What were some financial setbacks when you were young?

[MaxPowers]

What financial lessons did you learn as you were growing up? Did the financial setback hurt you for a long time? Or were you able to quickly get over it? Let me in on it so I may avoid the same mistake.

My biggest setback is when I cosigned for a car loan with my Ex. She now refuses to pay, and to protect my credit, Its going to end up costing $9k. Making payments. I can get my $ back by suing her. Will do that next October. This deal has also put a big dent in my credit score. I will never co-sign again.
I let my good friend borrow $1,000. He was moving and needed money to help with the move. We had a plan worked out for him to pay me back, I though we would stay in touch. Never happened. I now don't lend money to anyone. Its harder for me to trust someone.
Bought my first car cash. Didn't know the importance of credit, and now I am just starting to establish credit.


Should I be beating myself up over these mistakes? I am 24 and figure in the long run it's just pocket change.

[fruitbowlk]

NO you shouldn't beat yourself up over these mistakes as long as you learn from them. They are very pricey lesson to learn.

My biggest mistake was helping out my family financially. I lost lots of money and also lost relationships with my family members.

[red92s]

I'm still young-ish, financially speaking, but off the top of my head I would say:

- Selling my TV to my roommate when I moved out, and agreeing to let her pay $750 over three months. It's now been 6 months, and I'm still waiting on $150 (she has been chipping away though).

- Not taking better advantage of the tax savings offered by a 401(K)

- Totaling a paid off Honda

- Eating out for lunch about 3 times a week when I started working

- Not starting an emergency fund as soon as I started working (although now I'm closing in on 6 months)

That is about it, but I'm still young and have plenty of time to make more some more mistakes

[ScrimpAndSave]

I'm in my 5th year of teaching. For the first 4 years, I didn't save a dime. During the last year, I got serious about saving and now I have $20,000. I could have had SO much more...

[maat55]

You should go into the bathroom and go Jim Carrey(Liar,Liar) on yourself. Afterwards, you can walkout, with a smile, and a much smarter person.

My biggest mistake was buying too much house when I moved to the town I live now. We were investing well and had a small mortgage(before the move), then we slowly, for years, lived just beyond our means. I did not have the knowledge I have now, thank God I have time to fix it.

[gamecock43]

Never loan money to a friend- in high school it ruined my friendship with a best friend (over $350 too! Such a shame).

Never take financing for selling a car/ or anything. I sold a car to someone 2 yrs ago in return for payments. I got 2 payments and she was gone. Lost $700 in that deal.

[Ima saver]

I bought 3 rental houses when I was young. I figured that the rent would make the payments and someday I would own them free and clear. the tenants trashed the houses and I sold them all for less than what I owed, much less. One house sold for less than 1/2 of what I paid for it.

[hmd2009]

Never buy a house before selling the first one you own. We put ours up for sale and bought our new home, and then the old home flooded in a freak flood. Yes, it was a federally declared disaster, but FEMA won't even look at you if its not your primary residence. We now have a ruined home that we still have a mortgage on and can't sell, and have no idea what to do with it.

Never lend money to family. If you can afford to just give it away to them, do that instead. I haven't spoken to my brother in 3 years after he ripped me off AND never paid me back. He thought because he was mad at me for getting mad at him for ripping me off and costing us thousands of dollars, he didn't owe me a dime anymore.

[gamecock43]

Never loan money to friends/family. Seems to be a cardinal rule here.

[Snave]

My biggest mistake was not diversifying my 401k for a good 6 years when I started with my company. I was a well respected company that had a great track record and I wasn't financially wise enough to know better, so I listened to others in the organization say they had their money in the company stock. Stupid on my part and I had negative returns for years. The one positive was that at least I was socking money away. I just never got it to grow fo many years.

[cptacek]

I bought my first pickup without haggling. I just paid the price they offered. I think the salesman even tried to get me to offer a lower price.

Then I traded that one in on a new pickup about 3 years later, even though the first one was perfectly fine. And I got a 6 year loan on it. And I'm still paying for it...it will be gone this October.

[maat55]

Originally Posted by cptacek

I bought my first pickup without haggling. I just paid the price they offered. I think the salesman even tried to get me to offer a lower price.

Then I traded that one in on a new pickup about 3 years later, even though the first one was perfectly fine. And I got a 6 year loan on it. And I'm still paying for it...it will be gone this October.

This kinda reminds me of the time when I and DW were buying her a car when we were first married. I wanted to haggle for a good deal, but got the foot under the table treatment.

After agreeing on a price, they came back and lowered the price by 500 because we did not qualify at the higher price.

[Fizgig]

I was fortunate and was able to learn from other people's mistakes before I made them myself, especially with regards to credit.

