What were your biggest financial mistakes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taking out a $300K second mortgage in December 2020 and then using all of it to buy PYPL stock. We bought 1200 shares at $250 per share and now have only 500 shares remaining worth a measly $30K. We ended up selling 700 shares throughout 2022-2023 at a huge loss just to make our payments on the second mortgage.

We have 27 years of $1300 payments remaining and maybe 2 years of runway in remaining stock until we’re insolvent.

I never would have done this before, but so many people on DCUM were going on and on about refinancing at historically low rates and using the leverage to invest.

Yes, but why Paypal? Any other one would have been better.

PayPal was the very definition of a stock market bubble. I suppose when it was skyrocketing during early COVID it seemed like the entire world was transitioning to online transactions and investing here was a no-brainer. But then it crashed just as fast. It is hard to see a bubble when you’re looking through it from the inside.

Yes, but $300k into one stock? I bought Tesla as it was going up like a rocket. Don't listen to DCUM, but Bitcoin is on its cycle, right? Let's hypothetically say you are buying half a Bitcoin now (don't) with the $30k and see where it goes from now to August/ September 2025.

I would’ve bought Bitcoin 6 months to a year ago. I wouldn’t buy Bitcoin now.

Now you buy the proxy. It runs so much faster. It also goes down deeper when the dip comes. Get the coin afterwards or keep both.

[Anonymous]

Not keeping our previous homes as rental properties.

[Anonymous]

I did start putting money in a 401k when I was young, but I didn’t have any understanding of the market. I didn’t know that I should have taken more risk in the market when I was in my 20s, and I was very conservative and kept everything in bonds for WAY too long. Hate to think what I missed out on all those years. I try to comfort myself by thinking that I might have lost all those gains in 2008 anyway…

[Anonymous]

Investing in time horizon mutual funds in 401k. Just buying the S&P since I entered the work force in 1995 would have meant being much closer to retirement targets… years and years closer. Buying things that underperform the S&P when you’re in your 20’s and 30’s and even 40’s doesn’t make sense when you don’t plan on accessing the money until you’re 59 1/2 or older. Just dollar cost average into the S&P. Look at any dip in the S&P and the recovery no matter how bad the crash… 1987 crash, 1999 dot com crash, 2008 crash, 2020 covid crash, and if you just held the S&P it came back relatively quickly or at least outperformed most everything else, because American business and economy is going to adapt and come back.

[Anonymous]

1) Not holding on to our starter home. Cost us $300K back in the late 1990s, real money
2) Living in our current home for 25 years. We love it and our neighborhood and it suits us, but financially we haven't seen the appreciation we would have if we traded up every 7 or 10 years.
3) My husband didn't max out his TSP until I got a hold of him lol

[Anonymous]

Grad school. did a PhD after leaving a 100k/year job. talk about opportunity cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did start putting money in a 401k when I was young, but I didn’t have any understanding of the market. I didn’t know that I should have taken more risk in the market when I was in my 20s, and I was very conservative and kept everything in bonds for WAY too long. Hate to think what I missed out on all those years. I try to comfort myself by thinking that I might have lost all those gains in 2008 anyway…

Same. I thought I needed an asset allocation when I was younger. Nope.

Should have just bought an equity index fund and worried about bonds as I got older.

[Anonymous]

Like many here, not being aggressive enough early. Plus, right before the market crash in 2008 we went completely to cash. (It was already conservative, but not 100% cash.) We felt so lucky. But.... we felt uncomfortable getting back in. FINALLY, got back in in 2017, but back to conservative. Bonds, very little in stocks (funds) and cash. We have spent the last five years letting the longterm bonds come due and investing the cash. We are up to 56% stocks, 48% bonds (we would take a significant hit to sell them early) 6% cash. Our goal is 60/37/3

[Anonymous]

I'm in my mid 30s. Biggest mistake is being too traumatized by others suffering in 2008 that my portfolio weighed way too cash heavy. Even now I'm 30% cash and 70% equities with an eight figure portfolio and a fairly frugal lifestyle. Lots of missed opportunity.

[Anonymous]

Ignoring all the pipe dreams about things that would never have happened (buying bitcoin at the right time), the real financial mistake I made was not being aggressive with my housing budget in 2020/2021. I'd just moved back to the US after living abroad for a decade and I was very conservative in buying my first house and passed up on several nicer properties I could have afforded. This was in early spring of 2020 when COVID had hit the US and the RE market briefly tanked and there were a few sellers eager to sell, anticipating the worst. There was a two-three month window when interest rates had fallen to close to 3% but prices weren't taking off yet.

Flash forward four years I have a golden handcuff to my current property, which is fine, but it's not the houses I passed up in the name of frugality. Had I bought one of them, I'd have been sitting pretty and laughing all the way to the bank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll start:

1. When we bought our house two years ago, the interest rates just began to increase. So our mortgage rate is 5.5%. We could have bought it down to 4.5% if we had paid an additional $60k for a couple of points, and over the course of the loan that would have saved us $600k (we have a crazy high mortgage loan). But we thought that we could soon refinance into a 3.5% interest rate, so did not take that deal...

Now our plan is to pay off the mortgage aggressively, even though we would invest in the stock market if we had a lower interest rate.

2. We should have moved to our current area way sooner; then we could have bought a house way sooner and cheaper.

Not divorcing before I started banking income from a business.

[Anonymous]

By far not marrying Rich. I actually had a chance to marry an only child from a couple married later in life at 32. Her mom already a widow and already 72.

Her mom had a three million dollar house in 1996! Plus a two million dollar home in the Hamptons.

[Anonymous]

Having poor, divorced parents.