Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

People Describe The Most Expensive Mistakes They've Ever Made

People Describe The Most Expensive Mistakes They've Ever Made
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

Money is always a heavy stresser. Whether you have some or you don't, it can often lead to trouble. Cash can put us in especially more precarious situations when we lose it. That's always a fun time. Watching money--whether it be yours or other people's-- evaporate can be vomit inducing experience.

Imagine you lose it by your own hand and wrong doing? That is the biggest oops of all. Knowing you lost a fortune and you could have stopped it from going, if only you hadn't made one or six bad decisions? That's a lot to live with.

Redditoru/TheNarrator315wanted to hear, from whoever was willing to share, about the times some of us lost A LOT of money, by asking:

What was the most expensive mistake you have ever made?

I love money too much to lose it. I've misplaced it every now and again and it nearly gave me a stroke. So I am over the top with keeping track. But apparently some of you are not.

3 flights up...

Mad Tommy Wiseau GIF by The RoomGiphy

"Deciding to carry my 52" flat screen to up to my flat alone up 3 flights of stairs and tripping and dropping it. I died inside when that happened."

- SuperUltraSaiyanGod

Wrecked

"Not me - but I personally know 2 different people who purchased an expensive car on credit and failed to pay insurance. Wrecked car. Total loss. Tens of thousands of dollars in debt and had to buy a beater with cash because no bank would lend again."

- Yellobrix

"On the flip side, almost twenty years ago in Europe some of the car insurance + financing combo deals were insane. I worked for a major brand and we had one case where a woman had bought a new car at a normal discount, benefitted from the bundled insurance at full market valuation, drove around for three weeks, then she wrote off her car in an accident (her fault) - we had to send her a check for the €1000 more that her policy was worth above what she had bought the car for. Yes we had created a system through which crashing a car a month paid out €12k net a year."

- mmoonbelly

Bits...

"I sold all my bitcoins (500-1000) right before they price started to grow up instantly. Yes, I didn't lose money, but just imagine how many I could get if I sold them after they price grew up. So yep, very expensive mistake."

- Alone_Hamster_3258

"Same. My friends and I bought $20 worth of bitcoins for each of us in 2012. Today, none us remember the account that we created. We all regret it every second."

- Gharyl

STOP!

"Starting smoking as a teenager."

- seattlejc

"You can quit them! If you want to do it, I can tell you some tricks that helped me. Of course, there is no "magic pill" and you will have to use some will power, mostly in the first 2-3 weeks, but it gets way easier with time and I can assure you that your future self will be grateful to you for it."

- Foncho_is_Back

I Don't

Pay Day Money GIF by Boomerang OfficialGiphy

"Marrying my ex? Yep, that's the worst mistake in money and time. At least I got these cool kids though. They rock."

- LovesMeSomeRedhead

Marriage is always a dicey situation. That is why prenup. I don't share my change with anyone, that is one way to lose it. And stop smoking.

Hire Someone

Toilet Paper GIF by 100% SoftGiphy

"Picked up a free toilet to install for a remodel. Ended up breaking my car window driving it to location. Most expensive free toilet ever."

- PizzaShredder

Pre-Production

"Made a mistake on a laptop main board, the design got rushed into production. On the upside, it was caught during the pre-production build. Reworking the laptops cost $185,000."

- McDougal_Scarborough

"I feel like theres stuff like that where I work. Since they deal die casting large parts, even a single smaller portion of a die can be an easy $12k mistake."

- meadowshd29

Craps...

"Gambling. Started with $1,000, kept winning and had $73,000. Got greedy and wanted to hit $100k, and lost it all chasing the loss. All in the course of 12 hours. I was depressed for weeks afterward and haven't gambled a single dollar since."

- Ravioli421

"Well you really only lost $1000 and if you weren't the type to keep gambling, you wouldn't have gotten it up to $73k in the first place. Many people would have stopped at a few thousand."

- LurkerOnTheInternet

Careful with Numbers...

