Your best and worst money decisions?

[foxdongle]

best
me; first house doubled in value in 6 years.
dh; £2 lottery ticket - won a load
together; paying down mortgage pre dcs.

worst
me; getting an endowment mortgage.
dh; selling a house at the wrong time- still made a decent profit, but had he waited it would have been more.
together; getting a stupid big car that we both hated 2 months in- part chopped it for a smaller one.

Best:

• Taking up a final salary pension scheme at 21 (30 now and it's ending but thats a few good years with it under my belt)
• Going back to work full time after having DD - has kept me in a stable position with my employer

Worst:

• Buying a house with a 90% mortgage at the end of 2008. Owning has crippled me financially and I can't wait to go back to renting.
• Foolishly believing DH would support me financially when I was on maternity leave. He didn't (long story)

Best - buying a house in harrow just before the property boom. Sold at double what we paid.

• getting a mortgage at .5% over the BoE base rate.

Worst - not budgeting properly, getting in to a shitload of debt, not overpaying the mortgage, not continuing to pay in to a pension, not investing in property when I had the chance..

Best
My career.
Working for myself.
My education.
Property purchases and paying off debt early

Worst
Not a decision but English divorce law which is unfair to higher earners.

Worst
Agree its having 3 children. Wouldn't change it for the world, but has massive implications financially - more (low paid) maternity leave, longer working p/t, longer paying extortionate nursery fees, 3 x cost for clothes / school trips. Extending house to get an extra bedroom, bigger car, more expensive holidays. But they're worth it .
Not buying a more expensive house in 2001. House doubled in price, but if we'd have stretched ourselves a little, the gain would have been bigger.

Best
Coming off the property ladder at the end of 2007, before prices started to drop. Renting for 2+ years and buying again in 2010.
Starting pension at 22.

Preciousbane: I heard somewhere that those books can be quite collectable, so it might not be that bad a financial decision!

My best: renting the cheapest flat I could while saving for a decent deposit on my own house.
Really shopping around for the best mortgage geal I could find, and overpaying.
Investing in my education.

Worst: frittering money away on daft things, being generally disorganised and forgetting to cancel creditexpert membership after trial period.

Not buying some shares when I was advised to.

Best

Marrying my husband
Becoming a doctor (very stable career)
Not having kids (sorry but it's true that kids are v expensive. if I wanted them, I'd have them though, expense be damned)
Buying diamonds just before the big price increase

Worst

Not buying a house after the last slump. I may get another shot at this though

Excellent thread

Best

Spending money wisely improving our first house, we got every penny back at a time when the prices were stagnant.

Making overpayments on the mortgage

Discovered money saving expert, did a massive review and cut a bunch of pointless spending

Worst

Being born in 1981. Entered the workplace when the house prices had already doubled.

Paying a plumber £4,700 for a job he did not properly explain or quote for. I should have written clever letters and let him take me to the small claim court if he felt so bold.

Reckless spending at university, I worked the summers so it could have been worse, but the ' best loan ever' mentality meant I didn't really take it seriously.

Forgot my best one of all: marrying a frugal person

Buying a house just before prices plummeted.
Dropping put of uni rather than transferring meaning much higher fees and no grant when I went back.

Over paying mortgage clearing it in 8 yrs.
Establishing my career and wage before having children
Moving to a country with subsidised child care

Best

• Not taking out a Career Development Loan, but getting 3 part-time jobs to pay my post-grad tuition fees instead - plus great addition to CV
• Saving enough in my current account to get 4% interest every month - £19 is a nice amount these days!
• Sticking through 5 years of maxing my student overdraft and worrying through how I was going to get through the next term - it was worth it for the education & the experience - apart from money woes I had the time of my life!

Worst

• Getting my current car on finance - £300 a month for 24 months, ouch.

I should have got a cheaper model or a bank loan and paid in cash, but I was desperate to get a car quickly and bought the first "affordable" one I saw

• Giving my mum 'keep' money during uni holidays - "because you're richer than me with your student loan" - I should have just stayed in my uni town and worked there

Best

Overpaying on mortgage as much as we can

Insisting DH puts a good chunk per month into his SE pension

Every year I choose to put a monthly amount into AVCs rather than treating myself to a new bike on the Bike buy scheme - I hope this will end up being a good decision !

Worst

Buying a luxury flat with DH, buying high end wooden flooring, really expensive carpets etc and then getting married and pregnant within a year necessitating a move out to a house (see worst decision two)

Buying a house at the height of the housing boom

Working at a bank and taking the "sensible" decision to put my not huge bonuses into shares every year - only to watch them dwindle to nothing.

