Time for a new version of list your financial mistakes thread. Don't be embarresed we won't make fun of you... too much! This is just to point out some of the stupid things we have done financially so that others may learn from our mistakes.
I'll start:
1) When I was in my early 20s, I thought credit cards were evil due to the cries of the irresponsible. So I used my debit card for everything and ran up about $150 in overdraft fees in 4 years of college. Now I use rewards cards for everything and have made around $2k in rewards over the last few years since I started.
2) I bought a car in 2002 and paid in cash. Prime MMF was yielding about 5% and loan rates were 0%. I had good credit because even though I didnt have any CCs, my parents had me as authorized users for several years. I paid $9k in cash and could have had it financed at 0% while earning 5%. I was scared of debt due to irresponsible people screaming about how bad it is.
3) When I was 22, I married an Eastern European woman for $5k to help her get citizenship. I never got the $5k and she never put out
Number 3 is rough, you should have been making daily deposits...next time move your transactions to a Chinese or Japanese bank your deposits will accumulate.
1) Spent close to $1500 fixing up an old car because it had tons of issues, and when it was almost done I gave up and bought a new car ($20k). The old car went to my uncle who put on 25k miles this past year alone, and all he did was change the oil, and replace the last couple of parts (cost him <$300). About 6 months after driving the new car, I found a new job that allowed me to take public transit, so I only drive 20 miles a week. I'm still kicking myself to this day for not keeping that old car.
My husband and I ran up about $14,000 in credit card debt in our mid-20s. Then I saw Suzy Orman on tv one day and decided to just STOP doing that anymore. (I know many people hate Suzy, but her no-nonsense advice made us snap out of our stupid habits. It was a wake-up call).
We consolidated the debt to the lowest rate card. It took about a year to pay it all off - had to cancel the cable, cell phone, eat cheap food, stop buying junk we don't need, etc.
Now we always pay off the cards in full every month. We now ask ourselves (and sometimes each other) the following questions:
1. Do we have the money for this now, or do we need to save for it?
2. Is this item a NEED or a WANT? If it's a want, it can probably wait if we don't have the money in the bank to pay for it now. Often we forget about the wanted item after a few days anyhow.
3. If it's something we need (like a household appliance), does it NEED to be top-of-the-line or can we make do with the average and cheaper item? We try not to get wrapped up in "competing with the Jones's".
Temptation is so difficult to resist sometimes, and I wouldn't dare say that we haven't eaten out a few times when we should have stayed home or bought a small toy for our child when she has plenty to play with already. We are human after all. We don't, however, go and book a weeklong vacation somewhere and charge it to the credit cards unless we've earmarked money in savings to pay off the trip. There is a difference.
Though we started off with general save/spend dispositions respectively, we gradually pushed each other into polar roles. I felt like I had to be "the responsible one," she resented that and felt responsible for making sure we used out money. Each position reinforced the other, until I think we both reached unhealthy extremes. Following our divorce, we both have to answer to ourselves and only ourselves, and we're both much happier. She's paying off her half of the debt quickly. I'm off budget but still saving and paying off debt.
Personally, I've determined not to do it again. I'm going to be in a position to buy a house without a cosigner if necessary. I eat and live cheap. As long as an SO can provide for themselves, what do I care what they do with the rest? How I evaluate the potential of a relationship will include financial health, but I'm not going to have my fingers in those pies again.
Listing fees + Gallery fees + final value fees + Paypal fees ate away my marginal profits.
Since I didn't have much experienece with any business and I was in early twenties. Preety soon, I blew away my seed capital on so called eBay business. Now I have my own retail store and a website and I'm making decent living from my business (even in recession).
While riding on a bridge loan, I noticed scratches from a recent car wash. I freaked out and got into an auto accident. Then, the cop writes me a ticket for my overgrown baby in an infant car seat! Good thing someone else started those threads in Finance.
1. worked my way through college and tried to take too many classes and worked too many jobs and ended up taking longer to graduate than if I had gone slow and steady. I paid for a lot of courses that I ended up dropping.
2. Buying my first house I trusted that my credit union (Portland Teachers) would give me the best deal because, well, they were my non profit credit union. So I didn't shop around. I ended getting treated very badly and getting stuck with a high interest rate even though my credit was great and I had a 25 percent down payment. Stupid. I refinanced and never did business with them again.
3. When I was young I used to rack up bounced check fees which would make the next check bounce and so on. I only made 3.50 and hour and I was paying up to 100 dollars in fees! All I can say is overdraft protection is great.
4. Speaking of making 3.50 an hour, I also used to eat lunch for 4 dollars. Now I make ten times that and brown bag my lunch. Frugality comes with age, but at least it came.
qcumber98 said:While riding on a bridge loan, I noticed scratches from a recent car wash. I freaked out and got into an auto accident. Then, the cop writes me a ticket for my overgrown baby in an infant car seat! Good thing someone else started those threads in Finance.
uutxs said:The folks on Fortune's 40 under 40 list may be rising stars, but they're not perfect. Here are the decisions they most regret in their careers. Linky
The first one is:
"My biggest mistake was when I was a record executive I didn't sign Alicia Keys as an artist. ([In my defense], she didn't perform for me with a piano; I didn't know she was a complete musician."
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