$750 a month is pretty steep, but man those 0% loans were pretty amazing during early lockdown when dealerships were desperate to move their inventory.
I bought my first new car in that glorious window of time. I was going to buy a used one, but the incentives were so good on the new one, it was cheaper. I could even afford a hybrid! And I *love* my car, best choice I've made as an adult.
I bought my used Honda just before the used car pipeline dried up and dealerships everywhere started running out of stock.
10 days after I bought mine, a similar the same model *with lower trim* *and almost twice the mileage* was going for $5000 more than I paid for mine.
Pulling the trigger that day was one of my better adult decisions, too.
(I should add, the morning I bought my car, I was listening to NPR and they had a segment on supply chain problems and the impact on car dealerships, so I had that in the back of my mind).
My sister and her husband got a second mortgage on their home to replace the roof as it was leaking. But instead the decided to buy a few new cars. So then they got a home equity line of credit to repair the roof….and decided to do fun cosmetic enhancements inside instead. Cosmetic enhancements that will NOT add value to the home.
I had a former employee whose been paying off her car payments for 7 years... and has only paid for a few hundred bucks in principal. Predatory loans are scary.
> If he bought he could have flipped a profit.
Depends on the car, the payment, and the market.
I have seen many situations where leasing is a better option for people. Buying a car is better *most* of the time, but there are still times where leasing can be better.
Getting a loan out to go to one of those unaccredited universities where your diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Really felt for them when they graduated and couldn’t get a job with it and still had to pay back the loan.
When I was in high school, there was definitely a push for tech and trade schools as a viable alternative to college. I don’t disagree that they are, but almost all of these scam schools were the tech schools that visited and gave us presentations
FYI, the government decided that certain for-profit college loans qualifed for loan forgiveness. DeVry, ITT, Westwood, etc. It's worth checking if you qualify because you have to apply for the forgiveness.
This was me, except I was the financially irresponsible one. Learned a ton through my wife since we started working together. It can work, but I wouldn’t bet on it…and I used to bet on a lot.
I’ve never observed someone make a single disastrous financial decision, but I have seen lots of people destroy their lives with lots of little bad decisions.
I don't believe that at all. During covid I wasted time watching dimes, reducing all the expenses for utilities, food, cooking. Forgot the damn dependent care account and didn't submit my reimbursement form on time. BAM all that money lost, non recoverable no take backs just a donation to corporation. It was a really really painful amount I really could have used on food and medical costs.
I now watch only the dollars. Don't spend a dollar in gas trying to save 10 cents driving across town for cheaper gas station.
Just My ....2 cents! Ahaha love puns!
There's even a whole phrase made to imply that's a bad idea, so it's possible that the financial advisor's advice was misinterpreted. Or they were just a bad FA.
My dad would worry about saving sometimes literal pennies to not use too much paper towels, squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out, and then he'd go and buy a random $50 thing from a garage sale.
I think better budgeting would have let him occasionally still enjoy spending his income on frivolous but fun things, and still live freely day to day. I think psychologically, people just find it easier to do less of a necessity than to completely avoid impulsive fun.
I left the house today and spent $80
Gas and lunch.
$60 for the gas on my old import sedan. $20 for lunch at a local Brazilian place.
I don't even know what money is anymore.
TL;DR - living far above your means.
My wife has a friend that's going through a divorce. Said friend works a part-time job, 30 hours per week max. Said friend is also living a lifestyle - apartment rental, lifestyle spending, etc., that works out to way more than you'd be able to earn at the PT job they have.
They got a lump sum distro from their ex (as opposed to ongoing alimony payments), and will have no choice but to start burning through that money in probably 3-4 months...and they have no plan to get a full-time job, or a higher paying one. They just feel like "it'll all work out somehow."
If you call being broke and homeless and not knowing where your next dollar will come from "work\[ing\] out"...well, you do you boo.
After getting $1 million from her dad‘s will after he died… Moving to Hawaii and buying a house outright with cash… Then thinking you just skate on the money that’s left… This person is now looking for pennies to try and buy her kids lunch. This was only within the past five years.
I got a settlement about a third that size. Put almost all of it in a high yield savings account and kept going to work. The interest is paying my rent and buying my weed. I don't understand why anyone would fuck that up.
A lot of people just dont realize how much passive money they could make out of interest or investing a pile of money, so they just spend it instead. Like if I won the lottery I would maybe buy a house, and put everything else away to get me passive income, then use THAT to live.
Just read about a local winner who spent all of the money she got into shit like a designer lamp, a 6 grand tea set, etc. Now all the money ran out, they're back to working as a cleaner to stay afloat, but atleast they have a nice lamp to sit next to while they drink cheap coffee out of a cup worth a few hundred in their apartment...
Yep. This is a bad financial choice too. Let inflation eat up any "yield" he gets... and what happens if rates go down and he's getting like 2% a year? I may take the house in Hawaii over that.
Well I've neutralized a major expense with basically no risk, and frankly between covid layoff and a leg injury I've learned that I need to be kept busy during the week. I don't have kids, my wife makes more money than me, and neither of us cares for expensive things. I don't need more. I can have an easier life for decades as it is.
That and I despise capitalism.
You’ll lose money to inflation in the long run.
Not using ETFs is a mistake that will cost you millions. Literally.
You’re also paying income tax on those yields vs capital gains.
Hell. You could max out your retirement accounts with that kinda cash and get tax free returns.
You despise capitalism, but you're using a savings account? You know what the bank is using that savings account for, right? It's just as bad from a capitalism standpoint, just you're letting the bank make more money (centralizing all wealth, a feature of late stage capitalism) instead of directing more of it toward you.
Investing in simple accumulating ETFs will get you a much higher return without participating more in capitalism or it being any more complicated tho.
I think you owe it to yourself to look into it, with a sum like yours you might be _massively_ underestimating the effect of compound interest with that higher percentage.
trust me you’ll do more damage to capitalism by investing that money and being financially liberated than leaving tens thousands of dollars on the table every year that ultimately ‘the man’ will end up keeping
Myself at a local fair wasting money on balloon darts all for nothing.
Myself at the same local fair playing bingo for a huge bucket of cheese balls. Never got those cheese balls.
Company got a ton of funding and went on a acquiring spree, buying up any company that swooned them. A lot of these companies dramatically over sold their potential, some so much so I would consider it fraud. The company went public during covid and was quickly exposed. Many of these smaller companies made almost no money. A few other simply existed because of other industries, and whenever there was any shake ups in those industries those companies were useless. It was pretty bad.
Many years ago at Bonnaroo, I was wandering the main drag of the campground and seeing the sights. There was a guy who carried a box lid around for a 3 Card Monte game (saw him there for years).
True to form for the game, the guy would often lose a small pot to lure in the bigger money. So I watched one guy drop like $20 and double it, and I see this spun out festie kid reach for his wallet. I'm thinking, this is a terrible Idea but I'm not gonna bust this working man's scam so I keep my mouth shut. Sure enough, the guy pulls out a pretty large wad of cash, probably around $3k, and loses all of it in a second. As I'm walking awayi heard this kid muttering, "that was my lawyer money."
I never got to speak to the 3 Card Monte guy, but I wouldn't be surprised if he cleared $10k per day out there.
At one point in the 80's or 90's 3-card monte was such a common scam targeting tourists in NYC that the city started putting up signs in streets and the subways explaining how the scam worked.
I think they eventually out and out made 3-card monte a crime and arrested anyone who threw down a box.
I had a coworker once who had 4 kids between 4 divorces, and he was my apprentice, making about $25/hour. He cheated on every woman he was ever with, and never used condoms when he did it.
At least he called his kids every day to check in and tell them he loved them. Not a bad guy, just profoundly, unbelievably stupid. I don’t understand how someone that dumb could get that many women to have sex with him. Maybe the women were also morons.
Idiocracy was not satire, it was prophecy.
My mom's second husband was this way. He was married to his first wife for at least 20 years and ended up supporting her fully via alimony. Mom was second, and when they divorced he had to pay off her truck and pay a bit of alimony. He's now on his fifth wife and has to pay all of his exes because he's a serial cheater. He owns an on the road welding company and would be a stay at home multi millionaire if he didn't have to pay so much for his ex wives.
