Got this idea from blackfinancier's post about other people's bad finances. What are some of the dumbest financial decisions that you've personally made? One of mine:
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going to a non-target for 45K a year
This...::sigh::
Paying $14K at 16 for a Mustang without checking the insurance rates.
I probably would have done this too if I had $14K when I was 16
But had I invested it in oil stocks, I'd be collecting $2000/year in dividends today.
Not opening a health savings account my first year of work (missed out on no strings attached $500 company donation).
Directly bad decision: "loaning" a smack head friend $1,000 because I bought their fucking story about needing to pay off a student loan. Meanwhile, mine fell behind. This was "point and laugh" stupid.
Indirect: letting people in high school talk me out of applying/accepting/attending (I had a lot of options) Ivy / target schools in favor of a fucking state school. Chronic underacheiving townie assholes, I never even wanted to be like them anyway, I just wanted to fit in. Now I do and I'm busting my ass to get out.....forever.
Best financial decision ever: WORKING IN NEW YORK FUCKING CITY
Selling $5k worth of AAPL at something like $50/share to buy AMD at $40/share.
http://blog.compete.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Antoine-Dodson-Dumb…
Holy shit thats bad. AMD is pretty weak
Mine was when my friend found an old (outdated, we didn't know) form of currency and wanted to cash it in. Worth around 400ish dollars. Cashed it-split the money. Then i found out the currency bounced when it got to the FEd-took a few days to get declined. Never got my money back from the kid-but did manage to get credited for the money from the back through some nice legal arguments I found. I was young and back then 200 dollars was a big deal
Other than that-just wasting money on stupid shit like fads maybe in high school like cool sneakers etc. Or the furby. God that thing sucked.
Buying new books from the university book store lol.
Why's everything 'lol' with you? Did you just learn what it meant?
Yes, master. I apologize, master. Now, please teach me your ways in getting friend zoned by every single girl in the world, master. lol
sounds like a real shitty friend
Buying a bunch of BAC at 11.25.....
I bought at like 11:30, feel your pain...
Funding my retirement account the last two years and earning ~1% in the stock market when my student loans are 6% interest.
I understand this... that's why I'm paying offf my student loans... I figure even if I did decently well in the stock market it would be roughly a wash and when you factor in the risk, it's more worth it for me to have the peace of mind of being debt free. I'm trying to pay them down with a quickness.
Hmm, probably my worst financial decision is probably the cumulative impact of small purchases...buying coffee because I don't want to drink the office brew, packs of gum, food that goes bad in my fridge, etc. Literally thousands over a few years. Depressing to think of that waste...I need to strap a picture of Suze Orman to my wallet.
One bad choice was not changing my SSN and bank info after I turned 18. If you have a less than great family, they can use it to spoof their way into your checking account and clear it out. Lost about $3,500 that way, and it hurts more when you are not working. If they were smart, they would have waited until after I had been working for a few years.
Completely agree.
A friends sister did the same thing. She worked in a bank and he rather stupidly trusted her and she stole $20,000AUS by taking out a fraudulent loan on his name. The worst thing perhaps was that he didnt have the heart to call the cops on here.
Playing with the stock market when I don't have a fuckin clue really.
Letting some bitch run me for a year because I was a chivalrous and perhaps stupid gentleman.
A few dumb ones I can think of: - A few years ago. Not getting it in writing that my new firm would buy out my bonus. Caused a lot of aggravation and put 6 figures at risk. I got paid in the end, but I got a few grey hairs from the stress.
Could have done better: - Spending $20,000 on professional courses while working instead of doing a masters or spending a bit more and getting an academic qualification out of it... Very beneficial courses, but should have had work pay for it or have done a masters/diploma instead.
Best decision: - Being debt free. Has given me more flexibility and options than I would have had otherwise.
OP - out of curiosity: what was your "friend" going to ostensibly use the money for?
Student loans
Having a high maintenance girlfriend. She burned through my wallet faster than I can jerk off.
second that.
But I'll live and learn, and I'm glad to have made this mistake before hitting bigger salaries. In the grand scheme of things the damage was peanuts.
Doubled down on WaMu. Thought the Fed wouldn't let them go under.
