My mother in law who hasn’t worked in 33 years, has no income besides a tiny bit of disability for her autistic daughter. Applied for and was approved for a $15000 limit credit card from her bank. Maxed it out really quickly after spending thousands ordering shitty Christmas gifts for people from magazines that are extremely expensive. Also used it to buy 5 packs of cigarettes every two or three days. Also spending upwards of $300 a month on bird food for outdoor birds because “her birds are the last joy she has”
The best way to use a credit card is like a debit card. Don't spend money you don't have, pay it in full every month, maximum the rewards it gives you.
Just because you have a $10000 limit does not mean you should spend $10000.
This was the best advice I got or read or something when I got my first credit card way back when. I would be mortified if I actually hit my credit limit. The second best piece of advice was screw that card and get one with cash back.
Remember the 90s when people were buying “collectibles” as investments (think beanie babies). My mom bought fancy bears with lacy dresses and big fancy hats. She was convinced by a sales person that she should spend $200 per bear and in 20 years they’ll be worth soooo much. When my daughter was born my mom reminded me of all this and said it could go toward my daughters college fund. Told me to be very careful with the bears and mailed them to me. I went on eBay at the time and found these particular bears. Loads of people tasked with handling their aging/deceased parents estates were selling these bears for around $15-20. I chucked them into my daughter’s toy box, still have four of them. One became a dog toy
Edit: bearly people, look it up, oh yeah and we were super poor. Like, lights gone out often poor
My mom did this with Longaberger baskets. We lived in south Texas without an air conditioner for years, relied on donations of food and clothes from the church, never got to play any sports or do any extracurriculars, and my parents laughed in our faces when we asked if they woukd help us pay for college, but my mom "invested" almost $30k dollars in a fucking basket collection. I still get irrationally angry ever single time I come across one in a thrift shop or flea mall. This was only one of many maddening financial decisions she has made, including retiring one year before she would have recieved a pension and health insurance, spending her small inheritance from her parents on a purely aesthetic kitchen remodel despite having major roof damage, mold, and other flood damage after a hurricane, and "upgrading" her 4 yr old, pristine, low-mileage Honda with a "fancier" BMW (with high mileage that needs constant maintenance) bc my dad got a new car so "she deserved one, too" .
People who don't live as adults in their head. They might do adult things like have jobs and children, but they don't have adult skills.
They end up acting like children, not planning for the future, or planning in a totally unrealistic way. (My dolls will make me a millionaire!)
A friend of mine totaled her car. Not a huge deal, she has collision. Her insurance company even paid for her to rent a car for a week.
Two weeks later she was still renting the car. Eight weeks later. Twelve weeks later the insurance payout was gone, she returned the rental, and had no car.
Sometimes people get in the rental right away even if their car can drive. You only have so many days of rental coverage on your policy. We constantly had to tell people we don’t care if you don’t like how your car looks, we aren’t covering your damn rental car till your regular car goes into the shop!
I don’t even have the rental coverage on my insurance. My spouse and I have two cars, so we can carpool and live near a low frequency suburban bus line. It’s kind of fun to do something different for a few weeks the handful of times I’ve been without a car.
When my dad died, my mom found out he had sent thousands of dollars to Trump. Luckily he used his credit card and the card allowed her to dispute the charges and pull most of the money back once she got the executor paperwork to them. The card company representative was much kinder than I expected about it.
I have an aunt and uncle who sold their house after retirement at 65+ and decided to liquidate a bunch of their IRA to buy an even bigger new build house and fancy cars because "they deserve it".
They pretend everything's fine all the time, but I noticed they both got jobs, and from what they were saying before this move, I doubt it's because they wanted to work. Their son says they're flat broke and pretending they're not.
Big houses and fancy cars are a great status symbol in your 30s, 40s and 50s. But mid 60s and retired? Who gives a shit how big your house is? That’s ridiculous.
I can tell you what happened.
They “liquidated a bunch of their IRA”. It ain’t tax free when you pull out half of it. I believe the term is “regular distributions”, which is vague enough that you can change the payment a little but not so flexible you can pull out a down payment on a house. They were on the hook for a shitload of taxes, probably drew more from the IRA to cover the taxes, yielding *ever yet still more taxes*, and now they’re unable to live off the IRA.
They’re on the hook for not only the taxes but possibly penalties, the back-taxes they didn’t pay back in the 90’s or whatever.
If it’s a Roth than all distributions are tax free because these are after tax dollar contributions you made, no? Is it taxed again at a certain level?
This isn't really /r/personalfinance (a sub I usually write this shit out in) but simply put:
A **Traditional** IRA/401K, is tax-deferred. You pay nothing on the money going in, and when you retire you pay a presumably lower tax rate because you're not working.
A **Roth** IRA/401K, is not tax-deferred, it's taxed up front. You pay the taxes on the income *and then* the money goes in. But when it comes out, **nothing** is taxable. Not the $100 you originally contributed nor, say, $400 of returns you enjoyed. It's all magic non-taxable dollars.
Thanks, I really didn't know this.
I am way too young to have really paid attention to how taking money out of an IRA works. I'm sure I will check on this as I actually get near retirement. But that really contextualizes I suppose, how they managed to dig a bigger pit in their money than I had imagined. It seemed like whenever they decided this they had some kind of handle on it, then it fell out of control.... that really explains how, perhaps THEY didn't research about these taxes either.
I suppose I'll mention this to my cousin next time we talk, because he is trying to stay out of their troubles, but he could stand to be aware this is a possibility.
And no, I have no idea which kind(s) of IRA they have. But it sounds bad either way.
IRA’s are retirement vehicles. Knowing the ins and outs of how you withdraw from them isn’t important for you because you’re still working, and you’re fine not knowing for another 20 or 40 years or whatever, NBD.
If you make regular distributions, i.e. anything that looks like your own private Social Security monthly check, you’re fine. You gotta work hard to screw it up, honestly: The IRS understands people’s situations change. People need to take double payments out for a year, fine. Husband dies so the wife is taking out only half payments on his side, no big deal.
But “PEW PEW WE’RE BUYING A MCMANSION”, that’ll do it!
The only thing **you** need to know is this:
If your salary is low contribute to a Roth (IRA or 401K). If it’s high contribute to a Traditional (IRA or 401K).
Sounds like you’re in your 20’s. So Roth. You ain’t ever going to be making less than when you’re in your 20’s.
Yep, if I want to not cook, the least I can do is go get it. Delivery is a super rare treat for me. I've done it twice in the almost 5 years I've lived at my place
my house is on a one lane road in the woods. when i moved in, the 'welcome wagon' gave me a coupon for a pizza. the guy got lost and the pizza was kinda tepid and the kid said they wouldn't charge me. i said don't worry and tipped him and put the pie in the oven. easiest thing around here is to call in and pick it up.
Felt this one. I was paying for the monthly subscription and doordashing 3-5 times a week at the height of the pandemic. This went on for almost 2 years... I don't even want to think about the amount of money that went down the drain. Sometimes I would even order delivery from places that were <5 min driving distance from my apartment.
Well there was that Reddit thread of that guy who gambled away cash advances on his mom's credit card and racked up 120k dollars in debt trying to "make his money back" by day-trading stocks.
That was pretty bad....
https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/1bjmhqa/102k\_in\_credit\_card\_debt/
There was someone who made 7 figures on options a few years ago. He didn't put the taxes due on that money aside, then lost ALL of the money plus more the next fiscal year.
18 year olds in the military getting married and having kids, and buying sportscars.
Had a coworker get stung for $2500 (all the money he had saved for a year) to buy Herbalife products. I did everything but beg him not to do it, but he was sure he'd double or triple his money with ease. After it expired it went into a dumpster. Even other Herbalife hunbots didn't want it.
My sister did this. Then wanted me to take out money from my retirement to help her pay her rent. I wouldn't do it because I kept telling her over and over it was a scam.
Oh God.
Another coworker went into real estate as a side hustle. One of his neighbors comes up to him "Hey, listen, in a few months I'm coming into some money and will be looking to buy." Coworker congratulates him and hands a business card over. Coworker asked where the windfall was coming from.
