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.
Redditor u/TheNarrator315 wanted 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...
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"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
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"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
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"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...
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"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
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"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
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"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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When we're intoxicated, or even the slightest bit tipsy from having a little too much to drink, our immediate perspective on things is hazy.
But there's nothing like a bit of alarming news or a jarring incident to snap us out of the fog and focus on the moment.
Sometimes alcohol isn't always to blame for our impairment.
It can be a state of mind, like a perpetual numbness from being complacent in life, and all it takes is one shocking moment to rattle us back to our senses.
Curious to hear from strangers online about this type of scenario, Redditor Known_Challenge_7150 asked:
"What’s one thing that sobered you up real quick?"
These individuals were witness to shocking events that sobered them up right quick.
Bleeding Out
"Got out of a taxi and found a naked man profusely bleeding from his head crawling up the driveway in my condo. Called him an ambulance completely forgot I was absolutely wasted until 45 minutes later when I'd helped him translate and in to an amublance and stepped in my front door."
"Later a few days later learned he'd slipped in the tub and literally crawled out for help. Poor dude. He was fine but I genuinely thought he was going to die there."
– DongLaiCha
Tragic News
"At a bachelor party and we got a phone call that the groom’s father had suddenly passed."
– accountnameredacted
Bottom Of The Barrel
"I went to visit my parents back in July. I was homeless and deep into fentanyl addiction so I lost a lot of weight. My folks could see it. They knew something was up. Anyway, I spent the night and I was getting ready to leave in the morning and I looked at myself in the mirror for a good long time. I finally had enough and told them everything. They took me to detox, from there I went to rehab. Graduated in August and been living with them ever since then. I have 160 days clean and sober."
– Crotch-Monster
A reality check can be enough for some people to snap out of it.
Like Father, Like Son
"Was driving a drunk friend home, he had been on a bender again and was smart enough to call me for a lift rather than try and drive. As I helped in to his house his mother came down the stairs and said 'your as drunk as your father' and went back upstairs. I haven't seen him drunk since then, he still drinks but the thought of turning into his dad scared him out of hard drinking."
– psycospaz
Busted
"Flashing blue lights."
– FiddleOfGold
"This sobered me up just thinking about it."
– redmaple_syrup
Losing Sight
"Woke up to no sight in one eye. I had cataract surgery so just thought one of the lenses had slipped and it was an easy fix. Eye doc says nope, you had a stroke. I loved soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and salty food, which caused high blood pressure, which caused retina damage. Over six months was able to get most of my eyesight back with medication, and all back within a year. Trying to navigate life with one eye was very sobering. Started taking HBP much more seriously."
– MissHibernia
Quitting The Bottle
"Looked up someone I went to highschool with who was an awesome guy. Found out he had been dead for 3 years from alcoholism, at age 33. I made an overnight change. I hadn't started drinking that night yet, 10 months ago. Haven't touched it again since."
– omgtater
These disturbing moments were enough for Redditors to immediately come to their senses.
Unplanned House Guests
"Me and a buddy Woke up in someone’s living room, realized neither one of us knew the people, they were just nice and let 2 drunk guys sleep on their living room floor. We didn’t even say goodbye."
– Oneinsevenbillion75
Serious Health Warning
"Elevated liver enzymes."
"And the knowledge that this sh** was gonna kill me and I just couldn't orphan my family over it."
"So I opted for recovery, instead."
"Clean and sober since June 5, 2009."
– Far_Meal8674
The Joyride
"Grew up in a rural area. The little town hosted dances at the hockey arena, everyone (adults and kids) went and they overserved everyone, regardless of age. I was maybe 16 or 17 and was absolutely sh*tfaced, and jumped in the back of someone's truck with about 8 other people to go back to someone's cottage for after dance drinking. The driver (still don't know who it was) started racing one of his buddies and we whipped around small dirt roads, flying around blind corners on the wrong side of the road, going god knows how fast. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen. It was crazy scary and I was sober and thankful to be alive when we finally arrived."