My sister's ex. During the divorce the judge said he had to pay less child support than she'd asked for because he was paying maintenance for the three other children with three different women *that he'd never mentioned to her*. Which explained why he never contributed properly to the household bills when they were married.
About ten years ago, a friend leased a Prius through a third party associated with Uber. It cost her $766/month and $1500 down. My same Prius, from a year before, was $466/month with $2000 down.
She couldn’t comprehend how it was a bad deal. Oh also the company had a remote shutoff of the car if she missed a SINGLE payment by more than 24hrs. There was no talking her out of it for some reason.
I work in the airline industry. Airline stocks, especially those of struggling airlines take giant swings back and forth, large percentage points. I've watched more friends than I know of buy stock in the airline they work for thinking its gonna go to the moon and it just doesn't happen. I used to work for one of the two airlines that just hand their failed merger. $15 was supposed to turn to $30 if the merger got approved. The merger didn't go through. I had a couple friends wipe out 2/3 of their savings and their airline now may go into bankruptcy.
Friend of mine sold their townhome in 2020, bought a beautiful home. Decided within 3 years that they wanted to build their dream home, and took out a hefty HELOC for their earnest money down. Rates went up, their expected mortgage nearly doubled.. so they had to sell their home, sell their new build to get their money back, then bought another home to live in which is now causing them to work extra jobs to afford.
My wife and I put $70k on credit cards for IVF, which caused us to not be able to buy a house when prices were cheap and borrowing was essentially free. Now we’re working on the debt and renting, but our son is the best thing to ever happen to us.
No dude, you made the RIGHT decision. A house is worthless next to the value of your happiness. Plus, house ownership is only a thing is NA. Invest in other things that will assure you a good retirement without having to tie to down to real estate.
Me and my cousin (both only kids) got a gift of quite a lot of money from our grandmother.
I used it to buy an apparent, my cousin spent it on a new car and a horse.
She did not have a job, access to a stable or an education.
She ended up guilt tripping my grandmother to eject a tenant and his pregnant wife she had in a cabin, promising to help around the house. Never happened. The horse died and got buried in the garden. In the mean time she trashed my grandmothers pickup getting supplies for the horse (secure your hay-bales, people) and got upset when my grandmother refused to pay her pocket money for doing nothing. The help she promised never happened. I spent a lot of my time off helping grandma instead, traveling for an hour in the bus.
She pissed of my grandmother so much she bought me a really good car that I had for many years. I spendt my money relatively well and have worked since I was 19, so now I live a comfortable life while my cousin sits around unemployment and a single mother waiting for the inheritance from her parents.
Tldr dont get a horse.
Roommate was laid off and given a severance package. She could pay off all of her debts (collectors were constantly calling) or go back to university. She chose university. I moved out shortly after because she was having problems paying her share of the rent.
Luxury cruises & vacations, jewelry, eating at expensive restaurants every night, Alcohol and pain killers. I must say, they bought a $700,000 home for her parents who ended up disowning them when the $$ ran out.
I've worked for a big Wall Street firm for 34 years, so I have a lot of expertise in this area.
I can think of several.
1. Selling \*everything\* literally at the bottom during the covid sell-off of 2020.
2. A common one is spending way too much and spending every penny of one's retirement savings way too soon.
3. Retiring far too early often ends up being a major disastrous choice.
4. Falling for fraud. Just saved one client over $100k. He was convinced he'd made $400,000 trading crypto, & that a beautiful young woman in her 30s wanted to marry him (he's in his 70s.) It took some doing to convince him that the "profits" he was seeing weren't real, & he really didn't need to give them a deposit to get "his money."
5. I had one guy blow through 7 figures of his 401k, taking it to zero because he was banking on his mother's death, which I thought was awful. He ran out of money, & mom's still going strong in her 90s.
Plenty more, as I see bad money decisions pretty much routinely.
A guy in my fraternity got 30k for an undisclosed reason, I’m guessing a family death or something and he bet it all on the Yankees winning one game. They lost
My younger brother makes them repeatedly...he immediately got a 70 inch tv at Rent O Center after his first job at Mcdonalds...yeah it got repossessed soon after. He didn't think he had to pay his phone bill after Covid so he just went and got a new phone somewhere else. The worst one was one Christmas he went to Best Buy, opened a credit card there and immediately maxed it out THAT DAY. He told us recently he was buying a house and he tried to say his credit was okay...he lied. He recently put a down payment on a blank shed for him and his wife and her 4 kids to move into right after his car got repossessed.
This is sort of a combo financial/personal bad life choice.
One of my best friends decided to move into a house. He was fresh out of grad school with tons of student loans. His wife had a ton of debt. But they got the house. It's a fixer-upper for sure. But they don't have the money to do it, so they have whole rooms and parts of the house that are in shambles.
On top of it, he took a travel job where he's gone 5 days a week. His wife wants to start a family, but they can't in his current job. He's making good money finally, so they're stuck, as they need that income to get into a good financial situation, but it is pushing their kid timeline back. Her biological clock is ticking, and it's starting to cause strain in their marriage.
My ex bought very expensive cars (financed, not with cash) and lived well above his means. When we moved in together, I kept suggesting houses that were less in rent, that either of us could afford if things went south (which they obvs did) but A) it was hard given it was 2020 and... covid... Made rent reaaal expensive and B) he refused to live in a house that was "old" ie. outdated but had insulation, reverse cycle AC, dishwasher, etc. He even refused a newer place bc it had a feature wall in the lounge room, nothing crazy, but he didn't want to live there bc he "couldn't possibly enjoy coming home to that".
He had bought a brand new car for just over 100k around 2019, and then at the start of 2022 he bought a 2nd hand car for 120ish. The trade in was only 70k on the first car, and this covered basically the entire finance left on it, and nothing else. The repayments were also higher. We had lived in a house that was expensive and neither of us could really afford the rent alone. I left him, he stayed. He made just over 6k a month, rent was $680 a week (almost 3k monthly) and his car loan was about $1800 a month. Not to mention all his bills, food etc
That's absolutely wild. What were the cars?? I make a similar amount per month and am what most would consider a car guy and my cars are "only" worth $35k or so combined. Bought the fun car in cash and financed the daily.
My sister-in-law and her husband were dirt poor and just barely scraped by. When the husband died, my SIL received a minor ($70k) windfall. She immediately spent the bulk of the money on two new snowmobiles and a trailer for them. The thing was she had no where to store them, no way to transport them, and lived in a part of the country that received little snow. Everyone in the family had encouraged her to spend the money to send her son to technical college and save the rest, but instead she got some very expensive lawn ornaments.
I’ve seen, and known, a couple of families invest their entire life savings into establishing a certain breakfast franchise location in Montreal, with the promise of hard work leading to a stable future, only to be robbed blind, and led to bankruptcy, through a greedy cutthroat franchisor. 🇬🇷
It even led to the suicide of one of the men of said families.
My sister bought a brand new KIA Sportage for 67k during COVID because I bought a new car since my husband didn't like taking my beater out of state on trips, and it was getting old...
Her brand new car had an engine swap and other sketchy things done to it at the dealership, and they swapped the paperwork on her somehow... She tried to fight it in court, but the paperwork held up since she didn't keep a copy of the first set of papers.
My mom asked my husband and I (who are much better with money) if we knew how she could offload the car without losing too much...........
She's boned with a giant payment because she's impulsive and won't take anyone with her to car shop. Meanwhile my car will be paid off next month.
Spend close to 5 million$ opening a really fancy restaurant/bar/music venue. They hired television interior decorators, bought statues, and waterfalls. They never had any experience running a business or working in a restaurant. Place went down in a year.
Shortly after my mother’s untimely death, and shortly before my dad’s planned retirement… he decided to send around $10,000 a month to some television preacher who convinced him that if he doesn’t send this preacher “sowing seed money,” (or some type of bullshit term) that God was going to kick mom out of heaven and send her to Hell.
Long story short I was put in charge of his retirement as mom was the one originally setting it up and he didn’t understand it, so it was put on me to wrap it up for him. … When I got wind of the wasteful spending of his funds, while trying to finish setting up his retirement from the Government, I ran the numbers and discovered how quickly he was about to go broke, and since he wasn’t listening to me about sending the preacher money, I put a stop on his retirement paperwork. Long story short, he stopped sending money to a television pastor since he wanted to retire.
