I could have been rich! Biggest financial mistakes

[rememberitalltoowell]

And how you come to terms with them?

I turned down a really well paid role for something else that didn't turn out as planned, and could only find much lower paying roles afterwards. When I work out what that decision cost me over the course of my career, we're talking hundreds of thousands!

So how did you work out how much it cost you over the years?

What about day 5 when you would have been travelling to work and you got hit by a bus and killed?

Stop looking back, you cant say what was lost or what was gained. You're doing yourself harm.

Look at where you are now. Look at HOW YOU CHABGE TODAY. Not coulda shoulda woulda- it means nothing, it changes nothing, it serves nothing.

What can you do today to make your tomorrow better?

Why haven’t you been able to progress since then? 😵‍💫

Is this the £55k one that you were made redundant from?

Everyone could have been rich if they had known how property prices would continue to rise over decades. Just by buying a few terrace houses to rent out when they were worth 30k in the nineties and are worth 200k now.

I regretted not going into law and earning significantly more like some of my peers at university. Until one died of a heart attack in his late 30s, the rest are largely unhappy in their roles and have no work/life balance.

I finally have work/life balance now.

Money isn’t everything, there’s usually a trade off with any job. Usually with higher paid jobs, there is more stress involved and often means longer hours.

There’s a book about different kinds of wealth - one of them being time. It’s the most important one in some ways as you can’t generate more.

Properly related for me. Should have stayed in our first house that we got for £67k in a great area. Could have extended it and paid our mortgage off by now. Instead we moved a couple of times. Love our current house but we would have been mortgage free and a bit more comfortable by now. I think now DH is closer to retirement age this is more prevalent in my mind.

My biggest frustration relates to a Docklands flat.

We were commuting daily to London, a gruelling 4-5 hours a day on the train. Late DH suggested we buy a flat in Docklands using our Season Ticket money (plus a bit more)

As an East End girl, who knew Docklands before they started building, I poo poo’d the whole idea. Told him they would never make money.

OMG how stupid was I? I beat myself up about that stupid decision every time I think about it 🤣😂

How many years ago did he suggest this?

I bought £20 of Bitcoin out of curiosity in 2011 when it was a new thing. I can't remember exactly how much that was in Bitcoin but it was more than one and less than two. I spent it on a some basic ditgital services, maybe a game subscription? That would be over 200k now...

Two chances missed to make a fortune. One was a property in London sold for around £330k in 2006. Now worth £750k (we came off the property ladder for various reasons).

Also offered Bitcoin around 2010 - thought it would never catch on and didn’t understand it so declined to get involved. I would be a millionaire now and retired. Instead still paying a mortgage on a house worth £500k. Feel quite lucky however to have been able to get back on the property ladder (via some inheritance ). I try not to think about it.

Oh, why has my reply been hidden?

I mean the biggest financial mistakes are having children.

Anyway, whatever has happened is in the past. Learn from it, forget it, carry on.

Inherited £5000 in the late nineties, would have been enough for a deposit on a small flat in my hometown. Spent it on utter rubbish instead.

Got off the housing ladder in 2003, spent the money we made on a year away travelling, took me 18 years to buy again, am now in my fifties with a MASSIVE mortgage.

Have been given huge credit limits on cards for the last couple of decades and run up huge amounts of debt.

I also now have an ADHD diagnosis, which explains some of my shitty financial behaviour and I am doing my best to change.

Shouldn't have relinquished our jointly owned house to abusive ex husband. Did myself out of a good sum there.
Should have stretched our finances a bit more to buy cheap doer upper farmhouse with land. Worth millions now, done up gorgeously plus a bit was sold off for building.
Should also have bought one of the basements in Maida Vale that were going for 6K at the auction where we bought our current house, round about 1994. Can't imagine what they would be now.
Heigh ho.

My dad is generally v financially savvy and has invested v well in the stock market etc over the years and successfully started and grew his own business for decades.

However in 1996 I asked him to act as a guarantor for me to buy a 2 bed flat in West Hampstead for 108k and he refused because he said “ there’s no reason house prices will continue to go up”.

so none of us get it right all the time.

For anyone who cites Bitcoin, you have to imagine an alternative timeline in which you held your nerve and didn’t sell in spite of Bitcoin doing roller coaster ups and downs (when you would have appeared to be losing it all without any certainty that the value would ever climb back up).

Very few people (who weren’t already very wealthy) would have held on to Bitcoin through all those ups and downs, so I don’t think you can beat yourself up about it!

Not extending the lease on a flat earlier. The freeholder got about 8k from me for doing absolutely nothing. What a waste.

Buying the flat wasn't a great idea either. Went up in value by about 5k over 12 years. At least was on a low mortgage interest rate.

I am a lawyer
in house
I earn very well and have a great home life balance

What years did that 12 years cover??

I tell my children they’re my pension! 😆

2004 to 2016

over the course of that 12 years you would have made much more than £5k if you have sold in a different year.

Only if you regret having children @Oabrbjr

otherwise… I feel I got incredible value for the money I’ve spent!!

Back in about 97/98ish .. working in IT.. start of .com and all that. Someone suggested buying into a company called Amazon … ah well - whatever happened to them anyway??

I've read lots of financial books and nearly every one of them says the gift of time is the best thing money can buy.