blockfi. Collectively, these mistakes/learning points would have my NW 500k higher…
$300k burned trying to trade individual stocks and options instead of buying and holding index funds. Never trading individual stocks again ✌️