Author Topic: Tell me about a time you lost a significant sum of money on something dumb  (Read 25960 times)

Nissykins2

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I consider myself to be a worldly, careful, and street smart person, but I made a mistake this weekend that cost us $500. I've fixed the problem, but I'm beating myself up about it a lot. Since I know you guys are all really savvy and careful with money, could you help me feel better by telling a story of a time you lost a big chunk of money on something silly?

SamIAm38

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I got emotionally attached to my house. When I left for a new job (old job was at risk), I got people to rent my house instead of selling it in a good market. Now I've spent 4k in maintenance and repairs to the house in 6 months and essentially have lost half my rent money. All the while I could have sold the house and invested the equity for a year instead. Doah! Learned my lesson about real estate, maybe it wasn't all a loss.

Basenji

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Invested in a frontload fund, still stings thinking about that even 20 years later, eventually got out, but yikes we were so dumb

Bought a new car right off the lot when I was 21, wasn't fancy, but damn stupid

EXLIer

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I got emotionally attached to my house. When I left for a new job (old job was at risk), I got people to rent my house instead of selling it in a good market. Now I've spent 4k in maintenance and repairs to the house in 6 months and essentially have lost half my rent money. All the while I could have sold the house and invested the equity for a year instead. Doah! Learned my lesson about real estate, maybe it wasn't all a loss.

I did almost the same.  Rented my old house because I really liked it and thought we'd end up back there someday.  A few years of tenants with the final one lasting about 2 years trashed the place.

I wound up spending about $10K between flooring, appliances, painting, and redoing a driveway. 

Parizade

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I married the wrong person.

Digital Dogma

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I totaled a vehicle on black ice while it was raining and was out 2k for my deductible.

Ive drank thousands of dollars worth of bourbon before I became interested in saving money instead of blowing it.

I chose to walk away from a 1k deposit so I could move into a rental property closer to work and 50$/mo cheaper.

I invested 600$ into an IRA with a bank when I was very young and only made 22 bucks on it since then.... still need to roll that over to vanguard.

Thats about it...

pbkmaine

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I married the wrong person.

Me too. Got it right the second time, though!

marty998

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I married the wrong person.

Me too. Got it right the second time, though!

ok you win.... you guys make me feel bad for saying I spent $350 on a plumber who took 15 minutes to replace my shower taps that were busted.

tyleriam

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I bought a new house from an unknown builder with a hill in the front yard.  Turns out the hill got a lot of water from up higher and ended up in my yard forming a pond.  Rather than make the builder fix it (I should have documented everything and sued him) I had the yard reworked and put in a railroad tie retention wall.  That did not work so I ended up taking that out and having it reworked again, block wall with french drains behind and in front of it installed.  That seemed to fix the problem so we had enough, sold house and tapped out.  Between that and the asphalt driveway problem we had I figure we lost about $25,000-30,000 on that house.  Stupid first house purchase mistakes. 

So what did I get/learn from my mistakes?
- before buying a house go look at it when it is raining hard, observe water flow
- be VERY wary of evidence of wet areas/spots
- on issues like this document everything, time stamped photos, log every call with builder and if no response send registered mail
- if you do have to build a retaining wall, do it right the first time with block and french drains behind wall, everything else is temporary
- don't buy a house that sits lower than stuff around it
- don't buy from redneck shady builders who's son grades their lots on an old bulldozer with beer in hand (didn't see that until they were building the house next door after we moved in)
- should have hired a civil engineer to diagnose the problem, made that part of the file for eventual builder lawsuit
- buy a smaller house than you can afford, something can always come up

Million2000

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Spent and/or borrowed $40,000 for a liberal arts degree which while fun and enlightening, was not a good financial and career move. Also bought a brand new car off the lot, and borrowed money for that too.

Thankfully as of this next November (it's my debt payoff anniversary), I will have both paid off for 2 years.

BTDretire

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  When I was in my early 20's, I was sold a stock called Baldwin United.
The price went down, The broker said, if it was good at $20 it's better at $15,
so I was sold some more. The company went bankrupt, I don't recall ever
getting any money back.
 It was actually a good lesson, I now, keep most of my money in Vanguard Total stock Market Index, and have never been sold any stock again, I'm perfectly capable of making my own mistakes! :-)  I'm very leery of anyone selling on commission.
 However, I was in Vanguard during the 2008 drop. I watched the value drop over 40%.`
 That happened in 9 short months!!
But I hung in and the value is almost triple from the 3-01-09 low, including deposits.

Tris Prior

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I married the wrong person.

