Biggest financial mistake/regret?

[vellamint]

I have three....

Not waiting longer to have our first child thereby increasing our downpayment on the house. We put down 20% but if we had waited another year or two we could have put down over 50%.

Dormer said house in order to give the kids and ourselves more bedroom space.......sure it has GREATLY appreciated the value of our home BUT our taxes are skyhigh and the tax abatement will be over soon. Should have realized that it was a lot less costly to hire a mothers helper to get them out of my hair and away from each other!! (Thats a joke people!!) (kind of...)

Doing too much too fast when we first bought the house (again the house - do you see a pattern here). We rushed into doing the kitchen because my loving brother offered to do it a housewarming gift. Well never have friends and relatives do ANYTHING for you is my motto now and we have since redone it 3 times (yes you heard that right - 3 times in 16 years) before we finally got it right. That kitchen and a few other things were rushed into and now I see we should have sat back and waited a few years to really understand what can be done "cheaply" and what cant. AND sometimes you really dont know what you want until you live in a home for awhile.

 

[MrsPete]

Financial regrets? Other aspects of my life, sure, I can come up with regrets, but I don't have a lot here!

I guess the worst financial decision I've made was NOT refinancing our starter house. We bought it at 8.25% interest; when we'd been there 7-8 years, rates dropped. We talked about refinancing, but decided not to go to the trouble -- after all, we planned to move within a year, and we thought it wouldn't be worth the trouble and the cost. We stayed there almost 11 years. If we'd been more realistic about how long we were going to stay in that house, we'd have known it would've been worthwhile to refinance.

 

[karynnix]

cashing in 401K...twice. It was quick money, but just about killed us at tax time. What were we thinking?? Now we are in our 30's and JUST NOW getting started saving for retirement. Stupid, stupid, stupid...

 

[NeverlandClub23]

Oh Lord, I have SO many. And I'm still learning. My biggest one (but thankfully didn't blow up in my face) was taking out a loan for my boyfriend (now ex of many years) so he could get a boat and make the payments to me. After we broke up I went through heck trying to get him to pay and getting him to get his own loan. I was miserable for about a year and was paying for many of the payments myself and the insurance which was $800 a year (he still had the boat). Luckily when he got the loan he was also trying to win me back at the same time and ended up repaying all of the money I had spent while he still had the boat in his posession, but I knew better than to get sucked in the second time (I just wanted the money). Also, I would LOVE to have all of the money I've wasted on ex boyfriends. I would be rich!

But I haven't done any damage to my credit score, as being in a financial family, I've always known how important money, my credit score, and having a secure and stable future is.

 

[DVC Sadie]

I have made plenty of mistakes along the way and I think everyone does to a certain degree. I think all of us can sit back and look at things we could have done differently.

One that stands out for me is selling waterfront property a year or two too soon. If we had not sold it at that time and had waited we would have made so much more.

 

[EthansMom]

About 5 years ago, DH was becoming disenchanted with his job/employer and started thinking about changing companies. He had a distant relative in a similar field with whom he discussed his feelings and that relative "sold" DH on the idea of moving to the other side of the country to work for his small business. The job was not what DH had been told it would be, he never got the "ownership" in the company he had been verbally promised, and toward the end of his contract, DH was depressed and demoralized.

Had DH found a different job near to our first home, we would have gained $200k in equity in 2 years (hindsight is 20/20) and we would have stayed in an area we loved.

On the plus side, DH and I made certain that he had a written contract and he got "almost" everything guaranteed in that contract. I have no doubt that we would be in a much worse position if we had not gotten the necessities in writing (moving expense reimbursement, salary, vacation days, etc.). Also, DH was able to get a new job (back across the U.S.) with an employer that treats him well.

Lesson learned: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Also, don't make decisions based on verbal promises.

 

[arminnie]

A couple of people have mentioned selling too soon. Mine was selling too late.

Instead of sort of breaking even (except for the selling costs) I kept holding out for a better price in a cascading real estate market and ended up not only losing all of my down payment but owing over $45,000 at the closing. And that was just one of three houses. One I sold for $15,000 under the loan and another for $85,000 UNDER the loan amount.

I swore I would never buy again, but fortunately I did eventually buy five years later (for once at the bottom of a market not the top) and made a substantial profit on that property.

I still don't believe in having an investment that you have to "feed". It may not be possible to just hold on when you have $500-$1000 a month negative cash flow per property that you can't even live in. All of my properties were houses that I had lived in, when I was transferred I just never sold anything.

My motto - for every boom there is a bust (and the reverse).

 

[lnh'smom]

I think our biggest financial mistake was not saving money when we were first married. We didn't charge on credit cards or anything we just spent what we earned on eating out all the time, trips, movies, DVD's etc. Our attitude was, we can do what we want since we don't have kids yet. It makes me sick to think how much money we wasted on nothing.

 

[Chicago526]

I don't really have any, but DH does. Just before we met (like the week before we met!) he traded in his old truck for his current truck. Nothing wrong with it, he just wanted a new one. He was upside down in the loan on the old truck, so they rolled that into the new loan. Now he has a $440 a month payment for 6 years (4 years still left!) on this truck, which is now worth less than the outstanding loan because of all the miles he puts on it (he has a very long commute) and no longer has a warrenty, so we need to pay money for upkeep, too.

