Got convinced by someone I very much trusted to join an MLM as a 19 or 20 year old. After my parents learned about it, they were able to talk some sense into me, and I realized I was part of a pyramid scheme. I got out and basically broke even, which was honestly the best possible outcome of that whole scenario. It unfortunately degraded my relationship with the person who convinced me to join, and I never really could fully trust them after that.
It was Stream Energy/Ignite Inc. The energy markets in many US states are open to suppliers other than the utility companies. Ignite/Stream offered bad utility rates with pyramid scheme marketing tactics and eventually were sued.
Complaint here
That's part of what made it sound good at first. It sounded like a unique opportunity with a "legitimate" company, and I was too young and inexperienced to really understand the implications of it, especially when coming from someone I had known for over a decade and really trusted.
I spent 50 grand and 4 years of my life to be told by prospective employers that I either lacked real world experience, or that I was overqualified. It took me another 3 years to find a job after university - one that doesn't require training and is barely relevant to my field.
I get to hang a pretty piece of paper up on my wall, I guess.
Yeah that's rough. I can kind of say the same. The career I chose doesn't require the degree I have. It absolutely helps but if I could go back, I would have just gotten licensed at 18 and started working in the trade. Degree is mechanical engineering, trade is operations side of stationary engineering.
I was married, in my 40’s and listened to my now ex hubby #2 because his family had several. The payment was $600 a month… a second mortgage for a one week vacation? The timeshare, nor our marriage, lasted long after that.
Maybe I'm lucky, but I just stopped paying the maintenance fees. It never showed up on my credit, the phone calls stopped years ago, and all I get is the occasional scam offer in the mail to help me sell it.
I knew about bitcoin so early that at the time there was still a "bitcoin faucet" website giving them away for free, but between procrastination and skepticism I never bothered getting any.
Me, I falsely assumed crypto would be regulated by now. Also got scammed out of the proceeds from a doge coin miner my peers and I had infected our school wifi with. Only learned jack all about mining for it's relation to cryptographic mathmatics, ha.
Even though I knew about Bitcoin in 2009, I don't regret not buying into it at the start. Either I would have sold off at a dollar, because it "couldn't possibly go any higher than that" and then regret not holding onto it for the rest of my life, or I would be extremely rich and be a much worse person because of it.
It should be an sqlite database. The modern docs say so, I am not exactly sure if it was the case in 2010.
Is it bigger than 0 bytes? Try opening in https://sqlitebrowser.org/ . I don't know if it uses SQLcipher (probably not), but if you are using the Windows installer you should probably tick that there just in case.
EDIT: just a thought, if you can't get it just give it to me (not here tho, Tox F857EB6604B99A58ADD0965CEDFCBF78CF0BDF939DA7290D8D84117D8DE30C3F91B5EA9226E8), I will try some basic fuckery on it and do splitsies. It can go in these ways:
Nobody gets your coins - sad
I get your coins and lie - sad, but also you kinda didn't loose anything
I'm lucky to have only had access to crappy cocaine in my life. I think I did like 3 consecutive 8-ball weekends but felt like shit every Monday so I just stopped. Now I'm too scared of fent to even try to score some coke.
Too many people don't factor in the cost of transportation, and it's such a big one, especially now. In the midwest especially I know I did. I got a new job that was an hour away by car, which is about 40 miles including navigating from my city, the interstate, and the destination city. I knew my old car wouldn't make it that much, so I bought a new car to help (and stupid younger me thought I looked cooler with it). At the time, gas was about $3/gallon and I got 30mpg highway, and I'll round down to account for city mileage. So about 2.5 gallons of gas per work day, so $7.50 a day, or $150 a month. That's $1,800 a year gone to gas alone.
Then add in that new car payment ($500/month), and higher insurance (+250/month compared to previous insurance) and that's $10.800 a year just to get to work, not counting anything else.
Then I think that I took the job because I could get 20k more than my current job in the same city thinking "oh that's so much more money". Only looking back do I realize I immediately lost over half of that just to driving there, plus probably ~6,000 to taxes. So my "cool" new job in the other city netted me about $3,200 additional in my pocket per year, which is an additional $250 a month. Was it worth the additional stress of driving 2 hours every day, 40 hours a month (an additional work week every month) just for $250 a month? Probably not.
There are "True cost of driving" calculators to help understand this. Some of them are really involved. This one suggested to me that even my small, old hatchback costs something like $0.40 per mile, including depreciation, maintenance, fuel and so on.
One thing that most of us don't have a gut feeling for: Even at $4-6 per gallon, fuel is usually not the biggest cost involved. That's a lousy situation, because it means we don't react to the real costs. "Market forces" can't work if most of us don't feel their pressures because we're looking in the wrong places.
Changed over the ownership of the house I bought with my own money to my now ex because he was the one with the job. Am now house-less and renting an apartment at triple the mortgage payments.
I made a lot of mistakes divorcing my husband last year so there's plenty of mistakes to go around. I lost my job six months before we separated and that made me feel powerless. Only now am I reclaiming my power, happiness, and inner peace. Sending good vibes your way as you grow in strength and knowledge.
Not a big one, but surely the worst one. There was a "make your own perfume" stall in our college fest. I didn't like the fragrance of most of what they had to offer. It took me time to pick one, but I picked one that I thought was the most unique one.
Then when I came home, I realised it smelt exactly like my dad's car freshner.
Oh, I mean it was fact. Not speculation. Like it was logged and announced and done out in the open. The sec changed the rules while it was happening just to stop it. Plus the brokerages that froze trading at several points.
Awe man. I managed to minimize my winnings. Sold a call. I figured cool get some action. Yes, that was a 400% profit but if I had taken the opposite (buy the call instead), it could own a new car. Anyway. I'm happy you paid off your mortgage.
Bought a house with my ex and we were instantly house poor. We didn’t account for buying things for the house at all. Ended up selling and moving two years later at a loss even though we sold for a bit more than we bought it for.
they were from a poor country so $400 has 3x the purchasing power, like $1,200. I chose a poorer country because you can spend less money for more excitement
Probably the time I used a cash machine in a weird place in my home town to draw out the maximum I could for Christmas spending and all I got from it was the receipt saying the money had gone from my account.
The place was weird because, although it was in a very public square, it was kind of high off the ground, like it had been installed for people over 6ft tall. I am not that tall. The novelty appealed to me anyway. Mistake.
I was so ashamed, I never reported it. I didn't think I'd be believed.
If you want actual things, I own a pre-smartphone electronic personal organiser that I used about five times and about a dozen calculators from when I got really into them for some reason. And at least one of those was "parts only" that I completely missed in the description.
But if I could undo anything, I'd rather have that cash machine money back.
Ha, get ready for hyper inflation, your saved dollars will lose their value. All the rich finance bros will get sweetheart loan deals and buy up every scrap. Enter into fascist-feudal world. Where it gets hotter every year. Fuck you is the general plan I guess.
They're worse than boats. If anything breaks on an RV, and it will, it's really hard to get parts for them, and good luck finding an RV mechanic when it's "in season." Back when I had an RV, some kids outside were playing catch and ended up breaking one of my windows, and it took 3 months and countless calls with the manufacturer to get a new window. If you live in colder climates, you have to winterize your RV every year. They leak, and require constant maintenance. And if one of the tires blows out? It could total your RV.
To add to what boaratio mentioned: My experience is living in one while traveling for work for a few years (and I rebuilt mine to improve it over the stock configuration and knew how to fix it myself.)
They're more expensive to stay in than motels in many areas. Every time you drive somewhere it's an earthquake and something is breaking. They're either too hot or too cold due to no insulation, maintenance is terrible (and they require a ton), driving them around is terrible, staying in them is also terrible. They shake in the wind, are loud in the rain (I like that part tbh), are incredibly delicate for a road vehicle so anything touching them that wouldn't bother a car will damage them somehow.
Why all this? Labor is the largest cost for an RV, and they already have that as cheap as possible (I heard one is built every 24 hours on most lines), so the only way to save money is by going as cheap as possible on materials as well.
Every time you drive somewhere it's an earthquake and something is breaking.
I watched a vlog from someone who RVed full-time and this was my largest takeaway. They have a lot of things breaking.
the only way to save money is by going as cheap as possible on materials as well.
I think that a big factor is going to be that the volume sold just isn't that large. Fixing engineering problems is gonna be a fixed cost, independent of the number of units you sell, so a vehicle manufacturer that sells tons of units can do a lot more of that.
I was conned into going into ITT Tech out of high school. I learned a lot but didn't find out until later it was unaccredited so nothing would transfer to colleges and that they had lied heavily about their placement numbers. There were a few issues keeping from going after them: it was my parent's money, the point in time I went wasn't part of the lawsuit, and my parents were dead when the lawsuit came about. I cannot put ITT Tech on my resume because of everything related to it, it's a literal black mark. So I have to stretch the truth of those two years because of it.
Almost every single movie I've seen in theaters. At home is just better. Hell, sometimes the bike ride with my partner to and from the place is better than the movie-- could have just hung out at a park, lol.
I think this is mostly because movies are not really a shared experience any longer. The closest I've had recently to a cinema experience that you wouldn't be able to replicate at home was the end of Infinity War. Sure if you had a heap of friends over it might be close but the underlying feeling of dread, sadness, anger and confusion could be felt as you were leaving the cinema made it worth it imo.
I'm hoping Doomsday will be similar in the way it handles things but if it pulls another Force Awakens I'm gonna be annoyed.
I have a bag of popcorn on standby for when I watch a movie. In the Quest 3 i can play the movie in a cinema environment. Full giant screen experience, excellent sound with headphones, can pause it for a pee break, and it costs me nothing. Would definitely recommend. And there's no one else in the cinema either. Perfect experience
I bought a new, $100 android tablet a few years ago because I'd never had a tablet before and thought I'd try it. Assumed that since laptops around that price perform ok that it would be decent for basic stuff, but it really isn't. Just not enough ram (4gb), lags when doing literally anything, can't load most websites, can't even play most videos without it turning into a slideshow. Can't install a less shit more efficient OS. I would feel bad about reselling it because no one should be subjected to having to use this ewaste.
I guess I could look into that more, but cursory research gave me the impression that there aren't good options for tablets here. But I guess since it's useless anyway it would be worth it if I could just set it up as a server somehow, maybe I will keep looking.
No such thing as E-waste! any phone, laptop, desktop or tablet that powers on can be re-purposed for something cool or salvaged for parts. I once made a usable laptop out of 3 dead ones and it gave me another year to save up for a replacement rather than having to emergency buy something cheap and shitty.
Not a tablet, but I used to use a Motorola phone from 2014 that only had 2 GB of RAM and ran most if not all things fine (even modern versions of Minecraft). Why does the tablet seem so much worse even with more RAM?
I'm not sure, my guesses would be newer android is more bloated and old models don't get the updated versions, and that larger screens take more processing to render (although that would probably be more about stuff other than ram capacity).
I have never bought a vehicle for more than $5k, and most were 25+ years old when purchased. Most lasted 10+ years with virtually no significant repairs beyond the post-purchase glow-up.
Downside is that I have been hankering to get into an electric for some time now, but I am running into a few blockers:
10yo Chevy Bolts are still $20k+ CAD
I refuse to fund/promote fascism with a Swasticar
None exist with ease of repairability, and DRM is growing every year
None exist without significant privacy concerns
I will never tolerate a subscription - I will gleefully crack the software at the first opportunity
I’ll never buy an EV due to all of the reasons you listed. I’d say our next vehicle will be a 90s Toyo/Nissan/Honda sedan. I’ll gladly drive my current Subaru until it dies though. Hoping for 10+ years out of it.
For me, the issue with my older vehicles is the cost of fuel. The math is clear - an EV is radically cheaper over the long haul, especially for something like a sedan. Plus, far fewer moving parts to break.
