Worst financial catastrophe?

**QuarterMillionMan** · 05-13-2017, 09:05 PM

Those are some hefty losses.

Mine was during the 2008 financial collapse. My 457 plan took a hit of about $25,000, so I sold off my positions and didn't reinvest until years later but missed out on the gains on the way back up.

**AJSimon** · 05-13-2017, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by TexasHusker View Post

The worst I suffered was a 401K debacle at my co. that cost me $200K.

The next one was one time when I bought my wife a new Mercedes in Baltimore. It was supposed to take a week to get to Texas, but after about 10 days I got nervous.

I started calling the shipper and they didn't claim to know much. Finally, they admitted that the car had fallen off of the car hauler going 70 mph, and it was totaled. Problem is, they said they wouldn't take financial responsibility for it because their contract clearly states they are not responsible for strap failure.

My insurance company wouldn't pay because I had never taken possession of the vehicle. So I was out $50,000.

I had to hire a lawyer to sue the shipper, and wouldn't get my money back for 18 months.

Quite an ordeal.

If you don't mind my asking, if the contract states that the shipper isn't responsible for strap failure, how does it come to pass that you get your money back? Don't get me wrong - I'm glad you did, because common sense dictates that the shipper should be responsible for strap failure, but if a contract you signed says they aren't, how do you work around that legality?

**~bs** · 05-13-2017, 11:41 PM

auto carriers are supposed to cover insurance to carry these sorts of damages, so it's kind of idiotic that they'd make a big fuss over something that's clearly their fault. Responsibility for the vehicle is in their hands until they deliver the vehicle.

As a business or professional, you can disclaim liability to an extent, but you cannot disclaim it for everything that is in your direct control. This is likely what they ruled in court. Just imagine if you could disclaim all responsibility, wouldn't every single company and business say that if you are injured in any way using their product that they're not liability? Doctors would make you sign waivers, and oops if they make a bunch of mistakes, not their liability. Restaurants could serve you bad, tainted foods. Not their fault! etc etc

**TexasHusker** · 05-14-2017, 05:28 AM

Originally posted by ~bs View Post

auto carriers are supposed to cover insurance to carry these sorts of damages, so it's kind of idiotic that they'd make a big fuss over something that's clearly their fault. Responsibility for the vehicle is in their hands until they deliver the vehicle.

As a business or professional, you can disclaim liability to an extent, but you cannot disclaim it for everything that is in your direct control. This is likely what they ruled in court. Just imagine if you could disclaim all responsibility, wouldn't every single company and business say that if you are injured in any way using their product that they're not liability? Doctors would make you sign waivers, and oops if they make a bunch of mistakes, not their liability. Restaurants could serve you bad, tainted foods. Not their fault! etc etc

Pretty much this.

**disneysteve** · 05-14-2017, 06:36 AM

I can't think of anything that I'd call a catastrophe. Surely we've had some costly repairs and made some financial mistakes along the way but nothing that stands out as being major.

**97guns** · 05-14-2017, 06:40 AM

Originally posted by disneysteve View Post

I can't think of anything that I'd call a catastrophe. Surely we've had some costly repairs and made some financial mistakes along the way but nothing that stands out as being major.

Not too much here either, maybe $1500 on a few cheap stocks that went to zero

My brother took a 65k hit in the stock market, still getting a carry over deduction after all these years

**Singuy** · 05-14-2017, 06:59 AM

Bought a house at the peak of the market and then sold it at a 90k loss.

**AJ444** · 05-14-2017, 07:14 AM

130k in losses on primary residences between the two of us.

**tripods68** · 05-14-2017, 07:37 AM

$800 juicer that we used only 4 times in 15 years.

Bought Enron .81 cents a share @ 500 shares. Yup! Lost it all.

**scfr** · 05-14-2017, 08:02 AM

Nothing yet, which I find alarming because now I'm thinking I may be overdue for one.

**AJSimon** · 05-14-2017, 02:12 PM

Originally posted by ~bs View Post

auto carriers are supposed to cover insurance to carry these sorts of damages, so it's kind of idiotic that they'd make a big fuss over something that's clearly their fault. Responsibility for the vehicle is in their hands until they deliver the vehicle.

As a business or professional, you can disclaim liability to an extent, but you cannot disclaim it for everything that is in your direct control. This is likely what they ruled in court. Just imagine if you could disclaim all responsibility, wouldn't every single company and business say that if you are injured in any way using their product that they're not liability? Doctors would make you sign waivers, and oops if they make a bunch of mistakes, not their liability. Restaurants could serve you bad, tainted foods. Not their fault! etc etc

It seems to me that most businesses do this anyway (disclaim all potential liabilities in advance). It was just something I wondered - since businesses and professionals are often successfully sued for making mistakes I'm sure they claim (on paper) are not their fault, so I always wondered how the legal arguments tended to run. Thanks.

**commoncentsmike** · 05-14-2017, 02:28 PM

Can't say I've had any catastrophes. I've had some investments that went sound, but not a lot of funds were sunk into it.

**msomnipotent** · 05-14-2017, 09:30 PM

I believe I mentioned it here and another site a few times. We lost about 1/2 a million due to my husband working for a friend's start-up that totally screwed us over. That doesn't even include the back pay that he was never paid for, which I think was about $600,000. We were completely broke and only a few days away from needing to go to a food bank and signing over our house. We are also going to lose about $90,000 with the sale of this house, which I don't have a problem with. I consider it essential to my sanity at this point.

Up until then, my worst mistake was buying $1,000 worth of Disney stock with my mother right before Animal Kingdom opened, at a very high price, and then it tanked when within days because of so many animals dying. And my father told us not to reinvest the dividends, so we didn't the entire time. We were just talking about that the other day and we have decided to sell the stock, but that is mostly because we just don't want to deal with each other.

**alexander grey** · 05-15-2017, 01:07 AM

I wouldn't call it catastrophes in my case seeing that some of you guys are talking about pretty big numbers... For me just some small mistakes until date (fingers crossed).

Worst financial catastrophe?