"So this was able to be corrected without actually paying any cost, but it made me sick to my stomach all the same. I was put in charge of ordering new cars at a dealership, and was making my first order. Nothing exciting, just two dozen basic coupe cars with A/C. I got the whole order in, and was pretty pleased with myself until I hit send and then saw my error. See, there are different model numbers. ZZACD is a base model car - NOTHING added."

"ZWACD is a base model plus A/C. And I had chosen ZZACD by mistake. I ran to my General Manager right away, and after he made fun of me for being a dummy, we made a call together, and the people on the other end of the ordering process were able to switch out the models on the 24 cars I ordered. I am super duper ultra careful with numbers now, and get teased for triple checking everything, but man, that panic lingered for days."

- Lexi_Banner

Daddy Issues

"Didn't monitor the oil level in my car closely enough and messed up the engine. Downside I spent about $1200 and a month of weekends swapping the engine out. On the upside it was a good learning experience doing a major repair like that and I did it with my dad so it was a fun bonding experience with him."

- adeon

Redditors Recount The Wedding Objections They Witnessed | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

Weddings are supposed to be all about love and celebration, right? But let's be honest, weddings are stressful. According to a recent Zola survey of 500 enga...

Alo-no...

Happy Dance GIF by PLAYMOBILGiphy

"Moving to Hawaii. 12k in debt and back at my parents house at 27. Still not as bad as having kids though!"

- Ohdigidy

To Live

"I bought ARK Survival: Evolved (which is my fav game to this day) and it literally became free on Epic Games just a few weeks later."

- Wojtek1250XD

"I did not get it when it was free, because I didn't think, that the game is interesting enough... ended with me buying that for full price a few weeks later."

- Enyy1

"That was a relatively inexpensive mistake in the grand scheme of things, but of course, it's the most expensive one for you. But i feel you because when you buy something, you don't expect it to fall in price so much (or even be free) just a short time after you paid regular full price for it."

- kevin_r13

By the Foot

"$150,000 for mis-measuring something on a construction site. Off by 1 foot."

- RonSwansonsOldMan

"Did sort of the same thing fresh outta school as a surveyor, I didn't check the settings in the total station and laid out a row of 12 2'x2' concrete columns that were later poured and they were out by enough they couldn't be salvaged. Didn't get fired though but it taught me a valuable lesson to always double check crap."

- taco1911

Super Super Happy Face

"I got scammed for the Super Super Happy Face in Roblox. Was worth 10k Robux when I got it and now its around 60k. Might not seem like it matters but that was a big loss that day and I didn't even notice it."

- RedditAverager

"Used to be a developer for them when it was a new game. Started when I was in elementary school back in '09. Had ~300k Robux worth of stuff, stopped playing when I started college. My account got hacked when I started getting back into it and they won't restore it. Kind of crushed tbh. It was a huge part of my childhood."

- Aelsar

Ragged

Car Fixing GIF by The Back RoadsGiphy

"Left a rag in the engine bay which got sucked up into the timing belt housing leading to a violent interaction between the pistons and valves."

- moonorplanet

Laundry Day

"When I was like 15 I was staying at a fancy hotel in Vienna with some friends. One morning I noticed that some of my clothes were a little dirty (a pair of jeans and a t-shirt) so I thought I should get them cleaned. There was a self-service laundry a couple of blocks away from the hotel but it was snowing outside and I was too lazy to put on my winter clothes and walk in the cold so I just asked for the hotel's laundry service instead. I was very naive and thought that the laundry service was free for guests of the hotel."

"It wasn't free and the next day I ended up paying 90€ for the service (just a f***ing pair of jeans and a t-shirt). At the time that was like half of my savings and I stayed broke for the rest of the trip. If I had decided to walk to the self-service laundry instead of being lazy I would've spent 5€ instead of 90€ for the exact same service."

- trip_colours

Moving Art

"I was very young at the time, my parents had put a painting in the corner of out living room cuz we were gonna move it somewhere else, one day I was playing tag with my sister around the house, I ran into the living room (I was wearing socks) and so when I tried to stop to jump over the couch, I couldn't, so I slid on one foot keeping balance and using the other to stop, and the foot I was trying to stop with went straight into the very expensive very big painting."