I think, however, that a conversion of an older car is the trick. Sure, modern EVs are a shitton heavier, but only if you want it to go 700-1,200km. I don’t. I would only need a 100-200km range because bombing around town will be it’s only duty. Which means far fewer batteries and a powertrain weight that likely matches the original engine and drivetrain, allowing me to retain the original suspension as-is.
Cheaper for now. Don’t think for a second that costs will remain low when the majority of drivers switch. The population is used to budgeting x amount of money for fuel monthly, don’t think for a second that the cooperate owners will allow those savings to become the norm.
EV is cheaper now but it’ll likely get enshitified like everything else in this country. They will just use the excuse that more people using the grid = higher cost per kWh. When we all know that the data centers are using far more energy than single family homes charging a Chevy Bolt.
The fact that any homeowner can take their house entirely off-grid without consequences, and use their vehicle as a partial whole-house battery, takes many of those concerns off of the table.
Combine that with many companies offering EV conversions to vehicles that are old enough (minimal electronics), and you can easily bypass any enshitticiation with solar panels and an EV conversion that costs much less than a new EV.
Slate Truck. Extremely stripped-down. No cell radio. No GPS radio. No WiFi or Bluetooth, unless you stick some kind of hardware that can do them in there. Hell, no touchscreen car computer, just a place you can mount a tablet if you want. Doesn't even have automatic windows as a base option. Aside from having airbags, air conditioner, and being an EV, basically a 1980s-style vehicle.
It'll fail some of your other requirements, because it's new and you'd need a used vehicle to hit a $5k price point. Just pointing out that it'll meet the privacy point.
I do agree that it is depressingly rare to find modern cars that don't have privacy issues. It's not that I expected all of them to be privacy friendly, but I expected there to be more options.
Slate is also funding Fascism, being a Bezos project.
But it hits most other requirements, true.
Downside is that I want and need a traditional sedan with a full-sized trunk capable of securely holding at least 3-6 adult bodies, not a truck. If I was to get a truck, I also need it to haul 5,000kg on the regular across steep/alpine roads, 8,000kg+ in a pinch over mostly flat and level roads. The Slate truck is utterly incapable of that. And I have two F-150 7700 units that can and have done exactly that.
Your mechanic likely isn’t learning how to work on EVs
Many EVs have DRM out the wazoo, requiring the mechanic to spend $1,000,000 on a piece of software that has a $6,000/mo subscription just to authorize a brake replacement with the mothership. Otherwise the vehicle refuses to even roll, much less move under its own power.
And then the mechanic needs to rinse-and-repeat this spending spree with every other manufacturer who is also making EVs.
That shit becomes prohibitively expensive shockingly fast. And manufacturers are going whole-hog on this technique to send people back to dealer garages (who don’t have to pay those fees) for a slice of those profits, instead of independent shops that provide no profits whatsoever. They’re literally enshittifying cars until the only people capable of fixing them are dealers, or those independent shops who got wealthy enough fast enough to pay for that software.
I leased a non Tesla electric car and handing them back a car that has a residual value in the contract of $32000 but an actual market value of $20000 makes me feel like a got $12k of value out of the lease I didn't earn. In 2.5 years it has cost me maybe and extra $600 in electric to drive 25k miles.
I did kind of the same thing but just a new Acura. I did love the car, but toward the end of the lease it felt like I was renting an AirBnB, making sure nothing fucked it up right at the end and making sure I kept it under the mileage agreement.
At ~A$130 a week (2x 1L bottles of scotch and rum, and 2 x 24pk of beer(24x500ml), for 17 years, my math works out to be about $115k over the course of my drinking career.
I went with cannabis. After legalization, 70%+ concentrates are widely available for $15-25/g and I'm down to ~$120/month to cover my stayfaded lifestyle. I think I was paying $100/quarter oz of 15-20% flower pre-prohibition.
I used to sell plasma, and I used the funds on Robinhood to try investing without affecting my regular cash flow. Through sheer luck, in one day, my account went from around $200 to over $2500. I was overjoyed. I’d clearly made a genius-level decision that would only continue to pay out.
Anyway, I woke up the next day with less than I’d had to start. Should’ve taken the money and run. Or not tried to time the market. Either way, it felt like I’d lost $2300 instead of $50.
Need to read a random walk down wall street. Great book. The premise is no matter what news story hits the market, that information is already reflected in the stock price. Therefore, his theory is that you cannot out beat the market and it is in your best interest to dollar cost average a market tracker. That is investing. Myself I believe what you are describing is gambling.
That's an interesting game but it assumes the same amount either in or out all at once. Not what I'm describing where each month you invest a set amount into the market each time. This is what 401ks do. While the beat the couch is pretty cool it doesn't take into account the dollar cost averaging aspect. It's all in or all out. It's not in, then buy more, then buy more, then buy more then buy more etc....you get the picture.
Having said that it is absolutely true that time in the market is better than timing the market.
Haven't read that book, but I've been very successful with the opposite approach. A favorable article about a company's stock in popular mainstream media (not business publications) can push the stock up briefly over the next couple weeks based on false hopes of the clueless general public. Get in immediately, get out within a couple days if nothing happens, and within 2 weeks if it does. My other rule is only do this with options, not actual stocks. And yes, I too would call this gambling - but investing is never not gambling. It's just more or less so depending on how you do it.
That is true investing is never not gambling but a lot of people use like their savings for what you would do and that's the difference. Its like the casino, go into it with the amount of money you are willing to lose. If you can't lose that money don't go into the casino. Same principal with individual stock picks and options.
The premise is no matter what news story hits the market, that information is already reflected in the stock price. Therefore, his theory is that you cannot out beat the market and it is in your best interest to dollar cost average a market tracker.
I have a single digit percent allocation of single company stocks I pick myself. They are very useful as a constant reminder at how bad I am at picking single stocks to encourage me to leave the majority of my investments in boring index funds I strictly buy-and-hold.
This is why I don't invest. I tried it for a relatively short span of time. It was a large company that isn't a scam or anything but I can't remember the name of it. They had three sort of options for investing...1. high risk/reward, 2. Medium risk/reward, and 3. Low risk/reward.
I either picked 2 or 3 or something. Can't remember which. All that stupid thing did was lose money due to broker fees. I watched the money slowly drop over the span of around a year from "fees" with literally never earning a dime. I thought it was ridiculous so I pulled the rest of the funds.
I instead chose to place that money in a high yield savings account. Does it earn money quickly? No. But it isn't wildly unpredictable like investing and it will never lose money unless I take money out. Investing isn't for me.
With all due respect, what you did was not investing; it was closer to speculating. If your time horizon is less than 5 years, what you should look at is a savings account/certificate of deposit, not the stock market.
I had a mutual fund once (the Putnam Health Sciences Trust) that went down three or four years in a row (probably about 30-35% total). The same financial advisors who recommend I buy it advised that I sell it for the last two years I owned it. I didn't take their advice and held on to it - the next year it had about a 75% increase. I would have missed that and locked in my losses if I had listen to them.
I didn't know 5 years was a cutoff for something be considered investing but ok.
Yes, you're right. I could have decided to keep the account open for the next 10 years and maybe it might have eventually earned a single penny. But I chose not to because that's just not what I'm interested in. You do you. It's just not as easy and win-win as people make it out to be.
I instead chose to place that money in a high yield savings account. Does it earn money quickly? No. But it isn’t wildly unpredictable like investing and it will never lose money unless I take money out. Investing isn’t for me.
Even though I do invest in stocks, until recently I was a long time user of high yield savings accounts for years for my "safe" money. What I eventually realized was how the bank was able to pay me the comparatively higher interest rate for a savings account. Whatever money I had in the savings account they'd just buy short term US Treasuries (probably 4 week Tbills), they shave off .5%-1% interest earned for their company profit, and passed the remainder onto me. I finally sat down and learned how to cut out the middle man and buy the Tbills myself. So instead of the High Yield savings account paying me 3.01%, I'm earning 3.94% on the same money.
Also understand that Savings accounts and even Tbills usually drasically underperform compared to broad stock index funds. For example 2025 was 16.39% and 2024 was 23.21% returns for boring S&P500 funds.
Letting my partner quit their job so they could focus on working on a comic full-time.... I completely supported them. Buying them supplies and whatever else they needed. This lasted 2 years... with absolutely nothing to show for it. NOTHING. I have no idea what the fuck they did 10 hours a day while I was at work.
Yeah. My biggest financial mistake was not killing myself as a teenager, when I was about to try, for the first time. Everything got just worse after that, since I got very sick physically as well, and now will be poor for the rest of my life (however short that ends up being), living on wellfare. Worst thing financially is, by living, I am just pulling the people around me to poverty as well.
The best thing of having a machine shop and getting proficient with the machines is simultaneously having a god complex and imposter syndrome when you get to make cool stuff.
If you're gonna buy a reliable car with the intention of keeping it for 10+ years a new car isn't that bad. I recognize the fact it depreciates at light speed. But if you have no plan to resell, who cares.
Yeah that's a waste. Unless you're financially very comfortable and just trying to learn. I take like 2 classes a year at a community college/trade school. Not chasing another degree or cert just keeping myself fresh. Most of the class cost usually comes back in my tax return anyway.
If you’re talking strictly financial, getting married. I wouldn’t trade that part of my life, or the kids if got out of it, but strictly financially, I lost more than most people make in a lifetime.
I went into it with a sizeable emergency fund and well on track for an early retirement
Then I got laid off at the wrong time and used my emergency fund in a fancy wedding ceremony. I figured I could make it back pretty quickly, especially with the second income
But I quickly realized I wasn’t saving anything. When a medical emergency hit, my only recourse was a loan and emergency withdrawal from 401k
Fast forward 20 years and still no savings. While I had paid off the 401k loan, I made no contributions. Now I was way behind being able to retire. Then divorce happened. Lost half my house, half my 401k, but no savings to lose.
Now I’m living alone in the same house. I have a huge car loan. I have huge child support payments. I have college expenses for two kids. Yet I’ve been able to rebuild my emergency savings and max out 401k contributions. I’m in much better shape financially, just running out of time to save
I had an old paintball gun I bought off someone in highschool but never got the chance to play, until after college on a weekend out of town trip so I had to borrow everything. About 8 years later a friend decides to get back into it after his divorce so we played a couple times and I swore I'd wait until we played a few times before investing money into newer, better gear. Then I got a new marker, hopper, mask, tanks, and all the trimmings. We played once (1 on 1) then he vanished forever when he started dating his would-be wife. I never touched any of it again.
I didn't get into DnD until COVID, and know how I am with things, I decided to get 1 set of cheap dice, borrow a PHB and start small. After several sessions and a solid group my dice addiction hits, I buy PHB, DMG and MM off eBay, custom mini and make my own dice box. Then I start getting into DMing, buy tons of minis, DM gear, paints, more dice etc etc. Me and my gf break up, the DM (a coworker of mine) went turncoat and I was gone from the group. I tried finding a couple new games after I moved but no luck.
So now I got all this shit sitting on shelves in my basement
If you’re still interested in playing, see if there’s a local game store by you. People around me are always looking for groups and many would kill for a reliable GM. Though I do understand the money sink, I think there’s 8 totes of figures in my office that I’m too lazy to get at game time and we just end up using dice instead of the minis.
I get where you're coming from, and being hurt that way is completely valid.
But, your statement assumes you are the only person on the planet like that. If you're willing put someone else before you, unless you're completely unique, there is absolutely people out there with those exact traits, who would do the exact same for you. Obviously that's not an easy thing to find, and I understand your cynicism.
My first wife was, without a doubt, the worst person I have ever met. I was young and naive and didn't really understand what I was getting into. But there were signs. Signs that I ignored.
I still get a phone call once every few years from someone else whose life she destroyed. People who are so bewildered and worried that they themselves might be crazy that they went through the hassle of tracking me down just so they could have someone to talk to about it.
