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?!

Tronkmanton same thing happened to us (different photography studio) Dd was just 18 mos. The helper kept shaking scary bear in front of her face. Buckets of tears and screaming. Charming little sailor suit (wanky little sailor suit, I should say) went from crisp to damp and tattered. Ended up buying “package” of red faced toddler pictures. Dd swears you can see the tears on her cheeks in them.

The first time it was on the wedding, the second time was on the divorce.

These values will seem low, but take in consideration my currency is very undervalued so, essentially, multiply everything by 6 (current exchange rate).

Visiting Europe this summer, which is already a rip off but the only time I could go, I manage to find an organic store in Berlin. Being a Biology student, I saw "Bio" and my mind didn't make the leap to Organic.
I asked for a bit of parmesan cheese, just enough to go in two plates of pasta. 20 euros. A very fair price, if you earn in euros/pounds/dollars, but not if you earn in reais. My budget for the day was 15 euros.
"Eh, can you get me half of that?"
Still 10 euro. Boy, I made that cheese last!

350 quid on a leather manbag. It was coming up to Christmas last year and I wanted to celebrate my recent new job and bigger salary so I splurged. I should have paid more attention though. For starters, I thought it was a bit bulky but figured, once I took out the paper stuffing, it would be fine. Nope, still an obese fecker thanks to acres of unnecessary padding. Which meant I had to Marie Kondo the fuck out of my usual gear to get anything into it. Then I realised that the main zip, which ran three sides of the bag, was a puny little nylon one with two little zippers which had great difficulty rounding the shoulders of the bag so opening and closing it was akin to doing a spot of bomb-disposal. Then there was wearing it - like having a leather baby in a sling, heavy and cumbersome and clonking into all manner of objects and people.

Then came the fateful day when, running late for my bus home, I crammed my stuff into the bag and hauled the zipper shut only to find several of the teeth bent and the zipper off the rails. Now the bag was gaping wide open so I had to carry it home clutched to my chest to keep it closed. So, I brought it to be repaired to be told that, thanks to the bag's construction, they'd (A) have to take it to pieces and rebuild it and (B) thanks to said construction replace the zipper with an equally weedy one as that's all that would fit. In the end they sacrificed one of the zippers to hold one side shut leaving the other one to do all the work.

It's currently languishing unloved in my spare room and has been replaced with a 40 quid nylon record bag from TK Maxx that does everything perfectly, holds all my stuff, weighs almost nothing and clings to me like a particularly svelte limpet.

I'm a total sucker for expensive face creams/masks - every time I manage to convince myself the next one I buy will make me look like I'm 25 again. That never happens, and I cringe a bit when I think of the money I've basically pissed away over the years.

Oh I did that too, Tronkmanton with Pixiphoto at Mothercare a few years ago. Free photoshoot, they got me sucked in when I was all hormonal with 2 month old and 2 year old, took lots of stupid, very poor photos I then felt like I had to buy because they were of my beautiful babies. £200 later.... it was nearly 5 years ago and I'm still annoyed...

Bloody overpriced baby/toddler swimming lessons! They are £135 for a block of 10 but it’s almost impossible for us to make catch up classes if we miss one or if two so it ends up being about £16+ for a class. The council system is so complicated, hard to get onto and limited at weekend that I’ve been too lazy to start trying to sort it out but I really need to - it’s about a 1/3rd of the price! I want to keep up lessons as it gives us the motivation to take him every week and new things to do but we’ve spent an utterly insane amount of money over two years!! We are about to start with number two in a few months as well and I’m planning on the private classes while they are in the super warm pool but getting her on the council list ASAP!

I booked an eye test at a local independent optician and was planning to use an eye test voucher from work. Didn't read it properly and the voucher was only for Specsavers. £50. For an eye test. Outraged and really annoyed with myself for not looking at the voucher which I'd been carrying around for weeks!!

We paid for called display on our land line for over a year after changing to a phone with no display.

If it makes you feel any better they are a thousand times better live than on a recording. Some of the best gigs I've been to have been Mundford and sons. They're right up there with Vampire Weekend on the bands that clearly love performing and do it really well.

@FrangipaniBlue I did the same. Nearly £50K by age 30. On what?! I've learned my lesson well though. I'm debt free now and plan to stay that way.

£500 on searches and solicitor fees for a flat that we didn't even buy due to the seller pulling out 5 months down the line.

It still makes me cross that we're liable for the fees

We got sucked into the Mothercare photo studio deal also, £350, we still have the canvases up on the wall eight years later as I'm determined to get our monies worth

I spent £80 on a landline 'smartphone' that was a total piece of crap. I really don't know why I bothered, I only make/receive one call a week, if I could ditch the landline and pay a reduced rate for pure broadband I would. In fact, there, you go, that's my waste of money - paying for a landline phone service where I make one phone call per week, and could do that by facetime if I wanted.

£250 on a hypnobirthing course when the little bugger was stubbornly breach. Only way he was getting out was by c-section.

@Livedandlearned2 I think these are original tickets with my name on. I've had correspondence specifically telling me I need to collect them on the day, and bring ID, for this reason. It's one of the things that's preventing them from easily selling them on!

The miniature Henry hoover one is the best... I cant stop chuckling thinking about it.

£60 for tickets to a show. I was booking for my 2 friends and I and managed to book the wrong day. Completely my fault. Luckily my DDs loved it when we saw it in London so are happy to watch it again - and I'm going the next day with the friends after all.

Also show-related. Managed to double book myself for tickets to two different shows with 2 different sets of friends on the same day at the same time in different cities. Waiting to see if anyone has a friend that wants a spare ticket to save some of the lost money!

mooglycrunch it’s a shame your hypnobirthing course didn’t cover c-sections. The lady who did mine was great at emphasising that all the relaxation stuff could be used for c-sections and induction too Does make it a lot of money to waste otherwise, births aren’t always to plan!

yy to cranial osteopathy (about £40 for a woman to stroke my baby for half an hour), and spending a couple of hundred quid on professional family photos - they are nice, but not £200 nice.

If I ever have another child I'm going to make DH look after my wallet until my hormones have got back to baseline levels and I'm sleeping properly.

So much wasted money on Groupon. So many fraudsters on there, will never use them again!

@LunaMay that's really tickled me 😂😂

particularly svelte limpet.

So many things.

Worst one was installing solar panels under rent a roof scheme. Couldn’t sell our house and had to pay £20000 to buy the company out 😬

Mrs ZB- yup us too! It cost around 10k 🙈

Opting for a fixed rate mortgage instead of variable rate. Cost me approx £20,000.