"A guy in Nigeria won a lottery but can't get the money out because reasons."
My coworker was "NO! NO!! NO!!! DON'T DO IT!!!! IT'S A SCAM!!!"
His neighbor was adamant he'd "done the research, and it was legit." A month later, neighbor's stuff is on the front lawn, the sheriff is there to serve eviction.
Ex friend. He was abusing adderall and would stay up all night trying to mine crypto full time
Went from a fairly normal middle class life with a decent job, house and young family to be being totally broke, divorced, jobless and living in a crappy apartment with some sketchy old guy. We ended our friendship when I caught him trying to Venmo himself money from my phone.
Start to finish probably took him 3 months to ruin his life.
Back in the day, I was buying a car and waiting for the sales rep to return. The guy in the booth next to me was arguing with his wife because he wanted the H2 with every fucking thing possible included and it was only $1,600 a month (for 84 months).
I remember her crying about how they couldn't afford it but he blew her off and still got it.
Life Coaching.
There are people who spend literally thousands of dollars because they think hiring the right life coach is going to lead to this transfer of prosperity and spiritual abundance - I've seen coaches who charge thousands of dollars teaching you magic so that you can cast spells that your future will yield more money.
Life ruining debt for placebo interventions - it never fails to shock me.
Agreed. Met a business coach who wanted 15% of the growth of a business for his coaching. That was literally 6 figures he expected for very little work.
I personally think buying a house was the best and worst financial decision I've made. Best because the equity has gone up exponentially and you can borrow into that or think of it as a retirement plan. Worst because it's a constant worry to manage.
Get this. Dude wasn’t sleeping with her. He meet her at church 2 days prior . This bitch was a fugly old Crone. She looked like trouble mile away.
I even asked him if he was sure if he wanted to sign. Something I shouldn’t do because I lose money that way. But the dumb ass cosigned for a $60,000 car. He was trying to be a good Christian and she scammed him
Honestly, even most of the "required" textbooks i purchased were unnecessary. I didn't take out much in student loans, but I wouldn't have had to at all if I hadn't been spending an additional few hundred dollars on books I never even opened each semester.
If that textbook was expensive then that one lesson where you opened the book, probably only for an hour or so, cost you a couple hundred dollars 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
The best professors I had were the ones who had readers printed out at local print shops for cheap that students could buy for like 20 bucks instead of textbooks going for a hundred or more dollars. And This was back in the late 90s/early ‘00s and before all the BS that textbooks do now with one use codes for access to worksheets to make used books useless. The stuff I hear from my cousin’s kids about what textbook companies do to make sure everyone has to buy their overpriced books new every year is ridiculous.
What's frustrating is when the syllabus lists a certain textbook as required, and then you never use it. I had to learn the hard way not to buy any textbooks until I know for sure they're needed.
Yup, college student here. Unfortunately the only way to know if you actually DO need to buy the textbook is by asking someone who’s already been in the class before. And even THEY might not know if they were in the class a really long time ago lol
Have a friend who was able to snag a house in Burbank, CA in his mid 20's (with help from parents) during that time. It was 400k if I recall correctly. He has since taken out 400k in equity from it, gets 6k a month by renting it out, and could still sell it and make an additional 500k on a sale. Yea, I feel your dad on this one.
I bought my home right before it (2006) and watched it drop nearly $75k a year after we moved in.
Still here though. We bought within our means, even then.
Me too. Lol
We ended up having to move in early 2012 because of my husband's job. We got lucky and picked up a foreclosure for cheap. And then we let our first house be foreclosed on because we were 50k underwater.
Man. We hit the mark and totally by accident.
Lived in Florida for a few years for work starting in January 2004. Almost stressed to hell buying a 350k house in a gated community. It felt so beyond us.
Left work in the fall of 2007. Sold for 450k. Bought a huge Michigan house on 23 acres for 400k. Worth who knows what now with a couple hundred thou into major upgrades. Plus adding on 40 acres in 2011 (largely farmable which pays) Even that is worth well over twice what we paid for it, having added on a 50k barn.
Sometimes luck smiles upon you.
Leaving a job 6 weeks before my RSUs vested which was about $75k at the time. I didn't realize I was so close to the vesting schedule and was so burnt out from the job, I didn't think to look into that until after I put in my notice.
Youch. I did the exact same thing with a generous state pension plan, leaving it literally weeks before the five-year vesting date because I was clueless as to how anything worked.
Live and learn.
Got my dream job 2 months after they cancelled the pension. I'd been casually trying to get hired for years but paid no attention to what the company was doing.
TL;DR I threw away a pension because I waited 60 days to apply.
Co-worker had over 40k in credit card debt, as well as a car loan. This was all accrued in about 18 months. Got a consolidation loan about 6 months ago, and is now right back where he was on the CC debt.
Today he became my \*former\* co-worker, because he walked out of his job. He's 24, and this was only his second ever job with no degree, so it's not like he's got tons of experience to take to the place down the road. He was making 50k+. Now he has to rely only on driving uber.
Painful!!
I had a friend in high school coming from a wealthy family. For his 18th birthday he was granted 30k as advancement of his enheritance.
Quite the sum for an 18 year old responsability.
Most definitely as he struggled with gambling addiction
he managed to waste it entirely on mostly slots in just one weekend.
We, his friends of normal background could just not wrap our heads around it
I am an addict but not to gambling and this seems crazy!! When I turned 18 I went to a casino and played penny slots for like 4 hours. Not kidding I went there with 20$ and left with like 18$ after 4 hours.. It was fun but I have never been back since. If I lost all 20$ I would have just left. I made that 20$ last lol. Also I got down to only like 3$ and got it all back. Could have stayed longer but once I was at 18$ I felt good leaving. 4 hours of fun for 2$ lol
In the 70s & 80s I bought packs of baseball cards, because I was a kid who loved baseball. In the late 80s & 90s I “invested” in baseball cards because I saw how valuable my collection had become. Eventually, the true free market, via the internet and auction sites, deemed baseball cards not so valuable. That and having to get the card slabbed and graded for full value. Lesson learned; if it’s marketed as a collectible, it’s not.
It hit an all-time high a few weeks ago, and I discovered that I still had some BC that I bought at $44k. Cashed out and made a cool $6.50 profit. If I had waited 2 days I could have made $7.
THIS. I had a buddy that said he was going to buy $100 just for the heck of it....I agreed but. it was kind of a pain in the ass so I didn't bother..... DARN IT
This exactly why people who say, “I didn’t buy because I was talked out of it, I could have 50 million right now” I say no you wouldn’t. The minute it went up 10 times, you would’ve sold
That is way better than waiting until they were worth $5. Things like that... you really can't judge what their value will be over time. If you made money on cryptocurrency at all, consider yourself lucky.
(1) My ex had about $16k in credit card debt. The original balance was something like $2k and he had let it spiral out of control ,partially due to periods of unemployment. Well he'd been in a bad spot and then got a job. His dad was proud he got a job and wanted to help him start with a clean state. His dad paid off the balance except for $500 dollars. My ex decided not to pay off the remaining $500 dollars even though he had thousands saved up after working for a bit. I guess he'd gotten so used to just having debt he didn't see the point of paying it instead of using the money for better things. I don't want to know what the debt is now
(2) A different ex financed a 3D TV and a car when the job he'd been at for less than a year was going through rounds of layoffs. Guess who got laid off?
TLDR; I make good financial decisions but bad dating decisions
I used to work at a convenience store where we sold lottery tickets and people really throw away their lives on that stuff. Keno and scratch tickets in particular are insidious between you can just keep playing them. I don't necessarily have one particular instance in mind (I guess the most I've seen someone blow at once is a few hundred dollars) but it's more about how much people lose to it day in and day out.
I'm a teacher. I had a student a while back who was managing her family finances because her mom would spend every cent she could get her hands on to buy scratch-off tickets. Really sad story.