I don't necessarily like talking to strangers about that experience but I do take those calls. And I listen, fully explain what has happened to them, and encourage them to go therapy. Because I know what it's like sitting alone in middle of the crater where your life used be. It's better to be alone than to be with someone who makes you wish you were alone.
My second wife? Absolute saint. One of the best people I know. Came out of left field when I wasn't even looking and I'm glad she did.
That was me, fall 2019. Got a pawnshop laptop that I thought was gonna be good enough. It was not that good and couldn't properly even handle win10. Wasn't the greatest under ubuntu, but was better.
Giving money to people on the street for most of my life was a terrible financial decision on my part. I could've invested that money in something "right-wing" and be drowning in cash today! /s
Put my life on hold to pursue a PhD in CS, because I thought that would guarantee me a future. Well, it did not. Going straight into an industry job would have made my life a lot better financially and I would probably be buying a house by now.
I'm in my undergrad and I know a couple people wanting to go for their masters because finding a job is difficult right now, I feel like finding your first job with a masters might be harder than finding a job with only a bachelors no? Reason being, places don't want to pay more for a guy who is equally as inexperienced
My wife went back several years after under grad for a phd. Biochem. It's probably had a negative effect on job prospects. Either over qualified or under experienced. She's currently making minimum wage doing care work. Never got a job where a phd was an advantage.
That's my perspective as well, we're either overqualified or underexperienced, as you said. For, personally, it also took a toll mentally, both because the journey was tough due to the pursuit of funding, but also because I finished during COVID, which took any chance away, due to the absolute lack of networking happening at the time.
Yeah my wife was the same. 2018-2023. Delayed a little over a year because they shut the labs for months and limited occupancy when it opened. Basically 3 years she hardly saw anyone.
I think nothing beats experience, regardless of what your education is. As long as you can prove that you know what you're talking about, companies will hire you. So, if you've got a masters or a doctorate, but no experience, you're in a tough spot immediately. On the other hand, there's a trade-off with time; the time you spent on your education is time you could've spent instead gaining experience and networking. It's hard to do both, but during a masters it might be possible. Quite harder to do while pursuing a doctorate though, unless the networking is happening inside academia.
I think the real advice is that you shouldn’t do post-graduate studies unless it’s paid for, comes with a stipend, or comes with an assistantship. Too many people (including myself) have paid for advanced degrees out of pocket only to find that they were pure coursework with no tangible experience.
The other piece of advice that isn’t often given is that post-graduate work really is training for jobs in academia. If that’s not where you want to end up, then those degrees are rarely useful (outside of academia). There are a few fields where masters-level is required for entry level jobs, but setting your course for a PhD is really a course to an academic post.
Exactly, but even if your tuition is paid for with a grant, alongside a stipend, I would argue against pursuing a PhD, with the only exception being when you want a job in academia, like you said. The amount of money you'll be making in academia is absolute peanuts compared to the industry, and the same goes for relevant work experience.
Personally, I had to get a grant with a stipend, or else I wouldn't be able to afford it. I also got to lecture as an invited assistant for a year, but I never really wanted to teach. I wanted to dedicate myself to research, but I quickly realized nobody around me was actually trying to push the boundaries of knowledge and, instead of discussing ideas, learning from each other, and taking some freakin' risks, what I found was a lot of ass kissing, and seniors constantly doing paperwork to get funding, while delegating research to students. Everything that mattered to me felt secondary to everybody else. It felt quite lonely, so I eventually made the decision to leave, after nearly 20 years studying and working at the university.
It wasn't easy (still isn't), and this is why I like to share this perspective. Maybe it can save some heartache and financial hardship to a few people.
Getting into debt while being underemployed. Thank goodness for my wife, my privilege, and the fcra. Though I suppose it’s more the undiagnosed (until my mid 30s) ADHD that led to that, and most of my other problems
When I got my first credit card they told me that the very first transaction would be divided into 12 monthly payments, with no interest. So my first purchase was a new cellphone that I needed.
Later the same day I bought something for like a dollar, and just to be funny I paid it with the credit card.
Well, that $1 dollar purchase was also divided into 12 payments. Nothing bad happened because of that, but it just felt stupid.
Biggest financial mistakes were mostly related to education, going into it without a clear goal/before I was ready, and paying for some courses that weren't accredited by a university or association.
When I was 25 I was making a lot of money. So I bought my childhood dream car, you know the one you have on your wall with the chick in a bikini on the hood. So I bought a '98 Diablo VT with I believe around 3k miles (this was in 2001). It was the absolute piece of shit. Don't get me wrong, it was gorgeous and sounded twice as sexy. But I shit you not, every other time it left the garage the most random shit would break, crap that shouldn't break on a car with 3k miles and 3 years old. Spark plugs were fowled, radiator hose blew, wires would be frayed and cause electrical issues. It was like non-stop. I soldnit for a 20k loss.
Mind you I'm 43 now and own 9 cars, 4 motorcycles, and grew up building engines with my dad. So I have no issues working on cars or doing whatever. I can tell tell you outside of Jeep, that Lamborghini was the biggest piece of mentally handicapped engineered vehicle I've ever seen.
Jeeps - there's an old movie about a small town infested with C.H.U.D.-like critters underground. As the plot crawls along, multiple characters keep saying bad things about their Jeeps, like "Could you drive? My Jeep is still in the shop." By the end it's pretty obvious somebody didn't like Jeeps. Then during the credits the director drives up in a Jeep, gets out and says, "They say every story has a moral, and I guess the moral of this one is, Don't Buy a Jeep." Then he tries and tries to start it and finally gives up. I probably saw this back in the 80s on Showtime, and I've been searching for it ever since we got the Internet lol.
Options trading when I was younger. Luckily I didn't put too much into it and had a bump just before I pulled out so I didn't lose much. It turned me into a modified boglehead, which worked out great over the next 20+ years, so lesson learned.
1981 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. Spent more on the transmission than I did on the car. Fucking cool though.
Taking a job that required a long commute. Wasn’t so bad when gas was cheap. But it still costs me my time, wear and tear, additional maintenance on my vehicle, and of course just all the stress on my body. Thankfully they’d rather retain my knowledge and transfer me much closer to home.
I hated when i had a long commute. There was a toll bridge on the way as well just to annoy me more. Wasn't allowed to work from home until covid hit and suddenly it's possible. Now 6 years later and I've never driven that commute again.
Heat pump water heater by A.O. Smith. Failed in its first year, and now its warranty replacement is failing in the exact same way 13 months later.
Remains to be seen how well the installer will resolve this but given they've been largely ghosting me I'm pessimistic enough to have already written up an entire BBB complaint.
The concept of a heat pump water heater is great. And when it works it's great. But this is some awful, awful, awful reliability.
Can I ask if it was purchased from a professional plumbing supply house or a big box store (like Home Depot)? I bought a Rheem heat pump water heater from Home Depot and, while I got a really good price on it, only learned later that the big box models are made with cheaper components and the warranty is severely worse than the professional supply house version. I installed it about 3 years ago and so far I've had no issue with it (knock on wood). I'm hoping it stays that way.
Note: in my prior house I was a very early adopter of heat pump water heaters in 2009 with the original GE Geospring model. It ran wonderfully for the 13 years I still had that house and was still running fine when I sold the house. It did have one recall service on it, but that was covered completely by GE even years after the original warranty ran out.
Was yours from a big box store or professional plumber?
Mine was purchased through our plumber, it's got "commercial grade" on the side (which just reeks of empty marketing)
It's a State (A.O. Smith) HPSX-66-DHPT 240v
I'm asking them to replace it with another brand, and Bradford White is what I'd like. Apparently those are Geosprings which seem like they might be more reliable and also a bit more serviceable. It's good to have an anecdote to back that up, since I can't exactly look up Bradford White on retail sites (apparently they only sell to plumbers)
I’m asking them to replace it with another brand, and Bradford White is what I’d like.
In case you do end up with Rheem as a choice, it does have a couple of quirks, but nothing deal breaking for us. The scheduling function should work, but lots folks report trouble with it working inconsistently. We don't have TOU power so its not a function we use. One other thing is that it has four functions with one being called "Energy Saver", and the app will nag you to put it in that mode. Ignore that. "Heat Pump" mode is actually the most energy efficient. Besides those two things, we're happy with it, but should we need service we'll have more difficulty because we bought a big box version and not the professional plumber version.
It’s a State (A.O. Smith) HPSX-66-DHPT 240v
A quick google search of that part number confirms your statement that it is a professional model (not a big box model).
I appreciate you sharing your experience. I'm sorry its giving you difficulty.
Early in my software dev career I had a contract job at a young company called Microsoft. Without going into boring details, what I saw in terms of miscommunication, wasteful practices, and odd behaviors by overstressed managers led me to see it as a typical startup that was outgrowing its ability to run itself. At that time they were handing out full-time employment like candy - most of the programmers in my hallway got converted - but I left, because I didn't think the company would go anywhere. This was two or three years before the stock went nuts and programmers there became millionaires in their twenties.
No no, getting married was the poor financial decision. After that, paying for the divorce to be rid of her was an investment in your sanity and happiness.
Quit my job start of this year.
Thought I could start a self employed thing with a secure client but they bailed (turns out they just went with my previous employer for lower prices).
PS2's State of Emergency. Back around GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas, so Rockstar shat gold, I saw this with them as the publisher and preordered. What a fucking stinker. I pretty much never preorder now.
used to love photography when i was younger. spent a month's salary on a used R5 mirorless thinking it would rekindle the joy. have used it once in 3 years. feel bad about it from time to time.
I bought a 2-metre mini-USB cable, once. In 2021. For €10. It may not be the worst in terms of pure monetary amount, but definitely worst in terms of use to cost.
Worst would’ve been having a kid at 21, second worse was. It grasping how predatory credit cards can be. Survived the first but the 2nd one hurt the longest, now I treat credit cards like poison, I try to avoid carrying a balance at all costs and expend any extra funds to eliminate any balances before I look at other possible uses of that cash.
I find that a terribly sad perspective - while children are certainly expensive from an economic standpoint, they often have tremendous payback in other ways (and sometimes economically too).
Rolling over a payday loan. You write them a check for $300 post dated for payday, they hand you $255. On payday, I would go back with a fresh $300 check to replace the one they just cashed so they could hand me another $255. This would be after exhausting overdraft from my checking that cost something like $35 to overdraw by $200. I wasn't even on hard drugs or drinking, just weed and nicotine. By the time I was 30 I had $15k in financial judgements against me, it took another 4 years to pay everything off. It almost cost me a promotion during the credit check. Apparently you shouldn't be a financial advisor if you're terrible with your own finances but I talked my way out of it (and then failed as a financial advisor).
Bought a 300€ NAS HDD (WD Red Plus 8TB) plus a 150€ HDD enclosure, only to realize the HDD is way too loud when existing in the same room. Now using it as a backup drive and my old external HDD is back again. Feels bad I send so much money. It's now almost 400€ though.
Put the enclosure in another room? If you don't have another computer that you can hook it up to as a NAS, modern USB has pretty short cable length limits, but there are optical USB cables that can run much longer---convert the USB signal to optical, send it over fiber optic, convert it back on the other end. They aren't cheap, as USB cables go, but they're a lot less than 400 euros.
Thanks for the ideas. It is a small Dell Optiplex I run a jellyfin server on. The issue is more Ethernet. I guess easiest would be to just run it via WiFi, but I haven't tried that out yet and am a bit worried over stability.
Between a laptop I got fall 2019 or a desktop I got some time around 2023. Both were decently priced, though, so it wasn't terrible.
The laptop was from a pawnshop. Was a detachable monitor touch screen type that had battery issues and is really underpowered. No matter what, the battery drains like the thing is on. Couldn't run win10 very well and did a little better using ubuntu. Now it kinda sits doing nothing since I have long since updated to a better laptop a couple years ago.
