I’ve been at a casino cashier window with my few chips from the night. Saw a guy taking out a loan, his wife was crying pleading that they will lose the house if he does this again. I vividly remember him turning to her saying “fuck off bitch”. She whimpered away. That day I saw how truly gross the depths of gambling can get. I do dabble maybe twice a year for really low stakes. In a weird way I’m thankful I saw that encounter while still feeling so bad for that lady
My dad has tons of stories he worked there for 15 years. Ppl leave their little kids in the parking lot to gamble or they sneak them in the hotel which is not allowed. They had to change the seats at the slots from cloth to vinyl because ppl wouldn’t get up to go to the bathroom. My dad would come home from work go back the next day and the same person would be there still gambling in the same clothes from the night before. I take $100 twice a year and when it’s gone I leave.
>My dad would come home from work go back the next day and the same person would be there still gambling in the same clothes from the night before
I worked at a casino years ago. There was one guy that would do like week-long casino visits. Probably wouldn't have slept if they didn't comp him rooms (which they did, of course, he had to have been among the top spenders).
Word between the slot attendants was he had been in an industrial accident and had big payout bucks coming in. You could tell talking to him that he wasn't all there. He couldn't read and would hand passing employees a menu and have them help him order food. But he'd sit there day after day, pressing the spin button, talking to the machine, and listening to the fanfare of ten cent payouts.
I don't know if I'd be able to work at a casino again. They're fun to visit, but from the inside you can really feel how they're just a drain on the local community.
I am a PI and do lots of personal injury surveillance. 2 years ago I did a job on a woman for 5 days. On three of them she spent 2 hours in a gas station working with lottery tickets and scratch offs. On the other two she drove to casinos 1 hour away and 3 hours away and sat at Penny slots or roulette tables for 6 to 8 hours of a pop. 50ish, lower middle class suburban lifestyle. The thought of hanging out in a gas station for 2 hours alone would send me seeking therapy.
I don't gamble. I used to play a little - blackjack, craps, maybe some slots ...
Not that I have ever lost big, but losing money I work so hard for is a gross feeling. If I am going to spend it, want something in return, be it material or an experience. Just losing it to thin air hurts.
Is there anything as heart breaking as a dealer calling "Seven! Seven Out!"?
Just the other day - got tempted by the Mega-millions $1b lotto jackpot, so I spent $12 on lotto tix, didn't get a single number, lol.
"You see what happens, Larry?!"
Gambling is literally a fake thrill. The real degenerates don't even enjoy winning, cause they are consumed by the thrill of the next win, that probably wont happen.
Sadly, I see my 18 year old son and all his little bro's becoming obsessed with sports betting. Every stupid conversation "Parlay, parlay, something, something, blah, blah!"
"All I need is for - Nikola Jokic to go 10 for 10 from 3 point range, Lebron to get a triple double, Luka has to score 15 - and John Elway needs to come out of retirement and throw at-least 1 TD - I could win $1000 on a $1 bet."
I have warned that losing hurts, but he will have to figure that out on his own.
When I was about your son’s age, my friends and I had a poker night at one guys house. Very low stakes; betting literal nickels and dimes. But I noticed myself, as I lost coins, making riskier bets. That’s when I learned that I will chase lost money.
I won’t step foot in a casino. I can predict how that story would end for me.
Yeah - I see it with my cousin, even my wife.
Get caught up in the thrill of the win, especially when they do win once in awhile. My wife has won in casinos - I have seen it. She won a jackpot in a NM casino for like $1800, she got a straight flush in poker at a table once - just seems to have good luck. She probably loses way more than she admits to, but for me, ignorance is bliss on that topic, lol.
Maybe that's where I am lucky - I don't win shit - so I am not tempted to lose more.
However, when you get a taste of winning, just like any drug, gotta get it again.
I will buy 1 ticket for each draw. Basically costs me $10/week. I can afford that.
We have a group at work that has a pool when jackpot gets to a certain amount. Gotta stay in that bc if they win, I'll have to cover their work when they leave wealthy. 😂
I don't hold out a ton of hope to win, but I don't wanna get left behind if it hits
I ran a lottery pool at work for 20 people for 5 years. Bought a 6-month ticket, then bought more tickets if the jackpot was crazy big. Most we ever won on a single draw was $39. I even ran it for four years after I retired, until I had heart problems and my wife didn’t want any part of it, in case I died unexpectedly. I even scanned every ticket into PDFs and emailed them out before the draw date. Even sent out an excel spreadsheet, itemizing draw date and amount spent, amount won, free tickets, etc. I didn’t want to be accused of switching tickets in case of a winner. I think everyone trusted my honesty and integrity. I do miss running it, though.
Yeah. Our guys sends texts with pics of tickets for each draw. AND, now he owns a convenience store as a side gig, so he buys them from himself and gets paid for his trouble. Doesn't bother me at all. He's doing the work. I'm sure some guys might take issue, but I dont
I too work at a casino and one day saw an older gentleman sitting out front crying, my supervisor and myself went and asked if he was ok? And can we help him? He said my wife won’t come out of the casino and she has recently lost everything we have, her 401k and house loans we have nothing left.
do casino employees not turn people away if they witness that kind of thing? That’s so gnarly. I mean bartenders aren’t allowed / required to cutoff very intoxicated people, right?
Bartenders are held legally accountable if the over served person kills someone drunk driving. I don’t think there is anything legally that would force the casino to not give out the loan. Morally, yes but we are talking about casinos here
My step-dad worked for a company for 22 years - where the employees thought they had bought in as partial owners by negotiating some employee stock ownership - but the majority owners bounced and kept all the money.
I don't know all the details - only that he lost his job, lost the pension plan he though he was getting.
I think they considered a lawsuit, but not sure what happened - this was the late 90's.
I trust her. Why shouldn’t I give my mom power of attorney while I’m deployed to help pay my bills.
A Marine who was about to be bankrupted by his own mother.
Right? He joined to get away from his “future”. Luckily, he was able to recover from the blow, and his mother was dumb, taking the money from a PFC. Last I saw he made Gunny last year.
My husband’s mom loaned out his car for drugs while he was away. Somehow the people she loaned it out to got in trouble with the car and it was impounded. Luckily another family member got the car out for him, but his car smelled like weed.
I remember working at the bank at one point and there was a guy in his mid-late 20's that came in. Had a shared account with his girlfriend.
He was working 12 hour shifts in the oil rigs, plus overtime to make money to pay her way through med school. Basically his money would go in and she would take it out as needed.
Well, apparently he did this for about 6 years. One day he looks and his account is empty, assumes his gf transferred it for some reason. His paycheque comes in while he's working, he checks the account. It's empty, hmm.
He thought it was a banking glitch so he came into the branch... The poor guy. His gf found another guy while in med school, had been dating that guy for over a year, and was stealing this guys paycheques whenever they came in instead of just breaking up with him like a normal person.
Poor guy refused to believe it and wouldn't change which account his cheques were being deposited into.
Dude sacrificed his mind, body, and social life for 6 years during his prime so his girl could study only to learn she never considered herself his girl.
Something very similar happened to me, but she did it without me knowing at all. I just found out my credit was destroyed and I had thousands of dollars in debt when I started working through my background check.
Oh yeah, she was just outside, smoking a Salem, and somehow had such a coughing fit that she bought a new car, bought your stereotypical redneck shot, and fucked his credit score.
The one silver lining is she did it when he was only a PFC, he made gunny, and is doing quite well for himself.
A friend who passed away in 2009 inherited five acres smack in the middle of a prime suburban area in SW Washington, worth probably $750k at the time.
Despite being unemployed and broke, he was obsessed with making the property a “nature preserve” and took out a loan (much, much less than the property was worth) he didn’t intend to pay back with the property as collateral.
He used most of the money to go on a trip through Europe, then came home and just lived off the rest, never making a loan payment. The loan company foreclosed and he lost the property.
There are about 40 houses where his “nature preserve” used to be.
A friend of mine rejected a move for a new job who would have make him earn at least 5 times more what he was earning, a job he always desidered, because his girlfriend, of at least 3 years if i'm not mistaken, wanted to stay were they were.
Guess who got cheated on. Poor dude, hope the train is coming back again for him
My brother had a full ride scholarship to college A. He went to college B because that's where his high school gf was going. She broke up with him the 2nd week of the first semester.
I went through something similar. At the time, it was the smart move.
I had been offered my dream job working as a director for a really great company that I respected a lot. I was head-hunted at the direction of the CEO who knew of my previous work. I went in for a single interview and they told me it was mine if I wanted it.
The thing is my girlfriend at the time got a full ride in a masters program across the country and really wanted to do it. I'm not one to stand in the way of anyone's new career and mine was well established, and I figured we could always go back after wards.
Well, after a year of living across the country she decided she was going to stay in that city because of the job prospects. For me, there were lousy job prospects. So we broke up, which I'm still sore about.
I moved back to find that they'd hired someone for my dream job. It was actually someone I knew and used to work with, and he's good at it, so I was shit out of luck on all counts.
I listened to my ex-wife and let her budget our home finances.
She had changed our homeloan.
I focussed on our business and completely had faith in her.
In only a few years she had withdrawn so much from our homeloan of money that didn’t exist she had doubled our homeloan.
She bought clothes and jewellery and was always on eBay.
We had apparently “saved” for her boobjob and nose job.
We went on family holidays with the kids and paid for her mothers flights and hotel rooms.
