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."
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."
"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."
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."
"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."
"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."
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."
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."
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."
"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."
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."
"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."
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."
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."
"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."
By the Foot
"$150,000 for mis-measuring something on a construction site. Off by 1 foot."
"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."
"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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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.
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Reddit user New-Low5765 asked:
"People who work in the airline industry, what are some of the craziest things you have seen?"
Don't Drink And Tow Aircraft
"Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather."
"So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks on planes, etc..."
"For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it."
"He was not sober."
"He was tasked with pulling a 370 [aircraft] into a hangar."
"He eyeballed it for whatever reason."
"So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process."
"Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in."
"We were promptly told that Christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller."
~ ProbablyChe
Occupational Hazard
"Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out."
"The staff then said, 'Oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away'."
"I guess he just bandaged and wrapped his own hand."
"It was about 1/4 of his finger including the nail that was cut off. The cutoff portion wasn't particularly bloody and it was really pale."
~ If_I_remember
"A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it."
~ BeerisAwesome01
"'Let’s just go, they can meet us there'."
~ InformativePenguin
"Plot twist. That included the pilots."
~ Windyandbreezy
Excess Baggage
"Coffin with dead body inside being left off the flight due to overload without notice either to us or the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us."
~ elenivog
employee of the month ups GIFGiphyNoped Out
"Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say 'I'm not flying this piece of sh*t' and get off the plane."
"All the passengers followed him."
~ Jaded-Session8422
"Hell yeah, I'm following the pilot off the plane if something like this happens!"
~ lukaron
Giphy"I had something similar happen, but never got on the plane."
"It was sitting there seemingly ready but they never started boarding."
"Eventually the pilots walk off the plane and a few of us heard them say ‘This junk isn’t going anywhere’."
"Flight ended up getting cancelled a short time later."
~ potatocross
"I was threatened with [pilots walking out] multiple times a week as an aircraft dispatcher."
"Auxiliary power units (APUs) run the air conditioning (AC) in the aircraft and they were always broken down and not fixed quickly, so when the pilots show up it is hot as hell inside and there's no ground crew to connect the external AC."
"So I would get a call from the Captain telling me he is not going to fly this piece of shit because it is too hot."
"Then they'd go on a tirade about how bad the company sucks because they don't do maintenance."
"I would agree with them completely."
Giphy"Then by the end of the call they'd say they will take it but the company sucks and needs to fix the APU."
"Occasionally the captain would refuse it, but then the ground crew would hook up the AC and they would always get back inside and fly it."
"For sure there were issues that popped up where the AC had an unsolvable issue and it would result in a cancelled flight."
~ Winchery
"I’m Dallas-Fort Worth based. No APU/AC in November? Meh, whatever."
"No APU/AC in August in Texas?"
"I’m not going on that airplane. Ground just can’t keep up."
~ poser765
☣️ Bio-Hazard ☣️
"Flight diverted to my airport because a girl in hotpants got uncontrollable diarrhea from the laxatives she took before the flight to help get over her weekend binge in Vegas."
"She sh*t in her seat and down the aisle and all over the bathroom."
"Five other passengers had uncontrollable vomiting because of this and the panic on the plane from the crew and rest of passengers caused the plane to make an emergency landing."
"They ended up having to cancel the remaining leg of the flight to decontaminate the plane."
"Police were sent and interviewed her and her friends and no charges were filed. I don't know if the airline put her on any kind of no-fly list or tried to have her pay for damages."
~ If_I_remember
GiphyHighly Unsuccessful
"There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed."
"The police arrested him in the gating area & confiscated the bags."
~ Traditional_Pair4840
"Something similar happened when I was a ramp rat back in the 1960s."
"Law enforcement was going to do the arrest at his destination."
"The weed disappeared before they got there."
~ endadaroad
Stealthiest Catch
"As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp."
"Flights were delayed."
"Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything."