Best :

Selling all of my banking shares to pay off half our mortgage ( £50k worth saved up throughout my 20 years working in a bank) 5 months before the banking collapse.

Worst:

Selling our first house. We didn't need to sell it and bought our second house intending to keep the first as an investment. I chickened out, worrying about having two mortgages to cover, and persuaded DH that we should sell it. We sold it for £80k in1999 and a year and a half later it was worth double that. It has recently sold for £250k.Gutted!

You can't win them all!

Worst: getting £1500 credit card and frittering it on nothing. Getting graduate loan of £4.5k and frittering it on nothing. Getting further loan of 3k and frittering it on nothing. Getting a payday loan and not immediately paying it back.

Best: pulling head out of anus, taking deep breath, accepting I was an irresponsible twat, and making conscious effort to become debt free. (Thirteen months or so to go)

Worst ones:
Wasting loads of money on shit over the last 15 years. I am a fritterer-never buy anything expensive but waste Money on coffees, lunch with friends and make up etc
Credit cards. Enough said.
Meeting dh, who was a financial black hole. I got into more debt helping him which I could ill afford and took a long time to pay off.

Best decisions:
Getting PPI on every loan/credit card I ever had. I claimed £11k in refunds this year which paid the stamp duty on our new house.
Meeting dh (ironically!) he now earns 3 times more than me, is completely financially savvy, has a good pension, inherited money from his family which enabled us to buy our first house. He made an amazing turnaround, so my gamble paid off...!

Best:
Using bonus to pay off credit card one year and not fritter it away on 'treats'
Setting up DDebits for saving accounts on payday each month so I never see or miss the money
Renting for years later than needed to save a really decent house deposit

Bad:
Equally, renting many years to save a decent deposit and watching house prices rocket in the meantime!
Becoming lazy and buying my lunch at work every day rather than making it. Dread to think how much that adds up to over a year!

Oh dear, I can't think of one good decision. I can think of loads of bad ones though.

Worst. Being a student until 2004 and it taking 10 years to save a deposit for a house as prices had rocketed.

Better. Being a student in a vocational career that meant I was unlikely to be out of work.

Best. Getting critical illness cover so when I was diagnosed with leukaemia at 34 we could still afford to pay the mortgage and the massive and unexpected childcare bill. We would have been so screwed without it and would have lost the house we worked so hard for. Only paid into the scheme for a year and never thought we would need it then BANG.

best: Buying flat in London SW11 when I was young free and single for £32k.

worst: Having an endowment policy on above flat and also selling it when i didn't really want to (was in lurve and listened to baaad advice).

Recently looked and saw flats in the same block- they're going for almost 10 times what I paid.

Another one here who hung onto Bradford and Bingley shares :(

Have also wasted so much money on crapola. Am now trying to educate my DCs into saving half of their weekend earnings. It's working for DS, but now that DD is at Uni she needs every penny she earns just for everyday living.

best - living without debt and never using credit or finance options. if we want something, we save up.

worst - paying £20,000 in total to convert my 1st degree to a law degree, then doing the LPC, to qualiy as a solicitor but then only practicing for 3 years. i hated every... single... second of it.

Best: buying first house at 18 for £37,500 (in 2001), now valued at £90,000
Worst: Letting said house out with a Lettings company and getting screwed over as tenant hasn't paid rent for two months.

Best buying property renovating a couple and being mortgage free
Worst joint account with ex which he fiddled and cost me 6k

Worst: waiting to buy a house for a price crash that never came

Deciding to work in a field with the worst salaries and job progression ever (journalism)

Best: marrying my very frugal DH and establishing a lifestyle that allows us to get over our financial problems and even keep on saving :-)

I think one of my best was getting a 0.18% above BOE base rate mortgage.
Another was using my student loans as a deposit on my and DH's first house. The mortgage came with a 5% cash back. I then used the cash back to for our wedding. This saved years of saving and meant we were able to buy a 3 bedroom semi and have a lovely wedding with 2 months of graduating.

Best

• buying a house when I got my first job in 1993 at the dip of the dip..

• getting that first job in the Civil Service - "gold plated index linked pension"

-investing in New star when it launched - and selling at a peak - investing in Royal Mail shares - and selling

• being a serial building society customer in the 80s when they were all converting and giving out shares
• marrying a prudent, frugal husband

Worst
(financially) leaving work when I had the kids - but personally, rather than financially, it was a great decision to make for us.
getting a credit card when I went to college - but it did make me the financially savvy person I am today....