To ask what's your stupidity tax?

Booked an airport transfer in Sicily for that day instead of the actual day of arrival. £100. Bloody annoyed me a lot

This! I’ve bought lovely stuff for a fraction of the price on Vinted and I look there first if me or the kids need something!

Bought a new car and was offered insurance at a bargain price, so ditched the lovely brokers I had been with forever, and took the bargain insurance. Fast forward 12m, and the 'bargain' insurance renewal was stupidly expensive.

'Sod that', I thought, 'I'll go back to plan A.' Except I forgot. I forgot so thoroughly that even when the unmarked spy van stopped me, I insisted I was insured. Only while I was ringing the brokers did the horrible realisation flood my body.

Fortunately the lovely brokers talked the man out of actually arresting me and persuaded him it was a genuine mistake. Still had to pay megabucks for un-impounding the car, more megabucks for a hiked insurance premium, and points (my first ever!) on licence for years and years.

I try to be grateful that my lack of insurance was discovered before I actually had an accident. It probably wouldn't have occurred to me to insure the car, without a reminder, for several years....(Nowadays I insure the second I receive the first reminder, about 3m before it's actually due).

Booked pricy train tickets on the right day but in the wrong direction (Edinburgh to London rather than London to Edinburgh).

I bought a flat in 2008 for £100k. A 3 bed house would have been £125k. I could have afforded it but didn't want to pay the extra.

The flat is now worth £180k, but the houses are now worth £350k.

Lending £1000 to someone I’d been close friends with for more than 20 years….

Another car key one… I was in the loo on the way out to the car park to go home from work. Car keys stashed in my very shallow trouser pocket. You can guess what happened, they fell out of my pocket and into the toilet bowl as I stood up and got automatically and violently sucked down the drain. Expensive Uber ride home & back and even more expensive to replace the key at the dealership!!

Sorry but your stupidity tax is actually getting a new battery when all you needed to do was get jump leads to start from another car and drive it so the alternator charges your battery up again ;-)

My daughter had to catch a train earlier this week and I accidentally booked it for a day early, only realised when I got a notification that the train was going to be on time. Cost £25 to change to the correct day.

I booked to take my daughter to see high school musical at the theatre and forgot until the day after.

Booked premier inn for two short breaks but got the wrong dates for both and they were non transferable so I needed to pay again.

Thought I had lost my car keys so arranged to buy new ones. Paid £50 for the key and was going to arrange to have it programmed when I found the key in the desk drawer at work.

I'm currently paying Microsoft £25 a month for Minecraft and can't figure out how to cancel it 🤦🏻‍♀️

I'm sure there are many more!

I've turned up a day late for a donestic flight scheduled at 00:30. Thankfully I narrowly avoided making the same mistake on a long haul international trip thanks to the prior mistake so an expensive lesson rather than stupidity tax.

I'm a champion at losing small items so now have tiles on everything I care about and a smart watch that finds my phone.

Applying for planning permission. Getting the " right" windows is gonna cost twice as much as the visually indistinguishable ones we wanted.

I need to hear more!

DH booked a trip to visit family on another continent in March next year. Except he didn't, he booked it for the same dates in February (days of the week are the same, as February has 28 days in 2025). Good thing he realized - the change fee was steep, but much better than showing up at the airport in March having long missed the flights.

Yes it was…

My sisters was, when coming to the end of a long stay here from Australia she decided to wash her cream kipling style bag. But her passport was in it. So unscheduled rush trip to London, cheaper if I came with dd on railcard, a day and a half sitting around Australia house, new photos new pp and overnight stay.

I have innatentive ADHD so I am a high rate stupidity tax payer.

I have spent twenty years paying for driving lessons and still can’t pass my test. I recently flooded my house because I left a tap running and did £6000 worth of damage (the insurance covered it but I still had to take annual leave to sort everything). I have travelled to appointments and events in the wrong day - a complete waste of time and money! I impulse buy. In my younger days I was always late handing in my time sheets or paying my bills so would I cure charges/ not get paid on time. Then there are the many, many items I have lost (usually glasses, keys, phones and bank cards).

Travelling with 2 year old DS and 6 months old DD. No other adults. Went to the airport for long haul flight to visit family. Totally forgot about visas and had to pay for overnight luggage storage at Heathrow, emergency 24 hour visa service x3 and new flights as original ones were non transferable non refundable. I got once a year so know but just totally forgot. I did something similar again 5 years later, I just don't learn.

Stupid travel tax, repeat offender.

I unwittingly clicked repeat order on Ocado when I bought a large monthly shop. The following month I made a new order which came but the following day the repeat order also turned up so we had 2 large shops in 2 days. The really embarrassing thing is that I didn’t realise what the issue was so I made the same mistake again in the third month.

The time I was a supervisor of a large team and the vast majority of us went out for a team meal.

Bill came at the end of the evening and I said I'd put it all on my credit card and everyone could just pass me their cash. Which they did along with a bit extra for the tip.

I looked at the total on the bill, thought about the wonderful service we'd had and added 15% to what I paid. Didn't spot the bit about them automatically adding a service charge for a group like ours so I effectively tipped them 35%.

Took bike rack off back of car as we were told that there was a spate of them being nicked whilst people were cycling. Put it in the boot, slammed the boot, broke the rear windscreen.
Idiot tax indeed

In hospital a lot for my current pregnancy and keep forgetting to pay for parking. Somehow have only been fined once so far but it wouldn't surprise me if I get more. This post just reminded me to go on and pay for today's parking as I completely forgot again so thank you

Forgot to set up insurance for the new cat as she came with temporary cover and I forgot to renew it after it expired. Cat got hit by a car (we assume). Fortunately, the injuries were not too severe, but the emergency vet trip and the treatment needed was £££.

Good thing she's cute.