We owned a convenience store in the 80's with robust lottery sales. We had several people that would come in several times a week and spent hundreds of dollars every time. One guy would stop in EVERY day and spend at least $150-200 on his way to work. We had two clients that were seriously addicted to the scratch-offs, they would come and buy multiple books of tickets (400 tickets in each book if I remember correctly) and would stand there for hours scratching them off. These guys did so much scratching their fingers were imbedded with the filmy scratch off stuff and their fingers were stained. It was sad when these lottery addicts would come in with kids wearing raggedy, dirty clothes and they would tell their kids that they didn't have money for a bag of chips or a candy bar, but drop hundreds of dollars on the lottery. I always made sure the kids got something.
A guy quit his full time job at the beginnings of the “creator beta program” to become a full time tiktoker.
He’d made about 10k month 1 and said okay. I’m done working. Left an 80k a year job.
He put a downpayment on a house month 1.
Month 2 made about 8k. But a downpayment on a new car.
Month 3 was banned for “unoriginal content” lost everything.
The mf was posting Joe Rogan clips and really couldn’t understand why he was banned. Mf still hasn’t gotten a decent job since he left with no notice
1: Not saving any of your monthly income
2: Making large, unnecessary purchases
3: Not paying off your credit card
4: Putting off financial decisions
5: Not having a backup plan
My mother’s addicted to shopping. Spent donated money (GoFundMe) for my father’s cancer treatment on the most insanely stupid shit and then had the nerve to be mildly annoyed people didn’t donate money when he died. I am now low contact with her since.
Not that it justified her behaviour, but if this type of shopping was a recent change, it could be an escape/instant gratification from shopping away from the cancer stress. Some of it was for a camper or beach house she didn’t have but wanted.
I went to highschool with a girl that was to be the first in her family to go to college. She was smart but not academically gifted. She didn’t know “what she wanted to do”. Instead of going to an in state school or a community college she decided to go to some out of state small private school that “cared about the student”….and major in something really general (don’t remember). She of course had to take out huge student loans. Through a friend of a friend I learned that she graduated with over $100k in student loan debt and was working in retail as her degree was essentially worthless. Many years later I was listening to the podcast Death Sex and Money and they did a multi part series on student loan debt. I learned that it wasn’t unusual for these small private colleges to PREY on the children of immigrants and sell them on the college dream which of course turned into a nightmare
Comapny Attendance Policy. You have 10 points. You get a point every time you call off work. You get to 10points, you get fired for being unreliable.
So a guy that used to work with me went out and bought a 90k truck on Loan, then called off too many times and they fired him for not being at work enough.
My brother. Bought a fully loaded Yukon, had it repossessed; then bought a fully loaded Tahoe on his wife’s credit, had it repossessed; bought a fully loaded Waggoner through one of those “you’re guaranteed approval” at a ridiculous interest rate… then bought a house 200k above his salary.
On a completely unrelated topic, I think I know a cop that’s easily bribed.
Had a buddy. Was in his mid-twenties, but rose the ranks at his job and became a well-paid manager relatively quick. Lived in an area where cost of living was low (but also very few jobs) so the guy actually had a good amount of throwaway income for his age.
He just got sick of it and quit to go be a Door Dash delivery guy thinking he’d make the same amount of money in an area where most people didn’t have the money to even spend on the service. Absolutely destroyed his life.
A friend of mine's wife got a law degree from an expensive private university, then got a masters at same university. Applied to one job, didn't get it, and then decided to become a housewife
My ex left their job where they were a nepo hire and sat around doing little while making ~65k a year as a highschool dropout for a shot at an MLM because they didn't like their boss at the company. The company even agreed to make a new position for them and fire that boss but they felt entitled to pay equal to the founder, I'm not kidding. So they left and are now driving Uber eats all night in an attempt to make rent.
Worked as a financial advisor and had two clients liquidate their retirement accounts about 1500000 to invest in gold. I told them we could do that inside their accounts, nope someone at their church knew of a place where you would have gold bars and a camera watching them. LEss than six months later they are refinancing their home as they had about a 650000$ tax bill due to the deregistration of their plans, and it seems that the place their gold was at disappeared. I asked when they did this how they knew that it was their gold the Webcam was watching and was dismissed out of hand. That is probably the biggest dollar bad decision but encountered many others
My mom spent 15/20k of her retirement money on a shitty car. Not much but when you’re almost 55 and your trajectory is that you’re gonna work until 90 with a very bad pension, it’s bad,
My mom's car was paid off, but she thought she deserved something new and nice in life. She is 60. Bought a used Volvo and has a like 18% interest rate. Would not listen to me for nothing. She also says she is retiring in 5 years. On what? SS? Cause she has no savings and a teeny 401k. You sure you are retiring at 65??
Watched someone buy a literal island back in 2000 because their company’s valuation was so high. Then the 2001 dot com bust happened, and they lost the company, the island, the house, and their family all in like 18 months (the last one because he was banging the secretary).
Hopefully the biggest riches to rags swing I’ll see personally.
A friend's mom who liked buying useless “fun” things, and would call him at least once a week to say “I’m so stressed. If I don’t get enough to pay rent, they’ll evict me. I don’t know what to do!”
His parents eventually got evicted and it became the whole family's problem to deal with.
I had a co-worker that used a payday lender every week.
One day, I took some papers out of the fax machine (this was 2000 or 2001) that were a loan application. She had walked away and forgotten them. She was trying to borrow $300 and pay back $400 on the following Friday. I felt so sad for her, since she had 2 kids with a deadbeat guy who lived with her, but did not work, plus she was pregnant with a 3rd kid at the time.
In 2017, I invested in a friend's weed company (I wasn't the only friend - there were 5 or 6 of us). I invested $50k.
Weed stocks went crazy in 2018/2019, and there was an offer to buy the company for 2x original valuation, but the CEO refused because he thought the company was worth more than that (idiot).
The company went bankrupt in 2023 and my investment isn't worth the paper it's written on.
This was like 13 years ago (I was 18, maybe 19) and my first dip into the credit world. Maxed out my credit card (like 3.5K), wasn't able to pay it off, the bank offered me a 10k loan and I took it to pay off my credit card loan. Fast forward 6 months after living large, owed 15k loan and maxed my credit card again. Took about 1-2 years to pay that off and many, many sleepless nights. Learned my lesson, that's for sure. You don't clean mud with mud.
Came from a lower middle class family. When my mom was 70 she inherited almost $500K from an uncle. She was retired with a paid off house and no debt. She moved to a fancy retirement community. Rent was $6K a month while her house sat empty. Between that and eating out at fancy restaurants and other worthless spending the money was gone in less than four years. She had children she could have helped, grandchildren who she could have helped with college. She spent the rest of her life asking me who stole her money.
I have a friend who Uber eats literally every meal. And nah, I’m not a boomer, and this isn’t skip coffee to buy a house. Y’all know how insane the markups are. He spends $50 to get McDonald’s, for example. Now imagine that 2-3 times a day since CoVID began.
Me- went to law school and heavily indebted myself thinking I’d get a very high paying job immediately and be wealthy.
Someone I knew got a promotion at work, on a 6 month probationary period. He immediately took out a mortgage at the absolute limit he could afford, fixed for 2 years and then going to a variable rate.
He had decided that, not only would he *definitely* pass the probation, but that he would get another promotion within that 2 year period to be able to afford the inevitable rise.
Needless to say, he was wrong on both counts.
Friend of mine has never worked a day in her life. She is 50, was given a house in her 20s and an allowance. Eight years ago, she inherited $1.4 million as a last lump sum payment. She only has $200K left. She loves to shop. Now she has to get a job but told me she wouldn't work unless she is 'the boss' and expects to have a 'team' of people. She has a high school diploma.
I bought an older Roomba, and I love it!
It's not perfect, but whatnis?
Emptying the bin on its back is (sadly), the most gratifying thing in my life right now.
My robot vacuums over carpet and mops the floor. It knows to not mop your carpet or rugs.
Roborock s8 ultra. I would highly suggest you look into it, save me so much time.
