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Apodemus

Gaffy wrote: »

That really is a great post.

Agreed! But if that is the seven deadly sins, then does it mean we are off the hook for wine, women and song?

colsten

I didn't appreciate the value of making pension contributions or other investments when I was young. I squandered away lots and lots of money on holidays, clothes, shoes, cars, handbags, bars and cigarettes [literally smoked through a house with 30 years of smoking....dreadful move!!], when I could have squandered just half, or less, of the money and put the rest into my AVCs, or just saved the money.

It's by sheer luck rather than by design and planning that things are working out alright for me financially at the age of 62 and beyond, and I have a rare and precious final salary pension to boost. That's a massive relief, now that I do need the pension income as I don't work any longer. If I could live my working life again, I would pay an awful lot more attention to making provision for my retirement. I was just sleep-walking into retirement and I ended up alright by a stroke of luck, but it could equally have been a total disaster. The odds for a disaster are now a lot higher than they were for people like myself 30-odd years ago. As there are no final salary pensions any longer, it's now massively more important that you sort out your retirement income provisions whilst you can. You still need 30-40 years at least to sort out a decent income during your retirement, so don't neglect your pension or whatever you call your retirement income provision.

I might sound like your grandmother to lots of you, but none of us can avoid growing old, and all of us need to live off something once we retire, and everybody wants to retire early. We all have an average life expectancy of 85-90 years upwards now, and growing, and at the same time don't want to work much beyond 65-70, with some wanting to retire in their 50s.

All I can say is: live for today, and also make plenty of provisions for tomorrow.

Ken68

Investing in Ionica, lost £2k. Still have the dish on the wall, maybe useful someday .


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionica_%28company%29

Snakey

Selling my house to move to London and not buying another as soon as I got down here. Reason was partly that everybody kept telling me that the market was overheated and due for a crash, but mostly (since you always need somewhere to live, after all) because I had the erroneous belief that you couldn't borrow more than 3x salary and this left me a few thousand short of the cheapest property that wasn't a complete slum. I knew that if I saved really hard I could have that few thousand in a couple of years.

Hindsight tells me that at the time you could get 100% mortgages and borrow 5x salary, and that property values in the area would increase threefold over the next fifteen years.

Lessons learned:
1. Don't assume that others are experts in a subject just because they act as if they know more than you. Lots of people like to sound important and superior, but they could be repeating any old !!!!!! they've read in the paper or heard down the pub.
2. Before making a decision based on assumptions or old information, do some research. If I'd only stuck my head round the door of the estate agents and asked about mortgages, instead of looking in the window and doing the maths for myself.

With the other mistake, I'll just summarise the lesson:
3. Don't hitch your wagon to somebody with markedly different financial values and goals.

bellaboo86

Letting my other half use my credit card. Let's just say the debt and the bloke are long gone. A couple of grand was a small price to pay to be shot of him.