People Describe The Most Expensive Mistakes They've Ever Made

Housing Market

"Wouldn’t budge from $62,500 for a downtown loft. Owner wanted 65k."

"Unit sold for $275,000 1 year later."

- EMH55

"Same backed out of buying a house for about $400k about 10 years ago, now worth about $3 million."

- reubenmitchell

Grad School

"For me, grad school. Realized I went for the wrong reasons about half way through the courses and decided that I should keep going so I wouldn't waste any money."

"I had a hard realization a few months after graduating that I could only survive paying my loans back and not thrive. I relocated to the oilfield and have been working a niche job of a niche blue collar job ever since. After working in Temps from -43f to 105 I can finally say that I paid off my loans."

- roustajoe

"The old sunk cost fallacy. Seems to be wired into our DNA as a species."

- SeraCarina

Day Drinking

"Getting day drunk with a friend to celebrate me getting a new job, the day before I started the new job. Decided to go for a walk, blacked out when it started raining."

" Woke up in the hospital handcuffed to a bed with a felony charge for assaulting an officer because apparently I fell asleep under a storefront to get out of the rain and kicked the cop who tried to wake me up in the shin, so he did the cop thing and slammed my face into the concrete while he handcuffed me."

"Had to pay thousands of dollars in attorney's and other legal fees to get the charges dismissed, went to my first day at my new job with a cut-up face that I had to figure out how to explain, and now I'm stuck at that job because despite it being dismissed, the charge still shows up on background checks so nobody else will hire me, and I can't get it taken off my record until it's been 8 years because it's a charge for a violent offense against a police officer."

"Yeah, I don't drink anymore."

- ErikPanic

Hiring Movers

"Trusting a moving company...cost me $1000, was a straight-up scam. The grand was my down-payment on a contract that accounted for all my stuff. A guy from a different company showed up and wanted a new contract with an extra ridiculous charge for my gun safe, and when I turned basically a random person away BECAUSE I HAD NO REASON TO BELIEVE WHO HE WAS, the first guy stopped answering calls, claimed I turned away service, and kept my down-payment on those grounds. Their company said "yep" and my bank couldn't get the money back on a fraud claim. I fully believe that if I'd let the 2nd guy take my stuff, they'd have extorted me for thousands of extra dollars."

"Mitch from Roadrunner Movers in Florida is a giant piece of sh*t, and I hope he loses an equivalent to what he's stolen from people."

- onebatch_twobatch

"In my first real move after residency the company tried to hold my stuff hostage for double the money. Luckily most of the stuff we had was crap and I told them to keep it and I’d see them in court. They miraculously were able to cover the 'overweight fees'"

- BladeDoc

Not A Glitch

"I was around 8 when I thought I discovered a cheat/glitch that gave me unlimited gold in a mobile game. Turns out I was just buying the gold with money.. I costed my family $800 that day."

- Badilol

Insurance Lapse

"Not paying my car insurance on time. Then proceeding to slide through an icy intersection and hit another car. No one got hurt, just my wallet. Almost $7000"

- sews4dogs

Fried Circuit

"Was troubleshooting an windshield de-icing test set used for F/A18's and had made an error in my set up. The error caused me to fry a non-procurable circuit card; leading to the entire test set, which was around $180k, to have to be replaced."

- squid1891

Calculation Error

"Made a calculation error at work during my first few months there which led to the firm undercharging ~$130k on a project...how I wasn't fired/written up I'll never know"

- zombiehitler_

Should Have Gotten The Insurance

"Didn't get insurance on a Polaris Razor. Side by side off roading vehicle. Had it less than 3 weeks and someone stole it from my driveway Christmas night. Had taken out a loan for 5 years.... Making the payment every month hurt knowing I didn't have it anymore."

"Only took it out once. 14k for the trailer and vehicle. Still hurts a decade later."

- lastone23

Co-Signing

"Signed onto a mortgage with my ex when I was 21 because he 'just needed a little signature, it’s not a big deal!' Spoiler alert….. it was a very big deal."

- noodlemom72

$13 Million Wrench Drop

"Not me thank God, but a new hire I fired his first day out of training for 3 safety violations. The last involved dropping a wrench from 100 feet up on a work platform onto the left OMS pod of Atlantis. 13 million in damages and inspection/launch countdown time lost. Xrays, borescopes, replaced the cracked tiles, etc."

- Bobmanbob1

Gotta Turn The Freezer Back On

"At my old job, I forgot to turn back on the freezer after cleaning it (I got pulled mid clean to go do something else) so I didn’t notice. Neither did my three managers."

"Over $10,000 in frozen product lost 🤷🏻♀️ but that place was the worst place I’ve worked so f**k Freddys Frozen Custard"

- suhryna

"Freddy's defrosted custard"

- tills31

Wrong Vendor

"I transferred $500k to the wrong vendor."

"I practically had a heart attack, but the 'wrong' vendor was another huge one so it was more like we paid an invoice a day early. Also, my boss was more in a 'everyone makes mistakes mood' and not her usual 'I'll yell at you for 30 minutes over a one penny error' mood."

- webhick

Laser Destruction

"I destroyed a $250,000 laser by shorting the capacitor bank (charged 50,000 V) to the control electronics (5 V)."

"Flash of white light, instant smell of ozone and burnt plastic, a bunch of smoke, and that was that."

- Aeolian78

"I shorted 65vdc to the 5v bus one time but only did about $8k in damage. That was an awkward phone call to make."

- Grat54

Not Buying Bitcoin

"My cousin works in finance and has been interested in investing since he was like 10 years old."

"When we were both fresh out of college (2009) I asked him what he thought about investing a bit of some money I had come into in bitcoin, which was $1 per coin at the time."

"He talked me out of what would potentially been over $100,000,000 in profit, assuming I had cashed out at the peak. I still rib him about it."

- sam_neil

Mistakes happen, that's a fact of life, but let's all hope none of ours end up being the expensive kind.