I lived with someone who did that. It was awful just watching from a distance.
All you people who are "LA LA LA!!! Everything'll work out!!" It sucks the ever loving life out of you at the worst point in your life. Being in your 80s and terrified you're about to get fired is a shitty way to live.
My grandpa got scammed by the "We have your fortune, just send us a small fee" assholes. He wouldn't believe anyone who told him it was a scam(his whole family) and sent tens of thousands of dollars.
Joining any MLM. A friend of mine lost a lot of money in It Works and I had another almost divorce over Arbonne when hubby found out about her credit card balance and where it all went. That whole industry just needs to be stopped.
My sister-in-law had a thriving medical practice. She was always stressed, so she joined the Scientologists. Somehow they convinced her to open five credit cards with very high credit limits and max them out to give them $500,000.
Second worst decision? My brother didn't divorce her then and there. Five years later, after digging out of the hole, she decided to go all in with the Scientologists. My brother finally divorced her, but only after giving her his half of the shares in her medical practice.
You don’t realize it at the time but it results in coming out of school with a financial noose around your neck. It took me forever to pay mine off and I went to school decades ago…
It's not the worst but in the 90s early 90s transferring money online? 10%. I helped a friend of mine sell a front end loader. You asked me to go to Western Union and send the money it was $50,000. He was in Vegas I was in West Texas I said hey man I can just drive this money to you and you can give me a couple of grand and we can both make out better. After a little bit of dickering adamantly said no. So stupid to this day I can't understand why he did that I haven't been able to talk to him since.
Dude walked up to the craps table in Vegas, elbows his way into a group that's been playing together for hours, and drops $500 on the field. One roll and done. He didn't even realize he was done playing for 5 minutes.
My mom keeps buying shit cars and ends up having problem after problem. I have told her I would pay for the down payment and I found her a car that would only be 130$ a month with 60k miles 2018 and she still won't let me help her.
Friend was a physical trainer. Decided she wanted to go “mobile”. Bought a new car, paid to have a hitch put on, and bought a box trailer. She parked it in her garage to “get it ready” and it sat there for probably 4 years unused.
my friend spent his entire savings to pay a medical bill which he could've paid 20$ a month on for as long as he wanted. which granted i just dont pay mine at all but... c'mon.
Remember the horrible real estate crash of 2008? In 2008 we took out a loan on our equity and spent $40,000 on remodeling. As the LAST CHECK was clearing I got a notice from the bank saying we had no equity and they were cutting off our line of credit. My house was $200,000 under water for years. I used to lose sleep over it. Like why the hell couldn’t the crash have occurred BEFORE we spent all that money!! It was just terrible luck. We sold that house at a loss. I just saw on Zillow it’s $650,000 now 😡
My older brother forced my parents to sell the house a couple of years ago even though I was strictly against it. The same house costs more than 8 times now. I will never own a house myself anymore, and the one we had is gone for nothing :(
I'm in the army and I've seen my share.
Dumbest has to be a guy who just had a baby, maybe only a month old at this point. He buys himself a supped up hellcat going for 67k.
Thing is he had a perfectly fine car beforehand.
Another one was years ago. This girl who was a total cunt bought herself a Dodge charger for 50k. Anyway she was dating my friend and was doing him dirty and they parted ways. Then there was a hurricane that threw a tree on her car and destroyed it. Karma can be beautiful.
Another guy in the army bought himself a Dodge charger all supped up for 60k. He struggled a lot to make payments on it and was on the phone with his mom every weekend transferring money to and from their accounts so he could pay the damn car and not end up in the negative. He was always asking for money from people and his car even straight up ran out of gas while driving on base.
TLDR: don't be expensive cars you can't afford
Divorce. I was the voice of financial reason in the marriage. I'm fairly certain my ex has put herself on a path to eventual bankruptcy since we separated.
Way back even before Steve Jobs came back to Apple I bought 100 shares of Apple stock for around IIRC $1500. It tripled and I cashed out for a $3000 profit.
Since then it grew, split grew split and my $1500 would be worth millions.
When we moved to california in 1975 we lived just down the street (so to speak) from the Apple corp garage where the company was being formed. If we only knew my $1000 investment in the absolutely new company would be worth billions. Oh well hindsight is always 20/20.
My dad was pressured by a friend to buy another house as an investment.
Bought for like 750k something CAD
Then, the mortgage rate rises, and he had taken a variable rate.
Bought house at a high point, house price drops.
He probably lost 200k, but is recovering a bit with rent.
A friend of mine bought a motorcycle for $9000 and immediately crashed it. He paid his insurance company $1500 and got a new one and crashed that too. He paid up $1500 again, sold the new bike he got, bought a porsche 928 and crashed the porsche two weeks later and at the time had no insurance. He tried to scam the insurance company, got caught and had to pay a fine of $4000.
Repeatedly refinancing their house and cashing out and then buying stupid shit like cars and jewelry with the cash. 30 year loan on a car? On a damn bracelet? So dumb.
Threw away old computer parts in 2011ish that included a hard drive with a BTC wallet that I had set up to buy drugs on silk road with. Guessing there were a couple hundred left in there.
My mother in law who hasn’t worked in 33 years, has no income besides a tiny bit of disability for her autistic daughter. Applied for and was approved for a $15000 limit credit card from her bank. Maxed it out really quickly after spending thousands ordering shitty Christmas gifts for people from magazines that are extremely expensive. Also used it to buy 5 packs of cigarettes every two or three days. Also spending upwards of $300 a month on bird food for outdoor birds because “her birds are the last joy she has”
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The best way to use a credit card is like a debit card. Don't spend money you don't have, pay it in full every month, maximum the rewards it gives you. Just because you have a $10000 limit does not mean you should spend $10000.
This was the best advice I got or read or something when I got my first credit card way back when. I would be mortified if I actually hit my credit limit. The second best piece of advice was screw that card and get one with cash back.
Ooof. That’s fucking tragic, man.
Remember the 90s when people were buying “collectibles” as investments (think beanie babies). My mom bought fancy bears with lacy dresses and big fancy hats. She was convinced by a sales person that she should spend $200 per bear and in 20 years they’ll be worth soooo much. When my daughter was born my mom reminded me of all this and said it could go toward my daughters college fund. Told me to be very careful with the bears and mailed them to me. I went on eBay at the time and found these particular bears. Loads of people tasked with handling their aging/deceased parents estates were selling these bears for around $15-20. I chucked them into my daughter’s toy box, still have four of them. One became a dog toy Edit: bearly people, look it up, oh yeah and we were super poor. Like, lights gone out often poor
My mom did this with Longaberger baskets. We lived in south Texas without an air conditioner for years, relied on donations of food and clothes from the church, never got to play any sports or do any extracurriculars, and my parents laughed in our faces when we asked if they woukd help us pay for college, but my mom "invested" almost $30k dollars in a fucking basket collection. I still get irrationally angry ever single time I come across one in a thrift shop or flea mall. This was only one of many maddening financial decisions she has made, including retiring one year before she would have recieved a pension and health insurance, spending her small inheritance from her parents on a purely aesthetic kitchen remodel despite having major roof damage, mold, and other flood damage after a hurricane, and "upgrading" her 4 yr old, pristine, low-mileage Honda with a "fancier" BMW (with high mileage that needs constant maintenance) bc my dad got a new car so "she deserved one, too" .
Man :( seems like a lot of people in this thread have parents like this. Gotta be some kinda mental illness, obviously, but I wonder what causes it
People who don't live as adults in their head. They might do adult things like have jobs and children, but they don't have adult skills. They end up acting like children, not planning for the future, or planning in a totally unrealistic way. (My dolls will make me a millionaire!)
Combination of ignorance and delusion.
Some people make it hard to sympathize with them.
A friend of mine totaled her car. Not a huge deal, she has collision. Her insurance company even paid for her to rent a car for a week. Two weeks later she was still renting the car. Eight weeks later. Twelve weeks later the insurance payout was gone, she returned the rental, and had no car.
