What were your biggest financial mistakes?

[Anonymous]

Going into journalism
Defaulting on a $3k limit credit card in college

That's about it

[Anonymous]

Buying a house in 2007 and having to sell before it recovered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not getting the screened in porch pre-pandemic. Will never be able to afford it now.

Seriously feeling this. Huge regret.

Biggest financial mistake was working in independent schools.

As opposed to public? Or at all?

[Anonymous]

Staying for ten years at the company that gave me my first job out of college, out of loyalty, laziness and the thought that they would be loyal to me when I started a family and leaned back a bit. Missed out on a ton of money because I would have increased my salary so much by switching companies rather than settling for the small raises they gave me even with pretty big promotions with increasing responsibilities. And then got laid off a year after having my first kid.

At the same time, my DH stayed in a bad partnership too long where he was pulling three times his weight and the others were hardly doing anything. He didn’t have a draw for more than a year while he was working his ass off.

As a result of those two, we weren’t able to hold onto our starter house and its $1500 mortgage when we needed something bigger. We could have spent the past 20 years renting that out for a fat profit.

[Anonymous]

Spending vs saving my annual bonus.

[Anonymous]

I would have millions more if not for my huge financial mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Another aspect of financial mistakes is their timing. When done sub 30yo, you can easily recover. Mistakes made over age 50, those are going to have more lasting negative impacts. Having CC debt at age 27 and blowing $$$ on poor stock tips is so different from doing this behavior at age 50.

[Anonymous]

Didn't buy more houses in 2010, 2011.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not getting the screened in porch pre-pandemic. Will never be able to afford it now.

Seriously feeling this. Huge regret.

Biggest financial mistake was working in independent schools.

As opposed to public? Or at all?

Left public for private.
$300,000 less in earnings over 12 years and loss of retirement pension. I did like the job, but it was my biggest financial mistake and the price is long term.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 1997, some friends and I had a stock "club" where we pretended to put money in stocks and watched what they did. I had $2000 in pretend money invested in Apple, which was deep in the depths of its John Scully days at the time.

Had I put $2000 of real money in AAPL, it would be worth about $3 million today.

Oops.

Had you invested in 2007 when Iphone came out, you still would have made money. I think every person at the presentation bought apple stock the next day.

Total BS but illustrative of why picking individual stocks is a fool’s errand.

It was NOT at all obvious in 2007 that the iPhone would become the winner in the cell phone market or even remain a viable product. (Bezos is a genius too – anyone remember the Amazon Fire phone??)

There’s a famous clip on YouTube of Steve Ballmer mocking the iPhone when it first came out, saying that it was too expensive for the general public and would never appeal to business customers because it didn’t have a keyboard. Ballmer was an insider’s insider in the tech industry and is himself now one of the 10 wealthiest people on Earth, and yet he had no idea what would happen in the cell phone market.

But this is what idiots like the PP do: look at a clear winner now, rewrite history to imagine that this was always obvious, and use that as a justification to buy individual stocks, imagining they know more than billionaire hedge fund managers and similar market participants who determine prices.

Outside of very true rare exceptions such as Warren Buffett, anyone who beats the market long-term by individual stock picking is L-U-C-K-Y!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 1997, some friends and I had a stock "club" where we pretended to put money in stocks and watched what they did. I had $2000 in pretend money invested in Apple, which was deep in the depths of its John Scully days at the time.

Had I put $2000 of real money in AAPL, it would be worth about $3 million today.

Oops.

Had you invested in 2007 when Iphone came out, you still would have made money. I think every person at the presentation bought apple stock the next day.

Total BS but illustrative of why picking individual stocks is a fool’s errand.

It was NOT at all obvious in 2007 that the iPhone would become the winner in the cell phone market or even remain a viable product. (Bezos is a genius too – anyone remember the Amazon Fire phone??)
Only a few people invest in individual stocks, because of the scare losing money. Almost every stock I have ever bought, which is about thirty-five, went up while I held them. I can name twenty off the top of my head that will be much higher 5 years from now. They are leaders in their business. They have a lot of cash and growth ahead. Chances of them being gone in 5 years are really small. Chances that they disappear while you holding them is even smaller. It's like hitting a lottery.



There’s a famous clip on YouTube of Steve Ballmer mocking the iPhone when it first came out, saying that it was too expensive for the general public and would never appeal to business customers because it didn’t have a keyboard. Ballmer was an insider’s insider in the tech industry and is himself now one of the 10 wealthiest people on Earth, and yet he had no idea what would happen in the cell phone market.

But this is what idiots like the PP do: look at a clear winner now, rewrite history to imagine that this was always obvious, and use that as a justification to buy individual stocks, imagining they know more than billionaire hedge fund managers and similar market participants who determine prices.

Outside of very true rare exceptions such as Warren Buffett, anyone who beats the market long-term by individual stock picking is L-U-C-K-Y!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 1997, some friends and I had a stock "club" where we pretended to put money in stocks and watched what they did. I had $2000 in pretend money invested in Apple, which was deep in the depths of its John Scully days at the time.

Had I put $2000 of real money in AAPL, it would be worth about $3 million today.

Oops.

Had you invested in 2007 when Iphone came out, you still would have made money. I think every person at the presentation bought apple stock the next day.

Total BS but illustrative of why picking individual stocks is a fool’s errand.

It was NOT at all obvious in 2007 that the iPhone would become the winner in the cell phone market or even remain a viable product. (Bezos is a genius too – anyone remember the Amazon Fire phone??)

There’s a famous clip on YouTube of Steve Ballmer mocking the iPhone when it first came out, saying that it was too expensive for the general public and would never appeal to business customers because it didn’t have a keyboard. Ballmer was an insider’s insider in the tech industry and is himself now one of the 10 wealthiest people on Earth, and yet he had no idea what would happen in the cell phone market.

But this is what idiots like the PP do: look at a clear winner now, rewrite history to imagine that this was always obvious, and use that as a justification to buy individual stocks, imagining they know more than billionaire hedge fund managers and similar market participants who determine prices.

Outside of very true rare exceptions such as Warren Buffett, anyone who beats the market long-term by individual stock picking is L-U-C-K-Y!

Actually I have dove extremely well picking individual stocks. I also have a bunch of people I pay to help conduct due diligence on potential and ongoing investments.

[Anonymous]

Getting married

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buying this money pit of a house.

Me too but aren’t they all money pits?

Perhaps but the other alternative is renting so you are paying for the money pit in lieu of the owner.

[Anonymous]

Telling my kids I would pay for any college they got into