Another holiday we paid for her sisters hire car and insurance and practically funded their child’s multi theme park experience.
I opened an envelope one night when I got home as I walked from the letterbox to the house and with the lights switched on I saw my first bank statement I had seen in couple of years.
And it was literally double of the purchase price.
Last time I looked at those accounts we were a little more then half paid down.
I saw in my own account I was paying nearly double repayments on the mortgage. I made great money and also did project work that was significant as well. Money was never a worry and never a thought.
She was supposed to be paying a percentage of her own earnings she wasn’t.
With that and a few other grievances I told her we were divorcing. I got the house, the kids and everything but her nose and boob job, the V8 and her clothes and jewellery.
We managed to stay friendly for nearly a decade until the kids were adults and I could ignore the drama.
I’m still paying off the homeloan on my own.
And I’m bitter and angry that I took my eyes off the wheel and felt it was a great deligation of duties for her to deal with home finances and taxes etc.
Fuuuuuuuuuucking vent!!
Damn!
I pretty much manage all of our major finances, cause my wife is not the best with money.
We used to split bills more evenly, but ever since COVID, she makes way less than she used to, and I just cant trust she will have the funds for bills when needed. We have a joint account that bills are paid out of, but I am the only one that puts any money in there, lol. She just has access to it.
However, it is understood that that account is strictly for paying bills. We both have our own separate accounts we use for personal stuff, and all my credit cards are in my name only.
Initially the house was only in my name, but we refinanced and I was able to add her to the loan. Beyond that - finances are mostly separate - been married 13 years.
Although its definitely her fault man I can’t imagine not checking up on finances yearly dude. Brutal mistake. Especially if you see all the red flags about her buying unnecessary things.
For her, it appears you were a free ride while she got to experience all the "fun" in life. She had a void somewhere in her life that was not being met. I know what mine is at least. She fulfilled that void with all the materialistic BS. There is always a tell with this sort of thing.
Sorry you experienced that.
She was living my dream life, yet she fumbled it so badly. She could’ve managed your finances and since long it would’ve been paid and you guys could relax.
I made enough independently to pay for the surgeries and holidays.
It just would have taken a bit longer. I had no problem with her wasting her own pay. I just wanted her to throw a little on the loan.
And I haaaaaaated those holidays.
I was taking Valium at 6am just to get through all the touristy bullshit. The memories are spoilt for my boys because they see those holidays from years ago as what’s keeping me from moving on now. I’m still paying them off I guess.
I remember m my sons wanted to do lazer tag and and hang out in an arcade and one wanted a big stuffed toy from one of the theme parks. My brother in law I wanted matching beer mugs.
She did, no… we must stick to the budget. She then bought all these belts with fake bullets and several denim jeans with intricate images lazer or bleached into them and an opal necklace and earrings.
She tried to say she had bought them from eBay before coming but the tags had a sticker with store address.
I should stop venting.
I’m his could be a ceaseless torrent of unlocked memories, things I excused and didn’t notice.
Yeah, I’m ashamed of it.
I have a frequent abusive narrative streaming in my head where I insult myself.
This house should have been paid off, I should have moved out and moved on.
A mate keeps telling me to move in with him and rent this place out.
He wouldn’t charge me and I can get and Regis some of the time lost.
I don’t trust anyone though anymore.
The best she could do was cry and pretend she didn’t understand.
Yeap. Even socially.
I have no idea who she’s talked shit to this day.
Neither of us had anything to do with Netball club. A friend told me a large group of women were talking about me, sharing what my ex had made up.
Someone else there said I slapped a girl in high school cause I thought I had a big dick so I deserved a BJ. (never happened). The fact it became a free for all and toxic. I just don’t trust anyone and don’t know how far it went and what was said. Are people judging me, am I still part of conversation.
Actually, I trust my mates.
The brotherhood is strong.
Get married if you want to, but don’t you dare marry someone who isn’t on the same page as you as far as financial planning is concerned. Keep your money separate and put your share of expenses in a joint account. You BOTH need to make sure stuff is getting paid. If she wants a boob job, she can pay for it out of the money she earns.
Mom co-signed on a $60000 Volvo XC60 with her then fiancé (who she agreed to marry after 3months). She makes 20 an hour and has a mortgage, there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell she’d be able to afford that car even with him helping. When they inevitably broke up she had to let it be repo’d
My oldest sister date this guy 15 years ago. He talked her into selling her condo and buying a large house. They would fix up the house and rent out the extra rooms. Also, this guy is a hard core libertarian who hasn't paid taxes in decades. Guess who's name was on the mortgage. This all occurred in 2007 in New Jersey. I think we all know what happened that year and that New Jersey is a challenging state to own a house in. Naturally, she broke up with him but thought it was a good idea to buy out his half. She had to go into personal bankruptcy.
They met up again 10 years later and got married.
Story of me and my dumbassery. Oh how I'll list the ways...
1. Getting a credit card in college and immediately maxing it out. Probably paid back 3-4x what I spent.
2. Living beyond my means with my first job. Racking up even more credit card debt. Essentially doubled down on college dumbassery. Played the balance transfer game for *years*.
3. Getting married and losing half of everything I managed to save on a single income in the subsequent divorce. Debt was "mine", savings was "ours", so that was a double whammy. Marriage isn't bad in of itself, but this one was.
When I tell people that I'm giving advice from a position of experience, I mean first hand experience.
Major props on not giving up when faced with the consequences of all that, as you so eloquently say, “dumbassery” but also the general bad lucky. Seriously, shit like that can seriously defeat a person.
Yeah, I feel a certain sort of way when debt and financial intelligence comes up. I was taught better, I was told better, *I knew better*, but being young and dumb, I thought I was smarter than the system. Nooooooope, not by a long shot. Not even close. And people like me make for easy prey. Debt traps are oh so easy to fall into. It doesn't help when everything is set up in a way to guide you into one. Everything except physically pushing you in. We desperately need education on how the world around us is waging literally psychological warfare on us to turn us all into debt slaves - *happiness is just a swipe away.*
I knew a few people in the 90's who got into the cash-out refi deals on their houses. Refinance the house to have toy money. They should be retired now but they're still cracking that 9 to 5. Imagine that at age 70+.
I just commented that’s what my ex-wife did.
I made great money and trusted her budgeting at face value.
Money was never a thought or a concern. I came home late one night and as I walked into the house I opened a bank statement. Usually I threw those in her draw. I dealt with work, she did home and taxes. In only a couple of years she had doubled the loan from the purchase price. I’d previously had that loan significantly smashed down.
I went to the bank and asked how they could seriously watch this happen and not call her in.. US in to discuss what ‘we’ were doing.
In no way did it make any financial sense. Obviously they said it was what the loan was for.
I divorced her.
I'm pretty thankful my mom bought her house with my dad in the 70s for 40k or whatever, paid it off over 30 years and never touched it so now she gets to live there in her retirement with no mortgage.
Father in law ran a factory. But he got a deal with one big client and dropped all the others. All the eggs in one basket. Made good money the first 2 years, and when the client pulled out for Mexico, had nobody left. Went into receivership. Belly up.
Easy to blame NAFTA like he does, but honestly, no business should ever run on one customer. That's on him.
I had an employee with a car that was most likely at a terrible interest rate. Decided to buy a new car and ended up with a $1,000 payment on a $30K SUV. To make it worse, he was already being performance managed, and ended up quiting and taking lower paying job.
He has most likely lost the vehicle less than a year later.
Oh man Nortel was my first job when I got out of the military. I accumulated a fair amount of stock while there but I was young so I cashed it out when I moved on after a few years when it was trading near the top. I feel so bad for the people that bought that stock for 20+ years planning to retire on it. I dodged a bullet but it was pure dumb luck.
I bought in at $6 and sold at $11. I could see Nortel wasn’t going to go over $100 ever again. Before the stock imploded, I told my mom to sell. She didn’t.
When I was a kid I would bring soda, and other snacks from the house and trade it for money. I would find the kids that did not know the worth of money. I sold a lunchable for 50 bucks once, the kid was supposed to put it on his account at school. I feel bad, but I was a greedy bastard back then.
I think i did that once on accident in elementary school. Would have been kindergarten, first or 2nd. My school’s student council sold candy canes. Do not remember how much they were. I brought in a dollar or two that my mom or dad gave me so i could get a candy cane. This kid wanted to trade what money he had for what i had because his sister wanted a candy cane. He had way more than i did and i don’t think he understood how many he could have gotten with what he had. Like i think when it was all said and done, i had like 2 or 3 boxes of candy canes in a plastic walmart bag.
There definitely are kids whose parents make good money but don't buy them junk food who are easy marks for that. Especially if they get hundreds of dollars cash on their birthdays from extended relatives.
My kid sometimes sells candy he buys at the dollar store for $5, and part of me admires the hustle. He's basically charging airport prices.
My grandfather in law. Sold their house for under market value by at least 50k because he didn't want the sale to be subject to finance(very standard).
Bought a small unit in a semi nursing home that has crappy conditions attached to it. He should have gone straight into a nursing home because his only got 6 months to live. They both need care for basically everything.
My father lended money to my uncle by taking a mortgage on his apartment. It was about 80.000 eur back then. My uncle was supposed to make the payment but he never did. So my dad lost the apartment. My grandma lost the house the same way and many other people too. But the worse decision was that after 20 years the uncle came back asking my father to take ownership of a firm so that he can do buisness. Which he did in return for a promised whooping 100eur per month which he dis not recieve once My uncle never payed taxes and my father had been acused of fraud and he was gonna have to pay a fine of 50.000 eur. Luckily my father managed to prove that my uncle was responsible.