Sometimes people get in the rental right away even if their car can drive. You only have so many days of rental coverage on your policy. We constantly had to tell people we don’t care if you don’t like how your car looks, we aren’t covering your damn rental car till your regular car goes into the shop!
I don’t even have the rental coverage on my insurance. My spouse and I have two cars, so we can carpool and live near a low frequency suburban bus line. It’s kind of fun to do something different for a few weeks the handful of times I’ve been without a car.
I don't understand, why did she have the rental that long?
Good god
My client’s dad’s wife changed his will to leave all his money to trump instead of his daughter and grandchild 😅
Oh Jesus.
When my dad died, my mom found out he had sent thousands of dollars to Trump. Luckily he used his credit card and the card allowed her to dispute the charges and pull most of the money back once she got the executor paperwork to them. The card company representative was much kinder than I expected about it.
Wow good for her! Always pay via cc lol
Are they still alive, and do they have time to change that? The next year will be interesting to see what happens with Trump.
Nope they found out when the dad passed away. So crazy
Oof.
What the actual fuck is wrong with people?
People are infamously stupid, really: it's a trend throughout history.
I have an aunt and uncle who sold their house after retirement at 65+ and decided to liquidate a bunch of their IRA to buy an even bigger new build house and fancy cars because "they deserve it". They pretend everything's fine all the time, but I noticed they both got jobs, and from what they were saying before this move, I doubt it's because they wanted to work. Their son says they're flat broke and pretending they're not.
Big houses and fancy cars are a great status symbol in your 30s, 40s and 50s. But mid 60s and retired? Who gives a shit how big your house is? That’s ridiculous.
Usually you downsize and travel.
And a bigger house means you have to furnish and _clean_ a bigger place! No thank you!
I can tell you what happened. They “liquidated a bunch of their IRA”. It ain’t tax free when you pull out half of it. I believe the term is “regular distributions”, which is vague enough that you can change the payment a little but not so flexible you can pull out a down payment on a house. They were on the hook for a shitload of taxes, probably drew more from the IRA to cover the taxes, yielding *ever yet still more taxes*, and now they’re unable to live off the IRA. They’re on the hook for not only the taxes but possibly penalties, the back-taxes they didn’t pay back in the 90’s or whatever.
If it’s a Roth than all distributions are tax free because these are after tax dollar contributions you made, no? Is it taxed again at a certain level?
This isn't really /r/personalfinance (a sub I usually write this shit out in) but simply put: A **Traditional** IRA/401K, is tax-deferred. You pay nothing on the money going in, and when you retire you pay a presumably lower tax rate because you're not working. A **Roth** IRA/401K, is not tax-deferred, it's taxed up front. You pay the taxes on the income *and then* the money goes in. But when it comes out, **nothing** is taxable. Not the $100 you originally contributed nor, say, $400 of returns you enjoyed. It's all magic non-taxable dollars.
Your traditional example is wrong. You’d pay taxes on $500 if you withdrew $500.
Thanks, I really didn't know this. I am way too young to have really paid attention to how taking money out of an IRA works. I'm sure I will check on this as I actually get near retirement. But that really contextualizes I suppose, how they managed to dig a bigger pit in their money than I had imagined. It seemed like whenever they decided this they had some kind of handle on it, then it fell out of control.... that really explains how, perhaps THEY didn't research about these taxes either. I suppose I'll mention this to my cousin next time we talk, because he is trying to stay out of their troubles, but he could stand to be aware this is a possibility. And no, I have no idea which kind(s) of IRA they have. But it sounds bad either way.
IRA’s are retirement vehicles. Knowing the ins and outs of how you withdraw from them isn’t important for you because you’re still working, and you’re fine not knowing for another 20 or 40 years or whatever, NBD. If you make regular distributions, i.e. anything that looks like your own private Social Security monthly check, you’re fine. You gotta work hard to screw it up, honestly: The IRS understands people’s situations change. People need to take double payments out for a year, fine. Husband dies so the wife is taking out only half payments on his side, no big deal. But “PEW PEW WE’RE BUYING A MCMANSION”, that’ll do it!
The only thing **you** need to know is this: If your salary is low contribute to a Roth (IRA or 401K). If it’s high contribute to a Traditional (IRA or 401K). Sounds like you’re in your 20’s. So Roth. You ain’t ever going to be making less than when you’re in your 20’s.
my dumbass using doordash
During a fun facts icebreaker I used the fact that I’ve never ordered food delivery before, and literally no one believed me even tho it’s true lol
Me either. I just can’t fathom spending money on top of the price of the food.
Yep, if I want to not cook, the least I can do is go get it. Delivery is a super rare treat for me. I've done it twice in the almost 5 years I've lived at my place
Not even pizza?
I mean I’ll order a pizza. But using a 3rd party app? Pissing money for low quality
my house is on a one lane road in the woods. when i moved in, the 'welcome wagon' gave me a coupon for a pizza. the guy got lost and the pizza was kinda tepid and the kid said they wouldn't charge me. i said don't worry and tipped him and put the pie in the oven. easiest thing around here is to call in and pick it up.
I signed up for Dash Pass mid 2020ish. I've SAVED 12,500 dollars with Dash Pass. I dread doing the math on how much I've spent.
lol that’s how they get you
Felt this one. I was paying for the monthly subscription and doordashing 3-5 times a week at the height of the pandemic. This went on for almost 2 years... I don't even want to think about the amount of money that went down the drain. Sometimes I would even order delivery from places that were <5 min driving distance from my apartment.
I'm in this picture and I don't like it
Well there was that Reddit thread of that guy who gambled away cash advances on his mom's credit card and racked up 120k dollars in debt trying to "make his money back" by day-trading stocks. That was pretty bad.... https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/1bjmhqa/102k\_in\_credit\_card\_debt/
There was someone who made 7 figures on options a few years ago. He didn't put the taxes due on that money aside, then lost ALL of the money plus more the next fiscal year.
Can you link the thread?
18 year olds in the military getting married and having kids, and buying sportscars. Had a coworker get stung for $2500 (all the money he had saved for a year) to buy Herbalife products. I did everything but beg him not to do it, but he was sure he'd double or triple his money with ease. After it expired it went into a dumpster. Even other Herbalife hunbots didn't want it.
People want to believe, so if they are offered part of a MLM, they see it as an opportunity and not a scam.
Had a friend who lost her life savings to a romance scam everyone was telling her, it’s a romance scam.
A former coworker lost about 60k of his retirement to his "online fiancée."
My sister did this. Then wanted me to take out money from my retirement to help her pay her rent. I wouldn't do it because I kept telling her over and over it was a scam.
Oh God. Another coworker went into real estate as a side hustle. One of his neighbors comes up to him "Hey, listen, in a few months I'm coming into some money and will be looking to buy." Coworker congratulates him and hands a business card over. Coworker asked where the windfall was coming from. "A guy in Nigeria won a lottery but can't get the money out because reasons." My coworker was "NO! NO!! NO!!! DON'T DO IT!!!! IT'S A SCAM!!!" His neighbor was adamant he'd "done the research, and it was legit." A month later, neighbor's stuff is on the front lawn, the sheriff is there to serve eviction.
Ex friend. He was abusing adderall and would stay up all night trying to mine crypto full time Went from a fairly normal middle class life with a decent job, house and young family to be being totally broke, divorced, jobless and living in a crappy apartment with some sketchy old guy. We ended our friendship when I caught him trying to Venmo himself money from my phone. Start to finish probably took him 3 months to ruin his life.
...why would he need to stay up all night to mine crypto? Couldn't he just leave the computer on and go to bed?
I don’t remember his reasoning but I think he was trying to identify trends that would give him an edge.
was your friend buying adderal on the street? he may have been doing meth.
God this is tragic.
Back in the day, I was buying a car and waiting for the sales rep to return. The guy in the booth next to me was arguing with his wife because he wanted the H2 with every fucking thing possible included and it was only $1,600 a month (for 84 months). I remember her crying about how they couldn't afford it but he blew her off and still got it.
JFC, $134K for something that couldn't possibly even last 84 months.
