Great 'What's your biggest ever waste of Money?' Hunt

BobbinAlong

Biggest waste was the ex and having one joint account for everything when married. Just don't do it as it's the major cause of arguments. Ex would go all month saying "don't spend any money" and complaining about essential supermarket bills etc. then spend what was left at the month end on some indulgence more for him than the family - computer software, diving, boat etc. Worst was my long deserved tax rebate and the fuss he made when I spent some of it on furniture (which is still serving me well). I then had to spend the rest on his tax bill because he'd bought diving equipment! Thankfully he then dived into a friend's wife and became ex :-)
Now OH and I keep seperate finances and are very happy.

angelpie4

I ordered some disney dvd's online from a company called 'Moviebytes' (WARNING!!! THEY ARE FRAUDS!!).
I ordered 5 dvd's to a total cost of around £58...in hindsite i should of known better, and remember my motto of 'If it seems too good to be true it usually is'...
I ordered dvd's that weren't currently available through most sites and shops (that should've had alarm bells ringing!) eg, Lion King I and II, Beauty and the beast...
The site was selling them for competitive prices (had they been available elsewhere) so i took a chance...
what i received (after almost 2 months and numerous emails to the company, who were extremely rude in their replies) were pirated copies...when i tried to get a refund they refused, and when i tried to get my money back from paypal it had gone beyond the allowed period of time (which had been done deliberately by MOVIEBYTES (DONT USE THIS SITE!!!!) so that i couldnt get my refund).
I reported them to trading standards (and also went to my local cop shop), and found that they were based in Singapore...the website is Moviebytes UK, and the postage label was Thailand, so that was a bit of a shock!
As they weren't uk based, trading standards could do nothing about it.

So i lost £58ish. Maybe doesnt sound like a lot (tho it is to me!), but it's taught me a huge lesson in shopping: Only use reputable sites/stores who are widely known and have clear returns policies.
And once again, If it seems to good to be true it USUALLY is

One more warning, in case you missed the first 2 (!!)
DON'T USE MOVIEBYTES
I have since found this site: canyoutrustthem.com (cant post the full link sorry, but do a search on it for moviebytes )
Wish i'd found this before!
Seems mine was by far not an isolated case. :mad:

angelpie4

minerva_windsong wrote: »

Mine would be my first set of driving lessons. I had lessons for eight months but never practiced outside them and was a nervous driver at 17 anyway, so ended up never taking the test. At £20 a lesson that's rather a lot...

Similar story with me too... at 18 (11 years ago!) I took an intensive course, failed the test (not surprisingly after 1 week driving!) so went onto more and more lessons (2 hours a week at approx £30 a time) and 4 further tests (failed all of them) over the course of about a year...gave up for a while, then to add insult to injury, i had my provisional license revoked 2 years ago due to ill health...i've come to the conclusion i was never meant to be a driver

onismum

£80 for an online diet club I never visit already know and offers no benefit. £££'l lost yes but no lbs

cagsd

Several times over, buying gig tickets that we then couldn't use as hubby couldn't get the night off work. Must have wasted £200 easily in the last year or two!

WhiteChristmas

When I married and we merged houses, one of the things sacrificed was almost all of my record collection.

Over a thousand vinyl albums.

Multiple copies of my favourites; original mint unplayed copies, picture disks, Japanese imports with promotional extras, autographed copies, alternative sleeves.

Total estimated purchase price; about £10k.

Total amount recovered from eBay sales; £3 or 4k.

Number of disks kept (even though I no longer own a record player); about 60. Estimated resale value; about £2k.

Everything else went to the BHF.

Y'know what, though? I don't think I can say I didn't get £5k worth of pleasure from the collecting and owning of those records.

traceya89

about 1000 videos in loft that we will never watch now as have no video play
lots of LP's and 45 records that will never be played again as no record player
loads of wasted food
lending money to friends, never to be paid back.
getting a credit card when young and going mad with it. using credit card for petrol purchases. having to pay credit card interest rates.
buying expensive toys for daughter when younger, to be used once or twice and then discarded
buying designer clothes now for teenager that she wears once and forgets about
buying expensive kitchen gadgets that are used once or twice and then gather dust
buying exercise bike and treadmill machine that again are used once or twice and now gathering dust. so far ive resisted the urge to buy a vibro stepper machine!!!

wish i could have all the money back that ive wasted!!!!!

jenniewb

I thought I'd be really cheeky here and make a list on my mothers behalf (love you loads mum but you spend on stupid things!). So heres my top 5:

1. Diet pills.
They do not work they do not work THEY DO NOT WORK! Nor does the tea, the tabs or (imo) the Wii fit vs the gym aerobics/circuit and cardio classes. Tried it. Its just not intense enough and is far easier to do the exercises wrong.

