Money down the drain - tell me your tales of misery!

[SomeOtherGirl]

Bad luck comes in threes, and I've had three money ones this week (the second one's not too bad)!

1- DH used a toll bridge that won't let you pay at a toll gate, you have to log on to the website when you get home. Guess what, he forgot - and used it in both directions. £80 fine coming our way! (And he wonders why I'm so neurotic about stuff! :-D )

2 - The toilet broke and needed replacing. I called a plumber and he wanted £160 plus VAT for the first hour. DH is currently redeeming himself for item 1, with a youtube 'how to' video and a toilet from B&Q. Dodged a financial bullet there! And shredded the divorce papers. Phew!

3 - But the most annoying one - I just mucked up an accommodation reservation in a really daft way that has made it cost an extra £130. Nothing I can do to undo the damage - I've tried, it is what it is - basically I lost out on a one-off discount. Urgh. That's a lot of money to me!

When this kind of thing happens, it makes me reflect on how difficult it is to save / earn money, and how easy it is to lose it, if you're daft enough (like us!!) For example, last night I spent three hours on the internet researching baby equipment to save £30 on the price of a baby item for imminent DC2. I was dead chuffed to have saved the money and was all pleased for a bit. That's three hours of an evening to save £30. How have I just thrown away £130 then?! What is wrong with me?

Now I'm wondering what I could have done with that £130, all the lovely things I deny myself in the interest of saving money.

*15 books for DC
*Probably an entire layette (if you still use that word!) for DC2
*10ish reusable nappies
*A total hair makeover including dye, perm and other glitzy stuff
*260 cans of diet coke
*A babysitter and meal and cocktails out on two occasions for me and DH
*A fancy upgrade on the pram I want to get for DC2 but can't justify
*A fancier phone next time I upgrade
*proper leather boots this winter
*A Rymek keyboard (total frivolity!)
*Petrol for four and a half round trips to see my DPs
*Tickets to go and see DPILs
*A lot of cinema tickets
*A lovely(ier) birthday present for DH
*Some clothes that aren't in the sale for once! (And therefore probably fit a little better)

I could go on :-D

Then I was thinking, hmmm, what could I do to make up that money, little by little - and I realised the world doesn't really work that way. I found 18p on the street the other day and felt I'd won !!!

So aibu to ask you to cheer me up and tell me the face palm moments when you realise you'd lost / squandered / wasted a load of money, what would you have done with the money if you hadn't lost it, and whether you managed to do anything to make it up in the end? :-)

DH booked our retun flight once at 1am. Lets say it was january 1st, 1am. Hotel checkout time jan 1st, midday.
We checked out midday and went to do some more sightseeing until the evening. Had a relaxed dinner. Got to the airport and our flight wasnt on the board.
Information desk informed us that it is jan 2nd now, because past midnight
We had to buy new tickets at ~£300 each!

I didnt even know the date/time etc. He organised it all and i just followed his lead.
I am responsible for our flight tickets now..

Bought a derelict house with the intention of either doing it up and extending it or knocking it down and building another house. Tried a number of times to get planning permission, every time took into account what they had objected to previous time. Never got planning permission. Got threatened (by the same council who refused every planning application) with prosecution for allowing a house to become derelict (even though it had been derelict for a decade before we bought it). Had to put windows in to prove it wasn't derelict (seems they weren't bothered by the lack of internal floorboards or parts of the roof). Sold it, losing over €100K, next owner got planning permission on the first try.

I'm tempted to assume that having a funny asian surname might have been the cause, but actually I suspect that they are just an inconsistent bunch of opinionated twats. It was the same council that had one department insisting that my grandmother (not an asian surname) remove a load of trees that bordered road because they might fall in a storm, while another department threatened to prosecute her if she even trimmed them because they had tree orders.

Bought a flat four years ago as everyone was telling me property prices were climbing and to get on the. Ladder ASAP. A few months later the announced a stamp duty cut for first time buyers so that would of saved me 5k. Then brexit hit. Now trying to sell it at 20k less than I bought it for 4 years ago

Slightly different but I forked out a small fortune for my daughter's dance and gym wear in Feb. They both closed down in March and now at reopening time nothing fits her! She wore her tap shoes a grand total of... once

I have several, sadly.
£350 in advance on coach travel for my dd to go to college. She gave up after 3 weeks, non refundable.
£150 to recover my car from the pound. I ran out of petrol, went to get a can and fill up from local garage, and it got towed away by the time I got back.
£4000 on a timeshare scam. During the 'presentation' of the 'hoiday' I wanted to leave, but my boyfriend persuaded me to stay, and I consequently signed up, paid by credit card, and then heard nothing. By the time I realised something was wrong and called the police, they were long gone.

Couple of years ago, the lawnmower packed in. I have to use 2 extensions to be able to reach the end of my garden, so kept swapping them around, trying it with only one extension lead at time etc.

Got rid of it and spent around £200 on a new one. Got home ready to fire it up and it wouldn't switch on. Turns out, it wasn't the mower or the extension leads but the plug socket in the kitchen. Not one of us thought to try another plug socket before getting rid of the old one.

