What’s the best advice you ignored?

[TheLastCup]

Just thinking about this recently- good advice I ignored to my peril because it didn’t suit my narrative or what I wanted.

Here’s mine:

• That if someone is giving you mixed messages they’re not that into you

• you can’t convince someone to fall in love with you

• don’t pack jeans on a tropical holiday. You won’t wear them

DH when he tells me I’ve packed too many clothes for a holiday. He’s usually right as I tend to only wear a few pieces lol

Don’t eat the cake 🧁

Dont rock your baby to sleep. Those hours spent rocking are some of my most tresured memories and i feel so close to DS because of it. I dont care that im rocking him at a weight of 10kg. We wont want it forever. So many people have told me not to

Leave your abusive partner. Ma y people told me. I did in the end

Don't bother sitting your O levels, education is a waste of time for girls, they go off and get married and have kids and throw it all away.

Um, thanks Auntie Phyllis but i'll ignore that pearl of wisdom

DM when I told her I was marrying DH1 . She said "You know he'll always have other women " as she loaded the washing machine. I was all rosy and happy to be engaged , and ignored her advice. I should have listened.

First one - sort out your pension as early as possible - now I'm fucked!

Second one - don't get married at 16 - hence the divorce at 27!

Don’t sell your flat and combine finances. If i’d listened i’d have a nice little side income of my own now.

When someone tells you who they are, listen.

I alwasy think too highly of people who turn out to be a$%*holes.

Best friend advised me against doing joint purchase/mortgage to buy property with then boyfriend. She thought it was too soon in the relationship, that he was pushing me to use me for my mortgage power.

Turned out she could read him like a book. He broke up with me shortly after we moved into the newly purchased property. Turned out he had doubts about the relationship but wanted the property. He had already spoken to the bank about transferring the mortgage to his name before her had told me it was over.

Don't buy a house by yourself wait a few years til you meet someone and buy together. I went ahead and bought, a year later the market crashed and spent 10 years in negative equity. Now bankrupt as couldn't pay off the deficit. If I'd have just waited a few years I'd now be financially secure but unfortunately didn't see the recession coming and lost the money my parents gave me for the deposit. It's the only bad decision I've made but it was a big one

Boys can wait. Studying for exams can't. X

Don't take the new job, stay where you are.

“Doing an excellent job is not enough - you need to shout about it”

Came from a man who was leaving my company who I thought was a dick because he always talked about all the stuff he’d done at work and how great he was.

I didn’t realise at the time that he was trying to help me. Saying “you’re sitting there doing a good job, making no waves and causing no problems and they are never going to promote you or give you a pay rise because why would they when you’re not making them?”

It took me going on maternity leave and my department practically falling apart before they (and more importantly I) realised how much I was doing and how integral I was.

I now run the department - sorry Paul, should have listened!!

Put your coat on or you will get a chill.

Good job I left it behind. It turned out a Second World War German naval mine had accidentally floated into the hood when we holidayed at Whitehaven in 1983. On the way to the disco that evening, I tripped and fell against the penny arcade. Had I actually worn my coat that night, one of the vertical plungers would most likely have depressed itself against the carcass of the treasure machine and the whole of Whitehaven would have been flattened to the ground, raining pennies from heaven in nearby Blackpool.

@Al203 that's quite a tale!

Buy the most expensive house you can afford. Mortgage to income levels get easier as time goes on. I was cautious and bought a little flat, but if I'd pushed myself back then I'd be a hundred thousand better off now, only ten years later.

Go to college and then university so you have something up your sleeve. I got a job straight from school and now have no career prospects. Biggest regret.

Always pay your rent/mortgage before anything else including all other bills_ should have listened..
Oh and when budgeting bills and what you can afford you must always set aside extra for emergencies as part of your outgoings and dont dip into it hmmm

There is so much good advice here that I too ignored

'Buy an automatic car'. Said my dh when I bought my last car, I do about 20k miles a year for business, I'm due to collect my new, AUTOMATIC car today, a year earlier than planned for this very reason.

My old boss said his friend approached him when he was in his 20s, and said: Spend an extra 2k and buy this 1 bed flat in this new development called 'Canary Wharf' instead of a 3 bed semi in Newcastle. He bought the 3 bed semi... his mate bought the flat, sold it years later for over a million. My boss sold his 3 bed semi for about 180k

Probably good advice that I am currently ignoring: keeping everything inside will ultimately be no really harmful for you, talk to someone, take time off work if you need to, it's not a sign of failure, it's ok to take a break from it all

In the past: give the baby a bottle/ dummy, don't pick her up when she cries (my mum said that when DC1 was less than a week old), leave her to cry at night, don't let her sleep in your bed