The desktop was a brand new but was a budget device that is not the greatest. Had 4gb of ram and weak other components other than the 1tb hard drive. Did its job well enough that I cannot complain. Mostly got it for the disk drive and plenty of USB plugs. Worked a little better when I upgraded to 16gb ram, but not anywhere near the level of my current desktop.
Edit:
I have given it some thought, and it was around 2021 when I got the desktop. Time is all fuzzy sometimes for me.
My advice is to always avoid laptops unless you absolutely could not do without the portability.
I have also had great success with surplussed business-class machines. Like, the models which are impossible to buy from any brick-and-mortar location, and can even be difficult to buy online because the company typically sells those models through MSPs (Managed Service Providers, outsourced IT provisioning companies for other companies). These models are usually super-robust because they are meant to NOT be disposable, and usually have much higher config ceilings on RAM and storage, and can easily remain relevant for a good 7-15 years while consumer models scream to be replaced at the 5-year mark.
Wait, you found a new desktop in 2023 with only 4 gigs of ram? I didn’t even think they made them with that little. Super budget ewaste tier laptops maybe, but desktops?
It was a $400USD lenovo budget desktop, so you can probably do the math on why there was so little ram. I'm pretty sure they designed it specifically for running things like an office suite and other low resource intesive software.
No slight against lenovo, but I'm positive it was meant to be for light work and I just used it for more than I should have.
Edit:
Thought about it, and around 2021 and not 23 when I got it. So still doesn't make a super huge amiunt of sense, but whatever.
Not applying for scholarships. I didn't have my mental health under control in high school and just didn't apply for any. Not even the one I was guaranteed…
I've spent so much on Magic the Gathering in my life. It's just cardboard sitting in a box now and I don't even enjoy it anymore. I haven't bought a single card in almost two years and it feels good to not constantly feel like I have to stay on top of every release.
Loaned a friend money to buy a second hand car. The car was in worse condition than expected, broke down permanently after a few months, and he got arrested for CSAM.
Taking financial aid as a student. I had a mental breakdown in school and lost all interest in bettering myself at all. Now I literally just wait for death everyday.
Failing out of an university program I was mentally and emotionally unprepared for, simply because my family put a priority on education and trades are below us.
If I had dumped the money into a tech company and done labour for the time it took, then diversified like a good investor, I’d be close to quite early retirement now.
I’ve also bought home tech stuff that just is objectively stupid. Remote light switches, blinking led lights, that sort of thing.
Buying shares in Superdry, J D Wetherspoon and Boohoo. All three lost me about £2k combined. I don't know much about the fast fashion industry, and the purchase of Spoons' shares was because I thought the hospitality industry was going to go through a post-COVID bounceback.
AT the start of COVID, I bought shares in an airline because I figured that once lockdown was over, everyone would go crazy traveling everywhere and the airline stock would skyrocket (pun intended.)
I bought a fully restored Jeep Grand Cherokee with steel bumpers. It gets 9 mpg. It’s pretty bad ass. Now it costs me $100 to go to Sequoia NP from Fresno. So now it’s just sitting. I got a super good deal on it. Dude I bought it from spent 40k to restore it. I got it for $10k. Gas bill is killing me so it’s just sitting.
Not worst, but it's been very hit or miss on Kickstarter. There were some good things that came from it buuut...
Coolest. Yes I did end up getting one, but never used the cooler itself. The only thing that got use was the Bluetooth speaker, which I used so much it killed the battery. When I was getting ready to move, the coolest was in pristine condition but the internal battery (for the blender and phone charging) was completely shot, and I had newer better coolers so I set it by the curb.
Andromium Superbook. This was supposed to be a netbook sized device that you plug your android into turning it into a "laptop". Nothing ever came from it, reports of being a scam or someone embezzled the money.
Polygons. Measuring cups and spoons which are a single piece of plastic that can "fold in" to different measures sizes. These seemed kinda slick but "production issues" blah blah "suppliers" yadda yadda, still nothing after a decade.
Bears vs Babies. A card game which turned out to be boring and shitty.
Nuvi Sleep Mask. A sleep mask which pairs to your phone that's supposed to help sleep by setting up light pulses etc. I could never get the app to work so a total bust
Flyte socks. Fun "bold" colorful socks. Stitching tore putting the damn socks on
7+. Various comic books. Backing a couple and finally reading them...you can tell why they had to seek funding on Kickstarter and otherwise couldn't find a publisher for these stories.
257 Comments
buttmasterflex@piefed.social · 85 pts · 3d
Got convinced by someone I very much trusted to join an MLM as a 19 or 20 year old. After my parents learned about it, they were able to talk some sense into me, and I realized I was part of a pyramid scheme. I got out and basically broke even, which was honestly the best possible outcome of that whole scenario. It unfortunately degraded my relationship with the person who convinced me to join, and I never really could fully trust them after that.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 12 pts · 3d
Which MLM?
buttmasterflex@piefed.social · 9 pts · 2d
It was Stream Energy/Ignite Inc. The energy markets in many US states are open to suppliers other than the utility companies. Ignite/Stream offered bad utility rates with pyramid scheme marketing tactics and eventually were sued. Complaint here
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 2d
Woah. That's not your typical belly wraps, Tupperware, or make-up mlm.
buttmasterflex@piefed.social · 4 pts · 2d
That's part of what made it sound good at first. It sounded like a unique opportunity with a "legitimate" company, and I was too young and inexperienced to really understand the implications of it, especially when coming from someone I had known for over a decade and really trusted.
squirrel@cake.kobel.fyi · 1 pts · 3d
DigDoug@lemmy.world · 79 pts · 3d
University
I spent 50 grand and 4 years of my life to be told by prospective employers that I either lacked real world experience, or that I was overqualified. It took me another 3 years to find a job after university - one that doesn't require training and is barely relevant to my field.
I get to hang a pretty piece of paper up on my wall, I guess.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 3d
Overall, I guess this wins
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 3d
Yeah that's rough. I can kind of say the same. The career I chose doesn't require the degree I have. It absolutely helps but if I could go back, I would have just gotten licensed at 18 and started working in the trade. Degree is mechanical engineering, trade is operations side of stationary engineering.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 3d
I'm sad I didn't experience university, it sounds like a great time. Parties, drinking, last minute assignments..
Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world · 61 pts · 3d
I was young and dumb and didn't know how to say no.
Timeshare.
It's so hard to get rid of. Fuck that thing.
Zerlyna@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 3d
I was married, in my 40’s and listened to my now ex hubby #2 because his family had several. The payment was $600 a month… a second mortgage for a one week vacation? The timeshare, nor our marriage, lasted long after that.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
How is that presented as good deal up front?
anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 3d
Maybe I'm lucky, but I just stopped paying the maintenance fees. It never showed up on my credit, the phone calls stopped years ago, and all I get is the occasional scam offer in the mail to help me sell it.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
Ooo thats a rough one.
hobata@lemmy.ml · 58 pts · 3d
formatted my drive 2010 thinking the bitcoin scam would not last so long.
grue@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 3d
I knew about bitcoin so early that at the time there was still a "bitcoin faucet" website giving them away for free, but between procrastination and skepticism I never bothered getting any.
scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 2d
Me, I falsely assumed crypto would be regulated by now. Also got scammed out of the proceeds from a doge coin miner my peers and I had infected our school wifi with. Only learned jack all about mining for it's relation to cryptographic mathmatics, ha.
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 3d
Even though I knew about Bitcoin in 2009, I don't regret not buying into it at the start. Either I would have sold off at a dollar, because it "couldn't possibly go any higher than that" and then regret not holding onto it for the rest of my life, or I would be extremely rich and be a much worse person because of it.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 9 pts · 3d
I still have almost two coins in a corrupted wallet file I've never been able to fix from when I mined them on my crappy little laptop back then :-(
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 2d
Wallet file from what?
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2d
Bitcoins are stored in a wallet file. My file got messed up. I've had this wallet.bat file for like 16 years now, just mocking me.
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 2d
.bat? Did you mean .dat?
I meant as in what wallet software, there are multiple talking the same protocol. Unless you mean Bitcoin Core specifically (the og).
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2d
Yeah. Dat file. I do mean OG bit coin. I mined it back in like 2010 when they were worth next to nothing. Like 20 cents a piece. There were no forks.
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2d
It should be an sqlite database. The modern docs say so, I am not exactly sure if it was the case in 2010.
Is it bigger than 0 bytes? Try opening in https://sqlitebrowser.org/ . I don't know if it uses SQLcipher (probably not), but if you are using the Windows installer you should probably tick that there just in case.
EDIT: just a thought, if you can't get it just give it to me (not here tho, Tox
F857EB6604B99A58ADD0965CEDFCBF78CF0BDF939DA7290D8D84117D8DE30C3F91B5EA9226E8), I will try some basic fuckery on it and do splitsies. It can go in these ways:radiofreebc@lemmy.world · 50 pts · 3d
treadful@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 3d
How much could a little spoon cost?
radiofreebc@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 3d
notfromhere@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 3d
Taste the meat not the heat
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
Gets the best of us
likebudda@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 1d
I'm lucky to have only had access to crappy cocaine in my life. I think I did like 3 consecutive 8-ball weekends but felt like shit every Monday so I just stopped. Now I'm too scared of fent to even try to score some coke.
mafishfayda@lemmy.world · 47 pts · 3d
An old job where transportation literally cost me half my salary.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech · 24 pts · 3d
Too many people don't factor in the cost of transportation, and it's such a big one, especially now. In the midwest especially I know I did. I got a new job that was an hour away by car, which is about 40 miles including navigating from my city, the interstate, and the destination city. I knew my old car wouldn't make it that much, so I bought a new car to help (and stupid younger me thought I looked cooler with it). At the time, gas was about $3/gallon and I got 30mpg highway, and I'll round down to account for city mileage. So about 2.5 gallons of gas per work day, so $7.50 a day, or $150 a month. That's $1,800 a year gone to gas alone.
Then add in that new car payment ($500/month), and higher insurance (+250/month compared to previous insurance) and that's $10.800 a year just to get to work, not counting anything else.
Then I think that I took the job because I could get 20k more than my current job in the same city thinking "oh that's so much more money". Only looking back do I realize I immediately lost over half of that just to driving there, plus probably ~6,000 to taxes. So my "cool" new job in the other city netted me about $3,200 additional in my pocket per year, which is an additional $250 a month. Was it worth the additional stress of driving 2 hours every day, 40 hours a month (an additional work week every month) just for $250 a month? Probably not.
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 3d
Yeah... Bought a luxury sport car years ago. Gas was $2.5-3 for premium, now it's over $6! I spend almost $350/mo now for roughly my 1k miles a month.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
Oh fuck that
WesternInfidels@feddit.online · 5 pts · 2d
There are "True cost of driving" calculators to help understand this. Some of them are really involved. This one suggested to me that even my small, old hatchback costs something like $0.40 per mile, including depreciation, maintenance, fuel and so on.
One thing that most of us don't have a gut feeling for: Even at $4-6 per gallon, fuel is usually not the biggest cost involved. That's a lousy situation, because it means we don't react to the real costs. "Market forces" can't work if most of us don't feel their pressures because we're looking in the wrong places.
If you don't feel like dealing with a complicated calculator, you can check how big a deduction the IRS allows for a mile of business use driving. This year it's around $0.70.
starlinguk@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 3d
Changed over the ownership of the house I bought with my own money to my now ex because he was the one with the job. Am now house-less and renting an apartment at triple the mortgage payments.
Aneb@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
I made a lot of mistakes divorcing my husband last year so there's plenty of mistakes to go around. I lost my job six months before we separated and that made me feel powerless. Only now am I reclaiming my power, happiness, and inner peace. Sending good vibes your way as you grow in strength and knowledge.
binom@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 3d
fuck man, sorry to hear!
cinoreus@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 3d
Not a big one, but surely the worst one. There was a "make your own perfume" stall in our college fest. I didn't like the fragrance of most of what they had to offer. It took me time to pick one, but I picked one that I thought was the most unique one.