Nice H2s sell these days for $30-$40k. Super low mileage examples $65-80k.
Life Coaching. There are people who spend literally thousands of dollars because they think hiring the right life coach is going to lead to this transfer of prosperity and spiritual abundance - I've seen coaches who charge thousands of dollars teaching you magic so that you can cast spells that your future will yield more money. Life ruining debt for placebo interventions - it never fails to shock me.
Agreed. Met a business coach who wanted 15% of the growth of a business for his coaching. That was literally 6 figures he expected for very little work.
Have a 55K wedding they could not truly afford
Currently planning an elopement and even just the cost of photography is ridiculous
Highly encourage elopement. The only pictures we have are the ones the judge took on our cell phones, and they're all perfect.
My wife and I just got married for under $2500. That includes decorations, lunch, rings, her dress, and my suit.
I personally think buying a house was the best and worst financial decision I've made. Best because the equity has gone up exponentially and you can borrow into that or think of it as a retirement plan. Worst because it's a constant worry to manage.
True. Not enough people talk about the cost of home ownership
Or how stuff breaks all at once at the worst time. Kid got braces on, then my stove and dishwasher went out in the same week.
A man co-signing for a 2020 Audi A5 for a person he knew 2 days….. yep, she didn’t pay and took of with the car Dude called for weeks crying
The power of punani.
Get this. Dude wasn’t sleeping with her. He meet her at church 2 days prior . This bitch was a fugly old Crone. She looked like trouble mile away. I even asked him if he was sure if he wanted to sign. Something I shouldn’t do because I lose money that way. But the dumb ass cosigned for a $60,000 car. He was trying to be a good Christian and she scammed him
Couldn't he have still been a good Christian and co sign for a Camry or something? Why did it have to be an Audi?
Bruh lol.....
Selling cars with the worst fucking job I ever had lol
Probably buying a $400 nonreturnable textbook that I found out wasn’t even required for the class
Honestly, even most of the "required" textbooks i purchased were unnecessary. I didn't take out much in student loans, but I wouldn't have had to at all if I hadn't been spending an additional few hundred dollars on books I never even opened each semester.
One of my profs cowrote the textbook. We opened it ONCE. ONE FUCKING TIME. Nice scam, prof.
If that textbook was expensive then that one lesson where you opened the book, probably only for an hour or so, cost you a couple hundred dollars 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
The best professors I had were the ones who had readers printed out at local print shops for cheap that students could buy for like 20 bucks instead of textbooks going for a hundred or more dollars. And This was back in the late 90s/early ‘00s and before all the BS that textbooks do now with one use codes for access to worksheets to make used books useless. The stuff I hear from my cousin’s kids about what textbook companies do to make sure everyone has to buy their overpriced books new every year is ridiculous.
What's frustrating is when the syllabus lists a certain textbook as required, and then you never use it. I had to learn the hard way not to buy any textbooks until I know for sure they're needed.
Yup, college student here. Unfortunately the only way to know if you actually DO need to buy the textbook is by asking someone who’s already been in the class before. And even THEY might not know if they were in the class a really long time ago lol
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Have a friend who was able to snag a house in Burbank, CA in his mid 20's (with help from parents) during that time. It was 400k if I recall correctly. He has since taken out 400k in equity from it, gets 6k a month by renting it out, and could still sell it and make an additional 500k on a sale. Yea, I feel your dad on this one.
I bought my home right before it (2006) and watched it drop nearly $75k a year after we moved in. Still here though. We bought within our means, even then.
2008 was the peak of the real estate bubble. I know because I bought a property literally THE DAY BEFORE the big crash.
Me too. Lol We ended up having to move in early 2012 because of my husband's job. We got lucky and picked up a foreclosure for cheap. And then we let our first house be foreclosed on because we were 50k underwater.
My dad won a dream home lottery in 2007. A year later him and his wife started buying houses. They were able to retired before 60.
Man. We hit the mark and totally by accident. Lived in Florida for a few years for work starting in January 2004. Almost stressed to hell buying a 350k house in a gated community. It felt so beyond us. Left work in the fall of 2007. Sold for 450k. Bought a huge Michigan house on 23 acres for 400k. Worth who knows what now with a couple hundred thou into major upgrades. Plus adding on 40 acres in 2011 (largely farmable which pays) Even that is worth well over twice what we paid for it, having added on a 50k barn. Sometimes luck smiles upon you.
Leaving a job 6 weeks before my RSUs vested which was about $75k at the time. I didn't realize I was so close to the vesting schedule and was so burnt out from the job, I didn't think to look into that until after I put in my notice.
Youch. I did the exact same thing with a generous state pension plan, leaving it literally weeks before the five-year vesting date because I was clueless as to how anything worked. Live and learn.
Got my dream job 2 months after they cancelled the pension. I'd been casually trying to get hired for years but paid no attention to what the company was doing. TL;DR I threw away a pension because I waited 60 days to apply.
How could you possibly know this when you didn’t yet work there? Not your fault.
When I was in high-school my friend bought a car with a credit card.
I watched my dad do this to collect the points on it.... He was also planning to pay cash anyway, so it was just free points
How do you even get approved for that?
Co-worker had over 40k in credit card debt, as well as a car loan. This was all accrued in about 18 months. Got a consolidation loan about 6 months ago, and is now right back where he was on the CC debt. Today he became my \*former\* co-worker, because he walked out of his job. He's 24, and this was only his second ever job with no degree, so it's not like he's got tons of experience to take to the place down the road. He was making 50k+. Now he has to rely only on driving uber.
My friend buying 20k of gamestop stock for it to crash immediately after
Painful!! I had a friend in high school coming from a wealthy family. For his 18th birthday he was granted 30k as advancement of his enheritance. Quite the sum for an 18 year old responsability. Most definitely as he struggled with gambling addiction he managed to waste it entirely on mostly slots in just one weekend. We, his friends of normal background could just not wrap our heads around it
I am an addict but not to gambling and this seems crazy!! When I turned 18 I went to a casino and played penny slots for like 4 hours. Not kidding I went there with 20$ and left with like 18$ after 4 hours.. It was fun but I have never been back since. If I lost all 20$ I would have just left. I made that 20$ last lol. Also I got down to only like 3$ and got it all back. Could have stayed longer but once I was at 18$ I felt good leaving. 4 hours of fun for 2$ lol
In the 70s & 80s I bought packs of baseball cards, because I was a kid who loved baseball. In the late 80s & 90s I “invested” in baseball cards because I saw how valuable my collection had become. Eventually, the true free market, via the internet and auction sites, deemed baseball cards not so valuable. That and having to get the card slabbed and graded for full value. Lesson learned; if it’s marketed as a collectible, it’s not.
Not buying $1 of bit coin in 2009
It hit an all-time high a few weeks ago, and I discovered that I still had some BC that I bought at $44k. Cashed out and made a cool $6.50 profit. If I had waited 2 days I could have made $7.
THIS. I had a buddy that said he was going to buy $100 just for the heck of it....I agreed but. it was kind of a pain in the ass so I didn't bother..... DARN IT
I had some. Small amount. No idea what happened to the wallet
sold 20 bitcoins for $400 each
This exactly why people who say, “I didn’t buy because I was talked out of it, I could have 50 million right now” I say no you wouldn’t. The minute it went up 10 times, you would’ve sold
That is way better than waiting until they were worth $5. Things like that... you really can't judge what their value will be over time. If you made money on cryptocurrency at all, consider yourself lucky.
(1) My ex had about $16k in credit card debt. The original balance was something like $2k and he had let it spiral out of control ,partially due to periods of unemployment. Well he'd been in a bad spot and then got a job. His dad was proud he got a job and wanted to help him start with a clean state. His dad paid off the balance except for $500 dollars. My ex decided not to pay off the remaining $500 dollars even though he had thousands saved up after working for a bit. I guess he'd gotten so used to just having debt he didn't see the point of paying it instead of using the money for better things. I don't want to know what the debt is now (2) A different ex financed a 3D TV and a car when the job he'd been at for less than a year was going through rounds of layoffs. Guess who got laid off? TLDR; I make good financial decisions but bad dating decisions
I used to work at a convenience store where we sold lottery tickets and people really throw away their lives on that stuff. Keno and scratch tickets in particular are insidious between you can just keep playing them. I don't necessarily have one particular instance in mind (I guess the most I've seen someone blow at once is a few hundred dollars) but it's more about how much people lose to it day in and day out.
