What's your most expensive moment of stupidity?

[HangingOver]

Cheer me up MN.

I visited DF for the first time since moving a loooong way away on the train this weekend. The train fares were over £200 all in but worth it to see DF. Raced to the station today to get the connecting train home and realised the return journey I booked was, in fact, yesterday. Minutes to spare and only first class seats available. £198. So my two days with DF cost me over £400. What an absolute wally! Am trying to channel my inner Love Islander and just say "it is what it is" (and obviously being grateful I actually had the money in my account to buy it). I was trying to think back and I think this is probably my single most expensive incident of stupidity (the one time the waiter accidentally charged my card €300 instead of €30 not counting as that was his fault).

Tell me yours while I drink my fifth cup of free tea.

Dropped a tin of green paint out of my loft hatch all over my wool CREAM landing carpet. And my daughter... completely ruined it and still not replaced it after we had to rip it up, so got knows what it's going to cost as the stairs will need doing too. The more i tried to clean it up, the more mess i made. Took nearly 3 hours to clean up and i still find paint on stuff

Slightly similar to yours - I accidentally booked flights for the wrong week! We had been considering two possible weeks and I got confused. I was able to change them when I realised my mistake but had to pay an admin fee of £35 per person per flight - we're a family of five so that's £350

Our flat... we were young, it had a 69 year lease... we had no idea the cost of a lease extension would be £20k.
We ended up making a loss

Accidentally broke something Important that cost me 1k to fix. It was an accident and not intentional, broke my heart too, I was so upset with myself! (But over it now) took 2 years to pay back!

Petrol in my new diesel car.. £50 fuel wasted plus £250 to drain it!

I was also always the kid that accidentally dropped glasses at friends parents houses, which is so unlike me as I was always a very carful and cautious child!

Haven’t broken anything in years now though so I’ll put it down to a phase.

Broke the MIL crystal drinking glass once too. Ooops!

Mine's a train one as well. Went to the wrong station and realised too late to make it to the right one. I'd checked my ticket three times and even timed the walk to the station.

First day on a cleaning job. Broke something. The lady was lovely about it. Kept me on. Was mortified.

Buying a Range Rover Sport (second hand).

It breaks so often that I have to shell out for the expensive warranty, many insurers (LV I'm looking at you) now refuse to insure it as it's so easy to nick. The garages never answer or return your call as all the other RR drivers are trying to book their faulty cars in. They then want you to pay £600 diagnostic fee each time they look at the fault (which the warranty people confirm they will reimburse if there's a fault but the dealers refuse to admit for some unknown reason).

My most recent fault was the rear passenger door stopping latching so just kept swinging open near pedestrians every time I turned a corner. Crawled home, we got it shut and the garage couldn't open it again. This is but one of many.

On top of that, even if you're a considerate driver (which I try to be), everyone treats you like you're a total wanker (appreciate that it is stupidly wide).

That aside (ahem), I love it but never ever again. I'm (genuinely) buying a Skoda next time.

Buying an infected kitten from a dodgy breeder. £8,000 in bills over the past 12 months and the heartbreak of having him PTS in the not to distant future.

Buying a 'cheap' car. It has ended up costing me a small fortune. I could have spent that money buying a much better one.

Oh lord some of these. I actually winced imagining the paint!

Petrol in my new diesel car.. £50 fuel wasted plus £250 to drain it!
My dh did that when he filled up on the way home from picking up the brand new car.

I once had a few very stressful days when DM came to visit. She routinely throws stuff out, just because, and I have to check the bins when she's gone. No dementia issues. I went to get my hair done, and in an otherwise empty, not small car park, managed to back into a BMW. This was the only car there apart from mine. Although the damage didn't look terrible, it was thousands, on the insurance but still stupid excess amount. It was like my brain packed up and left home.

It was like my brain packed up and left home

That's quite understandable when you're stressed I think. When my DM was dying my PIN fell out of my head. I'd had the same one for 10 years. I still don't know what it was. Had to get a new card.

I've lost my passport. That's £177 down the drain. That's a lot of sangria I won't be drinking...

Flights again
Arrived at airport in Paris after taking DD to Disney. Long check in queue and when we got to the front we discovered I had booked the return flight for a months time.
Lots of shrugs and told us to go and see Customer Services ASAP if we wanted to stand any chance of getting on the flight. Did that and were told it would be £600, we had paid £300 for the flights so was gutted to spend an extra £300
It was actually an extra £600!!

On the train to Leeds festival with dd2, she asks to look at the tickets, I get them out then take them bsvk and put them in the bin as the woman goes past. Arrive in Leeds Saturday night, realise no tickets, 12 hours of phoning and tweeting later have to queue up at bramham park to buy new ones in the morning.

Idiot.

Oh wait I've just remembered another one.

DP and me coming back from 8 months in Australia. On the way out DP booked his excess baggage (loads of sports gear) in advance but we had a bit less on the way back. I asked him if he should book it ahead of time and he said it'd be fine (his catchphrase ). When we got to the airport it was £1200!!! He briefly attempted to get my to leave all my clothes behind before paying up. Insanity.

@SpongeBobJudgeyPants

I once had a few very stressful days when DM came to visit. She routinely throws stuff out, just because, and I have to check the bins when she's gone. No dementia issues. I went to get my hair done, and in an otherwise empty, not small car park, managed to back into a BMW. This was the only car there apart from mine. Although the damage didn't look terrible, it was thousands, on the insurance but still stupid excess amount. It was like my brain packed up and left home.

So you are that person who decides to park very close to the only other car in the car park. Do you also choose to sit very near the only other people in a cinema ? Grrrr

These are making me feel better.

I received an email yesterday asking me to rate my stay in a London hotel. When a gig was cancelled for the second time, I'd forgotten to also cancel the hotel I had booked. Gutted as now £100 down which would have come in really handy over the Summer holidays. It was free cancellation up until day before but they didn't email me until after. It was booked a year ago so had forgotten all about it.

Agreeing to put an offer on a house to keep DH quiet, assuming we’d be outbid as was the norm with every other fucking house at the time. Not in UK so once offer is agreed and accepted it’s a done deal, you can get sued If you back out. Now have 150k+ Extra mortgage, hate both the house and the location, desperately miss the old place, and it’s done massive damage to our relationship so we might end up separating 😕

Now that’s a fucking disaster.

I used to think I was assertive enough and not conflict averse but have come to realise that this is only with strangers or in professional/commercial contexts. Fml

I hope these are making you feel better OP

My DD threw away her AirPods charging case in the Aldi litter bin last week. Was inside a bag she was throwing away. Hours of searching at home only to have to trogg back to Aldi and root through the bin. Not a good look. Amazingly we found it

Oh lord! That reminds me... Again when we were in Australia, I decided to clean the scrub out the washing machine by putting it on an empty 90 degree wash (I normally wash at 30).

The next load of laundry I did was a load of colours. Of course I accidentally left it on 90 which meant they were ruined. The kicker was when I saw my poor airpods clinking around against the glass. Amazingly, one of them survived, when they dried out!

Flew to Italy, hired a car and did an Italian road trip. Didn’t realise there were two airports at our final destination, so when it came to flying home we just typed in ‘airport’ into the sat nav and went to the nearest one. Returned the car, wandered up to checkin…. And you’ve guessed it, we were at the wrong airport