Had I met him before he did the trade in, I would have talked him out of it. He tells me it's my fault, I should have met him sooner!

 

[nuzmom]

Regret 1 - not saving more money when I was working and making big money.

Regret 2 - never learning how to live with a budget (still working on that one)

Regret 3 - having a mortgage payment based on 2 incomes. We built our house on family property. I designed the house from scratch (I had experience doing so). My DH and I did a lot of the work and we are very emotionally attached to the home. We LOVE our home, HOWEVER, I HATE the payment. It's not so much the mortgage as it is the taxes!!!!!! Ugggh.

 

[momof3littlelilos]

Mine was a domino effect mistake. I "took time off" from college at 19.
When I finally went back I was 24 and a single mom, which led to me taking out more of the student loans I was offered than I would have otherwise. My son got sick, I took a semester off here and there and at 38 am still a semester short of a B.A.
So, I'm in debt and not real employable...thankfully I have this SAHM thing as a cover

My stepdaughter is currently "taking time off" from college, and I worry that this is going to mess things up for her like it did for me. Oh well, It's a drag when your kids "know" more than you do!

 

[missj1975]

]Also, I would LOVE to have all of the money I've wasted on ex boyfriends. I would be rich!

I can totally relate. Apparently I was a magnet for losers who couldn't keep jobs. But I have learned from my mistakes. Now I just enjoy being single and spending all my money on Me!Me!Me!

 

[mt2]

Not buying an AP to Disneyland when I lived in LA for 7 months. I went once a month while I was there never knowing about an "AP". I learned about them after I finished school and moved back to TX.

I guess it was good though because I wouldn't have studied on the other 3 weekends.

 

[runwad]

Ok you won't really appreciate this since you don't personally know my DH but he is financially illiterate but when we married he wanted to take all the money we made on our wedding and buy my companies stock which at the time was 5 bucks a share...well I had learned you never put your eggs in one basket and veto'd that, well what do you know 2 years later that stock was at $32/share, we could've made a cool 50 grand, I've never heard the end of it...so remembering that debacle a few years ago he tells me to buy Sirius stock because of Howard Stern going there and it's going to make a lot of money so I thought I better cause last time I didnt and look what happened.... so I bought some at 7 bucks share, you know what it is now??? Somewhere close to 4 Stick with mutual and index funds people!!!

 

[Disney Doll]

Not starting to save for retirement sooner.

Spending a lot of money for about 5 years in our mid-30's trying to have a baby, which was unsuccessful. Of course, if it had been successful, I'd have thought it was the best $$ I ever spent!

 

[TEK224]

I'm with those that should have been warned about cc debt. Travelling is my weakness. I'd just charge it, have a good time and worry about paying for it later.

I'm much better now, but still have to catch myself sometimes.

 

[stemikger]

Everything I know about money I learned from making mistakes. The first one is buying life insurance as an investment.

The second is taking out a 30 year mortgage instead of a 15. I would have been almost done paying if I took out a 15.

The third is walking away from a business without selling any of the equipment. That was a big one. I probably walked away from about $40,000.

But no sense living life with regrets. The positive side of all this is the knowledge I have gained.

That is why when I meet someone in their 20s. I try really hard to convince them to start investing their money. I wish someone told me that stuff when I was younger. I'm 42 now and I have become the official money expert to my family. Most of them are older then me and they still don't get it. So I consider myself lucky that even with all the mistakes I am at a good place now.

 

[HugsForEeyore]

My hugest regret was not using savings to improve my appearance when I was younger, which I think hampered how I presented myself, which therefore affected how employable I was. I had a very poor smile due to palate/teeth issues, which my parents refused to pay to correct when I was young. I truly believe my poor appearance negatively affected how interviewers perceived me, and I had a hard time advancing in a career. I finally wised up at age 33 and used up almost all my savings for surgery/orthodontics to fix my mouth. And I am hoping it will pay off - now I have a part-time job in a new field, but I am still looking for the full time benefits job (but my appearance is far better so I am very hopeful ). But I feel I would have advanced in a career FAR sooner if I were more presentable. MANY wasted years there, floundering in sub-par jobs.

Appearances matter incredibly - wish I woke up on that WAY before my 30's.

 

[deide71]

Oooooh, mine's easy.

My husband was employed by a telecom company in the mid 90's through 2004. He was good about putting 10% of his income into his 401k with a 4% employer match, he wasn't so good about diversifing. He put the bulk of it into his employer's stock, since that had the best return. You can see where this is going...At one point in 1999 he had 70,000 in his 401k, of course the stock started on a free fall, but we never changed our allocation. Today that account is 35,000.

Live and learn.

 

[stemikger]

Originally posted by dide71
My husband was employed by a telecom company in the mid 90's through 2004. He was good about putting 10% of his income into his 401k with a 4% employer match, he wasn't so good about diversifing. He put the bulk of it into his employer's stock, since that had the best return. You can see where this is going...At one point in 1999 he had 70,000 in his 401k, of course the stock started on a free fall, but we never changed our allocation. Today that account is 35,000.

Ouch. It could be worse I saw a couple on Oprah who had a million in Enron Stock. They were in their mid thirties and had their eye on early retiement. Well you know what happened to their million.