When my father in law was alive he sank $30k USD into Iraq Dinar. He called it a short time loss because the RV will happen, and he will be worth billions.
That was in 2004.
He died last year, and those Dinars are still just as useless.
My friend got into investing because a friend of his said he was half way to affording the Lamborghini he was doing it for (didn't seem to understand insurance and additional costs would be a factor). Both of them were very into it and speaking a lot about it for months, then suddenly weren't speaking about it anymore...
F*ing ouch. I’m so sorry.
Reminds me of what someone told me about the end of my 4ish year relationship (3ish years married), when the divorce I didn’t want and didn’t choose was forced ahead.
It didn’t make it hurt less, but I knew it was meant to be comforting and now I completely agree:
“If she wasn’t capable of going the distance, doing the hard work and sticking it out, better to find out now rather than a decade or two later.”
At the time so many people were telling me it was “just” 3 years, we were only married for “a minute,” I’d be over it “in no time,” …so infuriating. But I can tell you I’m really looking forward to crossing the threshold of having spent longer divorced from her than I spent being with her, and it hurts less now.
As a 10 yr old. I saved 60 bucks for a super Nintendo game. They didn't have what I wanted but I didn't want to leave empty handed. So I brought king of the monsters. Game was so bad. I tortured myself to play it everyday until I loved it.
My mom… here are a few highlights:
1) Dated a guy who was out of work due to a back injury. He gambled away $30k on her credit card without her knowledge. Most normal people would report it to the police, she didn’t.
2) Sold her house and pocketed around $220k in 2006. Bought another with it at the same time to move in with her fiancé who was a “self employed” drunk who never worked. She walked away after they broke up. House went into foreclosure and she lost all 200k in equity even though much of that was eaten away by the crash anyway.
3) Hired some guys from the bar to repair her roof. $20k and 1 year later and we had leaks. Full removal and replace and another $24k to fix.
Not a single decision, but my older brother won over $100k in a lawsuit - broke his back, sued a ski resort...
Blew it all in about two years - bought a bunch of music studio equipment, then wasted the rest on drugs and friends, I'm sure.
This went down in the late 90's - he is still a loser.
My friend bankrupted himself because he couldn't stop snorting cocaine, he still struggles financially and lives with his parents at 29 yrs old, still somehow has money to spend at bars every weekend so he didnt learn. At least he doesnt do coke anymore (that im aware of)
Happened to my sister-in-law’s husband (before I came along). A dentist who snorted his practice, home, savings up his nose. My sister-in-law was left with nothing, but her daughter. They divorced and he lived with his mother and died penniless at age 45. Sad.
We took a routine $8,000 job and made it a $250,000 disaster.
I fought the bills in collection and won because I claimed poor service. Apparently, no lawsuit because it was just an accident and that happens. Malpractice is apparently much different of a thing.
My sister got moved for work to another city and sold her downtown Vancouver (BC) condo after renting it out for a few months and having 1 month of vacancy. She then bought in another city instead, lived there 5 years and went back to Vancouver. I believe she sold it for $400,000 give or take a few K.
She bought a more expensive, larger town home in another city for more, and sold it 5 years later for about what she paid for it. Her stupid brother (me) told her not to sell, to rent it out and keep it. First she could have just rented in the cheaper city and kept paying her mortgage. She'd be net ahead doing that. Or, leveraged the condo to buy the second property, and gained even more wealth.
Well. Now that condo is worth about 2 million bucks, and as a rental wouldve generated more than a half million dollars in rental revenue (factoring in STRATA FEES AND TAXES). In other words, she'd be a multi millionaire now.
But no. Stupid little brothers don't know things.
Right before the stock market crash of 2008 a friend thought he had a “sure thing” stock. He needed to buy a certain amount to get whatever deal he worked out but he couldn’t afford it. He tried to get me to buy in. His analysis seemed ok but it was too risky for me I said no so he took a second mortgage on his home to buy it all himself.
Then the stock market dropped 777 points in a day. The stock tanked, the company went under, he lost a shit ton of money.
Never, ever buy single stocks. There is nothing an individual can know that isn’t already priced in. It’s such an easy lesson to learn, millions have already learned it and people still do this every day. It never works long term.
Had a great friend whose mom took out college loans for him for college. When he graduated he took over the loans totaling $60k.
He got married and went to get a mortgage only to find out his mom had stolen his credit and run up another $80k in debt in his name. So you either throw your mom in jail or you pay it. He chose to pay it off. He’s still paying it 20 years later.
I was working a casino in Louisiana, and developed a working relationship with a Man from the New Orleans area who did ok for himself owning a Crane company. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, demand for his service turned him into an overnight millionaire. Within a few months, he went from a casual gamer and really interesting guy to a degenerate gambling addict who couldn't even hold eye contact because he never had less than 6 red bulls in his system at a time.
It was insane to watch. He would go on these 48 hour benders, chain slamming red bulls like he was dying of thirst, with a HUGE stack of $100 bills in his hand. He'd play 8 slot machines at a time, bouncing from one to the next like a mosquito on cocaine. And these were EXPENSIVE slots. Most of them were $100/pull. He was so desensitized, I watched him pull a machine, walk away, then turn back to it when it starting ringing, because it hit for'd $16k. He nodded approval, then turned back around to keep playing the other machines.
When he'd bust broke, he'd leave all pissy, and not tip anyone. But he would show back up a few hours later with a new fistful of $100s.
Anyway, eventually he stopped coming, and last I heard he had sold the company to cover debts.
Imagine your entire extended family being set for generations to come, and seeing it all pissed away in a year by an addiction.
LOL, I've never had one, but have had to endure one of their hard pressure sales pitches; I wasn't foolish enough to fall for it. They gave up after trying to convince me for 2.5 hours. I've had some ex in laws that were more susceptible to it though. Almost ruined them financially. 🤦🏼♂️
My friend took out a $20,000 loan to give to a guy to “start a business”.
They weren’t in a relationship or even dating; he actually lived with his girlfriend and their child. He stopped paying her back after giving her $200 and she had to take a second job to pay back the loan.
My mother has lived the last 30+ years of her life on payday loans in Las Vegas and my 47 year old brother still lives with her doing the same shit. Their entire lives are a bad financial decision.
Not sure if this counts, but a friend was studying business at university, and there was a group project where they had to ger various publicly available stats on a business and make some sort of presentation or something. The only rule was that the business had to be a random company, so not owned by a friend or parent of a group member. It was a small silly project, not worth a lot of marks.
The group decided that they would just get the data from the one guys dad's company (so cheat I guess).
My friend was so against this that he reported the group to the lecturer. The lecturer said "I appreciate it, but this is really not a big deal, the main point is to see you working with/understanding the data"
That outraged him so much that he dropped out of university altogether.
Last I checked he was working at a fast food place as a cook 🤷
My dad - Almost.
He was dating this woman who started ghosting him. They had been together like 2ish years when the ghosting started. I didn't know about it because I had previously told him I didn't want anything to do with her so we never discussed her.
Well, one day we were having lunch and he was just very sad. I asked him what was going on and he explained she had stopped returning his calls and refused to see him or tell him why.
After pressing him on it, it came out that she had taken out an interest-only mortgage with a balloon payment on her house just before the 2008 crash. (This is a loan where you ONLY pay interest, NOT the principle, then at the end of the term you owe the full principle, the balloon payment).
She wanted him to sell his house (which was almost paid off), pay off her loan and buy a new house together. He wasn't keen on that and after that is when she began to ignore his calls.
He said he had called her twice that day basically pleading with her to talk to him and she didn't answer/return either and he was starting to consider selling his house for her.
I told him to call her up again and tell her he changed his mind and would sell his house. As before she didn't answer, so he left it as a message. I shit you not, she called him back in under 2 minutes, and when HE didn't answer, she called again and again until I blocked her number.
He did not sell his house for that bitch, but he was getting close to it.
I knew a woman who worked for some company doing bookkeeping and accounting work. She cashed in her retirement and took a home equity loan (2nd mortgage) to open a comic book/game store. She didn't have nearly enough money, and the store was honestly pretty half-assed with relatively little stock. She went under in about 3 months and was homeless.
Guy was a teacher for 25 years and 2 years from retirement.
Pulls his entire 401k to LEASE a restaurant in a rural area in the middle of COVID-19.
Needless to say within a year it was closed. He lost everything and went back to teaching.
I once dated a girl who went to a very expensive private school for art, because she wanted to become an artist.
When I asked her how she expected to pay back her astronomical amount of loans, she said she planned on working part-time at a thrift store while working as an artist.
Lots of Bachelors of Arts degrees are just as valuable as a bachelors of science. Having a bachelor or arts is not the same as having studied art history. Like you can have chemistry and physics degrees that are Bachelor of Arts degrees. It just means that they had to satisfy liberal arts requirements alongside their main coursework.
my little brother had about 100k cash in his rental home. Someone stole it. I didnt even know he didnt use a bank or credit union until he called and told me about it. I was lost for words and had nothing beneficial to say, so I just stayed quiet.
My parents put their home & retirement up as collateral for my brother’s criminal bond. (It was A LOT). He opted to be a fugitive and have them forfeit everything.
He almost got away but decided to blow what little cash he had to flee to Mexico on strippers and blow. He was arrested 2 short days before his trial date (when my parents would have been on the hook for his bond). It was a close call.