My sister, six years older, got into terrible debt in her early twenties. I got to see all the stress and trouble that caused her. Also, when I was 18 I worked in a Wells Fargo call center for debt collections. I took call after call from people over their heads who couldn't pay. As a result, I didn't get my first credit card until after graduating college and have never carried a balance for more than a month or two.

My biggest personal mistake was renting a too-nice-too-expensive apartment after graduating college, mostly to keep my live-in boyfriend at the time happy (we broke up years ago). He paid the rent when I was in school, and after I graduated he went to school and I paid the bills. He had more expensive taste/perceived needs than I did, and paying the hefty rent kept me from saving for a few years.

[jIM_Ohio]

Leasing cars is expensive
car accidients cost money
renting is expensive
tax knowledge is a must

[snafu]

Bought 1st house from builder in new sub division which ended up being 8 months late to completion. We had to move temporarily to a month-to-month rental which cost more than a lease + the cost of utility hook-ups etc. Had I known more, I would have added a rider on the offer to purchase outlining responsibility for delays.

Our nighmare was just begining...Two months after finally taking posession, we were moved to the other end of the country by employer due to downturn in local economy. It was impossible to sell house when the economy tanked, the realtor we signed with changed occupation and no one tried to market that albatross/house.

Luckily we were able to rent it for the winter and it did finally sell when the economy recovered in the late summer. The debacle set us back 5 yrs. financially.

[creditcardfree]

Don't lease a vehicle.
Put up as large of a downpayment on a home as you can to avoid PMI.
Have more than liability insurance even if your car is paid for.

[MonkeyMama]

I am good at putting bad things out of my mind so reading this thread is bringing back memories - hehe.

1 - The worst thing we ever did was buy a bunch of tech stocks in 2000/2001. Yeah... (Scared me off of individual stocks. But learned that lesson right out of college which was fine. Could have been a pretty bad slaughter if we had invested longer. As is, we lost a few thousand dollars).

2 - Definitely guilty of not taking full advantage of 401k and IRAs, etc. If I could do 2000 & 2001 (DINK years) over I would have maxed out my 401k and maxed out our IRAs. BAck then, tax savings from 401k would have been enough to max out both IRAs.

3 - The money I invested as a teen (IRA) sat in cash earning 1% for about a decade.

4 - Along the same lines, our cash was only earning 1% or less. I think this is our worst mistake ever. When our income was lowest we had $30k cash in the bank earning like 0.5%. For a few years. The thought makes me cringe today.

IF you see a theme here - we had a great financial education and avoided most pitfalls, but yeah, terrible at managing assets. As were our financial role models.

5 - We bought 2 homes. That actually worked out okay. BUT, at the same time, was a risky enough experience I would never do that again either. I think we were rather lucky. We looked to buy some acreage around 2006 when prices were falling and real estate professionals were REALLY pressuring us to buy before we sold our current home. We knew not to move, buy, or move and quit job, until cash from house was in our hands (we talked often of moving out of area, to cheaper lands, when equity skyrocketed). Though original experience (2001) was a tad painful, definitely helped us keep our head when we had $400k+ equity in our current home for a time. We never got attached to it. I Can't say we would have been so wise if we hadn't already ridden an equity roller coaster with our first home. The most important lesson here was "Don't go shopping with paper gains." Owning 2 homes can be okay if you can AFFORD them.

In 2005 (real estate peak here), a LOT of our friends were snatching up second homes and didn't take it well when we warned them to be careful. They didn't understand we had been there, and yeah, did not pan out well for them at all. Some things you have to learn the hard way I guess.

[Goldy1]

I have not yet read the responses from others but here was a big lesson to me. I moved from the dorms to a sorority house in college. My parents gave me a credit card for emergencies and occasional charges, but never told me it was for emergenies or discussed a limit. There was sort of an unspoken rule I could charge about $100 a month.
I bought a few things for my new room in the sorority house ie. $100 desk, lamp etc. and apparantly ran up about 200 or so bucks.
My mom called me and told me how much I spent and to stop it. I denied spending as much as she said b/c I literally didn't think it all added up to be that much. She had the facts. I learned how stuff adds up, and I only used the card about twice the next 3 years to spot me I got a p/t job.

Also my mom told me how much her income went to my college, and it touched me and I appreciated it. Kids don't know these things.

[srblanco7]

PMI on a mortgage - drove me nuts

Fiddling around w/ my 401k investment choices - in essence, trying to "time the market" - cost myself a lot of money

And an ongoing issue of helping to support my brother in law and his wife. He has substance abuse issues and we've kept his wife solvent while he was in rehab etc.. The most recent "gift" was the last. Never again.

[project15]

I bought a 10 year old used car in college because I wanted a "sports car". It turns out the car was a piece of junk and fell apart on me a few months later. Sold it as a shell to someone who wanted to fix it up. I lost about $4k on that mistake which was a lot to me at the time.

I still want a sports car, but next time, I'll buy something a little newer and have it checked out a little better.