- ThawingAsh004724

Check it out...

"A friend of mine started a new job and didn't realize he needed to check the oil on the equipment he was operating. 2 million dollars later and all is running. Believe it or not he is still working there. Of course it's a government job."

- elmoz26

"I mean, they did just spend two million dollars on him for a very valuable lesson. Next person won't have that lesson."

- hitrothetraveler

Toilet Issues

Sesame Street Dancing GIFGiphy

"I once hired some exterminators because it wasn't previously disclosed to me that my house had a termite infestation. Long story short, they replaced my toilet with a toilet that had a joke hole that's just for farts and now I can't take a dump in my own house."

- askredditisonlyok

Raisins

"I once left an opened box of Raisin Bran on the kitchen table and left the house to hang out with a friend. I came back to find my three poodles had pulled it down and eaten almost all of it. My wife and everyone else was out of town so I had to bring all three dogs to the emergency 24-hour vet to get their stomachs emptied. One didn't get any raisins so he got to come home. The other two were admitted and monitored for two days. Ended up being a $3,000 vet bill. They were all ok though."

- DaleGribble3

No Exes...

"Got back together with an ex. Found out she had been freaking a former best friend/manipulated me into thinking I was a bad guy for questioning her story prior to the full truth being revealed. Sent me into a massive depressive spiral that ended with me withdrawing from medical school in my 4th year due to a breakdown. Now I owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and am in a dead end job making about 1/10 of my former potential."

- mathaius42

Always prepare properly when you're making a move. Even a move down the street can get costly. What have we learned? Be cautious with your finances, it easily comes and goes.

Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.

More from Trending/best-of-reddit

Jasmine Crockett Calls Out Trump's Hypocrisy By Pointing Out How Melania Got Her Visa
Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for SiriusXM; Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Jasmine Crockett Calls Out Trump's Hypocrisy By Pointing Out How Melania Got Her Visa

Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett pointed out President Donald Trump's hypocrisy on immigration considering how First Lady Melania Trump's pathway to citizenship was possible because she received an "Einstein visa," which is usually reserved for an individual with "some sort of significant achievement."

Speaking during a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Restoring Integrity and Security to the Visa Process,” Crockett noted that “the idea that Trump and my Republican colleagues want to restore integrity and security in the visa process is actually a joke," and harshly criticized the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and visa restrictions.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots of Jennifer Griffin and Pete Hegseth
The Hill

Fox Host Comes To Reporter's Defense After Pete Hegseth Berates Her At Pentagon Briefing

Fox News' chief political analyst Brit Hume came to the defense of Fox national security reporter Jennifer Griffin after their former colleague, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, criticized Griffin as the reporter "who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says” in a Pentagon news conference.

Hegseth, a former Fox News anchor, had criticized media outlets—including his former network—for what he described as unpatriotic reporting. Hegseth took particular aim at early intelligence assessments suggesting that President Donald Trump's bombing of Iran may not have significantly crippled Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Keep ReadingShow less

Teachers Share The Questions Students Asked In Class That Broke Their Hearts

Being a teacher is a calling.

It is not for the meek or weak of heart.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshot of Emily Compagno
Fox News

Fox Host Slams Dem For Dropping An F-Bomb After Praising Trump For The Same Thing Just Minutes Earlier

Fox News host Emily Compagno was criticized after she praised Donald Trump's use of the "f-bomb" earlier this week before condemning Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett's use of the same word—on the same episode of her show, no less.

Trump made headlines this week after admonishing Israel and Iran for violating a ceasefire agreement he'd announced on Truth Social. Although he claimed the ceasefire had been "agreed upon," Iran fired at least six missile barrages at Israel after it was supposed to take effect.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ken Jennings; Emily Croke
@Jeopardy/Instagram

Champ's Wild Final Jeopardy Connection

In a dramatic conclusion on last Monday’s Jeopardy!, a contestant revealed a surprising relationship to the final clue's answer. Hailing from Denver, Emily Croke made it to the final write-in portion of the game show with $12,200 in earnings.

In the category of “Collections,” host Ken Jennings read the clue:

Keep ReadingShow less