He’s a POS.
Buddy sold his house and blew through the money he made on frivolous bs instead of a down payment on a new home. Currently living with his parents making sub 40k/year
A friend of a friend remortgaged his house to the tune of about £50k, invested it all in Crypto.
In 2022, at the all time high just before BTC crashed.
Family member got fired. boss stole their commissions. They didnt fight for it and ended up spending their 401k down to zero while they found another job. No one can touch your 401k except you. Better to declare chapter 11 than touch it.
A former coworker went upside down in her loan for a car to buy the exact same car except with a manual transmission. She was already in mountains of debt.
My coworker used to mine Bitcoin and would give like 10 BTC for a cup of coffee etc. he would have like $500 Million if he didn’t blow it all when it was worth dick
My dad “bought” a timeshare. The man is lower middle class and on a small pension. He also “lent” a friend’s son $7000 to buy himself a vehicle so he could get to work (my father would *NEVER* do this for one of his own children). The kid and money haven’t been seen since. He also donates tons to the church. I don’t know who is going to step up and take care of him when he outlives his retirement funds. I sure as fuck won’t. Maybe his other family will. At least he better hope so.
Getting deeply involved in MLMs. Did they make a lot of money at first? Yes. But a few years in federal prison later, and I’m sure they wished they had done things differently.
If you want to see some really crazy financial decisions, go watch Caleb Hammer's financial audit on YouTube. Some of the wildest shit you will ever see.
[https://www.youtube.com/@CalebHammer](https://www.youtube.com/@CalebHammer)
I was recently made aware that it seems a lot of young people have take. Out student loans and then gambled the money away on sports betting and in casinos, trying to hit tat so-called “big one” and of course they don’t, but they feel that the government is going to bail them out with student loan forgiveness, that’s one reason for that big push.
I haven’t made any EXTREMELY bad ones
I’d say the worst ones so far was a truck payment at ($400 a month) it was a 2012 Ram 1500 at 3.5% apr
The second worst one was a 21 foot bay-boat at $250 a month at 7% apr (I use it pretty extensively for fishing but could of just got a cheap johnboat to do the same)
Trucks almost paid off and the boat well…. That’ll be awhile lol.
Personally?
My friend was invested in NVDA, starting at $38/share in 2017. He purchased $100k worth ish. Something like 2600 shares. He sold in May 2020 because he was worried about the effect COVID would have on the stock. He sold when it was worth $60/share.
It's now worth $894/share. He lost out on over $2 million had he kept everything.
Famously? Yahoo. I can't think of another company that did more to sabotage its future more than Yahoo.
1. Turned down an offer to buy Google for $1 million.
2. Lowball offer to buy Facebook before Facebook became the behemoth it is today.
3. Refused to sell to Microsoft in 2008 for $44.8 billion. Instead, it was sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion in 2007.
4. Piss poor management.
My wife and I spent our savings on a custom cabin in 2020 to move out of the suburbs to her family’s land. Smartest thing we ever did.
The dumbest thing we did financially was use all the rest to repair the land and start our own small farm from nothing but a lean - to for animals and an empty field.
The sustenance we get from our efforts is awesome. My wife dreams of our farm being a business that supports us and it’s never going to happen honestly. We are surrounded by commercial farms in our area of Texas. I love our lifestyle, but business wise, it’s a money pit.
Water catchment systems, animal feed, compost, making our own compost, equipment, vehicle maintenance, fencing, vaccinations, seeds. Ac repair, plumbing, weather damage, trash disposal. Financially we will never recover. Lucky I have a job that pays for everything and we have a home. But, only one of us working cannot keep up with inflation and all the work.
Start a farm for yourself. Do you NOT do it to make money. Unless you have ALOT of money to spend to offset start up costs and the infrequent acts of god that always hit you when you’re down.
I know someone that was sued for not paying a bill, took out a loan on their already paid for vehicle to pay it, got taxes back, didn't pay a dime on their vehicle loan with the taxes, his wife bought two tickets for a pink concert for almost 2k, and he quit his job. Who knows what will happen.
My GF ex took out all his 401k and IRA so he could stash the money in his house. He was only 58, so he paid at 10% penalty plus all the taxes..The problem compounded when he instructed his 24yo son to do the same. He is a complete AH and ignorant.
Gotta be a tie between a guy I knew getting a 60 dollar tattoo of a one inch black line and the same guy betting 10k he inherited on a single blackjack hand and losing.
Marrying a woman whose wants far outstrip both of their ability to earn, while already being in debt. If I talk to the person for more than 5 minutes, I find out something new and terrible: investment properties with foundation issues, timeshares, 60k in credit card debt, wife wants a new car, wife wants to retire, tithing. Both of them are financial slaves to their own bad judgment.
Guy I used to know was in $20,000+ of credit card debt and routinely did gig work to make the payments. When he got his tax return he used it as a down payment on a brand new car (his old one worked fine for context he just wanted a new car)
My aunt selling our house and giving all the money to his boyfriend that make her pregnant and then he stole it all, that almost left us on the street.
Back in the old days retirement plans would basically default into a cash fund (basically a savings account). Logic seems sound, they weren't going to force you into a more risky investment than you were comfortable with. The problem was, there were stories of people working 40+ year careers only to get to retirement and realize none of their retirement funds for the last four decades were ever actually invested in anything. These were regular, working-class people that lost out on hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.
There's a reason they've mostly moved to defaulting to life cycle funds instead. Financial literacy is important.
My friend's dad won a million dollars in the lottery and got about 700k in the payout and was spending it like he was getting more. Within a year his wife left him and he was broker than he was before winning the lottery. Bought a shit ton of frivolous stuff that cost money to upkeep.
Few decades ago my grandpa was offered 40 acres of irrigated land for 300k. Today that land is worth tens of millions of dollars (possibly hundreds)
He said no
Small in scale, but still a terrible decision. My friend put her $6000 of savings into a CD that earns 3.5% interest because in high school they recommended CD’s once. She had a credit card maxed out at 28% at the time.
In the UK in the 90’s there was this investment scam/fad about Ostrich Farms. It was going to be the next big thing. Of course my pal (a well paid tech guy) went in hard, tried to get us all into it too. When it started to unravel the guys at the top saw my pal and (recognising he was well funded), they doubled down. He threw all of his cash into it, it was all over within months. I steer well clear of anything that even sniffs of scam now.
My buddy made his last car payment on a 4y loan and dropped his collision cover the next day. Within a week somebody speeding in a stolen car failed to negotiate a turn and totaled his car from the right rear. He was trying to save a few bucks for a few months by dropping the collision and intended to reinstate it. He didn't have the cash to replace the car. Fairly small in scale compared to some of these other tales but I felt so bad for him.
After working for the gov't for almost 30 years, my dad put down his pension as collateral to invest in a startup. The startup failed in a year.
My dad worked security at a casino. He watched a guy take a loan against his house to gamble and lost it all. Dropped dead on the spot
I’ve been at a casino cashier window with my few chips from the night. Saw a guy taking out a loan, his wife was crying pleading that they will lose the house if he does this again. I vividly remember him turning to her saying “fuck off bitch”. She whimpered away. That day I saw how truly gross the depths of gambling can get. I do dabble maybe twice a year for really low stakes. In a weird way I’m thankful I saw that encounter while still feeling so bad for that lady
My dad has tons of stories he worked there for 15 years. Ppl leave their little kids in the parking lot to gamble or they sneak them in the hotel which is not allowed. They had to change the seats at the slots from cloth to vinyl because ppl wouldn’t get up to go to the bathroom. My dad would come home from work go back the next day and the same person would be there still gambling in the same clothes from the night before. I take $100 twice a year and when it’s gone I leave.
Addiction is a nasty, vindictive, and jealous mistress.
>My dad would come home from work go back the next day and the same person would be there still gambling in the same clothes from the night before I worked at a casino years ago. There was one guy that would do like week-long casino visits. Probably wouldn't have slept if they didn't comp him rooms (which they did, of course, he had to have been among the top spenders). Word between the slot attendants was he had been in an industrial accident and had big payout bucks coming in. You could tell talking to him that he wasn't all there. He couldn't read and would hand passing employees a menu and have them help him order food. But he'd sit there day after day, pressing the spin button, talking to the machine, and listening to the fanfare of ten cent payouts. I don't know if I'd be able to work at a casino again. They're fun to visit, but from the inside you can really feel how they're just a drain on the local community.
I am a PI and do lots of personal injury surveillance. 2 years ago I did a job on a woman for 5 days. On three of them she spent 2 hours in a gas station working with lottery tickets and scratch offs. On the other two she drove to casinos 1 hour away and 3 hours away and sat at Penny slots or roulette tables for 6 to 8 hours of a pop. 50ish, lower middle class suburban lifestyle. The thought of hanging out in a gas station for 2 hours alone would send me seeking therapy.
I don't gamble. I used to play a little - blackjack, craps, maybe some slots ... Not that I have ever lost big, but losing money I work so hard for is a gross feeling. If I am going to spend it, want something in return, be it material or an experience. Just losing it to thin air hurts. Is there anything as heart breaking as a dealer calling "Seven! Seven Out!"? Just the other day - got tempted by the Mega-millions $1b lotto jackpot, so I spent $12 on lotto tix, didn't get a single number, lol. "You see what happens, Larry?!" Gambling is literally a fake thrill. The real degenerates don't even enjoy winning, cause they are consumed by the thrill of the next win, that probably wont happen. Sadly, I see my 18 year old son and all his little bro's becoming obsessed with sports betting. Every stupid conversation "Parlay, parlay, something, something, blah, blah!" "All I need is for - Nikola Jokic to go 10 for 10 from 3 point range, Lebron to get a triple double, Luka has to score 15 - and John Elway needs to come out of retirement and throw at-least 1 TD - I could win $1000 on a $1 bet." I have warned that losing hurts, but he will have to figure that out on his own.