Then when I came home, I realised it smelt exactly like my dad's car freshner.
Shadow@lemmy.ca · 40 pts · 3d
Listened to the internet and held onto Gamestop for longer than I should have.
I still did ok, but fuck I could have paid off my mortgage.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 24 pts · 3d
To be fair, they trading commission did some really shady and imo illegal shit to cut the legs out from under the squeeze.
INeedANewUserName@piefed.social · 8 pts · 3d
Rules for thee and not for...
Strider@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Having also been part of the community but not letting the hype take over logic, I'm also convinced a lot of shady and illegal shit was going on.
And still is, on the stock market.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 1d
Oh, I mean it was fact. Not speculation. Like it was logged and announced and done out in the open. The sec changed the rules while it was happening just to stop it. Plus the brokerages that froze trading at several points.
Strider@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
We're in agreement. Especially those freezes...
dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 3d
Awe man. I managed to minimize my winnings. Sold a call. I figured cool get some action. Yes, that was a 400% profit but if I had taken the opposite (buy the call instead), it could own a new car. Anyway. I'm happy you paid off your mortgage.
Serinus@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 3d
... I think you misread.
miraclerandy@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 3d
Bought a house with my ex and we were instantly house poor. We didn’t account for buying things for the house at all. Ended up selling and moving two years later at a loss even though we sold for a bit more than we bought it for.
Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 3d
Underestimating the lengths that Trump admin would go to prop up equity markets during COVID
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 3d
This one got me too/is still getting me.
iloveyou@sh.itjust.works · 31 pts · 3d
$400 tipping camgirls. it was the fastest lost just for a few minutes of flirting with naked women
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 3d
Jeez thats a dark one
iloveyou@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 3d
they were from a poor country so $400 has 3x the purchasing power, like $1,200. I chose a poorer country because you can spend less money for more excitement
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 3d
For a couple hundred more you could just fly to a poor country and actually get some action
FatVegan@leminal.space · 8 pts · 3d
Mmmhhh exploit tgem even better.
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 3d
There’s definitely much more ethical ways to engage in prostitution with better results for everyone.
palordrolap@fedia.io · 25 pts · 3d
Probably the time I used a cash machine in a weird place in my home town to draw out the maximum I could for Christmas spending and all I got from it was the receipt saying the money had gone from my account.
The place was weird because, although it was in a very public square, it was kind of high off the ground, like it had been installed for people over 6ft tall. I am not that tall. The novelty appealed to me anyway. Mistake.
I was so ashamed, I never reported it. I didn't think I'd be believed.
If you want actual things, I own a pre-smartphone electronic personal organiser that I used about five times and about a dozen calculators from when I got really into them for some reason. And at least one of those was "parts only" that I completely missed in the description.
But if I could undo anything, I'd rather have that cash machine money back.
Railcar8095@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 2d
Waiting for the bubble to burst before buying a house.
Anytime now....
Creepo@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
It will the day I buy.
MintyFresh@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Ha, get ready for hyper inflation, your saved dollars will lose their value. All the rich finance bros will get sweetheart loan deals and buy up every scrap. Enter into fascist-feudal world. Where it gets hotter every year. Fuck you is the general plan I guess.
Railcar8095@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I don't have dollars.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Haven't you seen late-night infomercials? You can buy real estate with no money down!!!
Railcar8095@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I mean I don't have dollars as currency.
I live in RestOfTheWorldStan
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
I was waiting too. Sorry buddy.
gigastasio@sh.itjust.works · 21 pts · 3d
My kid’s mom.
Girl is a hole in spacetime that I’ve been throwing money into for eight years now.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 3d
Brutal
boaratio@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 3d
Buying an RV.
naught@sh.itjust.works · 16 pts · 3d
elaborate so i can scare my partner out of this lofty distant future idea
boaratio@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 3d
They're worse than boats. If anything breaks on an RV, and it will, it's really hard to get parts for them, and good luck finding an RV mechanic when it's "in season." Back when I had an RV, some kids outside were playing catch and ended up breaking one of my windows, and it took 3 months and countless calls with the manufacturer to get a new window. If you live in colder climates, you have to winterize your RV every year. They leak, and require constant maintenance. And if one of the tires blows out? It could total your RV.
Rent one if you must, but do not buy one.
hex123456@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 3d
It only works if you are your own RV mechanic. Windows are easy to swap yourself.
That said I agree; big cost that depreciates and costs you a ton per mile towed. Especially with today’s gas prices.
isnotayahoo@piefed.social · 13 pts · 3d
To add to what boaratio mentioned: My experience is living in one while traveling for work for a few years (and I rebuilt mine to improve it over the stock configuration and knew how to fix it myself.)
They're more expensive to stay in than motels in many areas. Every time you drive somewhere it's an earthquake and something is breaking. They're either too hot or too cold due to no insulation, maintenance is terrible (and they require a ton), driving them around is terrible, staying in them is also terrible. They shake in the wind, are loud in the rain (I like that part tbh), are incredibly delicate for a road vehicle so anything touching them that wouldn't bother a car will damage them somehow.
Why all this? Labor is the largest cost for an RV, and they already have that as cheap as possible (I heard one is built every 24 hours on most lines), so the only way to save money is by going as cheap as possible on materials as well.
tal@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 2d
I watched a vlog from someone who RVed full-time and this was my largest takeaway. They have a lot of things breaking.
I think that a big factor is going to be that the volume sold just isn't that large. Fixing engineering problems is gonna be a fixed cost, independent of the number of units you sell, so a vehicle manufacturer that sells tons of units can do a lot more of that.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
Yeah thats a good one.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 20 pts · 2d
I was conned into going into ITT Tech out of high school. I learned a lot but didn't find out until later it was unaccredited so nothing would transfer to colleges and that they had lied heavily about their placement numbers. There were a few issues keeping from going after them: it was my parent's money, the point in time I went wasn't part of the lawsuit, and my parents were dead when the lawsuit came about. I cannot put ITT Tech on my resume because of everything related to it, it's a literal black mark. So I have to stretch the truth of those two years because of it.
taiyang@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 3d
Almost every single movie I've seen in theaters. At home is just better. Hell, sometimes the bike ride with my partner to and from the place is better than the movie-- could have just hung out at a park, lol.
zidanerick@lemmy.patton.id.au · 8 pts · 3d
I think this is mostly because movies are not really a shared experience any longer. The closest I've had recently to a cinema experience that you wouldn't be able to replicate at home was the end of Infinity War. Sure if you had a heap of friends over it might be close but the underlying feeling of dread, sadness, anger and confusion could be felt as you were leaving the cinema made it worth it imo.
I'm hoping Doomsday will be similar in the way it handles things but if it pulls another Force Awakens I'm gonna be annoyed.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 5 pts · 3d
I have a bag of popcorn on standby for when I watch a movie. In the Quest 3 i can play the movie in a cinema environment. Full giant screen experience, excellent sound with headphones, can pause it for a pee break, and it costs me nothing. Would definitely recommend. And there's no one else in the cinema either. Perfect experience
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 3d
I bought a new, $100 android tablet a few years ago because I'd never had a tablet before and thought I'd try it. Assumed that since laptops around that price perform ok that it would be decent for basic stuff, but it really isn't. Just not enough ram (4gb), lags when doing literally anything, can't load most websites, can't even play most videos without it turning into a slideshow. Can't install a less shit more efficient OS. I would feel bad about reselling it because no one should be subjected to having to use this ewaste.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 6 pts · 3d
Can't root it?
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 3d
I guess I could look into that more, but cursory research gave me the impression that there aren't good options for tablets here. But I guess since it's useless anyway it would be worth it if I could just set it up as a server somehow, maybe I will keep looking.
freebee@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Digital picture frame might be feasible
Aethr@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I'm running
GrapheneOSLineageOS on an older Samsung tablet that's worked very wellchicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1d
I thought GrapheneOS only supported newer Pixel phones
Aethr@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Woops, I meant LineageOS!
jafffacakelemmy@fedia.io · 5 pts · 2d
Why havent you named the make and model so us readers dont make your mistake!
tal@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 2d
I'd think that his point would apply to any 4GB Android tablet.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
No such thing as E-waste! any phone, laptop, desktop or tablet that powers on can be re-purposed for something cool or salvaged for parts. I once made a usable laptop out of 3 dead ones and it gave me another year to save up for a replacement rather than having to emergency buy something cheap and shitty.
defrostedLasagna4921@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 1d
Not a tablet, but I used to use a Motorola phone from 2014 that only had 2 GB of RAM and ran most if not all things fine (even modern versions of Minecraft). Why does the tablet seem so much worse even with more RAM?
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1d
I'm not sure, my guesses would be newer android is more bloated and old models don't get the updated versions, and that larger screens take more processing to render (although that would probably be more about stuff other than ram capacity).
WesternInfidels@feddit.online · 2 pts · 2d
If you use Firefox for Android, you can install the uBlock ad blocker, which can reduce the load on your device substantially.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2d
Maybe, but this thing literally lags in the settings menu with nothing else open
fubarx@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 3d
Leasing a car.
I'd always bought a car and driven it into the ground. Leased an EV once. Hated the experience. Felt ripped off at the end.
Bought a used car after that. Back to normal.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 15 pts · 3d
I have never bought a vehicle for more than $5k, and most were 25+ years old when purchased. Most lasted 10+ years with virtually no significant repairs beyond the post-purchase glow-up.
Downside is that I have been hankering to get into an electric for some time now, but I am running into a few blockers:
speculate7383@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 2d
Eh, I removed the SIM chip from my 2015 Nissan Leaf. Took about 15 minutes with a screwdriver and YouTube.
mursejoy@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 3d
I’ll never buy an EV due to all of the reasons you listed. I’d say our next vehicle will be a 90s Toyo/Nissan/Honda sedan. I’ll gladly drive my current Subaru until it dies though. Hoping for 10+ years out of it.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
For me, the issue with my older vehicles is the cost of fuel. The math is clear - an EV is radically cheaper over the long haul, especially for something like a sedan. Plus, far fewer moving parts to break.
I think, however, that a conversion of an older car is the trick. Sure, modern EVs are a shitton heavier, but only if you want it to go 700-1,200km. I don’t. I would only need a 100-200km range because bombing around town will be it’s only duty. Which means far fewer batteries and a powertrain weight that likely matches the original engine and drivetrain, allowing me to retain the original suspension as-is.
mursejoy@lemmy.zip · -1 pts · 2d
Cheaper for now. Don’t think for a second that costs will remain low when the majority of drivers switch. The population is used to budgeting x amount of money for fuel monthly, don’t think for a second that the cooperate owners will allow those savings to become the norm.
EV is cheaper now but it’ll likely get enshitified like everything else in this country. They will just use the excuse that more people using the grid = higher cost per kWh. When we all know that the data centers are using far more energy than single family homes charging a Chevy Bolt.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1d
The fact that any homeowner can take their house entirely off-grid without consequences, and use their vehicle as a partial whole-house battery, takes many of those concerns off of the table.
Combine that with many companies offering EV conversions to vehicles that are old enough (minimal electronics), and you can easily bypass any enshitticiation with solar panels and an EV conversion that costs much less than a new EV.
tal@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 2d
Slate Truck. Extremely stripped-down. No cell radio. No GPS radio. No WiFi or Bluetooth, unless you stick some kind of hardware that can do them in there. Hell, no touchscreen car computer, just a place you can mount a tablet if you want. Doesn't even have automatic windows as a base option. Aside from having airbags, air conditioner, and being an EV, basically a 1980s-style vehicle.
It'll fail some of your other requirements, because it's new and you'd need a used vehicle to hit a $5k price point. Just pointing out that it'll meet the privacy point.
