What is your worst and most expensive financial mistake?

[HorseHeist]

Long time ago now, but mine was in my early twenties. Managed to buy two very unsuitable horses in succession over a short period of time They must have cost me thousands, to deal with the subsequent mess. Which was a lot of money going back almost a couple of decades.

I keep wondering if I'd put that money in a pension, what would it be worth now? I would have been off to a great start pension wise at an early age.

What stupid financial decision did you make, that sticks with you years later?

It’s easy to look back in hindsight and realise some things are mistakes but at the time the judgement wasn’t necessarily bad. Our worst was selling shares from a work scheme to buy a car rather than using finance- seemed like a rational(ish) decision at the time but those shares absolutely rocketed and we’d have got 40x the amount if we’d have hung on to them for 5-10 years. The whatiffs sting at times but you can’t dwell on past decisions or it would eat you up.

Other mistakes we’ve made are much smaller in comparison like parking fines. Generally we’re pretty sensible and savvy.

We bought our house at auction and had enough money to buy a basement in Maida Vale as well; they were going for £6000.
I was in Court that day and couldn’t go. DH went on his own - and didn't buy it.

Ours was the opposite. Not selling Halifax shares. I wanted to but dh insisted we’d have a marvellous retirement if we hung on to them.
Of course the crash happened.
They got converted to Lloyds shares and are currently making a loss of over 50%!
Worse still a colleagues dp’s were advised to invest their dgc’s school fees heavily in the shares and when they crashed she had to pull her dc out of private school.

same as others - playing safe and buying the 1 bed flat - not the small house we could have afforded. Got pregnant sooner than planned and within a year could no longer afford the houses we could have afforded the year before. Had to move town and leave all our friends and life to move to somewhere big enough.

I didn't make just one mistake - I made a series of similar mistakes coming from the same attitude which is that I was interested in things other than money and a modest lifestyle coming from work I enjoyed would be fine. I missed two crucial things: 1. picking men without caring about money doesn't mean you will get one like you, who gets on with the work without caring about being rich - it means you will get a freeloader; and 2. it's winner takes all in so many sectors, that just caring about doing a good job isn't enough to see you decently provided for (especially in this economy). If I could go back and do it again I would 1. look for a life partner with a reasonable lifestyle in mind, and pick someone decent at the beginning instead of the string of cocklodging selfish losers (I don't just mean pick someone more solvent. I also mean someone reliable and kind, a proper partner); and 2. be more ruthless at work. Just because you don't want to play politics doesn't mean it won't play you.

Not extending lease on my flat earlier. Stupid decision.

When Iwas in my early 30s I got scammed by someone I had considered my best friend for over 15 years. He took all the money I had saved for a deposit for a house (well into 5 figures which was a huge amount in 1995) and I never saw him, or the money again.

He was a financial advisor at the time and promised it was a good investment, promised it was all legit and registered with the right authorities, and I even had paperwork that appeared to back it up so I had really tried to do my due diligence.

I was devastated when I found out he had disappeared and it took me years to re-save that money. I still have the odd fantasy daydream that I will see him somewhere one day and I go up and publicly denounce him for the low lying conman ratbag that he probably still is!

Took me a long time to trust myself, or anyone else, after that experience.

Not marriage for me, I came out of mine quite financially stable as we had worked to renovate a wreck of a house, which then had to be sold. Emotionally devastating but financially sound.

Mine was lending money, over time, to a narcissistic, drunken step son, who thankfully, has turned his life around - all except for paying back any of the £19,000 he owes. ( apart from four £50 per month payments). Unfortunately, it has broken the relationship.

Paying for a holiday using vouchers. I got a discount if I ordered vouchers through my Employer's discount scheme. I thought that would be a great way to save money. Then the pandemic came along. Holiday got cancelled. I had to fight for the money to be refunded. I eventually got a refund in Virgin Instant Vouchers. We had to order a lot of wine and experiences! At least I got the money back in some form I guess. Next time I'm paying for a holiday with a debit or credit card.

Waiting too long to buy our first house(prices doubled)and buying the house we live in now.

I did exactly this last summer. Lost loads of weight and two dress sizes. Charity shopped huge amounts of Boden (loads still with tags), Phase Eight, Gap, M&S clothes, and just kept what fitted. Felt amazing about myself, I fitted into everything that I’d kept and was more organised on the clothes front that I had been in years.

Then over winter I regained all of the lost weight and more. And this summer I have nothing to wear that fits! I’ve had to buy yet more things, and have a whole load of lovely clothes that are two sizes too small.

