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.

@HangingOver

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.

If you have online mobile banking app., I’m with Barclays, you can find your PIN there. I’ve used it when I forgot my number on an infrequently used debit card.🙂

Oh, I hadn't thought to look! Still an idiot though!

I used my husband’s nickname when booking flights rather than his real name 🤦🏻‍♀️

85£ for change fees

Yeah the trains struck again - going back to Manchester for Christmas and mixed up Edinburgh Haymarket and Waverly with pre booked tickets

My friend bought the wrong HOUSE. He looked at 2 on the same road 16 and 61 , went back to see 16 again, even took some speculative measurements.. got really excited then went to estate agents and put in an offer which was duly accepted for 61.

NOT ONCE through the legal process did he realise and it was only when he picked up the front door keys on completion day he realised what he'd done.

That was a £400,000 mistake.. Obviously he needed a house and it was the right area but he was still pretty gutted and it cost him a small fortune to sort out the kitchen and garden which were the main reasons he'd rejected it in the first place!!

Hope that makes you feel better OP

Mine? ..Getting pregnant 🥲😂

Listsandbudgets

That's funny and yet so horrendous.

Watching pay for view porn with my bf when we we're drunk and running up a £60 bill

I bought a computer from Tiny a few days before they went bust. I didn't use a credit card because I didn't know that was what you are meant to do. I spent £500 and never saw the laptop. I was only just out of uni too so didn't have the money spare. I'd forgotten about that actually until I read this thread!

We move a lot.. military.. there’s always some address that I forget to update no matter how organised I am! Two moves ago we moved to another quarter only a few streets away (long story) so never got a post redirection as intended to drop by once in a while and collect it. Found 3 months after we moved that I hadn’t updated my v5, updated it and thought no more of it until just over a year later when we received a court order for £1300 for an unpaid fine. DH had borrowed my car and accidentally driven in a bus lane and the notification happened in that 3 months between us moving and me updating.
They only found us as the court recheck addresses and obviously got the new one. Gutted doesn’t come close, we paid it but I’ve no idea how.

DD was at fantastic Montessori school.
Aged 3. I planned for her to remain at Montessori until after her 4th birthday.
Then send her to local private school to join her siblings
Local private school contacted me and said they were oversubscribed for DD’s year and unless she started in September in their own nursery, she would not be guaranteed a place in Reception the following September.
Did not want to deprive her of the time in Montessori, all her siblings had maximum time there and I felt the quality of the Montessori experience was way above what a regular nursery could provide.
So paid for a whole nursery year in private school, while DD continued to attend a very expensive Montessori.
Was happy to accept this, until DD finally started in the private school’s reception class.
Yes, it was full for about the first half term, then a hand full of children left and spaces became available.
The spaces were filled by children of families moving into the area, who never had to secure a place in advance.
On a separate note.
The school have a sports kit, that costs £500+
Has to be taken home on the last day of term.
If children don’t provide a bag for the full kit the school sends it home with child in black bin bag.
Friend’s DS took his black bag home, Cleaner threw it out.

At uni, bought international flights to see family for Christmas, turned out it was a scam website. Only found out at the airport. £450

Oh god.. fortunately I forget these things, but a few that spring to mind (mostly from days of yore thankfully):
-Petrol in a diesel car
-losing car keys at a house party hundreds of miles from home
-writing wrong ref for train tickets more than once (before the days of smart phones)
-missing a flight home and therefore missing Easter and the last time I’d have got to see my uncle before he died
-buying dodgy bedding off a con woman who visited my work offices. Literally spent my last £200 on it, still can’t believe the stupidity of this one!
Oh bejeebus, I could go on!

Hardly my most expensive moment but some of the drunken mistakes above remind me about the time I bought Shay Given at a charity auction for £60.

Cardboard Cutout Lifesize Mr Given then had to accompany me home next morning squashed into the car laid in the middle of the front seats and his head on the windscreen.

He then took up residence in my spare room for two years before someone I work with gave me 20 quid for him as a Christmas present for his mother.

Oh and throwing cash away in envelopes after Christmas/birthday more than once. Hate myself so much for this one and now obsessively go through all envelopes and wrapping multiple times before chucking.

Buying dds wedding dress and a lovely mother of the bride outfit. They split up and cancelled the wedding. Still got both hanging in the wardrobe despite advertising them as new. Not many folks getting married in these covid times.

@NotPersephone that is brilliant

Sorry last one, getting a train from Sheffield to Liverpool Lime Street instead of Liverpool Street on New Year’s Day after a night clubbing. Missed my cousin’s 21st for that one.

Oh I meant to add, not me but some absolute numpty at my friends’ kids’ BMX club who recently spent £6K on a puppy and it died the same night they got it home. So the excited kids basically just got to watch it die. Did they at least get their money back? Not a chance, as they’d picked the dog up from a random wanker at a service station in Wales. So awful.

Accepted the request to attend a religious retreat with my aunt as a carer. 2 weeks away for my dc but I did it- We were both grieving my dgm (her dm).. On return she advised me the trip was instead of the 6k promised to me from dgm. No will, was verbally promised by dgm as she well knew...

Climbed on the kitchen table to clean the cupboard over it. When I went to get down I suddenly was "Oops! How am I going to do this?"

Last time I had got up there to clean the top of the cupboard my late husband was still alive. No I don't get up there often enough.it was thr year after he passed.

Our son wasn't in so I took a deep breath and jumped. I took the kitchen/dinning table with me and it broke. I was ok but the table wasn't.

I had wanted a new one for a while! Not the way yo do it.

Fortunately I was able to get another table that matched up to the chairs and in the sale. Was £500 and I got it for £300

I had bought tickets for Disneyland Paris for four and we were at the gate when I decided to nip back and book a restaurant for the evening, leaving DH and 2 DC at the gates.
By the time I got back the tickets had disappeared so I had either dropped them or they had been lifted from my hand and I hadn’t noticed.
We had to buy tickets again to get in - very expensive mistake.

Getting one of those mortgages where you can pay extra money in and write a cheque if you need cash .
My ex wrote a cheque to himself for 50k and by the time I noticed he had spent it on a share of a racehorse to impress his new tart

I'm not in the UK. Ds2 broke our new tv by accidentally bashing the screen while enthusiastically playing the maraccas. I phoned up the insurance company and told the truth and we weren't covered. The woman on the phone pointed out that we were covered for earthquake damage but ha, ha nobody ever claimed for that as earthquakes are really rare where we are. Two days later we had a really big earthquake and lots of damage in our town. If only I had waited to phone the insurance!!