My worst money mistake

wotsthat

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

My biggest financial mistake(and I swear I am not trying to point score) was my third house and main house I owned. Although we never lost any money on it and after 1997 it actually stated to gain some decent value. I regret the hard work, long hours and the amount of money/wages and more importantly TIME that was ploughed into it, time that I should have spent with my daughter and the rest of my family and doing stuff that was far more important. I never went behind with payments, we were never down in equity(actually did well out of it), and the house looked great when I actually found time to be in it..

Could be worse I suppose. Not many make money from their biggest financial mistake.

System

My biggest financial mistake was being awarded £8k compensation in 2002 and not buying a house with it.

pinkteapot

Am I the only person on this board who genuinely lost money owning a property? (I would have been £22k better off if I'd rented rather than owned from 2006-09).

Still, I lived to tell the tale. It's only money.

Wheezy_2

My worst was participating in an employee stock purchase plan with a Canadian Telco back in 2000 when the stock price was about to crash from CAD 124.50 to CAD 0.67

Another was taking out a 5 year fix back in summer '09.

wymondham

Probably when we lost money on our first house.... bought for £36k in 1990 and sold for £32k in 1996 -still our 2nd home also lost value so we were able to pickup a decent sized one........

If we'd rented for longer rather than buy in 1990 we'd have been much better off...

Mrs_Z

Yes, I'm no stranger to financial mistakes either, lost money on the technology bubble, invested about £7k and in the end they were worth £1k.

Couple of regrets; when buying our first house, not taking the max mortgage that the bank would have given us - could have bought a nice 2 bed cottage in Greenwich which would be worth an absolute mint now. Or not putting a smaller deposit on our house and buying a second property with the rest.

Not going for the max when remortgaging in 2007 - would have been laughing all the way to the bank as could have put the surplus to a savings account which is more than the mortgage rate...

But... you learn from your mistakes and you have to remember that on the other side of risk is the opportunity cost.

nicko33

pinkteapot wrote: »

Am I the only person on this board who genuinely lost money owning a property?

I'll be losing some if I can find anyone to buy my current house.

maveli

The worst was buying a house in 2006, but the best was remortgaging to HSBC's lifetime tracker Interest Only, tracking BoE+0.23. pays around £75.00/month for detached house

Loughton_Monkey

I have successfully avoided what I believe are the two worst financial mistakes anyone can make. These are:

1. Having children.
2. Getting a divorce.

Both of these things are (a) extremely expensive, and (b) totally unnecessary. Avoid them like the plague.

IronWolf

Most of my mistakes are buying things that I dont use. I just cleared out my wardrobe and realised how many clothes I've bought and only worn a few times before getting bored of them.

I suppose the biggest recently was letting our landlord bully us into a rent increase, but not entirely my fault, Ive been very ill and couldn't deal with the stress of moving out so just agreed to it.