Stupid ways you've wasted money

[Haypanky]

Please help me feel better by telling me your tales of money mistakes... I'm so embarrassed and horrified... On Friday I spent £390 on 2 tickets to Mumford & sons... I like them, but not that much!!! And we don't really have the money! It was supposed to be a massive treat. I thought £175 was the total price, there was a big red clock counting down, the kids were at me, I got click happy confirm confirm confirm... There isn't an adequate excuse. The tickets are non-refundable, and if I sell them, I need to go there on the night and hand them over to the buyer which involves a couple of hours drive, paying to park... I can't be the only one to have done something so stupid... can I?!

@moominfan that sounds very much like it, maybe I'm not totally thick?! Probably still a little bit though... 😳 Unfortunately I used my debit card.

Love your user name

A long anticipated appointment with Rigby & Peller on a recent visit to London to be fitted for the perfect bra. Seemed fine in the shop, but when I tried it on at home I had 2 big wobbly bits sticking up out of the front of the cups spoiling the silhouette, exactly what I didn’t want. I’m furious I paid £70 for a professional fitting and ended up with a bra that is nowhere as good as my usual ones.

Bit of a boring one sorry - we replaced our old dining room bay windows with uPVC double glazed ones. A year or two later I realised I actually wanted to put doors in so we could access the garden. Was galling throwing out nearly new doors. Dh still takes the mickey now but it has made a tremendous difference to the house.

Interesting the ones about cranial osteopathy. I'm generally not into alternative treatments but I found CO worked like a dream when dd2 was small.

I paid €100 for a 20 minute gondola ride in Venice.

If it helps I've done the same with tickets and I consider myself internet savvy and very frugal - felt like a total plank afterwards for ages. Just had to chalk it down to experience but will not fall for it again. Ticket sites are bastards...

£550 on fat reducing injections in my arms few months before my wedding. Most painful thing I have ever been through (including childbirth!), black and blue bruising for weeks, horrible sloshy feeling in my arms for weeks to have no fat reduced, arms actually ended up looking bigger than before 😩

If you go onto the gov.uk website there is a section where you can see how much you’d need to pay/top up to be able to receive your state pension when you reach a pensionable age!! I’m just about to do mine!!

I used to buy shampoo and conditioner that cost £20 each, and eyeliner that cost £39. I was convinced that the more expensive the product was the better.

Bought a derelict house on a decent sized plot of land within a short walk of the DC's school hoping to build a house. Nearly two years later we have realised that there is no compromise to be had between the house that we want and the high density housing that the council wants. It can be sold again, obviously, but that's stamp duty and planning costs down the drain.

£45 Reki healing session for a guinea pig with a sore leg.
This after a consultation and over night stay at vets - costing around £100 "she's resting on a heat pad." When I phoned!

Guinea pig cost a £5 donation to the local rescue.
Leg got better of its own accord.

£2500 on two Rolf Harris prints ...

DH recently became obsessed with trying one of those named memory foam mattresses. You know the Leesa/ Simba/ Eve type. I said it was too expensive but he wittered on and on and finally told me he’d found someone selling a brand new packaged one on gumtree for half price. So he drove two hours to Birmingham and spent £300 on a vacuum packed mattress (that did look right, in fairness). Then he spent £30 paying someone to take our older mattress away. Then we got the £300 one out, discovered it was fake and probably out of a skip beneath its fancy cover, and have now spent even more buying a proper new mattress and paying someone £30 to take the shitty one away. And I don’t like the new one as much as our perfectly nice old one . Fucking DH and his bloody random obsessions.

Fell for one of those market stall scams where they missell you stuff. I walked out feeling too embarrassed to say anything. A few weeks later and Watchdog or some such is on. Turns out the lady behind me was secret filming so my stupidity is being shown on prime time TV! My head is fuzzed out but it's definately me handing my money over.

The other one (of many) that sticks in my head is spending an absolute fortune on a bag on ebay. It was described as "well travelled". I thought it meant well travelled as in had been to lots of places, not "well travelled" as a more subtle way of saying trashed. Oops!

Over £1000 replacing the water tank/boiler that had sprung a leak (and plumber call out) only to find out that we had cover that would have covered repair/replacement for £60.

€€€€ for some fresh juice after a hot, strenuous climb up to the Parthenon in Athens .... they saw us coming ....

This is the idiot who lost the Leeds festival tickets that were her dds birthday present ON THE TRAiN to the festival and had to buy a second LOT at another £160.

Ffs. I have a proper job n a mortgage and all.

We booked a holiday to India and then my husband became ill and we couldn't go. Lost a lot of money and it was such a kick in the face.

I spent £50 on a Von Dutch cap when I was a teenager, never wore it and sold it at a boot fair for £2.

A few years ago I spent £300 on the limited edition Disney villains dolls, they are still in the shipping box at my parents.

Oh and £260 on my wedding shoes, swearing I'd wear them again, got pregnant and now my post baby feet won't fit in them.

By far my biggest monetary regret is my student loans. At least 80% was wasted.

I could have bought a house outright with it and vaguely considered it but alcohol and shoes seemed a better option.

20 years later and I'm living in one of the houses I probably would have bought. Only now the houses have a few extra zeros on the price so I've got a mortgage as well as student loan debt.

Paid £500 for flights and a fair bit on injections for a destination wedding which was cancelled the day after my final injection! Fortunately the “gear” I’d bought could be returned and I hadn’t yet paid anything to the hotels (two centre event in Africa).

It was nearly 15 years ago now but it still really annoys me.

I've recently discovered that DH signed up to Amazon Prime by accident and had no idea. We could have been watching tv and getting next day deliveries for bloody ages!
Cancelled it now but it stings a bit.

Mine was £900 on 10 photos! I had gone to the country living fair and a rep sold me a family photo package for £20 it supposedly included champagne, facial, massage, professional hair and make up and manicure. I gave it as a Christmas present to my mum and dad to have photos done with grand children. On the day there was no champagne - we had to keep asking for water as nothing offered on a really hot day sitting around for hours - manicure and massage consisted of hand cream quickly rubbed into hand. Despite asking how we wanted our hair and make up they just did their own thing and facial was a quick wipe with cleaning wipe! The kept us there all day with just some crisps and water - every time we tried to leave they claimed just 5 more mins. Photos were whittled down to 10 - when they told me the price I felt sick but was so tired and hungry and babies were crying that I just paid. As soon as I got outside I regretted it and tried to get them to reduce the number of pictures but they wouldn’t even let us back in. The pictures are not even very good - I still can’t look at them without wanting to be sick. Avoid SW3 photos!

I booked a Pilates course for about £100 for the term. Went to 2 classes before I broke my foot running and couldn’t do anymore

@Greendinosaur - ask them to refund it as you hadn't signed up to ot intentially. They often will.