what was your #1 money mistake?

[Anonymous]

Credit card debt right out of college. I know so many people who get caught in this, but it took a long damn time for me to get out of it.

[Anonymous]

Buying a house in 2004, totally renovating it, and then selling in 2010! It's pretty unpleasant, that horrible sound of money pouring down the drain!

It wasn't a decision, though. We HAD to sell because DH needed to move for his job. But I wish we hadn't spent so much money on that house. Who knew the recession was coming? And we would have been fine if we didn't have to move.

[Anonymous]

I have a grad degree I'll never use, but I've never thought of it as a money mistake. I loved the material and the experience and am perfectly happy that I dropped $25k of my big law money to enjoy one of the best years of my life. (It's a MSc from the LSE, so they only take a year, instead of two like in the States)

As for what I do consider mistakes: buying a condo in 2007 and selling it in 2010 because we needed more space; buying a Prius in 2008 just before they switched to the new model and started to drop MSRP; getting suckered by a fancy design-build firm to redo a bathroom that surely could have been done just as nicely but for half the price.