I do agree that it is depressingly rare to find modern cars that don't have privacy issues. It's not that I expected all of them to be privacy friendly, but I expected there to be more options.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
Slate is also funding Fascism, being a Bezos project.
But it hits most other requirements, true.
Downside is that I want and need a traditional sedan with a full-sized trunk capable of securely holding at least 3-6 adult bodies, not a truck. If I was to get a truck, I also need it to haul 5,000kg on the regular across steep/alpine roads, 8,000kg+ in a pinch over mostly flat and level roads. The Slate truck is utterly incapable of that. And I have two F-150 7700 units that can and have done exactly that.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 3d
Yeah my current mechanic strongly advises I keep my 15y/o car as long as I can and basically never even consider an EV as they currently exist.
invertedspear@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 2d
Your mechanic likely isn’t learning how to work on EVs and has a monetary interest in you not buying an EV that requires next to no maintenance.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
Many EVs have DRM out the wazoo, requiring the mechanic to spend $1,000,000 on a piece of software that has a $6,000/mo subscription just to authorize a brake replacement with the mothership. Otherwise the vehicle refuses to even roll, much less move under its own power.
And then the mechanic needs to rinse-and-repeat this spending spree with every other manufacturer who is also making EVs.
That shit becomes prohibitively expensive shockingly fast. And manufacturers are going whole-hog on this technique to send people back to dealer garages (who don’t have to pay those fees) for a slice of those profits, instead of independent shops that provide no profits whatsoever. They’re literally enshittifying cars until the only people capable of fixing them are dealers, or those independent shops who got wealthy enough fast enough to pay for that software.
invertedspear@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 2d
If leasing was a good deal for the customer they wouldn’t let you do it.
acchariya@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
I leased a non Tesla electric car and handing them back a car that has a residual value in the contract of $32000 but an actual market value of $20000 makes me feel like a got $12k of value out of the lease I didn't earn. In 2.5 years it has cost me maybe and extra $600 in electric to drive 25k miles.
SelfHigh5@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
I did kind of the same thing but just a new Acura. I did love the car, but toward the end of the lease it felt like I was renting an AirBnB, making sure nothing fucked it up right at the end and making sure I kept it under the mileage agreement.
mHtt@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 3d
alcohol
Agent641@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
At ~A$130 a week (2x 1L bottles of scotch and rum, and 2 x 24pk of beer(24x500ml), for 17 years, my math works out to be about $115k over the course of my drinking career.
mHtt@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 2d
8pack/day was $20/day or $600/month aka mortgage or car payment.
Today im having shrooms with the equinox.
likebudda@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 1d
I went with cannabis. After legalization, 70%+ concentrates are widely available for $15-25/g and I'm down to ~$120/month to cover my stayfaded lifestyle. I think I was paying $100/quarter oz of 15-20% flower pre-prohibition.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 2d
Damn, makes me feel better about my 5k of whisky bottles
luthis@lemmy.nz · 7 pts · 3d
This one cost me a lot more than dollars.
FatVegan@leminal.space · 4 pts · 3d
Ho ly. Ain't that the truth. Getting drunk twice a week, juat spending around 100 bucks per day was truly a decision of all times.
DonkeyStar@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2d
I used to sell plasma, and I used the funds on Robinhood to try investing without affecting my regular cash flow. Through sheer luck, in one day, my account went from around $200 to over $2500. I was overjoyed. I’d clearly made a genius-level decision that would only continue to pay out.
Anyway, I woke up the next day with less than I’d had to start. Should’ve taken the money and run. Or not tried to time the market. Either way, it felt like I’d lost $2300 instead of $50.
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 2d
Need to read a random walk down wall street. Great book. The premise is no matter what news story hits the market, that information is already reflected in the stock price. Therefore, his theory is that you cannot out beat the market and it is in your best interest to dollar cost average a market tracker. That is investing. Myself I believe what you are describing is gambling.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Might want to check this out: Beat The Couch.
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2d
That's an interesting game but it assumes the same amount either in or out all at once. Not what I'm describing where each month you invest a set amount into the market each time. This is what 401ks do. While the beat the couch is pretty cool it doesn't take into account the dollar cost averaging aspect. It's all in or all out. It's not in, then buy more, then buy more, then buy more then buy more etc....you get the picture.
Having said that it is absolutely true that time in the market is better than timing the market.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
I fully agree it's not a complete stock market model, but I don't think It claims to be.
I don't remember it addressing what happened to dividends paid; are they just banked, reinvested, etc.
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
It's certainly a cool tool
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Haven't read that book, but I've been very successful with the opposite approach. A favorable article about a company's stock in popular mainstream media (not business publications) can push the stock up briefly over the next couple weeks based on false hopes of the clueless general public. Get in immediately, get out within a couple days if nothing happens, and within 2 weeks if it does. My other rule is only do this with options, not actual stocks. And yes, I too would call this gambling - but investing is never not gambling. It's just more or less so depending on how you do it.
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
That is true investing is never not gambling but a lot of people use like their savings for what you would do and that's the difference. Its like the casino, go into it with the amount of money you are willing to lose. If you can't lose that money don't go into the casino. Same principal with individual stock picks and options.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I have a single digit percent allocation of single company stocks I pick myself. They are very useful as a constant reminder at how bad I am at picking single stocks to encourage me to leave the majority of my investments in boring index funds I strictly buy-and-hold.
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 18h
Great idea small amounts willing to lose.
dingus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
This is why I don't invest. I tried it for a relatively short span of time. It was a large company that isn't a scam or anything but I can't remember the name of it. They had three sort of options for investing...1. high risk/reward, 2. Medium risk/reward, and 3. Low risk/reward.
I either picked 2 or 3 or something. Can't remember which. All that stupid thing did was lose money due to broker fees. I watched the money slowly drop over the span of around a year from "fees" with literally never earning a dime. I thought it was ridiculous so I pulled the rest of the funds.
I instead chose to place that money in a high yield savings account. Does it earn money quickly? No. But it isn't wildly unpredictable like investing and it will never lose money unless I take money out. Investing isn't for me.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
With all due respect, what you did was not investing; it was closer to speculating. If your time horizon is less than 5 years, what you should look at is a savings account/certificate of deposit, not the stock market.
I had a mutual fund once (the Putnam Health Sciences Trust) that went down three or four years in a row (probably about 30-35% total). The same financial advisors who recommend I buy it advised that I sell it for the last two years I owned it. I didn't take their advice and held on to it - the next year it had about a 75% increase. I would have missed that and locked in my losses if I had listen to them.
dingus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I didn't know 5 years was a cutoff for something be considered investing but ok.
Yes, you're right. I could have decided to keep the account open for the next 10 years and maybe it might have eventually earned a single penny. But I chose not to because that's just not what I'm interested in. You do you. It's just not as easy and win-win as people make it out to be.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 17h
Absolutely, everyone should do themselves.
5 years is the minimum time frame I've heard for stock market investments; YMMV.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Even though I do invest in stocks, until recently I was a long time user of high yield savings accounts for years for my "safe" money. What I eventually realized was how the bank was able to pay me the comparatively higher interest rate for a savings account. Whatever money I had in the savings account they'd just buy short term US Treasuries (probably 4 week Tbills), they shave off .5%-1% interest earned for their company profit, and passed the remainder onto me. I finally sat down and learned how to cut out the middle man and buy the Tbills myself. So instead of the High Yield savings account paying me 3.01%, I'm earning 3.94% on the same money.
Also understand that Savings accounts and even Tbills usually drasically underperform compared to broad stock index funds. For example 2025 was 16.39% and 2024 was 23.21% returns for boring S&P500 funds.
WhatISawInTheForest@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2d
Letting my partner quit their job so they could focus on working on a comic full-time.... I completely supported them. Buying them supplies and whatever else they needed. This lasted 2 years... with absolutely nothing to show for it. NOTHING. I have no idea what the fuck they did 10 hours a day while I was at work.
KullumDaue@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 2d
you provided emotional support, I commend you for that. but they needed guidance as well, something you couldn't possibly provide.
probably being depressed af 😅
3daybanwithdrawl@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
I made a comic book while also working part time...not impossible.
Agent641@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Bruh I worked part time while working full time.
Lumisal@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Like, not even the comic?
disregardable@lemmy.zip · 17 pts · 3d
My entire existence is a financial mistake. To make a financial mistake, you have to have finances in the first place.
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 1d
Yeah. My biggest financial mistake was not killing myself as a teenager, when I was about to try, for the first time. Everything got just worse after that, since I got very sick physically as well, and now will be poor for the rest of my life (however short that ends up being), living on wellfare. Worst thing financially is, by living, I am just pulling the people around me to poverty as well.
village604@adultswim.fan · 14 pts · 2d
The most recent was waiting for the 32GB RAM sticks I needed to max out my hypervisor to go on sale below $120.
RodgeGrabTheCat@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 3d
Community College machine shop. Too many graduates, not enough available positions.
Maybe a few $100 in total so not too bad.
Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
I on the otherhand cannot wait until I can have a place of my own with a lathe and mill.
Keilik@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
The best thing of having a machine shop and getting proficient with the machines is simultaneously having a god complex and imposter syndrome when you get to make cool stuff.
aloofPenguin@piefed.world · 1 pts · 3d
why imposter syndrome?
is it like "I can't beleive I just did that!!", or something else?E: The second Follow Up isn't impostor syndrome iirc (I might be wrong about that)
Chivera@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 3d
A new car
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
If you're gonna buy a reliable car with the intention of keeping it for 10+ years a new car isn't that bad. I recognize the fact it depreciates at light speed. But if you have no plan to resell, who cares.
mysticpickle@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 3d
I read that in The Price is Right announcer's voice.
Nemo@slrpnk.net · 14 pts · 3d
continuing to attend college without a plan to graduate
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3d
Yeah that's a waste. Unless you're financially very comfortable and just trying to learn. I take like 2 classes a year at a community college/trade school. Not chasing another degree or cert just keeping myself fresh. Most of the class cost usually comes back in my tax return anyway.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 2d
Continuing to breathe has repeatedly proven, over several decades, to be the most devastatingly stupid decision I've made. Financially and otherwise.
AA5B@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
If you’re talking strictly financial, getting married. I wouldn’t trade that part of my life, or the kids if got out of it, but strictly financially, I lost more than most people make in a lifetime.
I went into it with a sizeable emergency fund and well on track for an early retirement
Then I got laid off at the wrong time and used my emergency fund in a fancy wedding ceremony. I figured I could make it back pretty quickly, especially with the second income
But I quickly realized I wasn’t saving anything. When a medical emergency hit, my only recourse was a loan and emergency withdrawal from 401k
Fast forward 20 years and still no savings. While I had paid off the 401k loan, I made no contributions. Now I was way behind being able to retire. Then divorce happened. Lost half my house, half my 401k, but no savings to lose.
Now I’m living alone in the same house. I have a huge car loan. I have huge child support payments. I have college expenses for two kids. Yet I’ve been able to rebuild my emergency savings and max out 401k contributions. I’m in much better shape financially, just running out of time to save
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2d
Dude.....if it has tits or tires it's going to cost a lot of money
THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
Not being born rich.
ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
Multiple hobbies I intended to do, invested and ran out of interest/time or moved into a new one.
I’m really bad at being constant or focus on one thing.
ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 2d
I’m currently in the camera gear rabbit hole. Still need to sell my expensive gravel bike.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Fuck thats big for me too.
Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Same here.
I had an old paintball gun I bought off someone in highschool but never got the chance to play, until after college on a weekend out of town trip so I had to borrow everything. About 8 years later a friend decides to get back into it after his divorce so we played a couple times and I swore I'd wait until we played a few times before investing money into newer, better gear. Then I got a new marker, hopper, mask, tanks, and all the trimmings. We played once (1 on 1) then he vanished forever when he started dating his would-be wife. I never touched any of it again.