~ Gregwaaah
"My significant other worked doing maintenance checks on commercial planes."
"This explains why they once found a bunch of dead crabs under the floorboards in the cargo bay. It was a mysterious mystery."
~ Highly_Referential
Avoiding A Strip Search?
"A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked."
~ Commercial-Chance561
"She was just very considerately trying to make it easier for TSA."
~ TrooperJohn
"They make you take off your shoes but they don't say that's all you can take off."
~ smartguy05
Language Barrier
"I witnessed this in the security screening of a large American airport."
"And to be fair, there was a language barrier as the passenger in question seemed to be speaking mainly French, and struggling to understand the TSA agent's instructions in English."
"Female passenger (tall, attractive, and sophisticated-looking) was wearing a business suit with a pencil skirt and matching jacket, which was buttoned closed, going through security."
"The TSA agent told her she had to remove the jacket. She ignored and tried to go through anyway."
"He stopped her and told her again more loudly (that's when everyone started noticing)."
"She said no. He insisted. She refused again, and tried to walk through."
Giphy"He got angry."
"She tried to explain something but it was unclear because her English was poor."
"It went back and forth."
"They both started getting angry and frustrated. It started holding up the line and other passengers were getting agitated."
"A few people tried to intervene and explain more calmly that she needed to put her jacket through the x-ray machine."
"Finally, near tears, she blurted out 'fine' and removed her jacket, revealing that she was wearing nothing at all underneath, and walked through the screening machine topless."
~ SigmaSeal66
I'm a nervous flyer so it's not something I do often, but I still feel a little cheated that nothing this bizarre has happened while I was traveling.
Has something ever happened during your travels?
Share it in the comments.
A good friend is not always the one with whom you share laughs and fun experiences.
The friendships you want to keep include those who won't abandon you in a time of need or someone who supports you in a variety of complicated situations where not even a family member can be relied upon.
Unfortunately, many of us have experienced a time when a person's true colors revealed to us that the so-called "friend" we've always trusted wasn't one at all.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor Aesthetik_1 asked:
"What made you instantly realize This 'friend' is not a real friend?"
These Redditors didn't realized at the time that they were being used.
Recurring Favor
"When he only called me when he needed something. It didn't hit me until much later."
– Queasy-Location-9303
"I have one of those 'friends'. She always gushes about how we're friends but she never initiates contact unless she wants me to do something for her."
– StiffAssedBrit
The Errand Girl
"Several years back, I had a friend who introduced me to this new boy she was seeing. Maybe a year later, their relationship blew up in a fury of bs (whole other story), but by the time they split, I was equally friends with both of them. He and I were both photographers at the time, so the friendship was instantaneous."
"One day we started talking about her, neither positively nor in poor taste, just kind of in general."
"He then asked me 'when she texts to hang out, what does she usually want to do?'"
"I paused. I thought. Holy sh*t, she'd either be asking for a favour or for help with some kind of errand. I was her f'king errand girl."
"She texted me a month or two later, just a 'hey'. I never responded. She never texted again."
"I'm still friends with her ex, though. That dude is genuine as heck."
– ChamomileBrownies
Testing The Friendship
"When you decide to let them be the one to reach out. And you never hear from them again."
– plzdontgetmad
"Yup. Made plans with a friend three times, she cancelled each time. I finally told her to let me know when she was free, we haven’t hung out since."
"She was a good friend for the season, but not a lifetime."
– NoMrBond3
People were shocked to discover the moment they realized they didn't really know who their "friend" was anymore.
The Chaperon
"I had been giving rides to a girl I thought was my friend. To and from school in high school. She wasn’t really suppose to ride with other teens but due to her mothers work hours we could easily pull this off. I thought we were close."
"One day while on the way home my brakes went out. We were about 2 blocks from her gated neighborhood. I managed to roll in safely and parked at her house to call a tow truck."