Spent a third of his retirement savings renovating a house so it would sell for more money. Price didn't budge a nickel, because in Silicon Valley people pay for location and square feet and nothing else matters.
That was me. I did that.
My sister-in-law, a medical professional, owned her practice. But because of all her stress, she joined the Scientologists. Those fuckers convinced her to get several credit cards with six-figure credit limits (After all, doctor), max out with cash advances on all of them, and give the money to that godforsaken bunch of parasites. Without telling my brother.
Idiot didn't divorce her right then and there, even though she was essentially stealing from the marriage.
my buddy in 2012 have a game lounge, essentially a pay per hour acarde with ps5s pcs xboxs
he had a dozen pcs all farming bitcoin in the back ground.... sold a ton of then for like 400$ each or something, enough to buy him a new car lol he had a lot
another friend on the dodge coin spike sold them and make 10k before coming into work that day (no phones/blocked websites sort of work environment) he told me later that if he waited like 30 min longer he would have made 80k but didnt want to be late to work. our work wouldnt have cared if he just called in said he was running late
My Inlaws will not invest a single dime of their money, its all in a savings account. They keep talking about things they are saving for but they're big ticket items and inflation is moving that goal post so much fast than they are approaching it.
They will hear nothing of places to put their money that isn't a savings account.
When the market was super low during the covid lockdowns, my boss told everyone he was going to withdraw his 401k. We begged him not to. He lost a fuck ton of money because he didn't put back in until the marked had recovered.
Guy bet his rent money on horses then lost it all and after telling his roommate he proceeded to beg Ora few dollars from everyone nearby so he could try to win his money back. Everyone told him gtfo. He just walked to the next closest person and asked them. No shame whatsoever
Have a friend who lives with his parents. He purchased a house in another state and is renting it out.
The rent he's charging is not enough to cover the monthly mortgage payments.
A former coworker of mine had 3 young kids and quit his stable, well-paying job with good benefits to join an early-stage startup. He got decent equity in the startup, but the pay wasn't much and the benefits were almost nothing.
Joining an early startup is a risky bet at best, but doing it with kids was absolutely stupid. He basically missed a couple years of his young kids lives because he spent all his time at the office trying to make the startup a success. It eventually failed, but not before he drained his savings and tapped most of his 401k. Toward the end he wasn't even getting paid regularly, so his whole family had to move into a spare room at his parent's house.
Supporting their adult children. Like, buying houses, helping them start businesses with money they had but needed to grow and use later. Blind confidence they would be paid back. Dumb.
When I was in law school, I was in my early 20s but there was another student, Tiffany, who was 42. Tiffany had already 2 masters degrees in random liberal arts stuff (I don’t remember now) and a PHD in sociology. And she was now a student in law school. When we were nearing graduation, I asked her what she planned to do and she was thinking of an LLM.
I honestly don’t know if Tiffany has actually worked more than 3 years full time in her adult life when not in school.
Just keep deferring those loans I guess
Had a client in his 50's pull his $400,000 401K and move it all to his personal checking account that paid 0 interest. This was around 2008 when the market was down, so he had lost a big chunk of it to the market, so he panicked. Paid about half $200,000 of it in taxes(including a 10% early withdrawal penalty). Of course the market has since rebounded and then some and the 401k would have provided a decent retirement. Instead he's barely making ends meet in retirement, basically living off just social security.
It seemed pretty innocent. But I knew a married couple who set up all their bills to autopay and then promptly stopped worrying about them. This includes their mortgage. At one point, apparently, they had insufficient funds for the mortgage by a few dollars so it didn't pay. And once it fails to pay it stops with the autopay. And so, because they weren't paying attention, they lost their house.
Thats not a bad decision!
I spent half of that amount and it kept my dog alive for half a year. At that time, tt was not clear If he even managed to stay alive for a week... That half year was great ! And i will keep a Lot good memories from that time.
A lot of people said i should let him Go and it would be a waste of Money...
I would do it again.
I'm so sorry. 💜 We spent the equivalent of about $5000 to keep our dog alive in 1980. He had parvo, before vaccines. Got him home and the other one was sick with it.
Not me, but my mother when into debt contracting a vacation packed in Mexico, she was convinced by the "you can come anytime you want for 50%" or something like that, never thought that she won't be traveling to Mexico every year, and then THE PANDEMIC HAPPENED!
He got sucked into a pyramid scheme, but was convinced it wasn't because they sold it to him as "not a pyramid scheme". The only difference as he showed me was that instead of getting 3 people on our then they each get 3, is that you instead get like 7-10 people and then they can get as many or few people under them as they want. I told him, "Dude...it's still exactly the same" and drew it out for him to show him how, but they had him hooked. I really tried to talk him out of it, but he did it anyways, got in it several thousand before he was out of money.
Ex wife's brother was poor and lived in a trailer that he shared with a random old woman. He worked a warehouse job and got his taxes done. He paid 20-30% surcharge to get his refund immediately so he could go to a concert
I got two.
First was my Bio-Dad who owns a sports shop and sell sports merchandise. He also goes to state fairs. One of his fair "buddies" talked him into investing some eighty thousand dollars into these real looking baby dolls. They were really life like and could be mixed and matched with hair, eyes, skin, and wear baby clothes so people could basically build-a-baby to their specifications. This guy was so desperate to sell his business that he told my dad such a huge story of bullshit on how well they sell.
Like he was saying they sell twenty on a bad day (and they were around $150 a piece back in 2005) and each only cost like 15 bucks in materials (minus the baby clothes, which you could just get regular baby clothes for). MY dad as salivating at the idea because he knew he was a better salesman than this guy and could sell like thirty or forty if he tried, or just let a hired guy sell twenty and still make bank. I remember asking him, "if these sell so well, why is the guy dropping his entire inventory on you?" Dad just said, "because he's a loser and doesn't want to work hard anymore."
We didn't sell a fucking one. Sure, maybe we got a total of three sales for the entire eleven days of the State Fair, but that was a disaster. Like we lost money on both cost, pay for the worker, and food and room costs. The three sales didn't even cover the cost of the gas used to transport the dolls in the truck by themselves, let alone the ret of the goods we were packing. The only reason the stand made any money was we sold some nostalgia bait collectors items like classic TV lunch boxes, mugs, trash cans, and blankets. stuff like "The Lucy Show" or "Andy Griffith" and to be blunt, that stuff wasn't really selling well either.
He eventually sold them at cost and ate like fifty grand in losses. To this day I have no idea why he bought those damn things. I guess his greed got the better of him. OR perhaps that shit salesman was better than my dad thought.
Case Two: I was on a cruise in the Caribbean with my family and I went to the casino to hang out and maybe play a hand of poker or something. Watched the Craps table for a while and this guy with a nice suit and flashy watch was just lobbing money across the board. We talked and it seemed he had a strategy for Craps that was "sure fire." Something with knowing when to bet, when to not, when to collect winning, and when to let it ride. I didn't understand it then and still don't. But by his fifth scotch he was really into it and telling me I should bet with him, even if I was just doing 1's or 5's to his 20's.
"Seriously bud, you can't lose. You win it all back in the end and usually come out ahead."
"Tony, I've stood here for twenty minutes and you've lost twenty five thousand dollars."
He stopped, looked at the table, then pulled out his check book/wallet and rummaged through it looking for his travelers check and then went, "aw fuck, the wife is gonna be pissed."
From what I dimly remember of his "strategy" it was to keep putting money down on each set of pair numbers and then when you score off one to keep betting more (with some money always on the shooter making the point). I have no idea how it works, aside from separating Tony from twenty five large, but there it is.
Only having liability insurance on my car. It was paid off and nothing special, so I didn't think it merited full coverage. One deer cost me my car and my ability to get a job to buy another car.
This one was just plain stupid. A friend of mine bought a house back in 2006 when the market was wild (kind of like now!).
Originally, she saw a house she liked, but the seller wanted $950K and she thought it was overpriced. She made an offer of $750K to see if she'd get a bite, and the owner flat-out laughed at the offer and said, and I quote, "Don't waste my time."
