Worst Investment You've Ever Made?

[jeffrey]

I'm looking for examples of the worst investments people have ever made - the more detail, the better. Everyone always talks about the supposedly great investments, but rarely do we hear about those investments where people went wrong (not something that most people want to brag about). I think highlighting the bad investment decisions is just as important as the good investments to help others from making the same mistakes you did.

If you have made a bad investment in the past, please share with an explanation why you thought it was going to be a good investment at the time. Thanks.

[Ima saver]

I bought shares in a stock, called JDSUniphase. I read an article in Money magazine that said this was a great stock to buy. It was $120 a share when I bought it in 1999, in the year 2000 it dropped when the bottom fell out of tech stocks. It now goes for about $3 a share!!

[SuzeOFan]

I hate to admit it, but when I was about 18 I was talked into investing in a 'Pyramid Scheme' by my brother and lost about $1000.

In honest retrospect, I see it was my own greed which deceived me and not the wiles of others.

[JBinKC]

Spending the money for a college education.

[Ima saver]

Whatever my first marriage license cost!! [Automated by GetSmile]

darnit Ima, you beat me to it!


mine was going to be my ex girlfriend.

[CJsoccerchic]

Buying a brand new car instead of a used one - It kills me everytime I think about how much money I lost taking that first drive out of the parking lot... ahhhh...

[abowers]

JBinkC - Just curious why your college education was not worth it?

[JBinKC]

I work in the gaming industry. My degree was a waste of money.

[gavinmccallister]

JBinKc, what is your degree in? Have you ever used your degree, if not how come? I went to community college but pulled out after two semesters, I had wanted to go into law enforcement, now I am a sales associate selling shoes, I enjoy what I do but sometimes the pressure put on me seems overwhelming sometimes.

[Haku]

gavin, why didn't you go into law enforcement?

This isn't an investment in the classic sense, but I sometimes go to expensive restraunts when I have a really bad day. A terrible waste of money.

[Fern]

My degree is in anthropology but i don't consider it a waste of money at all.

Because college not just taught me 'book smarts,' but also taught me how to think, how to reason, it introduced me to a wide range of different perspectives and truly expanded my universe coming from a small NJ town. College also allowed me to meet a whole lot of people from all different walks of life, something that may not have been possible if i just went straight to work.

Unless you're talking about a community college that is just an extension of high school, i don't think college is ever a waste of time.

[Ima saver]

Twleve years of my life, married to the wrong person! [Automated by GetSmile]

[gavinmccallister]

Originally Posted by Haku

gavin, why didn't you go into law enforcement?

Back then I made some decisions that weren't really the best.

[Haku]

gavin:

I see. Please understand that if it's not a felony, and depending on the nature of the crime, you can still try out for many law enforcement departments out there. You may have to do some serious explaining, but I would not dismiss such a route if that's what you want out of life.

[jmjj215]

I was 14 and was convinced that this "method" of making money on the internet would certainly work. It involved sending out SPAM (I had no idea what that was) and asking people to send you $5. You then put your name on the list and it would grow and grow with more people sending you $5. I had visions of going to the ATM and depositing thousands of dollars from my earnings.

I spent $90 on a bulk emailer and $25 sending out a $5 bill to each of the five people on the email. I sent out an email with my name now at the #1 spot. Well, a few hours later I got a call from the ISP and they said I was spamming and I wondered what they heck they were talking about. They realized I was legitimately stupid and didn't cancel the service. I also was contacted by a guy on the internet that found ponzi schemes to try and stop them. He was nice in explaining how illegal, stupid, and wrong the system was.

Ponzi schemes are still out there (12dailypro come to mind?), just more sophisticated. I was out $115 and some pride. I never received any money from the thousands of people I emailed.

[jodi]

1. My third car was bought used, but still $12k at a time when I had just graduated with $15k in loans and a job making $15,500/year. I paid it off two years early, but it was totally too much money for the amount of time I had it.
2. The first two years of college at a private university when I could have gotten the same from a local school. Being salutatorian, I definitely was expected to go to a four-year private school, so I never considered otherwise. Even though I had great scholarships and financial aid, I still graduated with the aforementioned $15k in debt, which never seems like a big deal at the time you take out the loans. Still paying it off 7 years later with a few years left...but I'm not saying college was not worth the money, but you don't always need the biggest and best.

[BCHGRL]

Renting when I could've purchased a home. I just wanted to live on the beach, and I could only afford it as a renter.

The housing market in my area tripled overnight, and when I did buy a home, I paid almost twice what the original owners did. They only owned the home 2 years.

[Fern]

This wasn't really an investment, but a few years ago i pre-paid for a winter's supply of heating oil with a local supplier. The company continued taking money in from hundreds of customers without delivering the oil. They went belly up. It got a lot of press in the papers,the attorney general got involved, but becus i was an unsecured creditor, i never got my money back. I didn't get burnt as badly as others; it was only a few hundred dollars.

[JBinKC]

I went thru 3 years of dental school. My college degree is in chemistry with 30 semester hrs of accounting . I wanted to become a pharmacist after I decided that dentistry wasn't for me but the schools wouldn 't accept any transfered credits towards a pharmacy degree even though I have taken about 90% of the curriculum for a pharmacist.

Although I have made a big sum in the stock market I could have only have imagined the amount of money I would have now with that wasted capital.

Investment wise my worst decisions were (1) have partners in my stock dealings whose influence in delaying capital gains cost me about 100K. (In my retirement account I sold the stock for a 60 K gain). (2) not selling when the earnings numbers didn't come through yet I held because of the company's expansion. (company was Bennett Enviromental ticker BEL) I had let go of a little more than 200K of gains in a stock that way.