– foxfood9116
The human psyche is a fascinating thing, isn't it?
How we can automatically focus on something urgent at a crucial time, even after getting buzzed from drinking too much alcohol.
But as we're in the thick of the holidays, it's a good reminder to drink responsibly and stay off the roads if you drive to your celebratory destination.
Cheers. Stay safe. And happy holidays.
We've all complained or vented about something in our lives which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't exactly a problem, or is very easily solved.
Then there are those who complain about things that others almost hope will happen to them at some point in their lives.
These are known as "first world problems", as they are problems that pretty much only the world's one percent faces.
From having to fly business class instead of first class, or being served Roederer instead of Dom Pérignon, these complaints are often met with amusement, bewilderment, or even anger.
Redditor jennimackenzie was curious to hear the most absurd "first world problems" anyone ever complained about, leading them to ask:
"What’s the most ridiculous 'first world problem' you’ve seen people get worked up over?"
"Tale As Old As Time..."
"I once knew a mom who was legitimately devastated, to the point of tears/grief, because a doctor predicted her 8 year old daughter's final height to be around 5'2","
"Which wasn't tall enough to get cast as Belle at Disney World."
"That was the child's (and her mother's) only dream in life, apparently."
"Didn't appreciate my suggestion that she could be Minnie or Mickey."
"Lol!"
"Only a face character would do!"- TravelLovingMom
"Must Be Funny, In A Rich Man's World..."
"My boss from about a decade ago was this insanely rich dude who always went to the bank to get fresh and crisp currency."
"He'd call the bank in advance to make sure they had some on hand."
"I think he was a germaphobe."
"He had a trash can that he'd throw $1 and $5 bills in that he thought was 'dirty' and regularly just donated it vs spending it."
"I asked him why he did this and he said it was too much trouble and asked if I wanted it."
"I said f*ck yeah dumped it into my bag and when I got home it was close to $400 in singles and fives.
"Another time, he wanted to upgrade all the computers in his studio, so we went to a store and bought 10 PCs."
"They all had $150 mail in rebates and he wasn't bothered to go through the trouble of mailing them in."
"3 weeks later I received $1500 after spending a whole afternoon filling out all those goddamn forms."- azninvasion2000
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Who Wore It Better?
"When I was about 19 years old, I was at my boyfriends family BBQ."
"I was wearing this pretty floral sundress."
"His cousins girlfriend showed up in the same dress and she was SO mad that she went and changed."
"I will never understand being upset when someone is wearing the same thing as you.'
"Did you really think that your shirt you bought off the rack is going to be unique to you?"
"No."- mertsey627
Seeing Red! Or Blue In This Case...
"The blue of the balloons wasn't quite the same as the bridesmaid's sashes."
"Years ago my wife and I attended a wedding."
"It was very low key."
"The dinner was in the dining hall at the university where the couple met, cinder block walls and all."
"It was a Baptist wedding - no booze and very serious."
"The dark blue balloons attempting to liven up the hall were a slightly darker shade of blue than the sashes on the bridesmaid's dresses."
"The bride lost here sh*t and absolutely raved for nearly an hour."
"I can't remember how they finally managed to talk her down."- mechant_papa
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See You In Court!
"Rich neighbors who end up in expensive court battles because they disagree about where a tree can be planted or whether the color of a fence fits in with the street’s 'amenity'."
'These disputes get really heated and rack up huge lawyers’ bills."
"The most pathetic part is after the judgement when they are arguing about who should pay the other party’s costs."
"Lots of affidavits filed citing the 'emotional distress' they had to endure, or painting themselves as brave warriors who were forced to take a stand to fight for 'justice'."
"Also lots of pompous litigants insisting that the judge refer to them by their 'Dr' title."
"An absolutely insane dumpster fire of entitled rich people problems."- ElectrocRaisin
It's Always People With Money Who Don't Want To Pay!
