What was your biggest financial mistake?

[QuickNameChange22]

Was watching an interesting video on YouTube of people talking about their biggest financial mistake and thought I'd be nosy and ask 😁

Mine (aside from having kids 😂) was either:

Taking a credit card out ",for emergencies". It's just amazing what I justified to myself as an emergency when I had that card!

And also taking out a student bank account with a £1.5k overdraft and thinking it was basically free money. Cue the next 4 years of constantly living in my overdraft, my wage not even half clearing it before I spent it to the limit again before the next payday. Sometimes I wish I could go back and give my idiot self a bloody shake.

In 2007 I sold my terraced house in the SE to move abroad. I ended up with £50k in the bank entirely due to the increase in house prices.

Not content with the 5% interest I was earning in the bank, I invested it with some encouragement and pointers from DF into blue chip shares - he reckoned there would be the dividends and some capital growth, and not to bother with diversification.

So, I bought the RBS shares he suggested just before the banking crisis and turned £50k into £2.5k within a few years.

That was all my savings.

It always helped me to remind myself that I didn’t earn a penny of that money. It was all capital gain from house prices. If I had scrimped and saved for that money, I know I would have been distraught.

It was an expensive lesson but I learned about diversity in investing and avoiding stock picking.

Marrying an alcoholic criminal who stole from my family

Not paying into a pension in my 20s & early 30s

Trucky. Presumably you'll get a decent amount of redundancy as you'll have been there a while, plus it's a big company. You may also get a certain amount of support from the company like help with CVs, etc. (No idea how much use that kind of thing is, mind you.)

If I were you, I'd start updating your CV, networking, finding out how you're regarded in the current jobs market. Even if you get offerred something, you don't have to accept it. If nothing else, you'll take back a bit of control - I left partly because I hated the uncertainty of what might happen next.

The other thing I did when I left the second company was go and update my skills for a year. Well worth considering - even something low-key, evenings only might cheer you up. Good luck.

Our two, old, money pit houses, roof, windows, electrics, plumbing, bathrooms, kitchens and damp issues. If we had stretched for our first house, maybe bought a modern house and stayed put, now we would have had so much choice with holidays, cars, savings, even house deposits for the DC and not had to work such long hours for so many years.

Putting down €3000 deposit on an apartment in Spain despite having doubts on the way to solicitors. A few hours later we pulled out and had to forfeit the €3000.

Buying a small house when we married in 1987, aged 21, once dc were born I had to persuade dh to move, it took years and years until he finally agreed. We’re now 58 and still have a bloody mortgage.

Snap!

but if you’re still married - what’s the issue?

Because he controls his pension. How much to take out as a lump sum, how much to receive per month. I have no say.

And he won’t involve you 50/50?

Is this a happy marriage??

Marrying the ex h!

Ouch

^ This is why I've never bought the period house I desperately want..
I've never bought new builds either (lots of other issues...) but I just know that I'd end up spending £££££ just to keep it dry and not damp and livable ☹️

Marriage

Marriage (which ended in divorce and I earned more than him even though I had done all the work with the kids etc so I lost half of everything I had accumulated)

And buying the big house I did when Dp and I decided to move in together. My kids are far happier and I tell myself this but now a lot of my wealth is tied up in that house and Rachel from accounts will revalue it and make it less valuable grrr

not being punchy enough around finances during my divorce. Everyone including my own solicitor said I was being overly agreeable and screwing myself over. I just wanted it amicably done. Feeling it now. (But it was amicably done which benefitted the children in other ways as was the intention).

@CrystalSingerFan thank you. Good advice I will. I have just got a mentor through work so hopefully that will help too.

Does you not benefit from it if you are still married? Don’t you share these decisions? And money?

Nice to have a mentor! Make the most of them. Thinking of you and wishing you well.

I feel like that, but also that I'm glad he's gone and it was worth it to get rid of him.

A picture of the image please. I'm curious.

I should have paid into a pension when younger

The Singing Butler by Jack Vettriano.

Never heard or seen it before but I'm not in UK. I googled it and it is a fascinating picture so I can see why it's popular.