I had some money in Lehman....
RatinaMaze sucks
as does your mom
Do you have aspergers or are you actually 12?
I wish i had more credits so I could diarrhea all over you
RatinaMaze sucks.
Bought a sports car for 20K. Proceeded to dump an additional 20K into it. I can probably sell it for about 20K currently. At least it's fun.
Going to Vegas and doing the models/bottles treatment isn't exactly a good financial decision.
Basically having no sort of budgeting system for my salaried income. Saving bonus exclusively and everything else goes to the wind.
Converting my cash to Josh Hamilton rookie cards in my youth, only to watch them become worthless and let my mom sell that at a garage sale. I must have bought 100 at $5 each, which was a lot of hedging bushes and assorted neighborhood shit. It still pisses me off.
I wasted a ton of time and money on sports cards too. It's pretty crazy that 95% of cards out there can be worth 5 cents and then there's cards going for $1000+
There used to be 5-10 card shops within my mom's range of patience and maybe 2 are still there. After posting that I realized that I am really happy it happened when I was 10 and not 30 because holy shit some people have been burned.
I was a decent baseball player growing up and I have started to get back into watching now that I am in nyc. The only collectibles on my wish list at this point are a signed Ted Williams bat (hoping for one actually used by him, and definitely willing to pay) and I have been looking for someone to make a 36x20 poster of Nolan Ryan bleeding all over his jersey when he took a line drive off the teeth from Bo Jackson. I then want him to sign it, but I need someone to make the poster first because I do not think it exists. That could be replaced by actually owning the jersey, but I think it is in Cooperstown so it would probably be tacky to ask the HoF to buy a piece of history back from them and stick it in a private collection.
I had 5 of this really nice Kobe Bryant rookie card. I flipped them after he won his first ring for about $10 each. Thought I was wheeling and dealing.
Today the only cards that have a chance of being worth more than the paper they are printed on are the ultra-premium brands, topps chrome and whatnot. You get about an autograph a box, and usually it's some terrible rookie that will be in the league for 2 years.
I do miss it though, it could be fun now that I have a little more income. Just reallocate some funds from the blackjack slot on the budget...
I think both cards & collectibles are fun strictly as a hobby. Everything is just so diluted now and the prices are insanely low. I belong to the same country club as Johnny Bench - the guy is a legend and in the HOF but even his stuff can be had pretty cheaply. He does some charity stuff around the club where you can buy his autograph on a bat AND ball for like $150.
Pete Rose is the same way where he basically signs every day in Vegas and those schmucks walk away thinking they just scored without realizing he must sign thousands of items/month.
I just HAD to try the top-quality heroin, now I can't use the cheap stuff anymore and it's eating my life savings. Got so bummed out I started drinking.
Buying college books at the bookstore.
Get out of here with that pussy shit bro...
^ Damn, whodi.
Every time I decide to go to Atlantic City.
Funny...
I just went through all of my sports stuff this weekend to try to sell on Ebay.
Almost every card I had was worth nothing to ~.05. I had a couple $20s, and one $75. Probably close to 10,000 cards. I went over to a baseball card shop, and tried to sell my shit to them. They would only take cards from 1975 and earlier, and would pay .01 per card.
They say that they have 100s of thousands of cards and if they sell them it may take up to 10+ years. Most of the time its collectors who have a whole set of cards but is missing like 1 card, so they call them up. They were basically giving away alot of nice shit that I will have to buy when I get my corner office one day.
I will probably go sell all my cards to them for .01 and call it a day.
I'm surprised they even made you an offer AND that they're still in business! Most of the B&M guys are long gone and the ones that are in business usually ain't buyers. That industry is in such a shithole. When I can get a HOF player to sign a bat & ball for $150, that's a real bad sign of the times.
Yeah it seemed like it was a running joke in there that whenever someone came into the store or called it was to sell their shit, never buy. It was just two guys who owned and ran the store.
Attempting to swing trade. God, I was stupid.
$10 dollar beers at hotel rivington.
Said before.....Paying 45k for UofT BComm
letting my ex borrow several thousand dollars that could have gone to pay student loans she does have like 10 times as much debt as me at an average of 8 or 9% so i think i win though
Bought PBR
Turning down a decent 35k job post-college just because it wasn't 'my dream job' and proceeding to be un(der)emplpoyed for unnecessarily long.
