Read that whole debt free thread and saw lots of anecdotes about individual financial success.
My finances are finally moving in the right direction after years of dumb decisions. I’m not sure I had any single terrible decision other than taking out my first credit card at age 22 to buy a Winchester M70 Sporter in 300 RUM that I never really liked. But that set the ball rolling toward carrying around 5 digits of maxed out credit cards for nearly 15 years. I even did a personal loan to transfer that debt and then re maxed out the card so I then had nearly double the last balance to pay off.
The year I got married, things had begun to to at least stabilize or so I thought, but my truck broke down towing our dumpy camper so I traded it in for a newer one worth three times the last one and financed it. Got married and overspent on honeymoon (we had money for it, we just doubled what we had available), then my wife financed a car worth 7 times her last. Later that same year she announces she’s pregnant with our first.
The pregnancy was my wake up call and from there we’ve had some good timing and made some good decisions to clear things up.
So how about you? What are some of the biggest stupid taxes you’ve paid, or biggest financial decisions you regret and would like to see others not make those same decisions. I realize this is the opposite of most of what we do where when we just toot our own horns here. But if you want to pass on wisdom from experience , it might be to air some of those regrets here.