+1. I don't even want to think about how much money this cost me over the years (plus legal fees for the divorce).

czr

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Fastest was I have wasted $200 in 10 minutes at a roulette table.

Most and not much different, I am currently down $8,000 in an unrealized loss chasing a single stock as its’ price was dropping. The market value is still less than 50% of purchase price.

Recently and before being more financially aware, in a weak moment I leased a luxury car. Negotiated down the selling price well but total payments (ie. depreciation) will be $14,500 and after three years I will have nothing to show for it. Should have just purchased a practical used car.

The good news is that the positive financial decisions outweigh the poor ones and there is time to make up for them. I consider all these examples as costly learning experiences that I hope not to repeat.

SyZ

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I turned right inside a crowded parking structure and a huge F350 4 feet off the ground came barreling down the center, no attempt to evade

Rather than risk death, I inched to the right where, of course, the one supporting pillar in this 20 car lane happened to be, causing damage along the side of the car

The F350, naturally, continues along and leaves with no incident

I call State Farm, they of course have no proof another car existed, and want me to spend a $1,000 deductible to then get $800 from them on the $1,800 repair. Meanwhile, my insurance would go up $50 a month for 5 years. Yea, what a bargain

I say, 'Thanks for nothing, just close the claim' - which they do

But, because a claim was reported, it shows on Lexis Nexus as an accident, even though insurance did absolutely nothing and there was no reason to ever report it

<3 insurance

2Birds1Stone

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I bought $30k worth of Silver and Gold in 2013/2014 and have an unrealized loss of ~$9k on it right now.

Captain FIRE

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In college, I learned about a company that would send you full rebates for all of the things you bought from them.  I suspect the idea was that these were quite overpriced items, and some people would fail to submit the rebates and they'd pay for it based on that.  Rather than test the waters as originally planned, I got too excited and I "bought" about over a thousand dollars of things from them, which mostly were overpriced crap.  Company went under, people sued, I think I got about 7.5% back of what I paid.

I also got one present for my mom (Kincaid screen saver she still uses 15 years later) and a favorite recipe from one of the cookbooks I bought.  Everything else was crap.  Example of overpricing: I think the screensaver was like $120.  It's on amazon today at $14 (although it was probably more back in the day - but at most I can't imagine it more than $40).

I learned things too good to be true likely are, and if I *must* do it, to tread very warily.

gggggg

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I blew through a chunk of money gifted to me by a wealthy relative in my pre-frugal days. Bone head move. I have to say though, it did get the "spending bug" out of my system, so in a way, it was useful.

Philociraptor

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Took out $100k of student loans at private university instead of going to local state school for free. (currently owe $64k still, 5 years out of school)

Borrowed $26k for a brand new Ford Mustang right out of school, before I even had a job lined up. (traded it in 3 years later and bought an ugly car with cash)

Bought a house on an FHA loan requiring PMI payments each month. (refinanced out of PMI 3 years later)

I did manage to marry a women who shares my dream of early retirement though, so that's something.

Uturn

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I have a private pilot license. 

iwasjustwondering

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I was going to Los Angeles with my kids a few years ago.  We were flying Virgin Atlantic.  I got a car to take us to Newark Airport, in plenty of time for the flight.  Except Virgin didn't fly out of Newark at that time.  They only flew out of JFK.  So we had to take a $250+ cab ride to JFK.  Oops.  We missed our flight, of course, and were supposed to have to pay a rebooking fee of at least $50 each, but I bet my kids I could talk them into waiving the fee, and I did.  That was a dumb one. 

mozar

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I'm a little bit embarrassed about this but I refinanced a couple years ago without running the numbers. I went from 5% at 30 years to 3.5% at 15 years which will cost me an extra 3k over the life of the loan plus the 1k refinancing fee. *hangs head in shame*
Good news I guess is that my mom ended up refinancing because before she saw me do it she was too intimidated,  she ended up saving 50k or so.

honeybbq

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I gave a live in ex-boyfriend of 3 years 10k to pay for a downpayment on a house in a city where he was moving to (we were going to long distance it, it was a good opportunity for him, I was supportive, blah blah).

Turns out it was just a big scam and there was no house. The best was he came up with a crazy lie that multiple people had tried to buy the house and the title search was misdone so it was actually HE who was getting scammed, and by proxy... me. However, pretty sure that is not the case.

Anyways, I made him disappear but I never did get my money back.

seathink

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Bought a new car after bullying, thus doubling my debt-load, from 25k in student loans to owing over 50k.