Paying for an Ivy to major in liberal arts instead of something hard-skills. (I hate to say it, but Mom and Dad, all your nags were on the money.)
My two biggest wastes are easily:
Buying a house - I actually don't regret it at all, but that money could definitely be used more wisely.
Eating out - I enjoy going out to dinner, but when I was single I ate out almost every meal. I've easily wasted tens of thousands of dollars and consumed thousands of extra calories eating out when it wasn't necessary.
I recently started doing more grocery store shopping instead of eating out. Mostly for my waistline more than financial. But the cost differences/savings are night & day! I now go home and cook myself up some turkey burgers for lunch - something that would have cost me $15 is now like $4 of groceries. When I think of all the meals out in the past (and there's been a lot of them!) it becomes a huge financial mistake in my mind.
So the opportunity cost of your time is $0?
I'm.an extremely frugal person by nature...so no cable, no eating out, Macys sale suits etc. I can grant that maybe its less a concious choice versus hating cable tv, restaraunt food (even in NYC I'm a better cook) and shopping. I'm the quintissential "good American" with the Suze Orman personal finance commendation for maxing out deferred plans and having 8-10 months salary in liquid savings.
Last year, in one of the most agonizing decisions I've ever made - I chose to spend $22 thousand dollars treating my 11 year old mutt for cancer. It makes me a little queasy to think about - because she is a big dog and her life expectancy is 11-13 years.
She is however in total remission, feeling great and still cuddles with me pretty hard at least once a day. Imagine - all that for a social evolutionary parasite and lower mammal.
Wow, that is tough. It is pretty awesome that you'd do that. Your dog is seriously lucky.
I have a 4.5 year old American Bulldog that is awesome. Even though she has cost me a lot of money (and aggravation) getting her was one of the best decisions I ever made. That being said, I don't know if I could drop over $20k hoping to cure her of cancer.
On the topic - another bad decision from a purely financial standpoint is buying a dog.
Cost of Dog + a few hundred a year for vet + $40/night that I'm out of town + doggy emergency room visit (allergies to spider bite) + food + dog walker when she was a puppy + damage she's done + miscellaneous = A few thousand EASILY (prob $5k by now and she hasn't even had any real medical issues yet)
Yeah - dogs are totally a bad financial decision. That being said - American Bulldogs are awesome! Its very easy to get too emotionally attached. My dog was a throwaway, so she didn't cost me anything. And to her credit, besides the walker and the very occasional boarding - she only went to the vet once for the runs. Other than that she only had routine maintenance.
My husband died in an accident shortly after we were married and my mother died unexpectedly not too long after that. When everyone went back to real life - it was just me and her for a while and if it weren't for my needing to take care of her, I probably would have really lost my footing. So I felt like I owed her. A dog. I owed a dog - for existing as a dog.
Someday you'll be thinking about all the things you and your loyal companion have been through, good and bad and otherwise and you'll probably end up facing a big money decision (at least that's what the statistics say) Trust me, start an earmarked fund now - because it will be a lot harder than you think to not treat her if its treatable. We can't be rational all the time, but we can do what we need to to mitigate our irrationality.
betting on red instead of black.
take a girl out more than three times to dinner in NYC and having her tell me she only fucks if your her bf
you're pickin the wrong girls dude
fucking right
/\ this
there's nothing wrong with taking chicks out...but if it doesnt go anywhere (IE you dont want a GF, or she's not gonna put out) dont bother setting up anymore dates...you should be able to tell after the second date
A "close friendship" with you is worth less than $10,000. If I were you, I would seriously reconsider what "close friend" means.
Anyway,
My worst financial mistake was investing in Goldman Sachs towards the end of 09 while investing about the same in Apple. Both canceled each other out.
Buying a house in november 2007 because I thought the housing market couldn't get much worse. In hindsight, I'm glad I own a home - but I could have gotten a lot more bang for my buck if I'd waited 4 or 5 years.
@rastarocket only with cell phones, not with landlines. Incoming calls on landlines are free.
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