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.

Accidentally bet £500 on a football match, meant to type £5.00 into the app. The team lost.
Also was refused entry onto a plane to South Africa for a dream safari holiday because we didn’t have the kids birth certificates (didn’t know you needed them to get into the country)

I was looking for a new car, and had max £1200 to spend. Looked for weeks and nothing suitable. Then a car came up at a local car sales place, 10 years old, incredible condition, lovely to drive, TONS of paperwork! The garage offered a month warranty. It was £1500 and I sold loads of stuff to get the extra £300 I needed to buy it.

I should have combed through the TONS of paperwork, as that would have told me all about the knackered injectors and engine issues, which conveniently enough we’re not covered on the car sales place warranty. Car had to be scrapped after 6 weeks. This was late 2019 and I still haven’t gotten over it, nor have I been able to afford another car. Fuming just thinking about it.

Also was refused entry onto a plane to South Africa for a dream safari holiday because we didn’t have the kids birth certificates (didn’t know you needed them to get into the country)

This is badly publicised given it's mandatory. I only found out by accident looking online for something else. And it has to be the original copies in the long not abbreviated form (from memory). I was surprised that BA hadn't emailed us to double check we knew.

Locked myself out of my flat at 6am on a freezing December morning, wearing just my pyjamas. IKEA had turned up out of the blue to deliver a mattress I'd been waiting to be delivered for about a month (had recently moved in and had been sleeping on an inflatable bed). In my haste to finally get this bloody mattress I left my keys inside and the front door slammed behind me. Decided to kick the door in as it was just one of those flimsy wooden interior doors flats have, and thought I could do a DIY job on the broken lock. But I actually managed to take out the entire door frame...

Emergency new doorframe and new locks came to £2k. Took me about a year to pay it off my credit card and didn't have a holiday for a very long time.

Petrol in diesel car too

Personalised number plate (young and stupid). Hate the bloody things now.

@sociallydistained I did exactly that! I got a note from my midwife and they cancelled it!

@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.

Cheeky sod should have left his clothes behind .

Mines an emotional one. Took a job abroad. Lost someone very special to me.

@Stakhanovite

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.

That's sad .

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

Sell it now! I did that to my diesel car, Six months later it started mis-firing.

Took it to a garage, they diagnosed fuel injector and recommended a different garage. They found it wasn't the fuel injector. Six weeks and a few thousand pounds down the line, I needed a new engine. One of the piston casings had partially melted. "Have you ever misfuelled? I was asked.

I have filled our petrol car with diesel - some 20 years ago. Cost £100 to sort out + the £40 for the petrol. And I have done it TWICE. I did it 2 years later too - different car... Cost about the same. Luckily, on both occasions, I realised it just after I had done it, and so didn't drive the car, and cause £500 of damage, like a friend of mine did 3 or 4 years after my second f-ck up!

Also, I'm not being funny, but I am a bit shocked about the tales about the vet bills, in particular the one about an infected kitten they bought from a dealer, and had to spend £8,000 on in vet bills in less than 12 months! I don't understand why you wouldn't take it back to the seller, and I also don't understand why, if it was that sick, why you wouldn't have the poor thing PTS. I know this may sound harsh (to some) but I would not be forking out £8,000 on a new kitten I just bought ... If kitty survives, you are going to have a lifetime of high vet bills.

I know someone who was asking for money on gofundme for their dog some time back. He was 3 years old, and had had 7 different operations and procedures in that 3 years, costing £20K. His first at 4 months old! The owners had maxed out their credit cards, and taken out a loan, and had no more access to money, and their dog needed an 8th operation, which was going to cost £5,000. I was like Not only have they spent MASSIVE amount on him (like £25K+,) but I felt for the dog, being dragged through all of those medical procedures and operations.

I just can't get my head round it! I mean, I 'get' people wanting to make their cat or dog better, but spending multiple thousands on a pet that you just got, is baffling. As is dragging a pet to the vet time and again, for multiple procedures... forking out five figures for all of the multiple procedures...

JMHO.

I got £250 shopping vouchers for Christmas and hid them as I was going on holiday the next day in case of burglars.

When I got home couldn’t find then anywhere. Looked for months. Found them 15 months later hidden in the wardrobe where I’d looked many times. Two weeks out of date

Ah that's fine OP. You still got something for the money.

An ex of mine bet £500 on an England/ Scotland game years ago and England lost.

I had a Toyota yaris. Perfect car except the boot was quite big enough. After 12 months of it not quite fitting buggy etc I arranged to part ex it for a bigger car.
Only when clearing it out did I find the button which shoved the back seats forward and made the boot bigger
Never mentioned that to dh!

