What was you stupidest financial mistake?

**Slug** · 03-06-2012, 05:52 PM

Son was just born and we were moving to NJ for a job (where we knew no one). Wife's nesting instinct was huge so we bought a townhouse instead of renting....in 2006. Horrible timing. Then, we hated NJ. So we sold for a $36k loss. In sum, a stupid decision to buy, but a great decision to leave. I sometimes look on Zillow to see how much the townhouse is worth. It's still below the price we sold for in 2008. Moral of story: pregnant ladies are irrational

**PMMM** · 03-06-2012, 07:49 PM

Didn't save enough for the first 20 years of my adult life. Need I say more?

**Mr Nice Guy** · 03-06-2012, 08:10 PM

-Kept a job since age 16. Didn't start saving anything until a couple years ago (age 24)
- Took credit card to the bar at age 21....... Thank God I don't go out hardly anymore lol

**SnoopyCool** · 03-07-2012, 02:15 AM

I took student loans (when I did not need to) the last two years of my college education. Not smart.

**phantom** · 03-07-2012, 04:57 AM

When I graduated college, my plan was to pay off most of my student loans and then save up for a car. I was living with my parents and they were letting me use one of their cars to get to work until I could buy my own. I waited until 6 months after I was out of school and the loans started accruing interest and I started owing money to actually make a payment. I looked at my savings and saw I could put about $8000 on my student loans and still have $1000 left over, so that's what I did. About a week later, on the way to work on an icy road, I lost control and slid into a minivan totaling the car. My parents decided they weren't replacing the car and that it was time for me to buy my own. So, I used my remaining $1000 as a down payment and went and got myself a car payment of $350 for the next 6 years.

For many years, I thought my biggest financial mistake was letting my emergency fund drop down to $1000. But, now I think my real mistake was probably either buying such an expensive car or not paying off the car loan early. 8 years later, I still love that car, but I do feel pretty dumb when I think about how much I paid for it.

**Shaabenanizer** · 03-07-2012, 06:36 AM

Like the OP I bought a timeshare. Two weeks later I realized the mistake and managed to get out of it but not after losing couple of hundred of dollars (for down payment? Can't remember the exact $$$, it's been several years and I think I blocked most of it out)

When internet was just getting popular (phone jacks, remember those?) and I didn't realized I was using a long distance line and my phone/internet bill was a whopping $800. I quickly made sure that didn't happen again.

**FrugalTexan75** · 03-07-2012, 06:25 PM

In February of 2000 I quit my teaching job (teaching 5th grade at a public school - not a mistake, saved my sanity.) However in my desire to find another job, I ended up at a "fire safety" company which was essentially a MLM. I put full effort into it, and within 4 months had attained the level of "manager" and opened my own office in another city. Moved to this city, rented an apartment with a 6 month lease, leased office space, rented furniture for the office .... etc. 6 weeks after opening I was completely maxed out on all my credit cards, and had not one penny to my name. The last day my office was open I chose to pay my secretary with my remaining funds rather than the phone bill. (We were told that you couldn't run an office effectively without a secretary - I tried to do *everything* I was taught to the letter!)

I spent another three weeks in that city trying to find a job - any job. Had maybe 6 days worth of minimum wage jobs from various temp agencies, but then finally had to give up and move back to my parents. A month or so later I found another teaching job, but the financial damage was extensive, and my new job didn't even barely begin to cover my minimum payments on credit cards or other loans. So ... by January 2001 I filed bankruptcy.

While what happened was extremely stupid on my part, I did completely turn my financial life around. It was a really hard knock lesson to learn, but I don't think I'd be who I am today without having gone through that.

**YLTL_Dan** · 03-08-2012, 07:21 AM

I bought a brand new car (Xterra) one year out of college. My old Chevy Lumina was find, but I thought I deserved a new car!

I couldn't even afford a down payment... but I took out a $28k, 5 year loan with payments around $510/month. I had it for two years before I finally got sick of the payments and sold it (luckily for what I owed since I paid extra payments). I will never have car payments again.

**fe2o3ez** · 03-08-2012, 09:27 AM

My first marriage:

I was a MBA student on a full-ride scholarship. The problem? My fiancee was HIGH-maintenance (which everyone but me could see) and expected us to live in a place that was beyond our means. (since I was a FT student, we would have easily lived on her $29k salary and my $600 stipend) Instead, we maxed student loans available to me - to the tune of $30k over 2 years.

Then we got married in year 2. Put ALL wedding expenses and honeymoon on credit cards in my name, about $25k worth. We had a 12-piece band, for cripes sake! Maxed all CCs and then some.

I was assuming that I would come out of the MBA program making the average of 70k + 15k signing bonus, as advertised. Problem #2? I came out during the job market crunch of early 2001. There were no jobs, much less salaries of that caliber, available.

The kicker: the marriage lasted only 8 months (gee, I wonder why).

The silver lining: Divorce only cost me $168. ($40 for forms online and $128 in court fees)

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 03-08-2012, 11:55 AM

These are pretty cool. Glad to see that stupidity has happened to us all.

**bennkar** · 03-08-2012, 06:35 PM

The obvious one for me was getting married - or should I say getting married to her. I guess I could say it could have been worse, but that's pretty damming praise. Perhaps the bigger mistake was thinking I could fix this and finally figuring out you can't fix others after 15 years of marriage.

Giving her $40,000 for her share of the house was the biggest bargain. My finances have skyrocketed since she finally left.

**vitalogist** · 03-08-2012, 09:04 PM

Ordered some supplies for a business venture from a friend. Since he was kind enough to give me that loan on very flexible terms, I was confident that I won't have to worry about it on a monthly basis. Business was thriving for a few months and I was making minimal payments to my friend. Things started to get ugly when I purchased spent money on stuff that don't have anything to do with my business venture. We were then outpaced by competitors and the cash flow stopped.

In short I made some pretty bad personal and business decisions relating to money.

**Bob B.** · 03-09-2012, 05:31 AM

Not a single mistake - but a series of mistakes (a lifestyle, really) made chiefly between 1996 and 2008 that got us 30K in credit debt. That's now down to a bit less than 10K.

**phantom** · 03-09-2012, 06:05 AM

Reading the marriage-related financial mistakes here reminds me of a marriage-related financial "mistake" that I made myself.

When I still dating my husband, I started looking to buy my first house. My then-boyfriend (future-husband) kept telling me that I should buy him a house instead, to which I would retort that I wouldn't buy him a house till he bought me a ring. Well, before I got around to actually finding a house for myself, he did get me a ring. So, we ended up buying a house together. But, I did provide most of the down payment, and the way we have our budget set up the mortgage payments come out of my paycheck. So, in a way, I am buying him a 270k house because he bought me a 3k ring. If not for the fact that there's more to our marriage than those 2 financial transactions, that would have been a pretty bad deal.

What was you stupidest financial mistake?