The new mower is very flimsy and crap to use compared to the old one, (which had just been a Wilko own brand, nearly half the price). I can't justify a third one, even though Nick at Gtech keeps trying to seduce me with money off their cordless one.

I mis-spelt my son's name on a purchase of a flight to Dubai. It was a typing error- not that I dont know how to spell my kid's name lol.

Anyway, they wont accept flight tickets if the name is even slightly different from the passport so I had to buy another one at £800. I was gutted.

A company that comes up when you google passport application and charges the same amount as the passport application. But what you get is a filled out passport form. I then had to pay again to get my passport. Was RAGING. These days I always check the little padlock on websites but this was around 10 years ago

Happened to me too.

@Lobsterquadrille2

Falling asleep on the last train home from London, ending up at the end of the line and having to pay £60 for a taxi home. I did that a few times.

You need one of these!

Brought a mobile phone off a stall in town did not work £130 down the drain didn't have it in me to get a refund. Little woods always is a scam poor quality stuff at department store prices with interest.

DH's airmiles expired - enough to go to Europe (we live in north America)

Buying 4 cheap advance train tickets for the wrong day!!!

I double and triple check now

I treated myself to a pair of very expensive killer heels from Russell & Bromley.

Wore them to a party and they absolutely killed my feet. I took them off and carried them when we walked to my friend's car at the end of the night. She had a mini, so only 2 doors, and there were 4 of us. I put my killer heels on the roof of the car while I faffed about moving the seat forward and clambering into the back.

And left them there.

If anyone found a pair of really high, strappy black shoes from Russell and Bromley, somewhere between Brixton and Croydon in 1989, you may keep them.

@LilaButterfly

DH booked our retun flight once at 1am. Lets say it was january 1st, 1am. Hotel checkout time jan 1st, midday. We checked out midday and went to do some more sightseeing until the evening. Had a relaxed dinner. Got to the airport and our flight wasnt on the board. Information desk informed us that it is jan 2nd now, because past midnight We had to buy new tickets at ~£300 each!

I didnt even know the date/time etc. He organised it all and i just followed his lead.
I am responsible for our flight tickets now..

I know so many people who have been stung with this! And one of them is an air hostess

I treated myself to a Karen Millen coat more than twenty years ago that cost in the region of £300. I never buy expensive stuff but had had a bit of an unexpected bonus at work so decided to treat myself to a London shopping spree.

I left the bloody bag with it in on the train and ssomeone must have nicked it as it never turned up in lost property. I was bloody upset at £30 of wasted train ticket too!

DS1 needed new school shoes in January of this year. I hung on as long as possible (his feet are truly enormous) and finally gave in. Cue Covid 3 weeks after I bought them and his feet went up another size over lockdown. £90 down the drain on shoes that still look brand new.

I once signed up to a door-knocker-chugger for a charity donation, only to discover a few days later that they were shitbag scammers and destroyed my bank account. I think they rounded out at around £800 before I could freeze the card.

@Lobsterquadrille2

Falling asleep on the last train home from London, ending up at the end of the line and having to pay £60 for a taxi home. I did that a few times.

The toblerone made me laugh!

@DuckyMcDuck. No need to pay return postage costs to Amazon.
Tick the box that says item incompatible.

260 cans of diet coke

Oh bum I reposted the photo! The picture is for you @Lobsterquadrille2, it's a helmet that says "wake me up at XXX" Never mind, it's a good pic :-D
Google Chindogu Japan for more ridiculous inventions from Japan

The toblerone comment is because the toblerone comment made me laugh!

Recently I managed to purchase 6 copies of the same book, instead of one, from Amazon.

When my son was a student, I added him to my car insurance while he was learning to drive. For various reasons we only managed to drive out together twice, so the whole business ended up costing around £200 per outing.

I took out a sim only deal when my contract finished back in March. Stuffed up the pac transfer and couldnt be non-contactable on my mobile. New sim customer service was affected by covid and I couldnt work out how to cancel.

Anyway, I meant to sort it out. Forgot. Realised today I've now been paying £8.99 a month for nothing for 6 months .

I am an idiot. It'll take a year if I switch now to save the money I've wasted.

Oh smashed 2 phone screens, speeding fine.

I have wasted so much over the years it's a joke. I'm stupid now just spend loads on wine and taxis, never meal plan.

Brand new car, I was heavily pregnant and scraped it getting out of a car park in a panic as it was busy- a familiar car park and easy in my previous car, £150 damage and this was in the 90s, I was so upset

Another train one here.

I used to travel to London quite regularly for work, to attend meetings at the company’s London office. Travelled there one day for a meeting on a return ticket. After the meeting I went straight back to Paddington & over time platform 1, which was the platform that all return journeys had departed from in the past. The time came for my return journey & train wasn’t there, waited 5 minutes just thinking it was running late. Waited another 5 minutes, then decided to just double check the announcements to see what the delay was. Turns out I was at the completely wrong platform & my train had actually left on time but from platform 5 instead. I had to buy a single & wait another 30 minutes 🤦‍♀️