@crowsfeet57

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

Sell it now! I did that to my diesel car, Six months later it started mis-firing.

Took it to a garage, they diagnosed fuel injector and recommended a different garage. They found it wasn't the fuel injector. Six weeks and a few thousand pounds down the line, I needed a new engine. One of the piston casings had partially melted. "Have you ever misfuelled? I was asked.

Sell it and make some poor unsuspecting person the potential recipient of a dodgy car that needs thousands in repairs

@JackGrealishIsMyNewManCrush I agree re the animals but it is anathema to say it.

Tens of thousands on a pet when it is probably cruel to put them through all that.

I don't understand the anthropomorphism. Animals aren't people.

@BusterGonad

We missed our flights home due to the fact they emailed my husband the flight change, he didn't check his emails and when we checked in it was the new self check-in, the tickets came out like a receipt and we didn't check the finer details as I checked our flight (original flight number) that morning on line. We sat and had a beer, I then went to check on the board, flight number on the print out was different, confusion, I can't work out what's gone wrong, flight number on the ticket on the board had been 'final call for boarding' panic... Panic... Panic. Jeepers, the thought of telling my husband. It was awful. £1000 and 6 hours later we board our new flight. Obviously as is sods law are suitcases managed to get the flight we missed.

We had similar but the flight we missed was the last of the day and we couldn't fly until 6 pm the following day so ended up paying for a hotel for the night and a day's car hire .

Losing my passport in the airport, between check-in and boarding. I was a teenager and it was my first holiday with a boyfriend. The passport was handed in but I didn't get it back until after our flight had left, and as it was the last flight of the night, it cost me night in an overpriced airport hotel and replacement flights in the morning. Plus my family never allowing me to forget it.

I booked a trip to Edinburgh, band b on the way up, city hotel, good tickets for the first night of the Tattoo, tickets for Holyrood House to see the Da Vinci drawings exhibition, afternoon tea at a grand hotel.
The Friday before we were due to go daughter calls from Edinburgh, Don't you have tickets for the first night of the Tattoo? Yes. Oh, well, it's tonight!!!
Turned out we did have tickets for that night but luckily everything else was for the following weekend!
I had to scan the tickets for the Tattoo Office and they reimbursed me, minus an admin fee, when I wasked if they had anything for the following weekend she only had single seats, which was just as well really, as I wasn't popular at home.

Paid £1000 to resurface the lawn of our new house and put in borders. Then realised the fence and shed needed replacing and so one whole border and part of the lovely lawn had to be pulled up. We can’t believe that we didn’t realise the fence and shed should have been replaced before attending to the lawn and flowers..truly not one of our finest moments.

Lost c. £300 of vouchers received for wedding. Realised I must have put them in the confidential rubbish at work within other papers.
Didn’t tell husband as knew he’d go nuts and I’d never hear the end of it. Told him I’d use the vouchers to buy remaining china we wanted and tried to source them off cheaper websites.
So not too surprising that we ended up getting divorced!

Bought a house with my ex when I wasn't happy in our relationship thinking things would improve. Not only did I put all of the deposit down but at paid off some of his debt and continued to support him financially as he got paid less than me and was also crap with money.

I'm still in the house now but it was a hassle sorting it out when I eventually kicked him out.

@BuddleiasBeesAndButterflies

Splashed out on 5 tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, thought it was a bit pricey at £625 but all the children have wanted to see it forever and after a year of cancelled holidays etc thought why not treat us all. After booking realised that was actually only for one half, and was actually £1250 . It'd better be bloody amazing!

It is! I must say it is probably the best show I have seen!

@Raffles1981

Not a massive mistake, not vastly expensive but one year my DFIL gave the two step kids £75 each in cash, for christmas. Stepson put his straight into his back pocket. Stepdaughter left hers in the envelope. You guessed it, it got thrown out with all the wrapping paper. By me

Exactly what my late OH did with the cash given to our daughter by his mother, he was obsessive about getting rid of all the wrapping paper and when she couldn't find her envelope he had to empty the bin onto the garage floor to find it. Naturally, it was all her fault for not putting it somewhere safe.

Not me but my parents. There are three of us and when they were young enough they used to play our birthdays and ages for the lottery. I remember calling them excited because they had got five numbers and were in for a decent five figure sum. However they had only got four, which was only worth a few hundred. They hadn't changed my age in the numbers they played when I'd had a birthday a couple of weeks before, so they were one digit out.

Booked West End musical tickets and didn't put the date in the calendar. Totally forgot about it until I found the booking confirmation buried in an email folder three months and £250 later.