This was after many work days excitedly running car-less numbers and calculating how much I could save/travel if I walked/biked the eleven long city blocks to work.

Unfortunately it was August, I was a wuss, and my roommate kept hounding me that I needed a car (she drove a new car that her dad paid all the payments and insurance on it). Said roommate went as my "buddy" to the dealership.

I caved after test driving a perfectly good 5-year-old model when both her and the sales guy demanded I drive a new car to compare. :(

Proudest moment: sold the car to friends, paid off the loan early, and bought a damn scooter.

I was going to Los Angeles with my kids a few years ago.  We were flying Virgin Atlantic.  I got a car to take us to Newark Airport, in plenty of time for the flight.  Except Virgin didn't fly out of Newark at that time.  They only flew out of JFK.  So we had to take a $250+ cab ride to JFK.  Oops.  We missed our flight, of course, and were supposed to have to pay a rebooking fee of at least $50 each, but I bet my kids I could talk them into waiving the fee, and I did.  That was a dumb one. 

I've done this, too! Looked at Burbank, bought LAX, forgot I didn't fly out of Burbank...
« Last Edit: June 21, 2016, 04:14:52 PM by seathink »

Uturn

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I gave a live in ex-boyfriend of 3 years 10k to pay for a downpayment on a house in a city where he was moving to (we were going to long distance it, it was a good opportunity for him, I was supportive, blah blah).

Turns out it was just a big scam and there was no house. The best was he came up with a crazy lie that multiple people had tried to buy the house and the title search was misdone so it was actually HE who was getting scammed, and by proxy... me. However, pretty sure that is not the case.

Anyways, I made him disappear but I never did get my money back.

I was going to volunteer to be the next ex-boyfriend, but I'm not quite sure the definition of "made him disappear."

nawhite

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I'm a little bit embarrassed about this but I refinanced a couple years ago without running the numbers. I went from 5% at 30 years to 3.5% at 15 years which will cost me an extra 3k over the life of the loan plus the 1k refinancing fee. *hangs head in shame*
Good news I guess is that my mom ended up refinancing because before she saw me do it she was too intimidated,  she ended up saving 50k or so.

I'm confused how the numbers work out how you say? Unless you had less than 15 years left on your 30 year mortgage, you are going to pay interest for less time and you are going to pay a lower interest rate. How in the world does that cost more?

Even if you only had 5 years left on the 30 year loan and you extended that out another 15 years, why not just pay the old payment amount and get rid of the loan in 5 years again?

irishbear99

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There was a period of about 4-5 years a decade ago when I only contributed 1% to my TSP because I was convinced I couldn't afford to contribute 5% in order to get the full match. Now I max it out every year, but still shake my head at my younger self. If losing out on free money isn't dumb, I don't know what is.

FrugalShrew

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My employer chips in $500 per year for folks with a high-deductible health insurance plan. When I started with them, it was mid-fall. HR sent a notice around Thanksgiving that we needed to have HSA accounts by December 31 in order to get the $500. The December 31 deadline was bolded. I completed the paperwork to open my account about a week and a half before the deadline. But I'd neglected to read all the way through the notice, which a few paragraphs in suggested that it could take up to 2 weeks to process the paperwork. My account was officially opened in early January, and I lost out on receiving $500. Oy.

fuzzy math

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I bought a house in 2008. We had to move in 2012. Walked on the house (ruined my credit). Moved again in 2013, 2014 and 2016. Lots of lost matching retirement funds.

Finally settled, credit is rebuilt. I shudder to think of where we would have been if those series of things hadn't happened.

JoJo

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Bought a condo for $550,000 in 2007.  I'd be lucky if I got $500,000 for it today.  Dues have gone from $247 to $395 in that time frame and we are looking at a possible very large assessment (like $27,000).

MoonShadow

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In my early 20's, My wife & I got involved in a "buying club".  We had to finance the $1500 5 year membership fee, and we didn't have the money to participate till our 5th year.  So when we finally did, we went back to where the club office was, and found out that it had closed up and filed bankruptcy two year before.  I'm still not sure if it was a deliberate scam, or just poorly managed, but I never got anything out of that $1500 fee.

Lesson learned, never buy a discount on credit.

MoonShadow

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I have a private pilot license.

I'm guessing that you don't own an aircraft?

Cellista

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When I bought my house I trusted the seller when he said the crawlspace under the 500 sq ft addition that he built had been inspected.