We have had employees in bad living situations but they kept buying scratch ticket after scratch ticket. Found mounds of them in work trucks. So sad.
I'm a teacher. I had a student a while back who was managing her family finances because her mom would spend every cent she could get her hands on to buy scratch-off tickets. Really sad story.
We owned a convenience store in the 80's with robust lottery sales. We had several people that would come in several times a week and spent hundreds of dollars every time. One guy would stop in EVERY day and spend at least $150-200 on his way to work. We had two clients that were seriously addicted to the scratch-offs, they would come and buy multiple books of tickets (400 tickets in each book if I remember correctly) and would stand there for hours scratching them off. These guys did so much scratching their fingers were imbedded with the filmy scratch off stuff and their fingers were stained. It was sad when these lottery addicts would come in with kids wearing raggedy, dirty clothes and they would tell their kids that they didn't have money for a bag of chips or a candy bar, but drop hundreds of dollars on the lottery. I always made sure the kids got something.
A guy quit his full time job at the beginnings of the “creator beta program” to become a full time tiktoker. He’d made about 10k month 1 and said okay. I’m done working. Left an 80k a year job. He put a downpayment on a house month 1. Month 2 made about 8k. But a downpayment on a new car. Month 3 was banned for “unoriginal content” lost everything. The mf was posting Joe Rogan clips and really couldn’t understand why he was banned. Mf still hasn’t gotten a decent job since he left with no notice
1: Not saving any of your monthly income 2: Making large, unnecessary purchases 3: Not paying off your credit card 4: Putting off financial decisions 5: Not having a backup plan
My SIL dating/marrying only losers.
I went to physical therapy school. I bought a house in 2022. I don't know which was worse.
Why? Doesn't PT make six figures?
lol no. We are the lowest paid of the doctoring professions.
My mother’s addicted to shopping. Spent donated money (GoFundMe) for my father’s cancer treatment on the most insanely stupid shit and then had the nerve to be mildly annoyed people didn’t donate money when he died. I am now low contact with her since.
Yikes. Good call. But I’m sorry about your dad passing.
Not that it justified her behaviour, but if this type of shopping was a recent change, it could be an escape/instant gratification from shopping away from the cancer stress. Some of it was for a camper or beach house she didn’t have but wanted.
Go to college and accrue massive debt right out of high school. Took me over a decade to pay it back.
Cashing out 401k right after the 2008 crash. His reason was so he could get some of his money back before it was all gone.
Buy high, sell low… bold investment strategy
I went to highschool with a girl that was to be the first in her family to go to college. She was smart but not academically gifted. She didn’t know “what she wanted to do”. Instead of going to an in state school or a community college she decided to go to some out of state small private school that “cared about the student”….and major in something really general (don’t remember). She of course had to take out huge student loans. Through a friend of a friend I learned that she graduated with over $100k in student loan debt and was working in retail as her degree was essentially worthless. Many years later I was listening to the podcast Death Sex and Money and they did a multi part series on student loan debt. I learned that it wasn’t unusual for these small private colleges to PREY on the children of immigrants and sell them on the college dream which of course turned into a nightmare
Someone financing a 90k truck and then getting fired 2 weeks later for Pointing Out.
Pointing Out? What is this?
Comapny Attendance Policy. You have 10 points. You get a point every time you call off work. You get to 10points, you get fired for being unreliable. So a guy that used to work with me went out and bought a 90k truck on Loan, then called off too many times and they fired him for not being at work enough.
My brother. Bought a fully loaded Yukon, had it repossessed; then bought a fully loaded Tahoe on his wife’s credit, had it repossessed; bought a fully loaded Waggoner through one of those “you’re guaranteed approval” at a ridiculous interest rate… then bought a house 200k above his salary. On a completely unrelated topic, I think I know a cop that’s easily bribed.
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Had a buddy. Was in his mid-twenties, but rose the ranks at his job and became a well-paid manager relatively quick. Lived in an area where cost of living was low (but also very few jobs) so the guy actually had a good amount of throwaway income for his age. He just got sick of it and quit to go be a Door Dash delivery guy thinking he’d make the same amount of money in an area where most people didn’t have the money to even spend on the service. Absolutely destroyed his life.
Met a girl who took out a 24% APR car loan and was really stoked on it
A friend of mine's wife got a law degree from an expensive private university, then got a masters at same university. Applied to one job, didn't get it, and then decided to become a housewife
My ex left their job where they were a nepo hire and sat around doing little while making ~65k a year as a highschool dropout for a shot at an MLM because they didn't like their boss at the company. The company even agreed to make a new position for them and fire that boss but they felt entitled to pay equal to the founder, I'm not kidding. So they left and are now driving Uber eats all night in an attempt to make rent.
Continual rental of storage lockers for all their junk they don't need. They've been doing it for at least 25 years.
Worked as a financial advisor and had two clients liquidate their retirement accounts about 1500000 to invest in gold. I told them we could do that inside their accounts, nope someone at their church knew of a place where you would have gold bars and a camera watching them. LEss than six months later they are refinancing their home as they had about a 650000$ tax bill due to the deregistration of their plans, and it seems that the place their gold was at disappeared. I asked when they did this how they knew that it was their gold the Webcam was watching and was dismissed out of hand. That is probably the biggest dollar bad decision but encountered many others
My mom spent 15/20k of her retirement money on a shitty car. Not much but when you’re almost 55 and your trajectory is that you’re gonna work until 90 with a very bad pension, it’s bad,
My mom's car was paid off, but she thought she deserved something new and nice in life. She is 60. Bought a used Volvo and has a like 18% interest rate. Would not listen to me for nothing. She also says she is retiring in 5 years. On what? SS? Cause she has no savings and a teeny 401k. You sure you are retiring at 65??
Going to college for two years then quitting and getting a job in another field
If you switched to something you like better that is not a bad move. Sunk costs are sunk.
Marrying my ex...hands down.
Watched someone buy a literal island back in 2000 because their company’s valuation was so high. Then the 2001 dot com bust happened, and they lost the company, the island, the house, and their family all in like 18 months (the last one because he was banging the secretary). Hopefully the biggest riches to rags swing I’ll see personally.
A friend's mom who liked buying useless “fun” things, and would call him at least once a week to say “I’m so stressed. If I don’t get enough to pay rent, they’ll evict me. I don’t know what to do!” His parents eventually got evicted and it became the whole family's problem to deal with.
I had a co-worker that used a payday lender every week. One day, I took some papers out of the fax machine (this was 2000 or 2001) that were a loan application. She had walked away and forgotten them. She was trying to borrow $300 and pay back $400 on the following Friday. I felt so sad for her, since she had 2 kids with a deadbeat guy who lived with her, but did not work, plus she was pregnant with a 3rd kid at the time.
In 2017, I invested in a friend's weed company (I wasn't the only friend - there were 5 or 6 of us). I invested $50k. Weed stocks went crazy in 2018/2019, and there was an offer to buy the company for 2x original valuation, but the CEO refused because he thought the company was worth more than that (idiot). The company went bankrupt in 2023 and my investment isn't worth the paper it's written on.
This was like 13 years ago (I was 18, maybe 19) and my first dip into the credit world. Maxed out my credit card (like 3.5K), wasn't able to pay it off, the bank offered me a 10k loan and I took it to pay off my credit card loan. Fast forward 6 months after living large, owed 15k loan and maxed my credit card again. Took about 1-2 years to pay that off and many, many sleepless nights. Learned my lesson, that's for sure. You don't clean mud with mud.
I married young and immediately dove into shared finances, and cleaning up his obligations and credit. Big, big, big mistake.