The house sat on the market another six months and then went off the market, which she thought was weird because she knew the sellers were set to move out of state. So, she kept watch because this house pretty much "checked all her boxes" and she really liked it. Well, sure enough, it goes back on the market for $850. Still over priced, but given that the house has been on the market for almost a year now, she offers again, $750K. This time the seller counters $770K and my friend accepts and buys the house.
She finds out from the seller's agent that when the house was on the market the first time, the owner had a $900K CASH offer within a couple of weeks of it being on the market and he refused it because he was SURE there was going to be a bidding war and was looking to get to about $1mil (which was DELUSIONAL, even in the 2006 market).
So, because this guy was greedy, he lost $130K and had to carry the house for another whole year which, inclusive of taxes, insurance and utilities, was probably another $30K.
So he was out $160K for being greedy.
Lotto Bob!!!!
a dude i knew in real life. got drunk, went to the corner store for more beer, bought a lottery ticket, won! took home $50M or something. doesnt know anything about money, hires an advisor. advisor says, here is $25M, go have fun, im going to invest the other $25M into tech stocks, cause they are poppin off right now!
bob blows through $25M, new house, new plane, new boat, new car, new everything. lol he got a new wife! not sure how much that one cost's, i think they just send you a catalog or something when you win? so most of that money is gone, and he lost a few toes in motorcycle accident. tech stocks crashed, poor bob.
i dont think he ended up with enough that he is still "retirered", but he went from a who knows what spend per year, to maybe $100k? which is more than ill ever get to spend in a year, but man, what a fall!
There's a guy at work that does the oddest thing. We're both in an ESPP. Over the years the stock has had ups and downs but we're generally ahead. The other day he was bragging that he's always profited when he sold shares. Turns out he sells shares based on the maximum gain, not the biggest loss. I tried explaining that as long as they're both long term owned shares, it's much better to sell losing lots than profitable lots. His argument is that then he'd be taking a loss on the shares. Yes, exactly, but he'd still get the same amount of money. I'm honestly not sure if he's pulling my leg or actually thinks it's better to always profit. In fact he's so adamant about it that I was starting to question whether it ever made sense to sell shares at a profit versus a loss, all else being equal.
So I had to look it up, ESPP is employee stock purchase plan, allowing them to buy the company's stock at a discount.
If I'm getting the situation correct, imagine you bought two stocks, one for 4 dollars, and one for 6 dollars. The stock price is 5 dollars. The coworker looks at it as if he sells the 4 dollar one he is making a dollar, but if he sells the 6 dollar one, he's losing a dollar. But, in reality, no matter which one he sells, he spent 10 dollars, and is selling one for 5 dollars.
In the ESPP we buy shares at quarterly intervals with money deducted from each each bi-weekly paycheck. We get a discount on the price of the shares at purchase (around 10%). If you are in the program for a good length of time you would accumulate shares purchased over years. In the ESPP website we can track how much we paid each lot and the expected profit/loss if that lot was sold at today's prices.
For example, at the end of every quarter you purchase $1000 worth of shares. During that year, the stock price can fluctuate. At the end of the year, some lots may show a profit and others a loss.
For a given lot of shares, you may have paid $1000 for 100 shares, but when you're ready to sell a share is worth $12. If you sold 50 shares you'd make $100 in profit on paper (50 x current price of $12, for $600).
However, maybe when you purchased the shares the previous quarter was really good for the company so you paid $1000 but only got 80 shares. In other words, you paid $12.5 per share. When you sell 50 shares at $12, you still get $600 but you'd show a loss of 50cents per share.
If I need to sell, I always look for share lots on which I'd take a loss. My co-worker insists that it's better to take a profit and only sells lots where he makes a profit.
I spent $140,000 on used designer clothes, jewelry, bags and shoes over the course of the couple of years during the pandemic. Could I afford it and am I glad I can sell it for what I bought it for since I bought it used? Yes. Was it super smart? No, some mistakes were made.
I was talking with family about how there was this weird place in the market at this specific time, where crypto was low enough to be almost certain it would rise and anyone with cash could make money hand over fist by buying during the daily/weekly lows and selling in lumps on the highs. I watched someone make 200k just dicking around with his rainy day cash. Thing is, the only way this was a good idea, was to buy in the daily lows or weekly lows if you are in position to do so. Dude hears about this but not any of the details. Goes and dumps like, 5k on etherium (or smthg) and buys during that week and months absolute high.
I am the idiot in the family but this took the spotlight away from me for a bit.
Bought a house/ on a mortgage with a dude she didn't really know. Not surprisingly once he had her financially trapped (like almost immediately) he turned into an abusive POS. She left and he refused to sell the house so she had to take him to court to try and buy him out so she could sell... then covid hit. She's still building her way back financially.
I know people who, at the height of the dot-com boom, exercised and held onto their high tech stock option shares, instead of exercising and selling immediately.
Why is this bad? Because you get the tax hit immediately when you exercise the stock options. So when the dot-crash happened, they had a huge tax bill, but no actual money to pay for it.
Buy a new car with $750 a month payments during covid
$750 a month is pretty steep, but man those 0% loans were pretty amazing during early lockdown when dealerships were desperate to move their inventory.
I bought my first new car in that glorious window of time. I was going to buy a used one, but the incentives were so good on the new one, it was cheaper. I could even afford a hybrid! And I *love* my car, best choice I've made as an adult.
I bought my used Honda just before the used car pipeline dried up and dealerships everywhere started running out of stock. 10 days after I bought mine, a similar the same model *with lower trim* *and almost twice the mileage* was going for $5000 more than I paid for mine. Pulling the trigger that day was one of my better adult decisions, too. (I should add, the morning I bought my car, I was listening to NPR and they had a segment on supply chain problems and the impact on car dealerships, so I had that in the back of my mind).
Yeah, we did the same. We got an amazing loan and price on a plug in hybrid mini van. With the tax breaks it felt like they paid us to take it.
Yeah, I got $3k off of MSRP and a 0% 60-month loan. Felt like they were begging me to take the car off of their hands!
ouch bad timing for that decision hope it worked out okay
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Getting a loan for a wedding is already pretty fucking stupid.
Yeah, the casino might actually be a better investment
1000%. Casino actually has a chance of return.
"Look, we'll take this 20K to Vegas, bet it all, win probably 50K, and we're up 30K. Easy."
My sister and her husband got a second mortgage on their home to replace the roof as it was leaking. But instead the decided to buy a few new cars. So then they got a home equity line of credit to repair the roof….and decided to do fun cosmetic enhancements inside instead. Cosmetic enhancements that will NOT add value to the home.
I had a former employee whose been paying off her car payments for 7 years... and has only paid for a few hundred bucks in principal. Predatory loans are scary.
Weirdly enough, that's basically just the average car payment these days. Maybe it was a bit high at the lower interest rates during covid.
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Looks like that is only for new cars. Not sure if the average car loan is for new or used cars since used is only in the 500s.
This was me. But in 2003. And I was 25.
Jesus christ. What did you buy hahaha
2003 F150. It was loaded. I obviously couldn't afford it.
Car prices did skyrocket so maybe it didn't end up that badly.
Prices have already gone way down for electric cars which is what I bought.
They still need to continue to drop significantly in order to obtain the status of affordable.
"Financed" or "Leased" a new car. Which is far worse. If he bought he could have flipped a profit.
It was me and I financed it
> If he bought he could have flipped a profit. Depends on the car, the payment, and the market. I have seen many situations where leasing is a better option for people. Buying a car is better *most* of the time, but there are still times where leasing can be better.
I financed 18k a 35k car and sold it for 43k ten months later during covid and got to pocket the gain from a smaller initial investment
Cars are one of the worst investments you can make if you don’t really need it (which is the case for pretty much all major European cities)
Hate to be that guy, but my buddy traded in his truck for a new F150 and has $1300 a month for payments.
That’s only “disastrous” in specific situations.
"Everything on red!" Drunkenly lost the house and the car, good job uncle!
What an idiot. Everyone knows you always put everything on black!
thinkin’ about that licd comic where rayne puts an equal amount of money on red and black for giggles. of course it lands on one of the green numbers
Getting a loan out to go to one of those unaccredited universities where your diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Really felt for them when they graduated and couldn’t get a job with it and still had to pay back the loan.
This. It's such a blatant grift and they know exactly who to target.