"She flipped. Told me I couldn’t stay. She knew my brakes were not working as she had also been terrified when we couldn’t stop. She said she wanted to go to a movie that weekend with other friends and her mom would ground her if she saw me at the house. I offered to lie and say I only stopped there as my car malfunctioned on my way home. I had to pass her neighborhood on my way home anyways."
"She refused. Started to scream at me. She didn’t care what happened I had to go. Started to call the guard at the front gate to tell them I had broken in and was threatening her."
"I left her and that friendship that moment. I managed to roll my car slowly to a mechanic not too far away but never forgot the shi* feeling of knowing I could have been seriously hurt and she wouldn’t have cared. She wanted to see a movie. She had the nerve to sheepishly call and ask me a couple days later if I could give her a ride to school. Told her I was too busy and no longer had time… after all I wanted to help her obey her mom's rules. She rode the bus til she graduated."
– Duffarum
Unwilling Companion
"I had this friend in school. Each year there was a funfair in our city, all students received vouchers for a drink and something to eat. This friend complained the whole day that she had no one to accompany her to the funfair. So, stupid me offered to go with her."
"Once we arrived we met another friend of hers. And another, and another... until we were a group of 5 or 6 people. I didn't know anyone and was basically just walking behind them. This friend took me aside and said, 'My friends think you are annoying, and we would like you to leave.'"
"It was a pleasure to see that she failed her exams a year later."
– Auldale
There's the spirit of competition, but when it's taken seriously, we're no longer game for these friendships.
I Can Do It Better
"Constantly 'one ups' me. A real friend is happy for you."
– Complex-Half8338
"That one time I got a fake bag but she doesn’t know and then 2 weeks later messaged me that she also bought a luxury bag… Then when I got a bf, she also went to get a bf within 3 months which is TOTALLY fine but she constantly messages me for us to go on a double date. Anyways, sadly they didn’t last long :( I mentioned that I wanted to go to Cuba, she went ahead and bought herself a ticket to Cuba but I didn’t end up going lol"
– Hot-Coffee-8465
Never Steal The Spotlight
"When they loved the idea of me shining, but behind their shadow, I could never do or achieve anything above them, and when I did, they would get jealous."
– Jasssin23
"Yes! I recently ghosted a friend because of this kind of behavior. She was trying to compete about EVERYTHING. Like she bragged about how her mom’s car accident was more traumatic than my elderly MIL’s - which is not even an appropriate thing to compare. She would also try to 'outshine' celebrations of my milestones and was mean to several of my friends for no apparent reason. She was a loose cannon at best."
– thefifthtrilogy
All About Me
"ALL she talks about it herself and her problems. Granted she has a a lot but never asks about me or my life until she realizes she just bypassed my attempt to want to talk about something in my life bothering me and continued to talk about herself."
– PokemomOnTheGo
People can just be so rude.
"When I got really sick. Very few came to help."
– Tofflus1
"Same here. I got cancer and everyone I knew was over the top supportive for the first six months and then all but three of my friends just vanished. I saw one of them at a Halloween party while I was going through chemo and she told me that my bald head made people uncomfortable. I was dressed as Captain Picard, it was awesome and she ruined it."
– CatGoNoTail
Not Missing High School
"At lunch, she was sitting with her boyfriend, I was sitting with our friend circle. She came up to me, guilted me into sitting with her and her boyfriend, and then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of lunch."
"She didn't care about me, she just didn't want me talking to the friend circle that she had abandoned for her boyfriend. When I pointed this out to her, she called me a jealous b*tch."
"Ah, high school. How I don't miss thee."
– Symnestra
These examples actually served as a good reminder for me to take a moment and assess my friendships.
Not so much about how I've been treated but more about checking myself to see if I'm respecting the people I call my friends.
We've all been guilty of casually mentioning future plans to get together. I embarrassingly wait for people to initiate something, which is terrible.
Show up for your friends. Make them feel important like the individuals they are.