Ten years later when the floor in the addition is pulling away from the walls, I learn there is no way it was inspected.  This idiot used the wrong beams, wrong supports, and even put the insulation in upside down.  The three year warranty is long expired and a lawyer tells me it's unlikely I would win a lawsuit.

I am so freaked out I pay $50K to a reliable company to redo the construction, without getting other bids.

Lesson 1: trust nothing the seller tells you

Lesson 2: crawlspaces suck



« Last Edit: June 21, 2016, 06:39:13 PM by Cellista »

Uturn

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I have a private pilot license.

I'm guessing that you don't own an aircraft?

Nope.  And at $100/hr minimum to rent, that license doesn't see much use. 

SoccerLounge

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I have a private pilot license.

I'm guessing that you don't own an aircraft?

Nope.  And at $100/hr minimum to rent, that license doesn't see much use.
I almost started an IR this year, but then I came to my senses, thankfully!

Otherwise: I bought a white Les Paul Custom (very nice high-end electric guitar, for those who don't play) for about $5,000. I'd always wanted one. That is the single biggest "I just want one" expense of my life, and fortunately there haven't been many. I have on my to-do list for this month to sell it, finally.

golfreak12

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Mine is a good one.
I drove to Sacto to live with my brother for a while. In my 5th day there they stole my car.(it was a Civic Si). Police found it a bit later. Luckily they only took the wheels but left it sitting flat on the ground.
Funny thing. Before I left for Cali I took out full coverage for the car but didn't pay it so I thought I was fucked. I called them up and they told just pay the premium and then file a claim afterward. I actually made a bit of money after all of it but my insurance dropped me and refund me the pro-rate premium.

Same car a year later. I drove back to Florida after I had enough of Cali. I'm thinking nah I've lived in Florida all my live, cars just don't get stolen here. After a few months, one morning in front of my drive way, my car was gone. MF, they stole it right on front of my house. I didn't have full coverage of the car at the time. Police found it a day after and they stole quite a bit of stuff. I ended up selling that car for $1K. Lost around $5K on that car.

A little time went by and in searching for another car, I came across another car just like my old Civic Si. I didn't mean to but it was quite a deal. This time I was smart(at least I thought I was). It was going to sit it in the garage.. The thing was I had another car and I would only have insurance on the car I was driving at the time. At the time The Civic Si was sitting in the garage with no insurance since I wasn't driving it. I took it out and washed and waxed it, prepping it so I can start driving it again. I left it outside 2-3 nights(just because I was a dumbass) and one morning, YUP it was stolen. 3 fvking stolen cars all Civic Si. After the first 2 I should have learned my lesson. That car was worth around $7k-8K and the police never found it. I even called them a year later and they never found it. Money down the drain.

mozar

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Quote
I'm confused how the numbers work out how you say? Unless you had less than 15 years left on your 30 year mortgage, you are going to pay interest for less time and you are going to pay a lower interest rate. How in the world does that cost more?

Even if you only had 5 years left on the 30 year loan and you extended that out another 15 years, why not just pay the old payment amount and get rid of the loan in 5 years again?

I pay less in interest but I pay more per month. So when I have paid the 15 year loan in full I will have paid 130k. Plus the extra ~129 a month over 15 years is ~23k. So that's ~153k.
If I had just paid the original loan I think it would have been 150k. But I haven't looked at it in awhile. I only had it a year when I refinanced. If I'm thinking about this wrong feel free to pm me.

nora

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I paid a $10000 deposit to have something fixed and the company went broke before the work was done.

david51

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I bought $30k worth of Silver and Gold in 2013/2014 and have an unrealized loss of ~$9k on it right now.

     In the early 90's I lost 40k on silver. I like stocks better.

MoneyCat

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I invested in a Roth IRA with a "financial planner". I made $5 profit over the course of two years on $5,500 because they were charging me 1.25% in fees.

Nissykins2

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I'm enjoying reading these stories. Thanks for sharing, everyone.

Adventine

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I gave a live in ex-boyfriend of 3 years 10k to pay for a downpayment on a house in a city where he was moving to (we were going to long distance it, it was a good opportunity for him, I was supportive, blah blah).

Turns out it was just a big scam and there was no house. The best was he came up with a crazy lie that multiple people had tried to buy the house and the title search was misdone so it was actually HE who was getting scammed, and by proxy... me. However, pretty sure that is not the case.

Anyways, I made him disappear but I never did get my money back.

I was going to volunteer to be the next ex-boyfriend, but I'm not quite sure the definition of "made him disappear."