I didn't get into DnD until COVID, and know how I am with things, I decided to get 1 set of cheap dice, borrow a PHB and start small. After several sessions and a solid group my dice addiction hits, I buy PHB, DMG and MM off eBay, custom mini and make my own dice box. Then I start getting into DMing, buy tons of minis, DM gear, paints, more dice etc etc. Me and my gf break up, the DM (a coworker of mine) went turncoat and I was gone from the group. I tried finding a couple new games after I moved but no luck.
So now I got all this shit sitting on shelves in my basement
CatSuperVillain@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
If you’re still interested in playing, see if there’s a local game store by you. People around me are always looking for groups and many would kill for a reliable GM. Though I do understand the money sink, I think there’s 8 totes of figures in my office that I’m too lazy to get at game time and we just end up using dice instead of the minis.
Beetschnapps@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
My “ex-wife”, I mean, I wasn’t even married. It was almost like if I could help someone else more, then it would all work out.
Turns out no one cares about you, and the more you help others the less you have to help yourself.
I was incredibly altruistic and I would burn to help someone lest I burn alone.
The world don’t care. Get efficient and don’t rely on others.
Tenniswaffles@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 18 pts · 3d
I get where you're coming from, and being hurt that way is completely valid.
But, your statement assumes you are the only person on the planet like that. If you're willing put someone else before you, unless you're completely unique, there is absolutely people out there with those exact traits, who would do the exact same for you. Obviously that's not an easy thing to find, and I understand your cynicism.
Beetschnapps@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
No I don’t presume I’m the “only person on the planet like that”… I don’t think that either. But yea traits are traits.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 2d
My first wife was, without a doubt, the worst person I have ever met. I was young and naive and didn't really understand what I was getting into. But there were signs. Signs that I ignored. I still get a phone call once every few years from someone else whose life she destroyed. People who are so bewildered and worried that they themselves might be crazy that they went through the hassle of tracking me down just so they could have someone to talk to about it.
I don't necessarily like talking to strangers about that experience but I do take those calls. And I listen, fully explain what has happened to them, and encourage them to go therapy. Because I know what it's like sitting alone in middle of the crater where your life used be. It's better to be alone than to be with someone who makes you wish you were alone.
My second wife? Absolute saint. One of the best people I know. Came out of left field when I wasn't even looking and I'm glad she did.
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 10 pts · 3d
I bought a new car one time. Huge mistake. Buy a cargo bike and ride the bus, folks.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
New like brand new or you just bought a car in general and regretted it?
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 10 pts · 3d
I bought a laptop i don't really like. Screen is too small to get real work done. I thought i was saving money with the smaller model
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 3d
That was me, fall 2019. Got a pawnshop laptop that I thought was gonna be good enough. It was not that good and couldn't properly even handle win10. Wasn't the greatest under ubuntu, but was better.
Still, not my best choice.
Edit:
2019, not 2020 when I got it!
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
Bummer
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 10 pts · 3d
Shorted NVDA 2 years ago.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 5 pts · 3d
Shit.
solrize@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 3d
Should have decided to be born rich. Darn.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org · 9 pts · 3d
The crypto craze of 2017
blu64@feddit.org · 9 pts · 1d
so I bought a cheap old Porsche...I realize now there is no such thing.
blindbunny@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 2d
Marriage
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2d
Came herr to say this. Just don't do it.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Just because I see so many comments saying don't get married, I'll put in that I've been happily married 37 years, no regrets. Pick the right person.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 2d
Giving money to people on the street for most of my life was a terrible financial decision on my part. I could've invested that money in something "right-wing" and be drowning in cash today! /s
jldevezas@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2d
Put my life on hold to pursue a PhD in CS, because I thought that would guarantee me a future. Well, it did not. Going straight into an industry job would have made my life a lot better financially and I would probably be buying a house by now.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 2d
I'm in my undergrad and I know a couple people wanting to go for their masters because finding a job is difficult right now, I feel like finding your first job with a masters might be harder than finding a job with only a bachelors no? Reason being, places don't want to pay more for a guy who is equally as inexperienced
Buckshot@programming.dev · 5 pts · 2d
My wife went back several years after under grad for a phd. Biochem. It's probably had a negative effect on job prospects. Either over qualified or under experienced. She's currently making minimum wage doing care work. Never got a job where a phd was an advantage.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1d
I mean you could also not mention a phd or masters on your resume. Tailor it for the job
Buckshot@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1d
She tried that but then it leaves a 5 year gap
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Call it taking a sabbatical to have a kid. They can't demand proof of the kid.
jldevezas@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
That's my perspective as well, we're either overqualified or underexperienced, as you said. For, personally, it also took a toll mentally, both because the journey was tough due to the pursuit of funding, but also because I finished during COVID, which took any chance away, due to the absolute lack of networking happening at the time.
Buckshot@programming.dev · 1 pts · 2d
Yeah my wife was the same. 2018-2023. Delayed a little over a year because they shut the labs for months and limited occupancy when it opened. Basically 3 years she hardly saw anyone.
jldevezas@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I think nothing beats experience, regardless of what your education is. As long as you can prove that you know what you're talking about, companies will hire you. So, if you've got a masters or a doctorate, but no experience, you're in a tough spot immediately. On the other hand, there's a trade-off with time; the time you spent on your education is time you could've spent instead gaining experience and networking. It's hard to do both, but during a masters it might be possible. Quite harder to do while pursuing a doctorate though, unless the networking is happening inside academia.
derfunkatron@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
I think the real advice is that you shouldn’t do post-graduate studies unless it’s paid for, comes with a stipend, or comes with an assistantship. Too many people (including myself) have paid for advanced degrees out of pocket only to find that they were pure coursework with no tangible experience.
The other piece of advice that isn’t often given is that post-graduate work really is training for jobs in academia. If that’s not where you want to end up, then those degrees are rarely useful (outside of academia). There are a few fields where masters-level is required for entry level jobs, but setting your course for a PhD is really a course to an academic post.
jldevezas@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Exactly, but even if your tuition is paid for with a grant, alongside a stipend, I would argue against pursuing a PhD, with the only exception being when you want a job in academia, like you said. The amount of money you'll be making in academia is absolute peanuts compared to the industry, and the same goes for relevant work experience.
Personally, I had to get a grant with a stipend, or else I wouldn't be able to afford it. I also got to lecture as an invited assistant for a year, but I never really wanted to teach. I wanted to dedicate myself to research, but I quickly realized nobody around me was actually trying to push the boundaries of knowledge and, instead of discussing ideas, learning from each other, and taking some freakin' risks, what I found was a lot of ass kissing, and seniors constantly doing paperwork to get funding, while delegating research to students. Everything that mattered to me felt secondary to everybody else. It felt quite lonely, so I eventually made the decision to leave, after nearly 20 years studying and working at the university.
It wasn't easy (still isn't), and this is why I like to share this perspective. Maybe it can save some heartache and financial hardship to a few people.
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 9 pts · 3d
Getting into debt while being underemployed. Thank goodness for my wife, my privilege, and the fcra. Though I suppose it’s more the undiagnosed (until my mid 30s) ADHD that led to that, and most of my other problems
chunes@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2d
Changed major from civil engineering to computer science
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 3d
Rebuilding an old diesel
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
Absolutely a money sink
AnthropomorphicCat@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
Not the worst, but the weirdest:
When I got my first credit card they told me that the very first transaction would be divided into 12 monthly payments, with no interest. So my first purchase was a new cellphone that I needed.
Later the same day I bought something for like a dollar, and just to be funny I paid it with the credit card.
Well, that $1 dollar purchase was also divided into 12 payments. Nothing bad happened because of that, but it just felt stupid.
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 2d
Biggest financial mistakes were mostly related to education, going into it without a clear goal/before I was ready, and paying for some courses that weren't accredited by a university or association.
AstralPath@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 2d
Same here. Went to school for music industry arts. Havent made a damn cent since.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
I know an ~32 that is about 2 courses away from getting their BA in Fine Arts in music. They just stopped there. Haven't used any of that study since.
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 3d
Marriage.
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
Rough
Tiral@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
When I was 25 I was making a lot of money. So I bought my childhood dream car, you know the one you have on your wall with the chick in a bikini on the hood. So I bought a '98 Diablo VT with I believe around 3k miles (this was in 2001). It was the absolute piece of shit. Don't get me wrong, it was gorgeous and sounded twice as sexy. But I shit you not, every other time it left the garage the most random shit would break, crap that shouldn't break on a car with 3k miles and 3 years old. Spark plugs were fowled, radiator hose blew, wires would be frayed and cause electrical issues. It was like non-stop. I soldnit for a 20k loss.
Mind you I'm 43 now and own 9 cars, 4 motorcycles, and grew up building engines with my dad. So I have no issues working on cars or doing whatever. I can tell tell you outside of Jeep, that Lamborghini was the biggest piece of mentally handicapped engineered vehicle I've ever seen.
Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1d
i feel old now
(seriously though, i feel like this attempt at an euphemism misses and in fact intensifies the reason we don’t use that word)
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1d
We all want to see your collection posted on here man
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Jeeps - there's an old movie about a small town infested with C.H.U.D.-like critters underground. As the plot crawls along, multiple characters keep saying bad things about their Jeeps, like "Could you drive? My Jeep is still in the shop." By the end it's pretty obvious somebody didn't like Jeeps. Then during the credits the director drives up in a Jeep, gets out and says, "They say every story has a moral, and I guess the moral of this one is, Don't Buy a Jeep." Then he tries and tries to start it and finally gives up. I probably saw this back in the 80s on Showtime, and I've been searching for it ever since we got the Internet lol.
knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 3d
Strippers
Zorque@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
Yeah, but now Sham-payne can go to college.
3daybanwithdrawl@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
And i can get that video game she promised me. (I'm her kid)
square@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 2d
Options trading when I was younger. Luckily I didn't put too much into it and had a bump just before I pulled out so I didn't lose much. It turned me into a modified boglehead, which worked out great over the next 20+ years, so lesson learned.
1981 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. Spent more on the transmission than I did on the car. Fucking cool though.
lntl@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 3d
I bought like $20k of INTC when it was $19 and sold at $25
Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
Missed opportunity but still some nice cash.
Beth@piefed.social · 8 pts · 2d
Taking a job that required a long commute. Wasn’t so bad when gas was cheap. But it still costs me my time, wear and tear, additional maintenance on my vehicle, and of course just all the stress on my body. Thankfully they’d rather retain my knowledge and transfer me much closer to home.
Buckshot@programming.dev · 5 pts · 2d
I hated when i had a long commute. There was a toll bridge on the way as well just to annoy me more. Wasn't allowed to work from home until covid hit and suddenly it's possible. Now 6 years later and I've never driven that commute again.
noxypaws@pawb.social · 8 pts · 2d
Heat pump water heater by A.O. Smith. Failed in its first year, and now its warranty replacement is failing in the exact same way 13 months later.
Remains to be seen how well the installer will resolve this but given they've been largely ghosting me I'm pessimistic enough to have already written up an entire BBB complaint.
The concept of a heat pump water heater is great. And when it works it's great. But this is some awful, awful, awful reliability.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Can I ask if it was purchased from a professional plumbing supply house or a big box store (like Home Depot)? I bought a Rheem heat pump water heater from Home Depot and, while I got a really good price on it, only learned later that the big box models are made with cheaper components and the warranty is severely worse than the professional supply house version. I installed it about 3 years ago and so far I've had no issue with it (knock on wood). I'm hoping it stays that way.
Note: in my prior house I was a very early adopter of heat pump water heaters in 2009 with the original GE Geospring model. It ran wonderfully for the 13 years I still had that house and was still running fine when I sold the house. It did have one recall service on it, but that was covered completely by GE even years after the original warranty ran out.
