I've moved too many times. Sold a condo that had gotten too small, bought a house I hated, moved to another house I also hated, then moved again to a house I really like (so far). This all in the matter of a couple years. I'm an idiot who can always find an intolerable problem in any place I am.
I got lucky on the sales and always almost broke even on price, but lost a ton on mortgage fees, real estate fees, movers, furniture, etc., etc....
I bought $250,000 worth of put options on Countrywide Financial that expired worthless about 3 months before the 2007 financial crisis.
sunflower wrote:
Worst decision - probably not buying a really nice house in 2010 when prices were low. Instead we bought a modest home that we outgrew in 7 years and had to pay 2X for our current home what we could have paid in 2010. We didn't have the stomach for that risk at the time.
Worst thing I've done that I shouldn't - probably investing in commodities related ETFs that I didn't really understand and didn't perform as expected. I.e., buying a gold fund and not having it track the price of gold.
My wife and I had put an offer on a great house in a great neighborhood on Sept 9, 2001. Well, 9/11 happened and everyone was all freaked out, especially me. We backed out of the deal and less than a year later we bought a house exactly like that one on the exact same street .... for $150K more! F. Oh well, easy come easy go. We still live there and if we sold it now it would sell for 1.8mil more than we paid so can't really complain I guess. SF Bay Area.
webby wrote:
I bought $250,000 worth of put options on Countrywide Financial that expired worthless about 3 months before the 2007 financial crisis.
No wonder.
It was the 2008 financial crisis
kw1954 wrote:
Taking out a huge student loan for my daughter to attend a private college.
Have been paying it back for 25 years and probably will continue to do so the rest of my life.
Not to fear, Uncle Joe and the Dems to your rescue soon! Stop paying it.
I shorted Tesla right before it went from $60 to $660/share because I thought no one could make cars better than the ones I grew up with.
The Unkle wrote:
No wonder.
It was the 2008 financial crisis
Haha. I should have said the 2007 housing market implosion.
webby wrote:
The Unkle wrote:
No wonder.
It was the 2008 financial crisis
Haha. I should have said the 2007 housing market implosion.
Housing was just a symptom. The cause of the economic collapse was the doubling of gas prices to well over $4 a gallon. That money went to OTHER COUNTRIES. Mostly the housing bubble was just a distribution of money from the banks (and investors) to the people selling their homes for far above actual value.
My biggest mistake had to be ordering the 7 layer burrito at Taco Bell and paying well over $3 for it when I could have ordered 3 delicious items off of the dollar menu.
I almost made the decision to give money each month to a website. Thank goodness I came to my senses.
During the dot-com runup in the late 90s I made hundreds of trades in small tech companies using money from a credit card cash advance and trading on margin. Some stocks I held for as little as a few minutes trying to trade on news. I could have just bought and held some of the high fliers and made a decent amount of money. Instead I lost almost all of it (around $7500 which was a lot for me at the time). I thought I was going to get rich day trading stocks.
Fortunately, I've used a buy and hold strategy of index funds in my retirement accounts and have done reasonably well there over the years.
Cocaine
My biggest mistake had to be ordering the 7 layer burrito at Taco Bell and paying well over $3 for it when I could have ordered 3 delicious items off of the dollar menu.
LOL. I've actually had this very thought a few times at Taco Bell.
Seriously though, my biggest financial mistake was probably being sentimentally attached to company stock that I inherited from my grandfather. He'd give each of his grandkids a few shares for birthdays and Xmas, then after he died we eventually inherited it. When I got older I put it in a brokerage account, and my broker kept advising me to sell it (or at least some of it) and diversify. But I insisted on holding on to it because I felt like I'd be letting down the family to sell any of my grandfathers' stock (my mom fed into this too). Mind you, this wasn't stock in a family business ... it was a Fortune 500 company. I even held onto for too long some company stock that was spun out of my grandfather's company that I got shares of, because I associated that with him, even though the spinout happened years after he died. I can't say I really "lost" money because it had all been gifted to me in the first place, but I certainly missed out on many more lucrative opportunities.
ur bein a pedant
Bought a used car six months ago and now I’m finding costly issues.
Had not bought a used car in over 20 years.
Never again.
But new. Enjoy all of the early niceties of newness. You’ll know all it’s been through and maintenance.
Keep it a long time.
* wrote:
Bought a used car six months ago and now I’m finding costly issues.
Had not bought a used car in over 20 years.
Never again.
But new. Enjoy all of the early niceties of newness. You’ll know all it’s been through and maintenance.
Keep it a long time.
Made the same decision after buying used car that cost more to keep fixing than monthly payments on a new car.
Years later, expert car mechanic told me that American cars were designed for attrition after 50,000 miles to encourage new car sales. He recommended used Mercedes or BMW (etc.) because all the parts were designed and built to last 150,000 miles.
Don't know if that's still true. Also true that EU roads are designed to last with much higher standards that the USA, whereas in USA the expectation for roads is persistent repair so as to help generate seasonal income for construction workers.
My worst financial mistakes involved relationships, and my best financial decision was to not have children.
I bet Donald Trump would grow into becoming presidential.
Lost a lot of money and lives there.
Marriage.
Getting married, then having an affair and getting divorced...
God. wrote:
I bet Donald Trump would grow into becoming presidential.
Lost a lot of money and lives there.
I heard there are places where people are still betting Trump will eventually win the 2020 election.
You can win some money back there.
Invested in Ford and CVS, lost around 5k. Pulled it out and invested in Apple and Nike and have tripled my fund.