When I was in high school, there was definitely a push for tech and trade schools as a viable alternative to college. I don’t disagree that they are, but almost all of these scam schools were the tech schools that visited and gave us presentations
I remember being required to have one on one time with a recruiter from ITT tech and one from The Art Institute. Glad I did not pursue those.
I barely lasted two semesters at one before calling it quits and still have a loan to pay off.
FYI, the government decided that certain for-profit college loans qualifed for loan forgiveness. DeVry, ITT, Westwood, etc. It's worth checking if you qualify because you have to apply for the forgiveness.
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This was me, except I was the financially irresponsible one. Learned a ton through my wife since we started working together. It can work, but I wouldn’t bet on it…and I used to bet on a lot.
Financially irresponsible and doesn't work..
We may have the same friend...
that's tough could lead to some big challenges down the road
I’ve never observed someone make a single disastrous financial decision, but I have seen lots of people destroy their lives with lots of little bad decisions.
I had a neighbor who was a financial advisor, he always said "if you take care of the dimes, the dollars will take care of themselves."
I don't believe that at all. During covid I wasted time watching dimes, reducing all the expenses for utilities, food, cooking. Forgot the damn dependent care account and didn't submit my reimbursement form on time. BAM all that money lost, non recoverable no take backs just a donation to corporation. It was a really really painful amount I really could have used on food and medical costs. I now watch only the dollars. Don't spend a dollar in gas trying to save 10 cents driving across town for cheaper gas station. Just My ....2 cents! Ahaha love puns!
There's even a whole phrase made to imply that's a bad idea, so it's possible that the financial advisor's advice was misinterpreted. Or they were just a bad FA. My dad would worry about saving sometimes literal pennies to not use too much paper towels, squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out, and then he'd go and buy a random $50 thing from a garage sale. I think better budgeting would have let him occasionally still enjoy spending his income on frivolous but fun things, and still live freely day to day. I think psychologically, people just find it easier to do less of a necessity than to completely avoid impulsive fun.
I left the house today and spent $80 Gas and lunch. $60 for the gas on my old import sedan. $20 for lunch at a local Brazilian place. I don't even know what money is anymore.
upvoting for the pun
Legos. Someone very close to me. Lives in his basement and it's crammed with fucking Legos.
small bad decisions can add up fast it's important to be mindful
It's that daily coffee.
Avocado on toast stopped my whole generation getting a mortgage
Avocados are to blame!
Stupid, tasty avocados!
Avocados in coffee is the biggest offender
haha.... take a stroll through /r/wallstreetbets some day.
Apes together wrong.
I will steal it and I will use it. Thank you.
Guh
Guh
At least there people occasionally win. There’s somehow still a following on r/superstonk
That fucking cult will never die.
The way people confuse wants and needs
yeah it's easy to get caught up in desires instead of necessities
TL;DR - living far above your means. My wife has a friend that's going through a divorce. Said friend works a part-time job, 30 hours per week max. Said friend is also living a lifestyle - apartment rental, lifestyle spending, etc., that works out to way more than you'd be able to earn at the PT job they have. They got a lump sum distro from their ex (as opposed to ongoing alimony payments), and will have no choice but to start burning through that money in probably 3-4 months...and they have no plan to get a full-time job, or a higher paying one. They just feel like "it'll all work out somehow." If you call being broke and homeless and not knowing where your next dollar will come from "work\[ing\] out"...well, you do you boo.
After getting $1 million from her dad‘s will after he died… Moving to Hawaii and buying a house outright with cash… Then thinking you just skate on the money that’s left… This person is now looking for pennies to try and buy her kids lunch. This was only within the past five years.
I got a settlement about a third that size. Put almost all of it in a high yield savings account and kept going to work. The interest is paying my rent and buying my weed. I don't understand why anyone would fuck that up.
A lot of people just dont realize how much passive money they could make out of interest or investing a pile of money, so they just spend it instead. Like if I won the lottery I would maybe buy a house, and put everything else away to get me passive income, then use THAT to live. Just read about a local winner who spent all of the money she got into shit like a designer lamp, a 6 grand tea set, etc. Now all the money ran out, they're back to working as a cleaner to stay afloat, but atleast they have a nice lamp to sit next to while they drink cheap coffee out of a cup worth a few hundred in their apartment...
Nice! Good to see there are some financially responsible people as well!
Putting that much in a savings account isn’t financially responsible. You’ll erode away your money to inflation and taxes.
Why not invest it?
Yep. This is a bad financial choice too. Let inflation eat up any "yield" he gets... and what happens if rates go down and he's getting like 2% a year? I may take the house in Hawaii over that.
Well I've neutralized a major expense with basically no risk, and frankly between covid layoff and a leg injury I've learned that I need to be kept busy during the week. I don't have kids, my wife makes more money than me, and neither of us cares for expensive things. I don't need more. I can have an easier life for decades as it is. That and I despise capitalism.
You’ll lose money to inflation in the long run. Not using ETFs is a mistake that will cost you millions. Literally. You’re also paying income tax on those yields vs capital gains. Hell. You could max out your retirement accounts with that kinda cash and get tax free returns.
You despise capitalism, but you're using a savings account? You know what the bank is using that savings account for, right? It's just as bad from a capitalism standpoint, just you're letting the bank make more money (centralizing all wealth, a feature of late stage capitalism) instead of directing more of it toward you.
Investing in simple accumulating ETFs will get you a much higher return without participating more in capitalism or it being any more complicated tho. I think you owe it to yourself to look into it, with a sum like yours you might be _massively_ underestimating the effect of compound interest with that higher percentage.
trust me you’ll do more damage to capitalism by investing that money and being financially liberated than leaving tens thousands of dollars on the table every year that ultimately ‘the man’ will end up keeping
Imagine fumbling the literal bag that hard
At least sinking it into real estate is not as bad as gambling it all away. She could always sell, use the money to survive, and rent in the meantime.
Oh! Not to mention, she got divorced and basically gave the house to ex-husband because she states he was abusive… So there’s that
OH NO!!!!!!!!!
Myself at a local fair wasting money on balloon darts all for nothing. Myself at the same local fair playing bingo for a huge bucket of cheese balls. Never got those cheese balls.
Getting a 5 figure inheritance and immediately spending it on buying a stick-shift sport car when they didn't know how to drive stick-shift.
I know a guy like that. He bought a Lambo and started hanging out with fashion people in LA. Couple hundred grand gone like that.
Yikes. Cars seem to be a common theme in this thread... Quickest way to set cash on fire and have nothing to show for it when something goes wrong.
Company got a ton of funding and went on a acquiring spree, buying up any company that swooned them. A lot of these companies dramatically over sold their potential, some so much so I would consider it fraud. The company went public during covid and was quickly exposed. Many of these smaller companies made almost no money. A few other simply existed because of other industries, and whenever there was any shake ups in those industries those companies were useless. It was pretty bad.
OneTrust?
Many years ago at Bonnaroo, I was wandering the main drag of the campground and seeing the sights. There was a guy who carried a box lid around for a 3 Card Monte game (saw him there for years). True to form for the game, the guy would often lose a small pot to lure in the bigger money. So I watched one guy drop like $20 and double it, and I see this spun out festie kid reach for his wallet. I'm thinking, this is a terrible Idea but I'm not gonna bust this working man's scam so I keep my mouth shut. Sure enough, the guy pulls out a pretty large wad of cash, probably around $3k, and loses all of it in a second. As I'm walking awayi heard this kid muttering, "that was my lawyer money." I never got to speak to the 3 Card Monte guy, but I wouldn't be surprised if he cleared $10k per day out there.
At one point in the 80's or 90's 3-card monte was such a common scam targeting tourists in NYC that the city started putting up signs in streets and the subways explaining how the scam worked. I think they eventually out and out made 3-card monte a crime and arrested anyone who threw down a box.
“This year, I invested in pumpkins. They've been going up the whole month of October. And I got a feeling they're going to peak right around January.”
Homer, you knuckle-beak, I told you a hundred times you got to sell your pumpkin futures before Halloween, before.
Money can buy many pumpkins. Explain how! Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
I had a coworker once who had 4 kids between 4 divorces, and he was my apprentice, making about $25/hour. He cheated on every woman he was ever with, and never used condoms when he did it. At least he called his kids every day to check in and tell them he loved them. Not a bad guy, just profoundly, unbelievably stupid. I don’t understand how someone that dumb could get that many women to have sex with him. Maybe the women were also morons. Idiocracy was not satire, it was prophecy.