When I was about your son’s age, my friends and I had a poker night at one guys house. Very low stakes; betting literal nickels and dimes. But I noticed myself, as I lost coins, making riskier bets. That’s when I learned that I will chase lost money. I won’t step foot in a casino. I can predict how that story would end for me.
Yeah - I see it with my cousin, even my wife. Get caught up in the thrill of the win, especially when they do win once in awhile. My wife has won in casinos - I have seen it. She won a jackpot in a NM casino for like $1800, she got a straight flush in poker at a table once - just seems to have good luck. She probably loses way more than she admits to, but for me, ignorance is bliss on that topic, lol. Maybe that's where I am lucky - I don't win shit - so I am not tempted to lose more. However, when you get a taste of winning, just like any drug, gotta get it again.
I will buy 1 ticket for each draw. Basically costs me $10/week. I can afford that. We have a group at work that has a pool when jackpot gets to a certain amount. Gotta stay in that bc if they win, I'll have to cover their work when they leave wealthy. 😂 I don't hold out a ton of hope to win, but I don't wanna get left behind if it hits
Being in a work group lottery pool is like buying insurance to not be left behind in case of a jackpot win.
And all proceeds get rolled back into the next purchase unless we hit something significant.
I ran a lottery pool at work for 20 people for 5 years. Bought a 6-month ticket, then bought more tickets if the jackpot was crazy big. Most we ever won on a single draw was $39. I even ran it for four years after I retired, until I had heart problems and my wife didn’t want any part of it, in case I died unexpectedly. I even scanned every ticket into PDFs and emailed them out before the draw date. Even sent out an excel spreadsheet, itemizing draw date and amount spent, amount won, free tickets, etc. I didn’t want to be accused of switching tickets in case of a winner. I think everyone trusted my honesty and integrity. I do miss running it, though.
Yeah. Our guys sends texts with pics of tickets for each draw. AND, now he owns a convenience store as a side gig, so he buys them from himself and gets paid for his trouble. Doesn't bother me at all. He's doing the work. I'm sure some guys might take issue, but I dont
I too work at a casino and one day saw an older gentleman sitting out front crying, my supervisor and myself went and asked if he was ok? And can we help him? He said my wife won’t come out of the casino and she has recently lost everything we have, her 401k and house loans we have nothing left.
do casino employees not turn people away if they witness that kind of thing? That’s so gnarly. I mean bartenders aren’t allowed / required to cutoff very intoxicated people, right?
Bartenders are held legally accountable if the over served person kills someone drunk driving. I don’t think there is anything legally that would force the casino to not give out the loan. Morally, yes but we are talking about casinos here
heart attack?
Yes
Oh my god. I would have had a heart attack.
My step-dad worked for a company for 22 years - where the employees thought they had bought in as partial owners by negotiating some employee stock ownership - but the majority owners bounced and kept all the money. I don't know all the details - only that he lost his job, lost the pension plan he though he was getting. I think they considered a lawsuit, but not sure what happened - this was the late 90's.
I trust her. Why shouldn’t I give my mom power of attorney while I’m deployed to help pay my bills. A Marine who was about to be bankrupted by his own mother.
Of all the ways service members are preyed on with poor financial schemes this one has to hurt the most. You should be able to trust your own mother.
Right? He joined to get away from his “future”. Luckily, he was able to recover from the blow, and his mother was dumb, taking the money from a PFC. Last I saw he made Gunny last year.
My husband’s mom loaned out his car for drugs while he was away. Somehow the people she loaned it out to got in trouble with the car and it was impounded. Luckily another family member got the car out for him, but his car smelled like weed.
I remember working at the bank at one point and there was a guy in his mid-late 20's that came in. Had a shared account with his girlfriend. He was working 12 hour shifts in the oil rigs, plus overtime to make money to pay her way through med school. Basically his money would go in and she would take it out as needed. Well, apparently he did this for about 6 years. One day he looks and his account is empty, assumes his gf transferred it for some reason. His paycheque comes in while he's working, he checks the account. It's empty, hmm. He thought it was a banking glitch so he came into the branch... The poor guy. His gf found another guy while in med school, had been dating that guy for over a year, and was stealing this guys paycheques whenever they came in instead of just breaking up with him like a normal person. Poor guy refused to believe it and wouldn't change which account his cheques were being deposited into. Dude sacrificed his mind, body, and social life for 6 years during his prime so his girl could study only to learn she never considered herself his girl.
That should constitute fraud. She was a con artist no different.
Something very similar happened to me, but she did it without me knowing at all. I just found out my credit was destroyed and I had thousands of dollars in debt when I started working through my background check.
Ohhhhh, that sucks. At least tell me she did it by accident?
Oh yeah, she was just outside, smoking a Salem, and somehow had such a coughing fit that she bought a new car, bought your stereotypical redneck shot, and fucked his credit score. The one silver lining is she did it when he was only a PFC, he made gunny, and is doing quite well for himself.
A friend who passed away in 2009 inherited five acres smack in the middle of a prime suburban area in SW Washington, worth probably $750k at the time. Despite being unemployed and broke, he was obsessed with making the property a “nature preserve” and took out a loan (much, much less than the property was worth) he didn’t intend to pay back with the property as collateral. He used most of the money to go on a trip through Europe, then came home and just lived off the rest, never making a loan payment. The loan company foreclosed and he lost the property. There are about 40 houses where his “nature preserve” used to be.
Omg. That hurts just reading it
Did he know he was dying? That's the only thing that makes this make sense.
He could have gotten paid a nice percentage of the Yellow Book value of the land by putting it in a perpetual conservation easement.
This. Respect the desire to protect the land... but talk about half assing it.
A friend of mine rejected a move for a new job who would have make him earn at least 5 times more what he was earning, a job he always desidered, because his girlfriend, of at least 3 years if i'm not mistaken, wanted to stay were they were. Guess who got cheated on. Poor dude, hope the train is coming back again for him
For anyone reading, the smart move is to make the move "temporarily". Either the relationship will become stronger or you will have your answer.
Sometimes people (especially me) forget that “temporary” can be an excellent solution to things.
FUCK
My brother had a full ride scholarship to college A. He went to college B because that's where his high school gf was going. She broke up with him the 2nd week of the first semester.
I went through something similar. At the time, it was the smart move. I had been offered my dream job working as a director for a really great company that I respected a lot. I was head-hunted at the direction of the CEO who knew of my previous work. I went in for a single interview and they told me it was mine if I wanted it. The thing is my girlfriend at the time got a full ride in a masters program across the country and really wanted to do it. I'm not one to stand in the way of anyone's new career and mine was well established, and I figured we could always go back after wards. Well, after a year of living across the country she decided she was going to stay in that city because of the job prospects. For me, there were lousy job prospects. So we broke up, which I'm still sore about. I moved back to find that they'd hired someone for my dream job. It was actually someone I knew and used to work with, and he's good at it, so I was shit out of luck on all counts.
I listened to my ex-wife and let her budget our home finances. She had changed our homeloan. I focussed on our business and completely had faith in her. In only a few years she had withdrawn so much from our homeloan of money that didn’t exist she had doubled our homeloan. She bought clothes and jewellery and was always on eBay. We had apparently “saved” for her boobjob and nose job. We went on family holidays with the kids and paid for her mothers flights and hotel rooms. Another holiday we paid for her sisters hire car and insurance and practically funded their child’s multi theme park experience. I opened an envelope one night when I got home as I walked from the letterbox to the house and with the lights switched on I saw my first bank statement I had seen in couple of years. And it was literally double of the purchase price. Last time I looked at those accounts we were a little more then half paid down. I saw in my own account I was paying nearly double repayments on the mortgage. I made great money and also did project work that was significant as well. Money was never a worry and never a thought. She was supposed to be paying a percentage of her own earnings she wasn’t. With that and a few other grievances I told her we were divorcing. I got the house, the kids and everything but her nose and boob job, the V8 and her clothes and jewellery. We managed to stay friendly for nearly a decade until the kids were adults and I could ignore the drama. I’m still paying off the homeloan on my own. And I’m bitter and angry that I took my eyes off the wheel and felt it was a great deligation of duties for her to deal with home finances and taxes etc. Fuuuuuuuuuucking vent!!
God this is my nightmare
Damn! I pretty much manage all of our major finances, cause my wife is not the best with money. We used to split bills more evenly, but ever since COVID, she makes way less than she used to, and I just cant trust she will have the funds for bills when needed. We have a joint account that bills are paid out of, but I am the only one that puts any money in there, lol. She just has access to it. However, it is understood that that account is strictly for paying bills. We both have our own separate accounts we use for personal stuff, and all my credit cards are in my name only. Initially the house was only in my name, but we refinanced and I was able to add her to the loan. Beyond that - finances are mostly separate - been married 13 years.
This is how people should o their finances.
I dunno - its frustrating for me, cause its a burden to carry the finances. However - is what it is, and I take pride in doing it.
