How To Recover From A Financial Mistake (SERIES)

Let’s face it. We have all made financial mistakes. Whether you once carelessly spent money on useless trinkets while on vacation or bought a house at the peak market price only to have it drop in value like a rock, financial mistakes hurt. They hurt a lot.

I remember receiving a brand new Velcro wallet for Christmas one year when I around 10 years old. There was a place for paper money as well as coins. If I were to sum up this wonderful new wallet in one word, I would choose “Amazing.” In this amazing wallet was money I had received from my aunts and uncles and grandparents. A total of $38 in paper money was in the wallet plus some change. After Christmas was over, we took one of my older brothers to the airport so he could fly back home. He was looking to purchase a newspaper. Since I wealthy beyond measure with my $38 cash money, I offered to buy the paper for him.

At the newspaper stand, I took out my wallet and opened it. This yielded the unmistakeable Velcro sound so everyone in the concourse knew I was opening my treasure chest. I chose the coins necessary to buy the paper and then placed the wallet on top of the newspaper stand so I could have both hands free to purchase the paper.

With newspaper purchase complete, I walked away – leaving my wallet on top of the newspaper stand.

You can probably guess what happened next: I soon discovered my error and raced back to find my wallet. I found it, but the money was gone. What a terrible and awful feeling it was!

Financial mistakes have a way of making us feel really low. This leads to any number of negative feelings: despair, depressed, frustration, desperation, anger, embarrassed, humiliated, confused, and ignorant.

In this series, I will be addressing some of the most common financial mistakes people make. We will talk about each mistake, its consequences, and how to recover from it.

The good news is you can recover from a financial mistake. It took several weeks, but I recovered from my lost Velcro wallet. And my huge credit card balance. And my student loans. And my furniture loan. And my engagement/wedding ring loan.

You can do this!

NOTE: If you have a particular type of financial mistake you want to make sure we include in this series, please fill out the CONTACT FORM and tell us about it.

Read the entire series (available after 8/10/2014)