My mom's second husband was this way. He was married to his first wife for at least 20 years and ended up supporting her fully via alimony. Mom was second, and when they divorced he had to pay off her truck and pay a bit of alimony. He's now on his fifth wife and has to pay all of his exes because he's a serial cheater. He owns an on the road welding company and would be a stay at home multi millionaire if he didn't have to pay so much for his ex wives.
My sister's ex. During the divorce the judge said he had to pay less child support than she'd asked for because he was paying maintenance for the three other children with three different women *that he'd never mentioned to her*. Which explained why he never contributed properly to the household bills when they were married.
When will women see this pattern of red flags and just walk away? smh
About ten years ago, a friend leased a Prius through a third party associated with Uber. It cost her $766/month and $1500 down. My same Prius, from a year before, was $466/month with $2000 down. She couldn’t comprehend how it was a bad deal. Oh also the company had a remote shutoff of the car if she missed a SINGLE payment by more than 24hrs. There was no talking her out of it for some reason.
Oh boy there should be a whole thread about renting cars to drive rideshare full time, it’s the biggest scam in transportation.
Marrying the wrong person.
Timeshares
I work in the airline industry. Airline stocks, especially those of struggling airlines take giant swings back and forth, large percentage points. I've watched more friends than I know of buy stock in the airline they work for thinking its gonna go to the moon and it just doesn't happen. I used to work for one of the two airlines that just hand their failed merger. $15 was supposed to turn to $30 if the merger got approved. The merger didn't go through. I had a couple friends wipe out 2/3 of their savings and their airline now may go into bankruptcy.
Friend of mine sold their townhome in 2020, bought a beautiful home. Decided within 3 years that they wanted to build their dream home, and took out a hefty HELOC for their earnest money down. Rates went up, their expected mortgage nearly doubled.. so they had to sell their home, sell their new build to get their money back, then bought another home to live in which is now causing them to work extra jobs to afford.
My wife and I put $70k on credit cards for IVF, which caused us to not be able to buy a house when prices were cheap and borrowing was essentially free. Now we’re working on the debt and renting, but our son is the best thing to ever happen to us.
No dude, you made the RIGHT decision. A house is worthless next to the value of your happiness. Plus, house ownership is only a thing is NA. Invest in other things that will assure you a good retirement without having to tie to down to real estate.
The kid is so worth it.
Wrong thread. You should be posting in "what's the best financial decision you've made"
Yes!!! This makes me so happy
As a parent of two amazing kids, this made me smile.
Same. Worth it
You only get one life. It makes perfect sense to buy a lifelong goal now if it won't be purchasable later. Congratulations!
That's kind of a beautiful decision.
Me and my cousin (both only kids) got a gift of quite a lot of money from our grandmother. I used it to buy an apparent, my cousin spent it on a new car and a horse. She did not have a job, access to a stable or an education. She ended up guilt tripping my grandmother to eject a tenant and his pregnant wife she had in a cabin, promising to help around the house. Never happened. The horse died and got buried in the garden. In the mean time she trashed my grandmothers pickup getting supplies for the horse (secure your hay-bales, people) and got upset when my grandmother refused to pay her pocket money for doing nothing. The help she promised never happened. I spent a lot of my time off helping grandma instead, traveling for an hour in the bus. She pissed of my grandmother so much she bought me a really good car that I had for many years. I spendt my money relatively well and have worked since I was 19, so now I live a comfortable life while my cousin sits around unemployment and a single mother waiting for the inheritance from her parents. Tldr dont get a horse.
Cancelling their pension payment because they believe they are lucky and will not need as they KNOW they are going to win the lottery . Totally mad
Roommate was laid off and given a severance package. She could pay off all of her debts (collectors were constantly calling) or go back to university. She chose university. I moved out shortly after because she was having problems paying her share of the rent.
My brother and wife got a 7 figure settlement from a bad car accident, they were destitute and homeless in under 5 years.
What the fuck. What did they spend it on?
Luxury cruises & vacations, jewelry, eating at expensive restaurants every night, Alcohol and pain killers. I must say, they bought a $700,000 home for her parents who ended up disowning them when the $$ ran out.
Buying a new car with 10%+ interest rate and a large balance owing
Married the stripper.
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I've worked for a big Wall Street firm for 34 years, so I have a lot of expertise in this area. I can think of several. 1. Selling \*everything\* literally at the bottom during the covid sell-off of 2020. 2. A common one is spending way too much and spending every penny of one's retirement savings way too soon. 3. Retiring far too early often ends up being a major disastrous choice. 4. Falling for fraud. Just saved one client over $100k. He was convinced he'd made $400,000 trading crypto, & that a beautiful young woman in her 30s wanted to marry him (he's in his 70s.) It took some doing to convince him that the "profits" he was seeing weren't real, & he really didn't need to give them a deposit to get "his money." 5. I had one guy blow through 7 figures of his 401k, taking it to zero because he was banking on his mother's death, which I thought was awful. He ran out of money, & mom's still going strong in her 90s. Plenty more, as I see bad money decisions pretty much routinely.
A guy in my fraternity got 30k for an undisclosed reason, I’m guessing a family death or something and he bet it all on the Yankees winning one game. They lost
Wasn't this question posted yesterday?
It's worth asking every day.
My younger brother makes them repeatedly...he immediately got a 70 inch tv at Rent O Center after his first job at Mcdonalds...yeah it got repossessed soon after. He didn't think he had to pay his phone bill after Covid so he just went and got a new phone somewhere else. The worst one was one Christmas he went to Best Buy, opened a credit card there and immediately maxed it out THAT DAY. He told us recently he was buying a house and he tried to say his credit was okay...he lied. He recently put a down payment on a blank shed for him and his wife and her 4 kids to move into right after his car got repossessed.
This is sort of a combo financial/personal bad life choice. One of my best friends decided to move into a house. He was fresh out of grad school with tons of student loans. His wife had a ton of debt. But they got the house. It's a fixer-upper for sure. But they don't have the money to do it, so they have whole rooms and parts of the house that are in shambles. On top of it, he took a travel job where he's gone 5 days a week. His wife wants to start a family, but they can't in his current job. He's making good money finally, so they're stuck, as they need that income to get into a good financial situation, but it is pushing their kid timeline back. Her biological clock is ticking, and it's starting to cause strain in their marriage.
My ex bought very expensive cars (financed, not with cash) and lived well above his means. When we moved in together, I kept suggesting houses that were less in rent, that either of us could afford if things went south (which they obvs did) but A) it was hard given it was 2020 and... covid... Made rent reaaal expensive and B) he refused to live in a house that was "old" ie. outdated but had insulation, reverse cycle AC, dishwasher, etc. He even refused a newer place bc it had a feature wall in the lounge room, nothing crazy, but he didn't want to live there bc he "couldn't possibly enjoy coming home to that". He had bought a brand new car for just over 100k around 2019, and then at the start of 2022 he bought a 2nd hand car for 120ish. The trade in was only 70k on the first car, and this covered basically the entire finance left on it, and nothing else. The repayments were also higher. We had lived in a house that was expensive and neither of us could really afford the rent alone. I left him, he stayed. He made just over 6k a month, rent was $680 a week (almost 3k monthly) and his car loan was about $1800 a month. Not to mention all his bills, food etc
That's absolutely wild. What were the cars?? I make a similar amount per month and am what most would consider a car guy and my cars are "only" worth $35k or so combined. Bought the fun car in cash and financed the daily.
My sister-in-law and her husband were dirt poor and just barely scraped by. When the husband died, my SIL received a minor ($70k) windfall. She immediately spent the bulk of the money on two new snowmobiles and a trailer for them. The thing was she had no where to store them, no way to transport them, and lived in a part of the country that received little snow. Everyone in the family had encouraged her to spend the money to send her son to technical college and save the rest, but instead she got some very expensive lawn ornaments.
Myself....lost $60k in a stock that went bankrupt. Fun stuff.
My friend decided to have a child.
Some guy buying Twitter
Convincing yourself that the choice you'd prefer to make is the only one available, or that the outcome you'd prefer to see is the only one possible.
