Some Of My Dumbest Financial Moves
I thought I would share a few of the dumbest financial moves I have ever made. As I wrote these, I experienced some feelings of frustration, regret, pain, a distress that I felt when I was totally broke.
- Financing a new car with 105-percent financing (I even financed the sales tax)
- Financing a used truck with 100-percent financing
- Financing another used truck with 100-percent financing
- Operating our finances without a written plan (budget)
- Preparing a budget, but failing to follow it
- Buying a “fixer-upper” home and seriously underestimating the costs – time and money
- Buying the stock of a company that was free-falling (Conseco) – it went on to be zero value
- Paying full price for a new home – without negotiating anything down
- Loading up credit cards and paying the minimum balance for several years
- Spending every dime I made without saving anything (no margin = guaranteed financial failure)
Care to share some of yours?
Ahhh…yes – I’m feeling your pain as I remember mine! One of my dumbest financial moves was thinking I wanted to start up my own business and sunk $25K+ into equipment, only to never “get around” to launching it (for various reasons, which are part of the pain!) The equipment sat in my garage for 4 years and finally donated to a charitable organization. Sure do wish I would have saved that $25K and really thought through what I was doing!!!
Student loans!! I took out an extra $5K a semester to cover “living expenses”. Funny how my much my definition of “living expenses” has changed since I’ve had kids.
Opening our first credit card account as a newly married couple so I could buy my husband a brand new 3,000 electric guitar!
It took us 4+ years to pay that off. 🙁
Many of the ones you mentioned…minus one or two that I never had the opportunity to make. Plus, loaning a “trusted person” money that I didn’t have to loan (and a lot of it), only to find out how untrustworthy the person really was. You think you know someone. I think that one was my dumbest, but it comes really close to my inability to tell my (now) ex-husband “no, we can’t afford your toys, plus new ones, and all the maintenance and accessories.”
Bought a fixer-upper almost 15 years ago…..how bout it’s not fixed up yet, and, refinanced some years ago, paid back interest only, and now underwater……
I watched Joe’s video on the Lord’s Prayer. Awesome! I have a new respect for him after this one! From someone who has never had the chance to see him in person and only listened to one video before this one. 🙂
In a moment of weakness while on vacation I bought a time share, which upon reflection is really a 99 year obligation to send someone a large annual fee (that can of course go up) plus special assessments. But I got such a great deal on it because it was a repossession from a corporate bankruptcy and I was paying cash rather than financing so they dropped the price even further. Yea – five minutes of internet research would have revealed that there are people so desperate to get out of them that I could have bought one on the secondary market for $1. Live, learn, and make the best of it.