Was yours from a big box store or professional plumber?
noxypaws@pawb.social · 1 pts · 1d
Mine was purchased through our plumber, it's got "commercial grade" on the side (which just reeks of empty marketing)
It's a State (A.O. Smith) HPSX-66-DHPT 240v
I'm asking them to replace it with another brand, and Bradford White is what I'd like. Apparently those are Geosprings which seem like they might be more reliable and also a bit more serviceable. It's good to have an anecdote to back that up, since I can't exactly look up Bradford White on retail sites (apparently they only sell to plumbers)
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
In case you do end up with Rheem as a choice, it does have a couple of quirks, but nothing deal breaking for us. The scheduling function should work, but lots folks report trouble with it working inconsistently. We don't have TOU power so its not a function we use. One other thing is that it has four functions with one being called "Energy Saver", and the app will nag you to put it in that mode. Ignore that. "Heat Pump" mode is actually the most energy efficient. Besides those two things, we're happy with it, but should we need service we'll have more difficulty because we bought a big box version and not the professional plumber version.
A quick google search of that part number confirms your statement that it is a professional model (not a big box model).
I appreciate you sharing your experience. I'm sorry its giving you difficulty.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Early in my software dev career I had a contract job at a young company called Microsoft. Without going into boring details, what I saw in terms of miscommunication, wasteful practices, and odd behaviors by overstressed managers led me to see it as a typical startup that was outgrowing its ability to run itself. At that time they were handing out full-time employment like candy - most of the programmers in my hallway got converted - but I left, because I didn't think the company would go anywhere. This was two or three years before the stock went nuts and programmers there became millionaires in their twenties.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 2d
Paying my ex wife the money she wanted just to be rid of her
Stegget@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
No no, getting married was the poor financial decision. After that, paying for the divorce to be rid of her was an investment in your sanity and happiness.
ViscloReader@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Quit my job start of this year. Thought I could start a self employed thing with a secure client but they bailed (turns out they just went with my previous employer for lower prices).
Stern@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
PS2's State of Emergency. Back around GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas, so Rockstar shat gold, I saw this with them as the publisher and preordered. What a fucking stinker. I pretty much never preorder now.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 3d
I played a bit of that on the emulator recently, just the first tutorial mission I think. It didn't stand out
Stern@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
I was hoping for more chaos but instead got a shitty dynasty warriors
binom@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3d
used to love photography when i was younger. spent a month's salary on a used R5 mirorless thinking it would rekindle the joy. have used it once in 3 years. feel bad about it from time to time.
redkid1324@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 2d
I doubt it's the worst financial decision but I paid a lot of money during the iTunes era where you paid a buck for a song.
Pat@feddit.nu · 6 pts · 2d
I bought a 2-metre mini-USB cable, once. In 2021. For €10. It may not be the worst in terms of pure monetary amount, but definitely worst in terms of use to cost.
Brkdncr@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3d
Taking an interest in restoring cars.
anon_8675309@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
Time. Not investing earlier.
Compound interest is a force multiplier.
Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
My first wife.
kalkulat@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
Not to buy 100 shares of Apple stock when it was $15 a share.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 5 pts · 3d
Bought a car for 18k. Cost me tons at the mechanics. Sold it for about 10k. What a waste.
TheRagingGeek@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
Worst would’ve been having a kid at 21, second worse was. It grasping how predatory credit cards can be. Survived the first but the 2nd one hurt the longest, now I treat credit cards like poison, I try to avoid carrying a balance at all costs and expend any extra funds to eliminate any balances before I look at other possible uses of that cash.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Credit card companies hate him!
You're in the 1% or 2% of the population who actually learn from mistakes. Unloved by the business world for not being a profit faucet.
durably465@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 2d
Having kids.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d
I find that a terribly sad perspective - while children are certainly expensive from an economic standpoint, they often have tremendous payback in other ways (and sometimes economically too).
likebudda@reddthat.com · 4 pts · 1d
Rolling over a payday loan. You write them a check for $300 post dated for payday, they hand you $255. On payday, I would go back with a fresh $300 check to replace the one they just cashed so they could hand me another $255. This would be after exhausting overdraft from my checking that cost something like $35 to overdraw by $200. I wasn't even on hard drugs or drinking, just weed and nicotine. By the time I was 30 I had $15k in financial judgements against me, it took another 4 years to pay everything off. It almost cost me a promotion during the credit check. Apparently you shouldn't be a financial advisor if you're terrible with your own finances but I talked my way out of it (and then failed as a financial advisor).
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
That's pretty shocking - it sounds like the actual problem was being $255 short the and just never catching up.
laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 1d
Should have bought Gazillion sticks of ram
lokalhorst@feddit.org · 4 pts · 3d
Bought a 300€ NAS HDD (WD Red Plus 8TB) plus a 150€ HDD enclosure, only to realize the HDD is way too loud when existing in the same room. Now using it as a backup drive and my old external HDD is back again. Feels bad I send so much money. It's now almost 400€ though.
Allero@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 2d
Maybe sell it to someone who'll be fine with it? With growing prices, you can recoup more.
tal@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 2d
Put the enclosure in another room? If you don't have another computer that you can hook it up to as a NAS, modern USB has pretty short cable length limits, but there are optical USB cables that can run much longer---convert the USB signal to optical, send it over fiber optic, convert it back on the other end. They aren't cheap, as USB cables go, but they're a lot less than 400 euros.
searches
This sort of thing:
https://www.amazon.com/biaze-Extension-Extender-Transfer-Keyboard/dp/B0F93QZGQP
lokalhorst@feddit.org · 2 pts · 2d
Thanks for the ideas. It is a small Dell Optiplex I run a jellyfin server on. The issue is more Ethernet. I guess easiest would be to just run it via WiFi, but I haven't tried that out yet and am a bit worried over stability.
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 1d
Faceplanted off a Lime scooter. $6700 to remove and replace a tooth.
lando55@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 1d
I'd argue that's less a financial decision as much as it was a lack of coordination. Unless you were being paid to crash test like scooters.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I agree, an accident isn't a "decision".
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1d
Well, getting on the thing in the first place was definitely a mistake. I didn't spontaneously become less coordinated when I got on.
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 3d
Between a laptop I got fall 2019 or a desktop I got some time around 2023. Both were decently priced, though, so it wasn't terrible.
The laptop was from a pawnshop. Was a detachable monitor touch screen type that had battery issues and is really underpowered. No matter what, the battery drains like the thing is on. Couldn't run win10 very well and did a little better using ubuntu. Now it kinda sits doing nothing since I have long since updated to a better laptop a couple years ago.
The desktop was a brand new but was a budget device that is not the greatest. Had 4gb of ram and weak other components other than the 1tb hard drive. Did its job well enough that I cannot complain. Mostly got it for the disk drive and plenty of USB plugs. Worked a little better when I upgraded to 16gb ram, but not anywhere near the level of my current desktop.
Edit:
I have given it some thought, and it was around 2021 when I got the desktop. Time is all fuzzy sometimes for me.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 3d
My advice is to always avoid laptops unless you absolutely could not do without the portability.
I have also had great success with surplussed business-class machines. Like, the models which are impossible to buy from any brick-and-mortar location, and can even be difficult to buy online because the company typically sells those models through MSPs (Managed Service Providers, outsourced IT provisioning companies for other companies). These models are usually super-robust because they are meant to NOT be disposable, and usually have much higher config ceilings on RAM and storage, and can easily remain relevant for a good 7-15 years while consumer models scream to be replaced at the 5-year mark.
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 3d
Wait, you found a new desktop in 2023 with only 4 gigs of ram? I didn’t even think they made them with that little. Super budget ewaste tier laptops maybe, but desktops?
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2d
It was a $400USD lenovo budget desktop, so you can probably do the math on why there was so little ram. I'm pretty sure they designed it specifically for running things like an office suite and other low resource intesive software.
No slight against lenovo, but I'm positive it was meant to be for light work and I just used it for more than I should have.
Edit:
Thought about it, and around 2021 and not 23 when I got it. So still doesn't make a super huge amiunt of sense, but whatever.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Not applying for scholarships. I didn't have my mental health under control in high school and just didn't apply for any. Not even the one I was guaranteed…
RacerX@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 2d
I've spent so much on Magic the Gathering in my life. It's just cardboard sitting in a box now and I don't even enjoy it anymore. I haven't bought a single card in almost two years and it feels good to not constantly feel like I have to stay on top of every release.
18107@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 2d
Loaned a friend money to buy a second hand car. The car was in worse condition than expected, broke down permanently after a few months, and he got arrested for CSAM.
I don't think I'll be getting my money back.
aSaabD00d@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 2d
Taking financial aid as a student. I had a mental breakdown in school and lost all interest in bettering myself at all. Now I literally just wait for death everyday.
protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1d
not stop my mom from doing the worst finnacial decisions possible
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2d
Failing out of an university program I was mentally and emotionally unprepared for, simply because my family put a priority on education and trades are below us.
If I had dumped the money into a tech company and done labour for the time it took, then diversified like a good investor, I’d be close to quite early retirement now.
I’ve also bought home tech stuff that just is objectively stupid. Remote light switches, blinking led lights, that sort of thing.
Clbull@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Buying shares in Superdry, J D Wetherspoon and Boohoo. All three lost me about £2k combined. I don't know much about the fast fashion industry, and the purchase of Spoons' shares was because I thought the hospitality industry was going to go through a post-COVID bounceback.
Second to that, investing in a few startups via Seedrs/Republic (crowd equity platform) that eventually folded. One was a dating app that only ever managed to get a few thousand users. One was a digital painting tagging company that seemed sus in the first place. Another was DeadHappy, a life insurance broker that lost all its business after running an offensive ad campaign referencing notorious British serial killer Harold Shipman.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2d
AT the start of COVID, I bought shares in an airline because I figured that once lockdown was over, everyone would go crazy traveling everywhere and the airline stock would skyrocket (pun intended.)
It didn't work lol
auginator@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I bought a fully restored Jeep Grand Cherokee with steel bumpers. It gets 9 mpg. It’s pretty bad ass. Now it costs me $100 to go to Sequoia NP from Fresno. So now it’s just sitting. I got a super good deal on it. Dude I bought it from spent 40k to restore it. I got it for $10k. Gas bill is killing me so it’s just sitting.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
About 80% of my Steam library.
abecede@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Dyson vacuum robot.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
My current car. 2026 Nissan Pathfinder Platinum trim.
As I tell people it was a bad financial decision but it was the right one.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
I bought a Razer laptop
ZMoney@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
I bought a bunch of green energy stocks in 2024.
aSaabD00d@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 2d
Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Not worst, but it's been very hit or miss on Kickstarter. There were some good things that came from it buuut...
Coolest. Yes I did end up getting one, but never used the cooler itself. The only thing that got use was the Bluetooth speaker, which I used so much it killed the battery. When I was getting ready to move, the coolest was in pristine condition but the internal battery (for the blender and phone charging) was completely shot, and I had newer better coolers so I set it by the curb.
Andromium Superbook. This was supposed to be a netbook sized device that you plug your android into turning it into a "laptop". Nothing ever came from it, reports of being a scam or someone embezzled the money.
Polygons. Measuring cups and spoons which are a single piece of plastic that can "fold in" to different measures sizes. These seemed kinda slick but "production issues" blah blah "suppliers" yadda yadda, still nothing after a decade.
Bears vs Babies. A card game which turned out to be boring and shitty.
Nuvi Sleep Mask. A sleep mask which pairs to your phone that's supposed to help sleep by setting up light pulses etc. I could never get the app to work so a total bust
Flyte socks. Fun "bold" colorful socks. Stitching tore putting the damn socks on
7+. Various comic books. Backing a couple and finally reading them...you can tell why they had to seek funding on Kickstarter and otherwise couldn't find a publisher for these stories.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
When I was young I bought a brand new motor cycle from a dealership. Did I mention that I didn't know how to ride a motorcycle when I bought it?