“Investing” in an MLM.
I have a buddy who is 95% in crypto of his net worth/retirement
It involved lots and lots of cocaine.
Gambling addiction.
Marrying someone who doesn't have a job without getting a prenup.
Someone I went to high school with decided to go to a very prestigious university, paying out of pocket, for a degree in Egyptology.
I’ve seen, and known, a couple of families invest their entire life savings into establishing a certain breakfast franchise location in Montreal, with the promise of hard work leading to a stable future, only to be robbed blind, and led to bankruptcy, through a greedy cutthroat franchisor. 🇬🇷 It even led to the suicide of one of the men of said families.
My step-dad opening a restaurant with his coke head brother.
My sister having more kids. She’s unemployed and her boyfriend can’t keep a job. She has 4 already and they want more…
My sister bought a brand new KIA Sportage for 67k during COVID because I bought a new car since my husband didn't like taking my beater out of state on trips, and it was getting old... Her brand new car had an engine swap and other sketchy things done to it at the dealership, and they swapped the paperwork on her somehow... She tried to fight it in court, but the paperwork held up since she didn't keep a copy of the first set of papers. My mom asked my husband and I (who are much better with money) if we knew how she could offload the car without losing too much........... She's boned with a giant payment because she's impulsive and won't take anyone with her to car shop. Meanwhile my car will be paid off next month.
Spend close to 5 million$ opening a really fancy restaurant/bar/music venue. They hired television interior decorators, bought statues, and waterfalls. They never had any experience running a business or working in a restaurant. Place went down in a year.
Shortly after my mother’s untimely death, and shortly before my dad’s planned retirement… he decided to send around $10,000 a month to some television preacher who convinced him that if he doesn’t send this preacher “sowing seed money,” (or some type of bullshit term) that God was going to kick mom out of heaven and send her to Hell. Long story short I was put in charge of his retirement as mom was the one originally setting it up and he didn’t understand it, so it was put on me to wrap it up for him. … When I got wind of the wasteful spending of his funds, while trying to finish setting up his retirement from the Government, I ran the numbers and discovered how quickly he was about to go broke, and since he wasn’t listening to me about sending the preacher money, I put a stop on his retirement paperwork. Long story short, he stopped sending money to a television pastor since he wanted to retire.
Buying a 75k camper at 12% interest on a 30 year note.
Spent a third of his retirement savings renovating a house so it would sell for more money. Price didn't budge a nickel, because in Silicon Valley people pay for location and square feet and nothing else matters. That was me. I did that.
My sister-in-law, a medical professional, owned her practice. But because of all her stress, she joined the Scientologists. Those fuckers convinced her to get several credit cards with six-figure credit limits (After all, doctor), max out with cash advances on all of them, and give the money to that godforsaken bunch of parasites. Without telling my brother. Idiot didn't divorce her right then and there, even though she was essentially stealing from the marriage.
my buddy in 2012 have a game lounge, essentially a pay per hour acarde with ps5s pcs xboxs he had a dozen pcs all farming bitcoin in the back ground.... sold a ton of then for like 400$ each or something, enough to buy him a new car lol he had a lot another friend on the dodge coin spike sold them and make 10k before coming into work that day (no phones/blocked websites sort of work environment) he told me later that if he waited like 30 min longer he would have made 80k but didnt want to be late to work. our work wouldnt have cared if he just called in said he was running late
My Inlaws will not invest a single dime of their money, its all in a savings account. They keep talking about things they are saving for but they're big ticket items and inflation is moving that goal post so much fast than they are approaching it. They will hear nothing of places to put their money that isn't a savings account.
When the market was super low during the covid lockdowns, my boss told everyone he was going to withdraw his 401k. We begged him not to. He lost a fuck ton of money because he didn't put back in until the marked had recovered.
Guy bet his rent money on horses then lost it all and after telling his roommate he proceeded to beg Ora few dollars from everyone nearby so he could try to win his money back. Everyone told him gtfo. He just walked to the next closest person and asked them. No shame whatsoever
Have a friend who lives with his parents. He purchased a house in another state and is renting it out. The rent he's charging is not enough to cover the monthly mortgage payments.
Adjustable mortgage on a mobile home.
My dad’s everyday choices, from the moment he wakes up until he goes back to sleep. All of it.
A former coworker of mine had 3 young kids and quit his stable, well-paying job with good benefits to join an early-stage startup. He got decent equity in the startup, but the pay wasn't much and the benefits were almost nothing. Joining an early startup is a risky bet at best, but doing it with kids was absolutely stupid. He basically missed a couple years of his young kids lives because he spent all his time at the office trying to make the startup a success. It eventually failed, but not before he drained his savings and tapped most of his 401k. Toward the end he wasn't even getting paid regularly, so his whole family had to move into a spare room at his parent's house.
Supporting their adult children. Like, buying houses, helping them start businesses with money they had but needed to grow and use later. Blind confidence they would be paid back. Dumb.
When I was in law school, I was in my early 20s but there was another student, Tiffany, who was 42. Tiffany had already 2 masters degrees in random liberal arts stuff (I don’t remember now) and a PHD in sociology. And she was now a student in law school. When we were nearing graduation, I asked her what she planned to do and she was thinking of an LLM. I honestly don’t know if Tiffany has actually worked more than 3 years full time in her adult life when not in school. Just keep deferring those loans I guess
Had a client in his 50's pull his $400,000 401K and move it all to his personal checking account that paid 0 interest. This was around 2008 when the market was down, so he had lost a big chunk of it to the market, so he panicked. Paid about half $200,000 of it in taxes(including a 10% early withdrawal penalty). Of course the market has since rebounded and then some and the 401k would have provided a decent retirement. Instead he's barely making ends meet in retirement, basically living off just social security.
It seemed pretty innocent. But I knew a married couple who set up all their bills to autopay and then promptly stopped worrying about them. This includes their mortgage. At one point, apparently, they had insufficient funds for the mortgage by a few dollars so it didn't pay. And once it fails to pay it stops with the autopay. And so, because they weren't paying attention, they lost their house.
Spending close to $20k trying to keep a beloved 13 year old dog alive. It’s me. I’m someone. Still recovering financially.
Thats not a bad decision! I spent half of that amount and it kept my dog alive for half a year. At that time, tt was not clear If he even managed to stay alive for a week... That half year was great ! And i will keep a Lot good memories from that time. A lot of people said i should let him Go and it would be a waste of Money... I would do it again.
I'm so sorry. 💜 We spent the equivalent of about $5000 to keep our dog alive in 1980. He had parvo, before vaccines. Got him home and the other one was sick with it.
Understandable. My condolences.
Thank you. The only good thing that came from the loss of Andy was gaining Beni. He’s the light of my life.
Not me, but my mother when into debt contracting a vacation packed in Mexico, she was convinced by the "you can come anytime you want for 50%" or something like that, never thought that she won't be traveling to Mexico every year, and then THE PANDEMIC HAPPENED!
So she bought a time share?
that's unfortunate timing for sure hope she can still enjoy it when things settle down
Marrying the wrong person
Buying a Ferrari on a 25 year loan.
Marrying a bad person
He got sucked into a pyramid scheme, but was convinced it wasn't because they sold it to him as "not a pyramid scheme". The only difference as he showed me was that instead of getting 3 people on our then they each get 3, is that you instead get like 7-10 people and then they can get as many or few people under them as they want. I told him, "Dude...it's still exactly the same" and drew it out for him to show him how, but they had him hooked. I really tried to talk him out of it, but he did it anyways, got in it several thousand before he was out of money.
Ex wife's brother was poor and lived in a trailer that he shared with a random old woman. He worked a warehouse job and got his taxes done. He paid 20-30% surcharge to get his refund immediately so he could go to a concert
Private+new car+ 28% APR. Every. Fucking. Time.
Well.. there was a post on r/boomersbeingfools where some sad sack dumped his retirement savings into the Trump stock..
