Money you may as well have set on fire

[Snickernoodle]

Like you literally got NOTHING for it.
DD wanted to go to drama club for ages. Loved the first term. Asked if she wanted to do the second term. No sooner had a I sent the money across she came and told me she didn't want to do it and has been moaning and tantruming about it ever since. £90 completely wasted. I'm feeling pretty salty about it atm. Help me feel better about it with your wasted money stories?

A long time ago I blew £220 on a pair of Ugg boots (AKA slag wellies). Wore them about 5 times and realised I looked like a chav. Sold on eBay for £25.

£150 on a dance fitness concept instructor course - when I got the content it was actually awful and so shit I didn’t even bother completing it

£200 on CCTV I haven’t even installed and probably won’t

Not to rain in your parade but... My MIL, who had a very expensive art gallery, mentioned that I was due to inherit her art collection, which included works ranging from the few hundreds to the tens of thousands.

... I know she tried to sell most of it before selling the gallery at her retirement, but there were no takers. She has been trying for years to recover part of the investment with no luck. Most of those fashionable artists are now forgotten so nobody want to pay anything close to what she paid. I love some of the works but it would cost thousands to transport them to the UK, so I am not taking on that hoard.

It's a real nuisance isn't it @MissDianaBarry ?
I get sick of hearing "Oh you're lucky, you can buy kids' shoes and not pay VAT" but of course kids shoes in our sizes are built for people who weigh about 4 stone and have calves the size of my wrists.
Back in the days when I used to run regularly I used to have to order my shoes from Japan as a couple of brands did smaller sizes of proper running shoes though they didn't sell them routinely in the UK. People used to ask me why I didn't just buy children's sizes, but I would have needed to get a new pair every week - if I wasn't seriously injured by the lack of support that is!
And I know people are trying to be helpful but it does my head in when people suggest inner soles or heel grips, like I haven't tried every single kind on the market multiple times over the years. But the bottom line is that if shoes don't fit you, they don't fit you. Doesn't stop me trying to make them though - even though I should know better by now! I'm like a cross between Cinderella and Imelda Marcos with my cupboards full of teeny shoes that don't actually fit me.
If I could change one single thing about myself physically it would be to have size 4 feet, or even 3s would do. Unfortunately all my children seem to have inherited the stupid feet gene too. As DH has quite big feet I'd hoped they'd end up average but no such luck.

We tried to claim from them but they wouldn’t accept liability. Said driver shouldn’t have been in the vicinity at the time. Police no use as apparently you have to report such incidents within 24 hours and we didn’t know that in time.

Various fixtures and fittings that I bought for a house renovation ahead of time which ended up not being suitable, and by then was too late to send back.

Bought a brand new car then realised I could have got a £4000 discount if I’d used my Blue Light card.

This thread is making me feel so much better. Although it did remind me of concert tickets for a bad that then split up that I forgot I had and found them. The day after the gig. I was gutted

Didn’t you repair the cable? https://www.diy.com/departments/lawn-mower-cable-repair-kit-2-pin-rubber-flex-connector-10a-amp-orange/5055329056608_BQ.prd

Best thing is, next time you accidentally cut the cable you only need to rewire one side not two!

@OvalLemon surely you knew that dogs live for 10 to 15 years??? What would you have done if you fell pregnant say 3 years after getting the dog? Hopefully the loss of £500 knocked some sense into you!

Dds 6th form blazer....dropped out of 6th form after just a week! Bye bye wasted £45!!

Boxing gym for my son. Asked to go for 6 month, signed him up at 55 a month. Went for three weeks. Now currently in month 6 of the 6 month contract. Asked them several times if we can cancel. No as per the contract terms, 6 month minimum , so basically have paid 55 per month for nothing as he refised to go back even once. Oh guess eho then asks me last week, final month of paying for nothing if he can go back to boxing. Straight no from me. If he's going to be the next tyson fury or whatever he can train in the garden!

My feet are size 4 but as I’ve got older have become quite wide - I love shoes and boots but the amount I’ve wasted on shoes that no longer fit don’t bear thinking about.