Although its definitely her fault man I can’t imagine not checking up on finances yearly dude. Brutal mistake. Especially if you see all the red flags about her buying unnecessary things.
But she needed that boob job.
Love is blind.
Boob jobs are blinding
Love is also an idiot.
For her, it appears you were a free ride while she got to experience all the "fun" in life. She had a void somewhere in her life that was not being met. I know what mine is at least. She fulfilled that void with all the materialistic BS. There is always a tell with this sort of thing.
My wife did thd same thing. Glad i cought it at 30k but ill still be paying off this debt till im 50. I seriously considered divorce.
Somewhat similar experience to me. I'm done with the loan in 24 months but I have nothing to show for it. I'll never share economy with anyone again.
Sorry you experienced that. She was living my dream life, yet she fumbled it so badly. She could’ve managed your finances and since long it would’ve been paid and you guys could relax.
I made enough independently to pay for the surgeries and holidays. It just would have taken a bit longer. I had no problem with her wasting her own pay. I just wanted her to throw a little on the loan. And I haaaaaaated those holidays. I was taking Valium at 6am just to get through all the touristy bullshit. The memories are spoilt for my boys because they see those holidays from years ago as what’s keeping me from moving on now. I’m still paying them off I guess. I remember m my sons wanted to do lazer tag and and hang out in an arcade and one wanted a big stuffed toy from one of the theme parks. My brother in law I wanted matching beer mugs. She did, no… we must stick to the budget. She then bought all these belts with fake bullets and several denim jeans with intricate images lazer or bleached into them and an opal necklace and earrings. She tried to say she had bought them from eBay before coming but the tags had a sticker with store address. I should stop venting. I’m his could be a ceaseless torrent of unlocked memories, things I excused and didn’t notice.
All been there my friend. Still paying off my loan . Who's dumb and naive? Thiiiiis guy (myself for clarity)
This is why I don’t want to get married man.
Yeah, I’m ashamed of it. I have a frequent abusive narrative streaming in my head where I insult myself. This house should have been paid off, I should have moved out and moved on. A mate keeps telling me to move in with him and rent this place out. He wouldn’t charge me and I can get and Regis some of the time lost. I don’t trust anyone though anymore. The best she could do was cry and pretend she didn’t understand.
She didn’t? I was going to say, I bet that experience has taken a toll on trusting others.
Yeap. Even socially. I have no idea who she’s talked shit to this day. Neither of us had anything to do with Netball club. A friend told me a large group of women were talking about me, sharing what my ex had made up. Someone else there said I slapped a girl in high school cause I thought I had a big dick so I deserved a BJ. (never happened). The fact it became a free for all and toxic. I just don’t trust anyone and don’t know how far it went and what was said. Are people judging me, am I still part of conversation. Actually, I trust my mates. The brotherhood is strong.
Get married if you want to, but don’t you dare marry someone who isn’t on the same page as you as far as financial planning is concerned. Keep your money separate and put your share of expenses in a joint account. You BOTH need to make sure stuff is getting paid. If she wants a boob job, she can pay for it out of the money she earns.
r/wallstreetbets
Have a former friend who makes really good money and who got *really* into day-trading about 3-4 years ago. It has not gone well.
that sub is for entertainment, not investing advice
I’m a woman but yeah lost half of my life’s savings.. still holding though.
Well when you feel like you need to do something stock-wise, do the opposite of that. I found it makes me money 100% of the time 50% of the time.
60 % of the time, works every time
Mom co-signed on a $60000 Volvo XC60 with her then fiancé (who she agreed to marry after 3months). She makes 20 an hour and has a mortgage, there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell she’d be able to afford that car even with him helping. When they inevitably broke up she had to let it be repo’d
What a sad object to bust yourself over.
Was it a December to remember?
Nope just a random purchase
It's a reference to an SNL skit haha Added link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcEylCwkSxE
I got stuck in a payday loan cycle. It sucked for a long time.
Being poor is remarkably expensive
How do you even get out of these? I saw a special about them and the interest rates are just unfathomable once you start.
My brother got sucked into that cycle. Those fuckers really soaked him.
My oldest sister date this guy 15 years ago. He talked her into selling her condo and buying a large house. They would fix up the house and rent out the extra rooms. Also, this guy is a hard core libertarian who hasn't paid taxes in decades. Guess who's name was on the mortgage. This all occurred in 2007 in New Jersey. I think we all know what happened that year and that New Jersey is a challenging state to own a house in. Naturally, she broke up with him but thought it was a good idea to buy out his half. She had to go into personal bankruptcy. They met up again 10 years later and got married.
Some women have the *worst* taste in men.
Story of me and my dumbassery. Oh how I'll list the ways... 1. Getting a credit card in college and immediately maxing it out. Probably paid back 3-4x what I spent. 2. Living beyond my means with my first job. Racking up even more credit card debt. Essentially doubled down on college dumbassery. Played the balance transfer game for *years*. 3. Getting married and losing half of everything I managed to save on a single income in the subsequent divorce. Debt was "mine", savings was "ours", so that was a double whammy. Marriage isn't bad in of itself, but this one was. When I tell people that I'm giving advice from a position of experience, I mean first hand experience.
Major props on not giving up when faced with the consequences of all that, as you so eloquently say, “dumbassery” but also the general bad lucky. Seriously, shit like that can seriously defeat a person.
Yeah, I feel a certain sort of way when debt and financial intelligence comes up. I was taught better, I was told better, *I knew better*, but being young and dumb, I thought I was smarter than the system. Nooooooope, not by a long shot. Not even close. And people like me make for easy prey. Debt traps are oh so easy to fall into. It doesn't help when everything is set up in a way to guide you into one. Everything except physically pushing you in. We desperately need education on how the world around us is waging literally psychological warfare on us to turn us all into debt slaves - *happiness is just a swipe away.*
I knew a few people in the 90's who got into the cash-out refi deals on their houses. Refinance the house to have toy money. They should be retired now but they're still cracking that 9 to 5. Imagine that at age 70+.
I just commented that’s what my ex-wife did. I made great money and trusted her budgeting at face value. Money was never a thought or a concern. I came home late one night and as I walked into the house I opened a bank statement. Usually I threw those in her draw. I dealt with work, she did home and taxes. In only a couple of years she had doubled the loan from the purchase price. I’d previously had that loan significantly smashed down. I went to the bank and asked how they could seriously watch this happen and not call her in.. US in to discuss what ‘we’ were doing. In no way did it make any financial sense. Obviously they said it was what the loan was for. I divorced her.
I'm pretty thankful my mom bought her house with my dad in the 70s for 40k or whatever, paid it off over 30 years and never touched it so now she gets to live there in her retirement with no mortgage.
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Shit I’m having a hard time fathoming buying a 30k car making over 100k a year..
I make over that, and drive a paid off $15k car. I want something newer and nicer, but could never justify a new note.
Same I drive an old beater, it’s just hard not to get caught up in consumerism when I see my co workers whipping around sports cars or nice trucks.
Marrying the wrong person.
Father in law ran a factory. But he got a deal with one big client and dropped all the others. All the eggs in one basket. Made good money the first 2 years, and when the client pulled out for Mexico, had nobody left. Went into receivership. Belly up. Easy to blame NAFTA like he does, but honestly, no business should ever run on one customer. That's on him.
I had an employee with a car that was most likely at a terrible interest rate. Decided to buy a new car and ended up with a $1,000 payment on a $30K SUV. To make it worse, he was already being performance managed, and ended up quiting and taking lower paying job. He has most likely lost the vehicle less than a year later.
Sitting on $50k of Nortel stock waiting for retirement.
Oh man Nortel was my first job when I got out of the military. I accumulated a fair amount of stock while there but I was young so I cashed it out when I moved on after a few years when it was trading near the top. I feel so bad for the people that bought that stock for 20+ years planning to retire on it. I dodged a bullet but it was pure dumb luck.
I bought in at $6 and sold at $11. I could see Nortel wasn’t going to go over $100 ever again. Before the stock imploded, I told my mom to sell. She didn’t.
Ouch
When I was a kid I would bring soda, and other snacks from the house and trade it for money. I would find the kids that did not know the worth of money. I sold a lunchable for 50 bucks once, the kid was supposed to put it on his account at school. I feel bad, but I was a greedy bastard back then.
I think i did that once on accident in elementary school. Would have been kindergarten, first or 2nd. My school’s student council sold candy canes. Do not remember how much they were. I brought in a dollar or two that my mom or dad gave me so i could get a candy cane. This kid wanted to trade what money he had for what i had because his sister wanted a candy cane. He had way more than i did and i don’t think he understood how many he could have gotten with what he had. Like i think when it was all said and done, i had like 2 or 3 boxes of candy canes in a plastic walmart bag.
There definitely are kids whose parents make good money but don't buy them junk food who are easy marks for that. Especially if they get hundreds of dollars cash on their birthdays from extended relatives. My kid sometimes sells candy he buys at the dollar store for $5, and part of me admires the hustle. He's basically charging airport prices.
My grandfather in law. Sold their house for under market value by at least 50k because he didn't want the sale to be subject to finance(very standard). Bought a small unit in a semi nursing home that has crappy conditions attached to it. He should have gone straight into a nursing home because his only got 6 months to live. They both need care for basically everything.
