Worst financial catastrophe?

[clatoden99]

I moved to a location without doing much research. Within three weeks I knew it was a totally wrong move. The community was completely different than what I thought it was going to be. I knew I was going to be extremely unhappy. Usually you can just move. Right?

Well, we had purchased close to the US real estate peak prices in 2005. We spent three years renovating before finally moving in August of 2008. Remember August 2008? The housing economy collapsed and the recession began. The property was suddenly worth half what we paid for it. We could not even rent it for enough to cover our payment. This came about at the same time I was frantic to move out.

Why hadn’t I done research? Because my cousin had previously lived in that same community and had never mentioned anything wrong. When I ask him about it after I was so shocked, both he and his wife went on and on with horrible experiences they had living there! They had let me sell a business, move 2,000 miles and never said a word.

Actually, I guess my worst financial decision was trusting a relative.

[Fishindude77]

Had a pretty big screw up in my business a few years ago. Made a serious layout mistake on a big building project. The to tear out, rebuild and replace totaled approx. $600K out of pocket. From time of discovery until corrected took about 3 months and was pretty stressful. Luckily we had cash reserves to deal with the matter and other profitable projects going on at the same time so it didn't sink our ship.

In the end, the client was impressed that we took it upon ourselves to take care of things without a fight and they are still a client. My thinking all along was .... we made the mistake and we'll fix it at no cost to you.

[TexasHusker]

Had a pretty big screw up in my business a few years ago. Made a serious layout mistake on a big building project. The to tear out, rebuild and replace totaled approx. $600K out of pocket. From time of discovery until corrected took about 3 months and was pretty stressful. Luckily we had cash reserves to deal with the matter and other profitable projects going on at the same time so it didn't sink our ship.

In the end, the client was impressed that we took it upon ourselves to take care of things without a fight and they are still a client. My thinking all along was .... we made the mistake and we'll fix it at no cost to you.

Good for you. You kept your word and have been rewarded for it. That's a comparative rarity these days. This country is suffering an epidemic of people refusing to own their stuff.