The dog wouldn’t be a young puppy anymore… so not sure what you are getting at.. I didn’t want a newborn and a still puppy at the same time. There is no issue having a newborn if the puppy is grown up 3 years later.
what a daft mindless comment..

She was an art dealer from the sound of it. Most art galleries don't actually own the paintings they display — they simply sell them for the artists and take a cut. An art dealer who buys 'fashionable' artists and then can't sell them at a profit sounds like a hobbyist. I'm a hobbyist too. I recently sold a painting I bought from a student show in Camden in 1999 for 50 times what I paid for it. I paid £200 and sold it for £10k. I have two more of his paintings, too. Never buy anything fashionable, develop your own eye, do research and buy what appeals to you. That's the whole point: don't follow fashion — in anything. The whole point of fashion in clothing, interiors, art is to get you to buy, scrap and buy again because you don't want to look unfashionable. Break the cycle. Find what you like.

Friends son became a sculptor his work is incredible. What shocked me was that on trend artists used him to produce work that sold for tens of thousands in galleries when his actual skills netted him a few k. After he'd paid the bronze factory.

He produced work for a physically handicapped Trendy artist who had drawn a simple sketch and commissioned sculptors to produce full bronzes for international galleries.

It was sickening actually. Damien used unknown artists to turn his ideas into actual reality.

If you're wealthy like say Beckham, you could Scrawl something onto a paper napkin and trust a truly gifted anonymous artist to create a work of art. With the right name it's kerching time

£2k on a new (to me) car. Drove through a puddle not long after purchasing car, wrote it off as I flooded the engine.

One year, when cash was still a thing, I organised my work Christmas meal out. Afterwards I gathered up all the notes and put them in a pile on the table....without realising I'd put them on a small tealight. They literally did go up in flames. Luckily we managed to salvage the remains and a colleague told me the Bank of England would replace damaged notes and sent them off. Lo and behold, we got the money back.

My most recent waste of cash is to sign up for that Zoe testing kit..but the lost the will to actually carry out the test (this was a year and a half ago). So those muffins you have to eat are still in the freezer and well past their use-by date. That's £300 down the drain. But everyone who tries Zoe seems to find they have trouble processing sugar, and just puts chia seeds on everything, so I'll just assume that's the case for me.

For what it's worth I did Zoe and it came back that I don't have trouble processing sugar or fats and it's never recommended chia seeds 😂but it is almost
Impossible to eat any thing you didn't make yourself because shop bought food scores so low on the Zoe ratings. So maybe reducing sugar and upping the seeds isn't a bad plan!

Clothes for DS. He has sensory issues around clothing, so there's loads of things I bought which he's flat out refused to wear. I have also stocked up on things he does wear in larger sizes to avoid future problems - only for him to suddenly turn against the style completely out of the blue, so they never get used.

That made me laugh. My first mp3 player was a Creative Zen!

I would say she was both an art dealer, with a massive gallery and an art collector. Some of the artworks she has have been displayed at the Pompidou. But yeah, you can say it is a hobby, an expensive one, but a hobby all the same.

She bought art she loved, many times she put it back on sale if she needed more wall space for more purchases, but some she kept too long. Mind you, it is still fantastic work she bought for her own enjoyment but artists sometimes peak with a particularly brilliant collection of work and then lose lustre when they take their art in a different direction so it is not that the value will always go up.

I was only thinking about this the other day, wasted money over the years on things. I am trying to cut back on mailing / Posting costs, as they are getting very expensive now. some of the things iv posted could have not bothered with and saved a lot more money over the years. Things like physcial books. where as now I try to get Kindle Deals. that work out soo much cheaper.

As a lockdown purchase, I can't see us ever using the patio heater again . But it was a lifeline for the few weeks we did use it so perhaps not a waste ?

My huge waste of money is all the extra I pay in interest and late fines because I'm too disorganised to make payments on time . It's not that I don't have the money, I just seem to have a mental block here . Luckily the majority of our household stuff is on direct debit . I've also wasted loads on not returning mail order items by the date for refund .

Same here - although I guess I did lose a bit when I could be bothered to go .