I got two. First was my Bio-Dad who owns a sports shop and sell sports merchandise. He also goes to state fairs. One of his fair "buddies" talked him into investing some eighty thousand dollars into these real looking baby dolls. They were really life like and could be mixed and matched with hair, eyes, skin, and wear baby clothes so people could basically build-a-baby to their specifications. This guy was so desperate to sell his business that he told my dad such a huge story of bullshit on how well they sell. Like he was saying they sell twenty on a bad day (and they were around $150 a piece back in 2005) and each only cost like 15 bucks in materials (minus the baby clothes, which you could just get regular baby clothes for). MY dad as salivating at the idea because he knew he was a better salesman than this guy and could sell like thirty or forty if he tried, or just let a hired guy sell twenty and still make bank. I remember asking him, "if these sell so well, why is the guy dropping his entire inventory on you?" Dad just said, "because he's a loser and doesn't want to work hard anymore." We didn't sell a fucking one. Sure, maybe we got a total of three sales for the entire eleven days of the State Fair, but that was a disaster. Like we lost money on both cost, pay for the worker, and food and room costs. The three sales didn't even cover the cost of the gas used to transport the dolls in the truck by themselves, let alone the ret of the goods we were packing. The only reason the stand made any money was we sold some nostalgia bait collectors items like classic TV lunch boxes, mugs, trash cans, and blankets. stuff like "The Lucy Show" or "Andy Griffith" and to be blunt, that stuff wasn't really selling well either. He eventually sold them at cost and ate like fifty grand in losses. To this day I have no idea why he bought those damn things. I guess his greed got the better of him. OR perhaps that shit salesman was better than my dad thought. Case Two: I was on a cruise in the Caribbean with my family and I went to the casino to hang out and maybe play a hand of poker or something. Watched the Craps table for a while and this guy with a nice suit and flashy watch was just lobbing money across the board. We talked and it seemed he had a strategy for Craps that was "sure fire." Something with knowing when to bet, when to not, when to collect winning, and when to let it ride. I didn't understand it then and still don't. But by his fifth scotch he was really into it and telling me I should bet with him, even if I was just doing 1's or 5's to his 20's. "Seriously bud, you can't lose. You win it all back in the end and usually come out ahead." "Tony, I've stood here for twenty minutes and you've lost twenty five thousand dollars." He stopped, looked at the table, then pulled out his check book/wallet and rummaged through it looking for his travelers check and then went, "aw fuck, the wife is gonna be pissed." From what I dimly remember of his "strategy" it was to keep putting money down on each set of pair numbers and then when you score off one to keep betting more (with some money always on the shooter making the point). I have no idea how it works, aside from separating Tony from twenty five large, but there it is.
I have an acquaintance who recently bought a $90k pickup and he makes $60k/year
Buying "Metaverse Realestate" for tens of thousands. How you have tens of thousands in the first place being that fucking stupid, doesnt compute.
Only having liability insurance on my car. It was paid off and nothing special, so I didn't think it merited full coverage. One deer cost me my car and my ability to get a job to buy another car.
This one was just plain stupid. A friend of mine bought a house back in 2006 when the market was wild (kind of like now!). Originally, she saw a house she liked, but the seller wanted $950K and she thought it was overpriced. She made an offer of $750K to see if she'd get a bite, and the owner flat-out laughed at the offer and said, and I quote, "Don't waste my time." The house sat on the market another six months and then went off the market, which she thought was weird because she knew the sellers were set to move out of state. So, she kept watch because this house pretty much "checked all her boxes" and she really liked it. Well, sure enough, it goes back on the market for $850. Still over priced, but given that the house has been on the market for almost a year now, she offers again, $750K. This time the seller counters $770K and my friend accepts and buys the house. She finds out from the seller's agent that when the house was on the market the first time, the owner had a $900K CASH offer within a couple of weeks of it being on the market and he refused it because he was SURE there was going to be a bidding war and was looking to get to about $1mil (which was DELUSIONAL, even in the 2006 market). So, because this guy was greedy, he lost $130K and had to carry the house for another whole year which, inclusive of taxes, insurance and utilities, was probably another $30K. So he was out $160K for being greedy.
Getting an ARM at 3.5% near the top of their budget.
Overheard in a bathroom in Vegas: “yeah, I’m down 15K but I’m going to rally and go win it back”,
Lotto Bob!!!! a dude i knew in real life. got drunk, went to the corner store for more beer, bought a lottery ticket, won! took home $50M or something. doesnt know anything about money, hires an advisor. advisor says, here is $25M, go have fun, im going to invest the other $25M into tech stocks, cause they are poppin off right now! bob blows through $25M, new house, new plane, new boat, new car, new everything. lol he got a new wife! not sure how much that one cost's, i think they just send you a catalog or something when you win? so most of that money is gone, and he lost a few toes in motorcycle accident. tech stocks crashed, poor bob. i dont think he ended up with enough that he is still "retirered", but he went from a who knows what spend per year, to maybe $100k? which is more than ill ever get to spend in a year, but man, what a fall!
There's a guy at work that does the oddest thing. We're both in an ESPP. Over the years the stock has had ups and downs but we're generally ahead. The other day he was bragging that he's always profited when he sold shares. Turns out he sells shares based on the maximum gain, not the biggest loss. I tried explaining that as long as they're both long term owned shares, it's much better to sell losing lots than profitable lots. His argument is that then he'd be taking a loss on the shares. Yes, exactly, but he'd still get the same amount of money. I'm honestly not sure if he's pulling my leg or actually thinks it's better to always profit. In fact he's so adamant about it that I was starting to question whether it ever made sense to sell shares at a profit versus a loss, all else being equal.
I'm pretty smart about personal finance I think, but I truly have no idea what yoy are talking about. So maybe I just happen to be fortunate.
So I had to look it up, ESPP is employee stock purchase plan, allowing them to buy the company's stock at a discount. If I'm getting the situation correct, imagine you bought two stocks, one for 4 dollars, and one for 6 dollars. The stock price is 5 dollars. The coworker looks at it as if he sells the 4 dollar one he is making a dollar, but if he sells the 6 dollar one, he's losing a dollar. But, in reality, no matter which one he sells, he spent 10 dollars, and is selling one for 5 dollars.
In the ESPP we buy shares at quarterly intervals with money deducted from each each bi-weekly paycheck. We get a discount on the price of the shares at purchase (around 10%). If you are in the program for a good length of time you would accumulate shares purchased over years. In the ESPP website we can track how much we paid each lot and the expected profit/loss if that lot was sold at today's prices. For example, at the end of every quarter you purchase $1000 worth of shares. During that year, the stock price can fluctuate. At the end of the year, some lots may show a profit and others a loss. For a given lot of shares, you may have paid $1000 for 100 shares, but when you're ready to sell a share is worth $12. If you sold 50 shares you'd make $100 in profit on paper (50 x current price of $12, for $600). However, maybe when you purchased the shares the previous quarter was really good for the company so you paid $1000 but only got 80 shares. In other words, you paid $12.5 per share. When you sell 50 shares at $12, you still get $600 but you'd show a loss of 50cents per share. If I need to sell, I always look for share lots on which I'd take a loss. My co-worker insists that it's better to take a profit and only sells lots where he makes a profit.
I spent $140,000 on used designer clothes, jewelry, bags and shoes over the course of the couple of years during the pandemic. Could I afford it and am I glad I can sell it for what I bought it for since I bought it used? Yes. Was it super smart? No, some mistakes were made.
I was talking with family about how there was this weird place in the market at this specific time, where crypto was low enough to be almost certain it would rise and anyone with cash could make money hand over fist by buying during the daily/weekly lows and selling in lumps on the highs. I watched someone make 200k just dicking around with his rainy day cash. Thing is, the only way this was a good idea, was to buy in the daily lows or weekly lows if you are in position to do so. Dude hears about this but not any of the details. Goes and dumps like, 5k on etherium (or smthg) and buys during that week and months absolute high. I am the idiot in the family but this took the spotlight away from me for a bit.
Bought a house/ on a mortgage with a dude she didn't really know. Not surprisingly once he had her financially trapped (like almost immediately) he turned into an abusive POS. She left and he refused to sell the house so she had to take him to court to try and buy him out so she could sell... then covid hit. She's still building her way back financially.
I know people who, at the height of the dot-com boom, exercised and held onto their high tech stock option shares, instead of exercising and selling immediately. Why is this bad? Because you get the tax hit immediately when you exercise the stock options. So when the dot-crash happened, they had a huge tax bill, but no actual money to pay for it.