I am trying to lose the weight again, and am telling myself that if I do (it is harder and slower to lose this time round) I absolutely will not do the same again. I will not …

I did the same but we needed the money whilst I was on maternity leave 🤷🏼‍♀️

Not fixing my mortgage for longer 4 years ago.

We calculated that by this time, we would be ready to increase the mortgage and do some bigger improvements. I didn't know about having two products running at the same time, so we should have tied in for as long as possible at the ~2% rates that were around then, and just worried about borrowing the extra money separately.

Was right about the affordability - we would like to do more work now, and have done a bit on a 0% credit card - but with the huge increase in building costs and borrowing rates I'm not keen at all to increase the mortgage.

Our 2% rate is up in Feb and we'll be lucky to get around 4% now.

And @Ratonastick - Vinted is your friend, for both buying and selling. I am almost at the stage of being cost neutral for clothes. I spend on clothes, what I've earned from selling. Some great pre-loved and loads of new bargains, if you have the time to search.

I worked at a company that had a share scheme- the shares were worth about 45dollars at one point. I didn't sell my shares (which would have made me about 200k) and they are now worth almost nothing. I just didn't educate myself properly. If I think about it it makes me feel so terrible- that amount of money would have been life changing.

Not keeping an eye on our credit card after I had DS. It was a very traumatic birth and DH had developed PTSD without me knowing. What started with paying the odd bill in the lead up to pay day while I was on Mat leave, turned into compulsive spending to deal with his trauma. When I finally checked the card there was 7k on there.

It was a massive shock and took years to recover from financially. But we got there. Dealing with the fall out led to him getting treatment for his PTSD. We both had a lot of soul searching and deep conversations about where we go from there. It led to us having much clearer communication and being able to be more vulnerable with each other. So yeah it was awful, but long term there were some good sides to it. In the end we received an inheritance from one of his family members which cleared the debt and bought us a house outright. So we're living incredibly different lives nowadays!

Not realising my manager was a complete arsehole who had it in for me, and doing something stupid and minor that he was able to blow up into gross misconduct and get me fired when pregnant. Lost maternity pay and potential redundancy that would have been in the pipeline.

Mine is that when we bought our house 8 years ago we decided to go for a smaller cheaper house when we could have stretched to a bigger house at that point and been fine financially (a 3 semi vs 4 bed detached). The plan was to move after about 6 years to the kind of house we didn't stretch to (I had 3 children within 5 years during this period so my thinking was 3 lots of mat leave we needed to be careful not to overstretch). Only problem is in the meantime prices have rocketed, interest rates went through the roof but our wages just haven't kept up. We now can't currently afford the jump up, the house we want is now double the price of our current house (it really wasn't a huge amount more 8 years ago!). I do kick myself for being so careful, it hasn't paid off.

Was it from a garage? You will have rights 👍

I had this- car stank of air freshener... Looked all primped and polished - next morning, air freshener was taken over by the stench.... It was eye watering... Think it was dogs/fox poo /horse 💩....

I drove it back... And insisted they do a full upholstery shampoo.... They tried to give me more air freshener, 🤣i said unless it was fully shampooed - carpets /upholstery /ceiling lining, by end of day - i wanted my money returned...

Took an hour of argument... They did it...

If it's an private sale... Try some dry carpet shampoo... May get rid of it?

Making the decision (jointly) that hubby would be a SAHD and use income from his property rather than pay 2 x nursery fees. Made sense at the time but killed his career and now 8 yes later he can only get min wage jobs

We have lost out on 8 x years of him at mid career earning opportunities, not that he was in a high paid job to begin wirh, but could have progresed and paid the nursery fees many times over.
he is in his 50s now and I fear on the jobs scrapheap

Not me but my parents, sold our house for what seemed like a fortune at the time. Trebled in value in the next 5 years, the new owners did very little work to it if any, and they sold for just under £4m 😫

but thankfully they split up, so I’m happy that I no longer have to deal with DM

she still pops up and through flying monkeys every so often berates me for selling a place too cheaply…I tell them again how much she and her affair cost us all ;)

Marriage and divorce. I was the higher earner. He gave up work completely and ten years on he is pleading poverty but still not working 😐

So many of these aren't mistakes at all, many of you made the right decision armed with the information you had at the time.

Be kinder to yourselves and remember hindsight is 20:20!

Gastric balloon. £4k

it made me so horrifically ill I had to have it removed 4 days later.

do I win? 😂

Managed to study an NHS postgrad course in the only couple of years it wasn’t funded by the government. They cancelled it before I started and brought it back not long after I graduated. Will be paying back student loans until I’m 58.