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.

getting pregnant

*A woman I know had a dog who was fine all his life. Then he got to 13, and he started to get really poorly. One procedure after another, on his hips, eyes, heart, legs, all sorts. Spent some £30K on him over 15 months. He was in the vet more than he was out of it. They used to push him around in a child's pram!

At 14.5 years old he died anyway. All that treatment, and all that money, and the dog died anyway.*

And the owner had an extra year and a half with their dog...

Marrying my ex husband

My DH needed help fixing the garage door, which was stuck open. I was wearing my naice watch. I was told to hold the door, while he cut the wire, the full weight of the door pinned my wrist, and watch to the side, while scraping it down. My wrist was fine, the watch not so.
It cost near on £360 to repair it.

🤣🤣💐💐

I literally just ordered and picked up a fan for £105 from John Lewis to cool my kids bedroom. Got it home and it's a bloody fan heater.....!!

Kind of serves me right as it was a bit of a 'show-off' moment in front of my in-laws. At the time, living in a quaint European City outside of the UK, their first visit and I was so keen to show-off my new found language skills and to show how chilled out I was buying from the farmers market in the town centre. We all tasted the delicious cheese on offer and I promptly pointed at a smallish piece and said I'd buy it, without even trying to work out how much it cost. Over 120 euros later, with my chin on the floor, I couldn't back out of the sale, my in-laws thought I was completely mental. We all walked in silence for a while, me gripping onto my cheese. I wasn't sharing that cheese with anyone, I was so protective in fact that when I finally remembered to eat it, it had gone bad!!! What an idiot.

Having a large can of paint explode in the back of the car - seat not boot. It went everywhere, but worst of all it covered my best ever leather jacket - an oily nubuck Barbour that I was not able to replace as they had changed the design. I got a new one, but it was no comparison to the first. The upholstery was relatively easy to clean, but years later, I still have the jacket - it's a lovely shade of blue. After various different attempts to remove the paint, I concluded that over time it will crumble away. I may be rockin' that jacket in my 80's - or not!

Second week in charge of the narrow boat with DPs expensive fishing equipment on the roof. Swung too wide round a corner and the hedge plucked 1 rod nearly up by the loops and deposited it in the canal. I'm reliably informed it would've floated but the expensive reel weighed it down.

Spent an hour bobbing around in what I expect is the only very deep bit of canal for miles searching for it wearing a life jacket for children aged 5 to 8 years weilding a boat hook for balance and ground prodding.

This was expensive due to the lost equipment but also due to boaters passing by and after initially offering to rescue me taking pictures. I still am deeply embarrassed by the incident.

Years ago I got a call to audition for an opera company. I misheard the date on the phone and turned up on the 6th instead of the 5th. Nobody there. That cost me a whole job!
I'm pretty sure I would have got it because 18 months and a name change later, they employed me!

My kids (around 10 years ago) had a fight and thew a pot of glue at each other. Even though we've moved house and changed the sofa/curtains etc I still something find a bit on a book spine or whatever. The other night one of them happened to pick up a uhu stick that was on the table and even though they are now adult I yelled "put that down now!" He grinned and obeyed.

Getting married! 🙈

Buying a baby monitor. A day later I was given one. And I never used either of them as I used to hear my son making a noise in his cot as the house wasn't that big! I gave them both away.

And a few years ago, scratching the car. The car park has a very narrow channel to get into it (like a canal without water - just wide enough for a car - presumably to keep travellers out) and it was throwing it down with rain. Someone came towards me to come out of the car park and I got slightly distracted and just turned the wheel too soon and scratched all along the side of the car like a can opener. Every car in the car park had scratches. Cost about £280 to fix/make look better :( Went back the following year but car shared and let someone else drive. It was better weather and someone in the car park guided us in.