Indeed, I am curious as well about the full story :D

On topic: On a whim, I once bought a pair of fancy black high heels for what was then a full 1/3 of my monthly take home pay. I only used them a couple of times because they were so uncomfortable. They ended up growing mold in the back of my closet before I threw them out. Never again. I stick to nice comfortable flats and wedges these days.

Kalergie

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I never calculated my "losses" but hands down the most I've ever lost is by procrastinating between 2010 to 2013 to invest. I've saved a ton of cash during my early work life. Between 2008 and 2010, I paid off my student loan which was a great investment.

Then I learned about index investing but I was scared and thought I'd wait until I was absolutely sure about my Asset Allocation. By the time I finally launched, the bull had been raging all those years. I missed an early entry point.

In the end of the day, it will only affect a small amount of my life time savings, but still enough to bug me.


ltt

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Lehman Brothers bonds inherited from father years ago.....am still unhappy about the whole situation.

Uturn

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I also sat in cash and metals from 2010 to 2015 because I lost so much in 2001 and 2008, I was afraid of the market and listening to the wrong people.  I'll sell all my silver %15 off what I paid.  It's a bargain.

Kaspian

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I bought $1000 worth of MP3.com because David Bowie and Alanis Morissette were supporters of it and it was a damn good web site for artists to share their music.  Lawyers managed to bust the company even though it was artists sharing their own music legally.   ...Then the DOT COMs crashed anyway in 2000.

$500 in Laidlaw--a garbage removal company that was having legal troubles but I figured they had so many contracts they'd have to bounceback.  They didn't.

$500 in Jumbo Video, a competitor to Blockbuster.  ...And we all know how video rental places ended.

I don't know how many thousands lost in different sector-based mutual funds and locked funds before I finally learned about indexing.  I'm still trying to get the remaining $136 (out of $1000 I gave to them) from a company called Vengrowth who's had the fund locked for the past 20 years.  ...It's pure magic to turn $1000 into $136!  Thanks for that one, financial "advisor"! 
« Last Edit: June 22, 2016, 08:33:12 AM by Kaspian »

Ceridwen

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I needed an MRI and hospital wait times were long (Canada), so I called around to some private clinics and got a $500 quote.  Called my insurance to confirm it would be covered, and they said yes.

Got the MRI and submitted the claim, and insurance rejected it.  Why? Because I had already used up my allotted $500 in diagnostics for the year.  This was of course not mentioned to me when I called to see if it was covered.

The best part is, it was the last week of December.  So had I waited another week, it would have been covered.

No amount of pressure on the insurance company worked.  I was so mad and felt so mislead.  $500 down the drain.

campath

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I needed an MRI and hospital wait times were long (Canada), so I called around to some private clinics and got a $500 quote.  Called my insurance to confirm it would be covered, and they said yes.

Got the MRI and submitted the claim, and insurance rejected it.  Why? Because I had already used up my allotted $500 in diagnostics for the year.  This was of course not mentioned to me when I called to see if it was covered.

The best part is, it was the last week of December.  So had I waited another week, it would have been covered.

No amount of pressure on the insurance company worked.  I was so mad and felt so mislead.  $500 down the drain.
Dispute it with your credit card provider. You made the decision based on incorrect information from your insurance company.

doingmybest

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Time share in Sedona.  $14000 to buy it and at least $1000/year in costs for the past 12 years. At least we paid cash.  Still trying to unload it.

honeybbq

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I'm a little bit embarrassed about this but I refinanced a couple years ago without running the numbers. I went from 5% at 30 years to 3.5% at 15 years which will cost me an extra 3k over the life of the loan plus the 1k refinancing fee. *hangs head in shame*
Good news I guess is that my mom ended up refinancing because before she saw me do it she was too intimidated,  she ended up saving 50k or so.

Wait, what?

An example loan of 200k for 30 yrs at 5% - total interest paid is $186k
An example loan of 200k for 15 yrs at 3.5% - total interest paid is 57k.

Am I missing something?

honeybbq

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I gave a live in ex-boyfriend of 3 years 10k to pay for a downpayment on a house in a city where he was moving to (we were going to long distance it, it was a good opportunity for him, I was supportive, blah blah).

Turns out it was just a big scam and there was no house. The best was he came up with a crazy lie that multiple people had tried to buy the house and the title search was misdone so it was actually HE who was getting scammed, and by proxy... me. However, pretty sure that is not the case.

Anyways, I made him disappear but I never did get my money back.

I was going to volunteer to be the next ex-boyfriend, but I'm not quite sure the definition of "made him disappear."

:p  That's how I keep new would-be scam artists away. :D

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!