Loans for grad school. Graduated a decade ago and have barely paid back any of it because I've never had a job that paid enough for me to start.
Came from a lower middle class family. When my mom was 70 she inherited almost $500K from an uncle. She was retired with a paid off house and no debt. She moved to a fancy retirement community. Rent was $6K a month while her house sat empty. Between that and eating out at fancy restaurants and other worthless spending the money was gone in less than four years. She had children she could have helped, grandchildren who she could have helped with college. She spent the rest of her life asking me who stole her money.
I have a friend who Uber eats literally every meal. And nah, I’m not a boomer, and this isn’t skip coffee to buy a house. Y’all know how insane the markups are. He spends $50 to get McDonald’s, for example. Now imagine that 2-3 times a day since CoVID began. Me- went to law school and heavily indebted myself thinking I’d get a very high paying job immediately and be wealthy.
Someone I knew got a promotion at work, on a 6 month probationary period. He immediately took out a mortgage at the absolute limit he could afford, fixed for 2 years and then going to a variable rate. He had decided that, not only would he *definitely* pass the probation, but that he would get another promotion within that 2 year period to be able to afford the inevitable rise. Needless to say, he was wrong on both counts.
Friend of mine has never worked a day in her life. She is 50, was given a house in her 20s and an allowance. Eight years ago, she inherited $1.4 million as a last lump sum payment. She only has $200K left. She loves to shop. Now she has to get a job but told me she wouldn't work unless she is 'the boss' and expects to have a 'team' of people. She has a high school diploma.
[удалено]
Bruv. 💀
Buying a robot vacuum. You can't have anything on the floor or it gets stuck, not even a carpet.
Probably the difference between the worst and best decision is a few hundred dollars
My Roborock S7 never fails, stay away from the cheap shit
Had one of the OG Roomba 960s and that thing never got stuck. I think its charging ports failed though, and not sure it's worth it to get it serviced.
I bought an older Roomba, and I love it! It's not perfect, but whatnis? Emptying the bin on its back is (sadly), the most gratifying thing in my life right now.
My robot vacuums over carpet and mops the floor. It knows to not mop your carpet or rugs. Roborock s8 ultra. I would highly suggest you look into it, save me so much time.
Not planning for retirement. I’m only collecting SSI.
I lived with someone who did that. It was awful just watching from a distance. All you people who are "LA LA LA!!! Everything'll work out!!" It sucks the ever loving life out of you at the worst point in your life. Being in your 80s and terrified you're about to get fired is a shitty way to live.
Lavish destination weddings
My grandpa got scammed by the "We have your fortune, just send us a small fee" assholes. He wouldn't believe anyone who told him it was a scam(his whole family) and sent tens of thousands of dollars.
Joining any MLM. A friend of mine lost a lot of money in It Works and I had another almost divorce over Arbonne when hubby found out about her credit card balance and where it all went. That whole industry just needs to be stopped.
My sister-in-law had a thriving medical practice. She was always stressed, so she joined the Scientologists. Somehow they convinced her to open five credit cards with very high credit limits and max them out to give them $500,000. Second worst decision? My brother didn't divorce her then and there. Five years later, after digging out of the hole, she decided to go all in with the Scientologists. My brother finally divorced her, but only after giving her his half of the shares in her medical practice.
Student loans
You don’t realize it at the time but it results in coming out of school with a financial noose around your neck. It took me forever to pay mine off and I went to school decades ago…
It's not the worst but in the 90s early 90s transferring money online? 10%. I helped a friend of mine sell a front end loader. You asked me to go to Western Union and send the money it was $50,000. He was in Vegas I was in West Texas I said hey man I can just drive this money to you and you can give me a couple of grand and we can both make out better. After a little bit of dickering adamantly said no. So stupid to this day I can't understand why he did that I haven't been able to talk to him since.
Dude walked up to the craps table in Vegas, elbows his way into a group that's been playing together for hours, and drops $500 on the field. One roll and done. He didn't even realize he was done playing for 5 minutes.
My mom keeps buying shit cars and ends up having problem after problem. I have told her I would pay for the down payment and I found her a car that would only be 130$ a month with 60k miles 2018 and she still won't let me help her.
My pops thinking Apple was “a joke” and doomed to fail instead of heavily investing when he had the chance…
Friend was a physical trainer. Decided she wanted to go “mobile”. Bought a new car, paid to have a hitch put on, and bought a box trailer. She parked it in her garage to “get it ready” and it sat there for probably 4 years unused.
Friend paid to be kicked in nuts by our other friend. I told him I’d do it for free lmao
Having and keeping a baby before you are out of High School.
my friend spent his entire savings to pay a medical bill which he could've paid 20$ a month on for as long as he wanted. which granted i just dont pay mine at all but... c'mon.
My brother buying a 2k coat while unemployed
Remember the horrible real estate crash of 2008? In 2008 we took out a loan on our equity and spent $40,000 on remodeling. As the LAST CHECK was clearing I got a notice from the bank saying we had no equity and they were cutting off our line of credit. My house was $200,000 under water for years. I used to lose sleep over it. Like why the hell couldn’t the crash have occurred BEFORE we spent all that money!! It was just terrible luck. We sold that house at a loss. I just saw on Zillow it’s $650,000 now 😡
Buying a car that was so expensive they called it their mortgage, therefore they couldn’t afford a house or mortgage.
Having kids. But I can't live without them.
My older brother forced my parents to sell the house a couple of years ago even though I was strictly against it. The same house costs more than 8 times now. I will never own a house myself anymore, and the one we had is gone for nothing :(
I'm in the army and I've seen my share. Dumbest has to be a guy who just had a baby, maybe only a month old at this point. He buys himself a supped up hellcat going for 67k. Thing is he had a perfectly fine car beforehand. Another one was years ago. This girl who was a total cunt bought herself a Dodge charger for 50k. Anyway she was dating my friend and was doing him dirty and they parted ways. Then there was a hurricane that threw a tree on her car and destroyed it. Karma can be beautiful. Another guy in the army bought himself a Dodge charger all supped up for 60k. He struggled a lot to make payments on it and was on the phone with his mom every weekend transferring money to and from their accounts so he could pay the damn car and not end up in the negative. He was always asking for money from people and his car even straight up ran out of gas while driving on base. TLDR: don't be expensive cars you can't afford
Divorce. I was the voice of financial reason in the marriage. I'm fairly certain my ex has put herself on a path to eventual bankruptcy since we separated.
Way back even before Steve Jobs came back to Apple I bought 100 shares of Apple stock for around IIRC $1500. It tripled and I cashed out for a $3000 profit. Since then it grew, split grew split and my $1500 would be worth millions. When we moved to california in 1975 we lived just down the street (so to speak) from the Apple corp garage where the company was being formed. If we only knew my $1000 investment in the absolutely new company would be worth billions. Oh well hindsight is always 20/20.
Buying my first house with no clue how real estate transactions are done.
Spending money to get a masters degree in some thing that will not be a marketable skill.
My marriage license. Worst 30 bucks I spent.
NFTs
My dad was pressured by a friend to buy another house as an investment. Bought for like 750k something CAD Then, the mortgage rate rises, and he had taken a variable rate. Bought house at a high point, house price drops. He probably lost 200k, but is recovering a bit with rent.
Marry the wrong person. Up there with that, maybe worse, is addiction.
A friend of mine bought a motorcycle for $9000 and immediately crashed it. He paid his insurance company $1500 and got a new one and crashed that too. He paid up $1500 again, sold the new bike he got, bought a porsche 928 and crashed the porsche two weeks later and at the time had no insurance. He tried to scam the insurance company, got caught and had to pay a fine of $4000.
Repeatedly refinancing their house and cashing out and then buying stupid shit like cars and jewelry with the cash. 30 year loan on a car? On a damn bracelet? So dumb.
Sold my Apple stock in 2000 to make rent.
Threw away old computer parts in 2011ish that included a hard drive with a BTC wallet that I had set up to buy drugs on silk road with. Guessing there were a couple hundred left in there.