We were flying to stay with our best friends who lived in New York. We left home late, because DH was faffing about trying to reboot an old laptop. Then there were two separate accidents on the M1 and the M25. We were sooooo late arriving at Heathrow that we had no choice other than to park in the short stay carpark directly opposite the Departures entrance, otherwise we would have missed the flight.

Came back to a £520 parking fee for a 4 day stay in New York!

@Binjob118

I literally just ordered and picked up a fan for £105 from John Lewis to cool my kids bedroom. Got it home and it's a bloody fan heater.....!!

does it have a cold setting though? I have one which does. Actually you just reminded me, I might see how it works tomorrow.

Mine was a disgustingly expensive mistake that still brings tears to my eyes. Split from my husband over lockdown and in my haste to buy somewhere, agreed to buy off an acquaintance without an estate agent. She told me she was building a conservatory on it so I agreed to the price she was asking for as in my eyes it included a new conservatory. I didn't get to view it again apart from in WhatsApp pictures until we exchanged. Turns out it was a second hand conservatory with a plywood roof, worth about £250 and not the £10,000 I had thought it would be. I was devastated and there was nothing I could do. So I'm now in negative equity - just what I needed after I had already overpaid for a house in covid. I would take a £198 train ticket anyday!

I packed away my summer clothes a few years ago. Two bags. One of shorts and t-shirts.., basically every day mom expensive stuff. And one of all my gorgeous summer dressed and jumpsuits…. Presents from my husband who had picked them up for me when on work trips, things I had spent ages finding and was in love with. Probably €2000 worth of clothes that are irreplaceable. I also made a ‘give to charity bag’.
Put all three by door to garage and totally forgot to label. Mentioned to husband to remember to take the bag of charity clothes on way to work just before falling asleep. Next day put the remaining bags in garage without checking. Next year I opened them and realised I’d given my summer wardrobe to charity. I cried.

5 mins late to Lidl car park and got £90 fine. So annoyed.

I bought tickets to a festival for DD and 2 friends from Viagogo. Cost me £400 - well over-priced but I was desperate for her to get to a festival this summer. I thought it was a genuine ticket site but afterwards read loads of bad reviews. I’m not sure if the tickets will be any good or not and I can’t risk sending her with dodgy tickets so I’ve re-listed them and they’ve charged me £100 for the privilege. I’m not sure I’ll get anything back at all. Lesson learned!

@Calmyertits

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

If you’ve got home insurance you can make a claim. A similar accident happened to me many years ago, a tin of brilliant white gloss paint on a newly laid royal blue landing and stair carpet.🙂

Oh, I forgot the big one.
Fiat Multipla. Great concept. Piece of shit that broke down on every holiday we took it on.
Whenever it went below freezing, the handbrake froze on.
CD player jumped at every bump in the road.

I'm a karaoke DJ in the evenings, old laptop packed up, needed a new one pronto. Bought one on a Thursday which is my day of from the day job but usually a karaoke night. Went to work with it, left it in the pub at the end of the night. They put it behind their bar, didn't tell other staff so when I raced back on Friday to get it they insisted it wasn't there. Got a call from the manager to say it WAS there, only to find someone had gone behind the bar and nicked it. It is a rough scummy pub tbh!

@HangingOver

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.

I was flying out of JFK international airport in New York once and was checking in when I spotted a couple arguing with the agent about booking in their "luggage", which included a full-sized washing machine in its box and a 70" flat-screen TV. They were agog that the airline wouldn't just check them as luggage. God knows how they got the washing machine to the airport. It must have weighed 200 pounds.

They must have gotten quite a deal on the appliances.

My wedding 😂 paid for everything out of my own pocket. Marriage lasted 4 years. I'm now having to fork out for the divorce myself because he's a tight fisted bastard and relishes in the fact that we're still legally married.

Bit late with another lottery story, but I worked with someone who bought 2 lines on a ticket with her boyfriend. He chose the numbers for one and she did for the other.
They picked all the jackpot numbers between them - 3 on each line!