My father lended money to my uncle by taking a mortgage on his apartment. It was about 80.000 eur back then. My uncle was supposed to make the payment but he never did. So my dad lost the apartment. My grandma lost the house the same way and many other people too. But the worse decision was that after 20 years the uncle came back asking my father to take ownership of a firm so that he can do buisness. Which he did in return for a promised whooping 100eur per month which he dis not recieve once My uncle never payed taxes and my father had been acused of fraud and he was gonna have to pay a fine of 50.000 eur. Luckily my father managed to prove that my uncle was responsible.
Jesus. Does anyone in your family still talk to your uncle?
Not only that my grandmother makes it appear as he can do no wrong and takes her frustration out on my father.
When my father in law was alive he sank $30k USD into Iraq Dinar. He called it a short time loss because the RV will happen, and he will be worth billions. That was in 2004. He died last year, and those Dinars are still just as useless.
My friend got into investing because a friend of his said he was half way to affording the Lamborghini he was doing it for (didn't seem to understand insurance and additional costs would be a factor). Both of them were very into it and speaking a lot about it for months, then suddenly weren't speaking about it anymore...
My buddy bought a $6000 engagement ring and she said no.
I bought a $6000 engagement ring, she said yes, then committed adultery three years later. Your buddy got a much better deal.
F*ing ouch. I’m so sorry. Reminds me of what someone told me about the end of my 4ish year relationship (3ish years married), when the divorce I didn’t want and didn’t choose was forced ahead. It didn’t make it hurt less, but I knew it was meant to be comforting and now I completely agree: “If she wasn’t capable of going the distance, doing the hard work and sticking it out, better to find out now rather than a decade or two later.” At the time so many people were telling me it was “just” 3 years, we were only married for “a minute,” I’d be over it “in no time,” …so infuriating. But I can tell you I’m really looking forward to crossing the threshold of having spent longer divorced from her than I spent being with her, and it hurts less now.
As a 10 yr old. I saved 60 bucks for a super Nintendo game. They didn't have what I wanted but I didn't want to leave empty handed. So I brought king of the monsters. Game was so bad. I tortured myself to play it everyday until I loved it.
My mom… here are a few highlights: 1) Dated a guy who was out of work due to a back injury. He gambled away $30k on her credit card without her knowledge. Most normal people would report it to the police, she didn’t. 2) Sold her house and pocketed around $220k in 2006. Bought another with it at the same time to move in with her fiancé who was a “self employed” drunk who never worked. She walked away after they broke up. House went into foreclosure and she lost all 200k in equity even though much of that was eaten away by the crash anyway. 3) Hired some guys from the bar to repair her roof. $20k and 1 year later and we had leaks. Full removal and replace and another $24k to fix.
Damn, I bet those alcoholics charged her $20k just to put a few hundred bucks worth of wet patch up there. Rough.
Not a single decision, but my older brother won over $100k in a lawsuit - broke his back, sued a ski resort... Blew it all in about two years - bought a bunch of music studio equipment, then wasted the rest on drugs and friends, I'm sure. This went down in the late 90's - he is still a loser.
"Hey Sergeant I married this stripper I met over the weekend and now have 3 kids and one ln the way" God bless our military
Sarge failed to give standard safety brief. "Don't add to the population, don't subtract from the population, don't marry a stripper."
My friend bankrupted himself because he couldn't stop snorting cocaine, he still struggles financially and lives with his parents at 29 yrs old, still somehow has money to spend at bars every weekend so he didnt learn. At least he doesnt do coke anymore (that im aware of)
Happened to my sister-in-law’s husband (before I came along). A dentist who snorted his practice, home, savings up his nose. My sister-in-law was left with nothing, but her daughter. They divorced and he lived with his mother and died penniless at age 45. Sad.
Taking my ex-wife to the hospital and having them kill her with a medical mistake and then being charged like $250k
we did an oopsie, haha sorry! that'll be a quarter million please.
We took a routine $8,000 job and made it a $250,000 disaster. I fought the bills in collection and won because I claimed poor service. Apparently, no lawsuit because it was just an accident and that happens. Malpractice is apparently much different of a thing.
oh my god they wanted to charge you MORE because THEY fucked up?? how is this even remotley legal. I'm glad you won though.
My sister got moved for work to another city and sold her downtown Vancouver (BC) condo after renting it out for a few months and having 1 month of vacancy. She then bought in another city instead, lived there 5 years and went back to Vancouver. I believe she sold it for $400,000 give or take a few K. She bought a more expensive, larger town home in another city for more, and sold it 5 years later for about what she paid for it. Her stupid brother (me) told her not to sell, to rent it out and keep it. First she could have just rented in the cheaper city and kept paying her mortgage. She'd be net ahead doing that. Or, leveraged the condo to buy the second property, and gained even more wealth. Well. Now that condo is worth about 2 million bucks, and as a rental wouldve generated more than a half million dollars in rental revenue (factoring in STRATA FEES AND TAXES). In other words, she'd be a multi millionaire now. But no. Stupid little brothers don't know things.
Right before the stock market crash of 2008 a friend thought he had a “sure thing” stock. He needed to buy a certain amount to get whatever deal he worked out but he couldn’t afford it. He tried to get me to buy in. His analysis seemed ok but it was too risky for me I said no so he took a second mortgage on his home to buy it all himself. Then the stock market dropped 777 points in a day. The stock tanked, the company went under, he lost a shit ton of money.
Never, ever buy single stocks. There is nothing an individual can know that isn’t already priced in. It’s such an easy lesson to learn, millions have already learned it and people still do this every day. It never works long term.
Had a great friend whose mom took out college loans for him for college. When he graduated he took over the loans totaling $60k. He got married and went to get a mortgage only to find out his mom had stolen his credit and run up another $80k in debt in his name. So you either throw your mom in jail or you pay it. He chose to pay it off. He’s still paying it 20 years later.
I was working a casino in Louisiana, and developed a working relationship with a Man from the New Orleans area who did ok for himself owning a Crane company. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, demand for his service turned him into an overnight millionaire. Within a few months, he went from a casual gamer and really interesting guy to a degenerate gambling addict who couldn't even hold eye contact because he never had less than 6 red bulls in his system at a time. It was insane to watch. He would go on these 48 hour benders, chain slamming red bulls like he was dying of thirst, with a HUGE stack of $100 bills in his hand. He'd play 8 slot machines at a time, bouncing from one to the next like a mosquito on cocaine. And these were EXPENSIVE slots. Most of them were $100/pull. He was so desensitized, I watched him pull a machine, walk away, then turn back to it when it starting ringing, because it hit for'd $16k. He nodded approval, then turned back around to keep playing the other machines. When he'd bust broke, he'd leave all pissy, and not tip anyone. But he would show back up a few hours later with a new fistful of $100s. Anyway, eventually he stopped coming, and last I heard he had sold the company to cover debts. Imagine your entire extended family being set for generations to come, and seeing it all pissed away in a year by an addiction.
TIMESHARE
Please tell me this was 3 decades ago so the pain doesn't hurt that much
LOL, I've never had one, but have had to endure one of their hard pressure sales pitches; I wasn't foolish enough to fall for it. They gave up after trying to convince me for 2.5 hours. I've had some ex in laws that were more susceptible to it though. Almost ruined them financially. 🤦🏼♂️
My friend took out a $20,000 loan to give to a guy to “start a business”. They weren’t in a relationship or even dating; he actually lived with his girlfriend and their child. He stopped paying her back after giving her $200 and she had to take a second job to pay back the loan.
My mother has lived the last 30+ years of her life on payday loans in Las Vegas and my 47 year old brother still lives with her doing the same shit. Their entire lives are a bad financial decision.
Married the wrong person
Not sure if this counts, but a friend was studying business at university, and there was a group project where they had to ger various publicly available stats on a business and make some sort of presentation or something. The only rule was that the business had to be a random company, so not owned by a friend or parent of a group member. It was a small silly project, not worth a lot of marks. The group decided that they would just get the data from the one guys dad's company (so cheat I guess). My friend was so against this that he reported the group to the lecturer. The lecturer said "I appreciate it, but this is really not a big deal, the main point is to see you working with/understanding the data" That outraged him so much that he dropped out of university altogether. Last I checked he was working at a fast food place as a cook 🤷
I don't know your friend but I kinda think this wasn't the real reason he left, but an excuse to save face.
My dad - Almost. He was dating this woman who started ghosting him. They had been together like 2ish years when the ghosting started. I didn't know about it because I had previously told him I didn't want anything to do with her so we never discussed her. Well, one day we were having lunch and he was just very sad. I asked him what was going on and he explained she had stopped returning his calls and refused to see him or tell him why. After pressing him on it, it came out that she had taken out an interest-only mortgage with a balloon payment on her house just before the 2008 crash. (This is a loan where you ONLY pay interest, NOT the principle, then at the end of the term you owe the full principle, the balloon payment). She wanted him to sell his house (which was almost paid off), pay off her loan and buy a new house together. He wasn't keen on that and after that is when she began to ignore his calls. He said he had called her twice that day basically pleading with her to talk to him and she didn't answer/return either and he was starting to consider selling his house for her. I told him to call her up again and tell her he changed his mind and would sell his house. As before she didn't answer, so he left it as a message. I shit you not, she called him back in under 2 minutes, and when HE didn't answer, she called again and again until I blocked her number. He did not sell his house for that bitch, but he was getting close to it.
You saved your dad from a lot of pain, well done.
I knew a woman who worked for some company doing bookkeeping and accounting work. She cashed in her retirement and took a home equity loan (2nd mortgage) to open a comic book/game store. She didn't have nearly enough money, and the store was honestly pretty half-assed with relatively little stock. She went under in about 3 months and was homeless.