2. Tomatoes. For some reason she always buys them, for reasons unknown she never eats them. I wonder how many others have this same problem? (Luckily for me I like tomatoes and end up eating them all!) Similar with cupboards stocked with dried fruit and other cooking ingredience perishables, bought "just in case!" But they never get used up!! Plan what you are going to eat then buy it. Maybe if your unsure, when you feel a pull towards a pack of dried dates in the supermarket, name to yourself the exact day and time when you will be eating them, if you cannot think of a time, don't buy them. Save yourselves a fortune!!

3. Foot spa/facial cooling masque/etc. All those things to 'enhance your health' whilst you watch TV. Only no one ever has any time for them. The foot spa was used once in 5 years...now belongs to my sister who also has no time for it.

4. Virgin Media.
Now I may be at a bias here. I have freeview. I have a landline and free internet as long as I pay my bill for the landline. I pay £15 to £25 (not including license) a month for my TV, phone and higher speed internet.
My mother pays £90 a month minimum for all these services not including tv license. I am just in amazement. I can see now partially why she is always broke. I have used her computer and I don't see it any faster speed online then mine. I see her flick through all the channels and find..."nothing to watch" (and when I try I can also find nothing to watch) yet on freeview I can always find something to watch. Think it helps to not have so much choice- and not to have so many channels full of 1-hour-ago-repeats! Not that she even gets much chance to watch it as she is too busy working to pay for it! Her partner loves the sport. Which he records and watches back another time. Sorry but does this sort of thing not exist on the internet? can you not track a show down on the i-payer/youtube/etc and watch it there? Then theres the phone. No different to mine at all. I looked into virgin media last year but the customer service at the outlay was so rubbish I gave up.
Nope, can't see where the additional £70 odd goes.

5.Nail varnish. She insists on the top end brands: Chanel, Nails Inc. etc. wears about 3 times and doesn't store them well so they go bad (store them in the fridge they last years and years, store them in a normally heated room and they won't last much longer then a year or two especially with out summers). Nail Varnish that comes off a few days later and is replaced with a new one. I don't understand.....

WhistlersMother

1. Bought a three year old Fiat Cinquecento for £4000, spent another £4000 over then next five years just to keep it on the road...could have bought a new one with the money I spent. Now work for a car dealer, so servicing costs just £60 a year.

2. Spent nearly £10 trying to cancel a contract with 3 Mobile Broadband by telephone, because they spent about 30 minutes telling me the benefits of renewing my contract. Eventually had to tell them to 'F Off', put the phone down and cancel the direct debit.

3. Buying books. I'm an avid reader and usually get all my books from the Books Direct sales or on the £5 or less at Amazon. Unfortunately I have over 150 books on my shelves that I have yet to read and more coming.

4. Getting some sort of diet fad and buying lots of soup. taking them out of the cupboard six months later and giving them away.

5. Breadmaker. Actually costs more to make my own bread than it does to buy it at the supermarket!

6. Morphy Richards Automatic Vegetable Steamer. Cost £100, used once.

7. George Formby Health Grill. Cost £40, never used & lives in a cupboard still in its box.

8. Spending £250 on a beginners golf set and then discovering I didn't like playing golf. Worse, recently spending another £500 on a better set and having another go. Why do I do this to myself?

9. Buying a Black & Decker Strimmer & Flymow, then deciding to fill the garden with paving slabs and gravel.

10. Three years worth of gym membership at a very expensive club near where I worked at the time (probably cost around £1500 altogether) and at the end of the three years actually weighed more that I had at the start.

Primrose

WhiteChristmas wrote: »

When I married and we merged houses, one of the things sacrificed was almost all of my record collection.

Over a thousand vinyl albums.

Multiple copies of my favourites; original mint unplayed copies, picture disks, Japanese imports with promotional extras, autographed copies, alternative sleeves.

Total estimated purchase price; about £10k.

Total amount recovered from eBay sales; £3 or 4k.

Number of disks kept (even though I no longer own a record player); about 60. Estimated resale value; about £2k.

Everything else went to the BHF.

Y'know what, though? I don't think I can say I didn't get £5k worth of pleasure from the collecting and owning of those records.

What a pity you could have taken advantage ot today's modern technolgy! We had hundreds of vinyl classical records, which over a period of time my OH has now converted to Wav. sound files on the computer. They're all now stored on an external hard drive and can played through a "Squeeze Box" mechanism connected to our audio equipment so the music is not lost.