"I work in a public library."
"People will get so so mad if they have to be put on a wait list for a book."
"A popular book that just came out."
"Ok our services are not only free but so are the books."
"You’re welcome, a**holes."- Switchbladekitten
A Warm Butt Is A Happy Butt!
"My own."
"We have a bidet toilet seat (Fabulous! Everyone should have one!) and not only does it wash your bum and blow dry it, but the seat's heated!"
"It's shocking how much a heated toilet seat makes the whole process more agreeable."
"Except: We had a power outage and I went to use the toilet and the seat was cold!"
"Unacceptable!"
"This shall not stand!"
"I was really upset because it didn't feel good."
"Then I stopped and thought: This is the most first-world problem anyone's ever had."
"I was really pissed because my heiny was tepid."
"I got over it."- DeathGrover
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Holy Matrimony!
"Weddings are a gold mine for this question."
"People get so hyped up over their 'most important day of their life'."
"They'll destroy friendships, go into debt, and have crazy expectations."
"It's not always the couple who go crazy, either."
"Sometimes, it's the parents or another family member who feels entitled to control the wedding."
"It's just a party."
"Be considerate of guests, have plenty of food and drinks, and enjoy it."- magicrowantree
When Fast Food Isn't Fast Enough...
"Having to pull off to the side to wait for a drive-thru order to be brought out to you because your food isn't ready and there's a line building up behind you."- demanbmore
In Case You Don't Think Customer Service Employees Are Undervalued...
"I was working the return desk at a Target next to a military base so I have so many stories."
"One of my favorites was a lady who had her baby shower before revealing the gender and was livid that she had received floral newborn diapers when she’s having a boy."
"It was a huge box of super expensive, all organic diapers, that we didn’t carry and therefore could not return."
"I cannot accurately express her fury and disgust."
"How dare either suggest her boy could wear feminine diapers."
"I suggested she donate them if she didn’t want to use them and she instead threw away the entire box."
"When she left we pulled it out and threw it in our donate bin."
"There have also been multiple times where mom’s order massive toys and when we bring them out to the car they get furious that they aren’t wrapped."
"We don’t offer wrapping services."
"Here’s the thing, if you don’t want your kids to see the toys you got them for Christmas or their bit to day DON'T BRING THE CHILD WHEN YOU PICK IT UP."
'I’ve had multiple women scream and curse me out that I had ruined their kids Christmas by bringing the toys they ordered out to the car like they requested."- clever-mermaid-mae
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Happiest Place On Earth!
"I used to work for Disney."
"That in itself should tell you everything."
"However for fun I'll give you two specific stories one form our tech department and one from my wife who worked bookings."
"I specifically worked for their call center to help with technical issues with magic band and the website."
"Suddenly got worse huh?"
"A right of passage call everyone has at least one story of is the 'Dome call'."
"Basically there is a subset of Disney Guest (TM) that believes if it rains at Walt Disney world there is someone that will push a button to encapsulate the whole of Disney property in a dome to keep out the rain."
"I'm not kidding."
"If this button is not pushed they call our tech department to angrily ask why."
"My wife worked booking."
"Pretty much everything including Bibbidi Bobbidi boutique and Pirate's league."
"These two things did roughly the same thing difference being price and theme."
"BBB was expensive did more and was focused on princesses, pirates league did a bit less and focused on mermaids and pirates."
"Lady called up my wife, and got pissed about BBB being booked up (It goes FAAAAST)."
"Karen: 'Im going to give the phone to my daughter and I want you to tell her how you are ruining her vacation by not letting her do BBB'."
"Wife proceeds to explain how pirate's league is so much cooler and how she can be a mermaid or pirate and basically gets the kid to start demanding to their parents about how they want to be a mermaid instead of a princess."- trollsong
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The horror!
Being booked into a junior suite at Disney World instead of an executive suite!
It's almost as bad as having no money for groceries, or no food to feed you children...
Said absolutely no one.