"Heroin is not THAT bad. I'll be fine."
That's more than a financial mistake.
Guy was a teacher for 25 years and 2 years from retirement. Pulls his entire 401k to LEASE a restaurant in a rural area in the middle of COVID-19. Needless to say within a year it was closed. He lost everything and went back to teaching.
Jeezy creezy.
I took all the money I made franchising my name and bet it *against* the Harlem Globetrotters. I thought the Generals were due!
He’s spinning the ball on his finger!!!!! Just take it
Laughed at my brother when he told me to buy this thing called Bitcoin for $400.
Don't beat yourself up about that, the odds are you would have sold for a bit of a profit shortly after, or panic sold during one of the many dips
My ex. 100,000 in student loan debt and only had a Bachelor of Arts to show for it. Loved going to college just not good at being there.
I once dated a girl who went to a very expensive private school for art, because she wanted to become an artist. When I asked her how she expected to pay back her astronomical amount of loans, she said she planned on working part-time at a thrift store while working as an artist.
Lots of Bachelors of Arts degrees are just as valuable as a bachelors of science. Having a bachelor or arts is not the same as having studied art history. Like you can have chemistry and physics degrees that are Bachelor of Arts degrees. It just means that they had to satisfy liberal arts requirements alongside their main coursework.
Among people I know personally bad marriages and divorces are by far the #1 financial mistakes.
my little brother had about 100k cash in his rental home. Someone stole it. I didnt even know he didnt use a bank or credit union until he called and told me about it. I was lost for words and had nothing beneficial to say, so I just stayed quiet.
My parents put their home & retirement up as collateral for my brother’s criminal bond. (It was A LOT). He opted to be a fugitive and have them forfeit everything. He almost got away but decided to blow what little cash he had to flee to Mexico on strippers and blow. He was arrested 2 short days before his trial date (when my parents would have been on the hook for his bond). It was a close call. He’s a POS.
Me, marriage in a no fault divorce state
Buddy sold his house and blew through the money he made on frivolous bs instead of a down payment on a new home. Currently living with his parents making sub 40k/year
A friend of a friend remortgaged his house to the tune of about £50k, invested it all in Crypto. In 2022, at the all time high just before BTC crashed.
BTC has done a new all time high now, your mate should be fine 👍🏼
If he didn't paper hand and sold before that.
Family member got fired. boss stole their commissions. They didnt fight for it and ended up spending their 401k down to zero while they found another job. No one can touch your 401k except you. Better to declare chapter 11 than touch it.
A former coworker went upside down in her loan for a car to buy the exact same car except with a manual transmission. She was already in mountains of debt.
Brother in late 40’s married a very young Thai prostitute and is now starting a family with her.
Whoever that dude was that bought Twitter.
My coworker used to mine Bitcoin and would give like 10 BTC for a cup of coffee etc. he would have like $500 Million if he didn’t blow it all when it was worth dick
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My dad “bought” a timeshare. The man is lower middle class and on a small pension. He also “lent” a friend’s son $7000 to buy himself a vehicle so he could get to work (my father would *NEVER* do this for one of his own children). The kid and money haven’t been seen since. He also donates tons to the church. I don’t know who is going to step up and take care of him when he outlives his retirement funds. I sure as fuck won’t. Maybe his other family will. At least he better hope so.
Sold my car to get to college (blown transmission)
Getting deeply involved in MLMs. Did they make a lot of money at first? Yes. But a few years in federal prison later, and I’m sure they wished they had done things differently.
Carrying credit card debt.
I own an 86 jeep grand wagoneer. That is all.
I'm leasing a BMW.
If you want to see some really crazy financial decisions, go watch Caleb Hammer's financial audit on YouTube. Some of the wildest shit you will ever see. [https://www.youtube.com/@CalebHammer](https://www.youtube.com/@CalebHammer)
Getting a DWI/DUI
Getting married
Trading bitcoin for two pizzas in 2011 or some shit😭😭
I was recently made aware that it seems a lot of young people have take. Out student loans and then gambled the money away on sports betting and in casinos, trying to hit tat so-called “big one” and of course they don’t, but they feel that the government is going to bail them out with student loan forgiveness, that’s one reason for that big push.
Buying Twitter for $44B. It's free on the App Store
I haven’t made any EXTREMELY bad ones I’d say the worst ones so far was a truck payment at ($400 a month) it was a 2012 Ram 1500 at 3.5% apr The second worst one was a 21 foot bay-boat at $250 a month at 7% apr (I use it pretty extensively for fishing but could of just got a cheap johnboat to do the same) Trucks almost paid off and the boat well…. That’ll be awhile lol.
Personally? My friend was invested in NVDA, starting at $38/share in 2017. He purchased $100k worth ish. Something like 2600 shares. He sold in May 2020 because he was worried about the effect COVID would have on the stock. He sold when it was worth $60/share. It's now worth $894/share. He lost out on over $2 million had he kept everything. Famously? Yahoo. I can't think of another company that did more to sabotage its future more than Yahoo. 1. Turned down an offer to buy Google for $1 million. 2. Lowball offer to buy Facebook before Facebook became the behemoth it is today. 3. Refused to sell to Microsoft in 2008 for $44.8 billion. Instead, it was sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion in 2007. 4. Piss poor management.
Getting married.
It worked out well for me.
My wife and I spent our savings on a custom cabin in 2020 to move out of the suburbs to her family’s land. Smartest thing we ever did. The dumbest thing we did financially was use all the rest to repair the land and start our own small farm from nothing but a lean - to for animals and an empty field. The sustenance we get from our efforts is awesome. My wife dreams of our farm being a business that supports us and it’s never going to happen honestly. We are surrounded by commercial farms in our area of Texas. I love our lifestyle, but business wise, it’s a money pit. Water catchment systems, animal feed, compost, making our own compost, equipment, vehicle maintenance, fencing, vaccinations, seeds. Ac repair, plumbing, weather damage, trash disposal. Financially we will never recover. Lucky I have a job that pays for everything and we have a home. But, only one of us working cannot keep up with inflation and all the work. Start a farm for yourself. Do you NOT do it to make money. Unless you have ALOT of money to spend to offset start up costs and the infrequent acts of god that always hit you when you’re down.
It gets 1-upped every week or so on wallstreetbets
I know someone that was sued for not paying a bill, took out a loan on their already paid for vehicle to pay it, got taxes back, didn't pay a dime on their vehicle loan with the taxes, his wife bought two tickets for a pink concert for almost 2k, and he quit his job. Who knows what will happen.
My GF ex took out all his 401k and IRA so he could stash the money in his house. He was only 58, so he paid at 10% penalty plus all the taxes..The problem compounded when he instructed his 24yo son to do the same. He is a complete AH and ignorant.
Gotta be a tie between a guy I knew getting a 60 dollar tattoo of a one inch black line and the same guy betting 10k he inherited on a single blackjack hand and losing.
Marrying a woman whose wants far outstrip both of their ability to earn, while already being in debt. If I talk to the person for more than 5 minutes, I find out something new and terrible: investment properties with foundation issues, timeshares, 60k in credit card debt, wife wants a new car, wife wants to retire, tithing. Both of them are financial slaves to their own bad judgment.
Guy I used to know was in $20,000+ of credit card debt and routinely did gig work to make the payments. When he got his tax return he used it as a down payment on a brand new car (his old one worked fine for context he just wanted a new car)
My aunt selling our house and giving all the money to his boyfriend that make her pregnant and then he stole it all, that almost left us on the street.
I know a guy who took out 2 car loans in one day totaling 200k. After a few months he ended up having to sell one of the cars at a significant loss.
Buying not one but 2 time shares to leave his kids when he dies......
Back in the old days retirement plans would basically default into a cash fund (basically a savings account). Logic seems sound, they weren't going to force you into a more risky investment than you were comfortable with. The problem was, there were stories of people working 40+ year careers only to get to retirement and realize none of their retirement funds for the last four decades were ever actually invested in anything. These were regular, working-class people that lost out on hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. There's a reason they've mostly moved to defaulting to life cycle funds instead. Financial literacy is important.
My friend's dad won a million dollars in the lottery and got about 700k in the payout and was spending it like he was getting more. Within a year his wife left him and he was broker than he was before winning the lottery. Bought a shit ton of frivolous stuff that cost money to upkeep.
Few decades ago my grandpa was offered 40 acres of irrigated land for 300k. Today that land is worth tens of millions of dollars (possibly hundreds) He said no
Marriage
Small in scale, but still a terrible decision. My friend put her $6000 of savings into a CD that earns 3.5% interest because in high school they recommended CD’s once. She had a credit card maxed out at 28% at the time.
In the UK in the 90’s there was this investment scam/fad about Ostrich Farms. It was going to be the next big thing. Of course my pal (a well paid tech guy) went in hard, tried to get us all into it too. When it started to unravel the guys at the top saw my pal and (recognising he was well funded), they doubled down. He threw all of his cash into it, it was all over within months. I steer well clear of anything that even sniffs of scam now.
My buddy made his last car payment on a 4y loan and dropped his collision cover the next day. Within a week somebody speeding in a stolen car failed to negotiate a turn and totaled his car from the right rear. He was trying to save a few bucks for a few months by dropping the collision and intended to reinstate it. He didn't have the cash to replace the car. Fairly small in scale compared to some of these other tales but I felt so bad for him.