Did this one too! Relatively expensive (for a broke ass high school student) dumbass mistake

Just about everyone I know who doesn't own a house, but rents a cheap apartment......and then they go out and finance a $50,000+ truck on a 7+ year loan.   Dumb people......

you'd be surprised; i knew lots of guys who were sitting on $30-50k at the end of their 4-6 year enlistments

Me too

That struck me as odd also, if he is carrying around 6k on plastic I don't think he should be upgrading houses. I would invest in a Dave Ramsey class if I was him.

Well after reading some truly sad stories on this thread it is quite obvious personal finance should become an absolute required study matter for grades 10-12.
It might not help everyone but it might help some.
Shit.
Some real dumb ass people out there.

why would they want to make you financially literate?

they want you to pay interest and be ignorant

please tell me it was at least a 914-6?

He could have at least bought a 916 and kept it to sell for $400,000 today.

This is an odd story. My uncle bought 2 914s in the 90s. One needed a little work but the other was a donor car. One of the cars came with some Fuchs (sp) style wheels.

Well he ended decided not to take on the project because of the floor pan needing replacement and the engine needed more work that what he thought. So, he ended up selling the two for about what he paid. He ended up keeping the rims because the guy didn't want them so they stayed in his garage for years and then one day he puts them up for sale end ended up getting more for the set of rims than he sold the cars for.

Well exactly who is "they"
As in the bank that is stuck with your home or beat up car that you can't pay for.

My sister is just one poor financial decision after another. But don't worry, your tax dollars subsidize her stupid behavior

I don't cosign shit for anyone-not even my kids. I helped them build good credit. It's up to them to keep it.

I spend ~10% of my income on ammo

I have a $1300/mo rental

YOLO

Talking with a friend during college, he was married, and I asked him what his wife was getting her degree in.  He said history.  I was like .  And he quickly said, don't say anything, she will get pissed.  I said you already asked her, didn't you?

Hmm...Maybe we are related because your sister and mine sound precisely the same.

In that case, I'm rich. 

Around 1988, my brother traded a 71 Challenger 340 for a almost brand new computer. I recall at the time they had about equal value.

Im going to take this thread as a sign that I shouldn't buy some Sentinials from TNVC

There were a couple troops who actually owed their entire paycheck and had to start borrowing again on payday.  

At the time, I put some effort into giving advice and trying to figure out ways to help these people by using a bit of reason

I bought a airplane.

I heard after the first annual it's all gravy

My coworker, 35 years old and lives in a home his dad got for him because he couldn't qualify. And constantly bitches that his dad won't let him do what he wants with it. Makes $85k+ and doesn't even pay the full mortgage amount to his dad because he can't.

Why? Dude owns 4 cars, and leases a 5th. Only two run reliably and one is the lease. The other is his "special" car that he put 500 miles on in 1 year cause it's only for evening drives. He also has a SUV he payed for with his credit card. Speaking of credit cards he has at least six maxed out credit cards that I know of and student loans on top of that too.

Best part is, he is married and his wife who doesn't work wants kids, but they literally can't afford it. But if he could just get a 2% raise it would solve all of their problems. Seriously, he would mention every chance he got. So when we got a company cost of living adjustment of 3% did he pay off any debt? Fix his broken AC system so him and his wife would have AC this summer in the 100+ heat? Or prepare for having a kid? Nah... that's when he ran out and got the "special" car which his brother in law consigned on

I knew a girl (ex-girlfriend's sister) who was a stock broker.  She took every penny from her retirement account, with no intention on paying it back, to put the money down on her first house. She paid all kinds of penalties and taxes but she justified it.

My SIL spent 10K to become rolfer.

Right now, I have a friend who is 59. He never learned any skills. Just worked at a menial job until about 8 years ago when he got a really good job that came to an end as the company moved.

Life was always a party. One of the most cheap dudes you'd ever meet, unless it was time for beers, fun and concert tickets. Out to dinner with the wife 3-4 times a week, no kids, lots of vacations and hardly no savings.

Now, he gets a wild hair and wants to move to FLA with no job prospects, no skills, he will sell his home and maybe make $81k on it (no mortgage) after the sale. He will then try to buy a home in the Dunedin/Clearwater, or Edgewood area. Not a condo.....but a home so he can have the sailboat of his dreams. He's got maybe 90k in their 401k's which sit in the most safe money market accounts offered in the program. he has a "financial guy" holding his money in accounts that earn 3% and is charging probably that much to "manage" it in money market investments. He's losing all the time. His home (really cute on a great small rural property) has a tax burden every year of just under $2k. We can leave our homes on any given day and within one turn, be on roads where you may not pass another car for 20-30 minutes. I don't believe he will deal with traffic well.

His wife has a decent skilled job, but will be giving up all of her earned vacation time and will have to start all over. She will find work anywhere in her field. She wants NO part of this whole deal!

He figured, if he's going to be miserable, he's going to be miserable where the weather is nice. He's been to FLA twice in his life. Once 20 some years ago on vacation and recently in early March to visit his sister for 3 weeks when he lost the job due to shut down. He thinks summer will be a breeze there. He spent the entire time in a Hawaiian shirt with a beer in his hand. He believes every day will be just like that. he also believes that jobs are plentiful and everyone has health insurance and is happy at their jobs.
I see a guy who is out of options and miserable. He's totally talked himself into this and never even looked at anywhere or anything else. He will do this just out of spite for a place he now feels has "wronged him" by a company moving operations to another state. He doesn't want to work over 40 hours, wants every weekend off, fully paid health insurance, vacation to start and at least $15/hr Not too much to ask from a guy who worked retail counter help for 30+ years and has 8 years doing factory production line work.

I hope he's right, because he and his wife will be finally able to enjoy retirement two weeks after they die

I think he's setting himself up for disaster. I hate seeing it happen right in front of me, but there's no talking sense to him. I'm sure the FLA guys will chime in and say the same. They at least know the real costs associated with living there.

My entire life is a long list of horrible financial decisions.  I am so fucked right now that there is no way out.  

Fuck it.

yes, the credit cards are the top of the list right now. We're paying 0% until November 2018 on them We decided to pay off our $8,000 car loan first, as we were paying a whopping 4.5% interest on it. We have zero other debt. Student loans paid, don't drink, smoke, no cable, no new Iphones, three year old 42" TV. Dave Ramsey's book is in the book case. We've even read it a couple times.
   Mortgage lender approved us for far more than we paid for our new home, with no contingency. Current home is going on the market tomorrow, in a very hot market currently. I appreciate the opinion, but we're doing ok.

I work in the lending industry and I will never leave the sub-prime division just because of the stories I hear. Genuinely, nothing surprises me anymore.

The first story that comes to my mind is of a lady who was literally begging us to refinance her account so that she can catch up on her mortgage. IIRC, she was 4 or 5 months behind... what I know for sure is that I'm shocked she was in that house.

We ended up making a deal work for her that would catch her right up as well as paying off a few other bills. Well, somebody dropped the ball and didn't control the funds, she ended up going to the casino and lost every penny of it.

i paid 50,000 for a hanger to be built to put my 8,000 ultralight in. I love it!

I don't see how anybody can be that stupid you sure it was not 90k.

Many men go just for themselves because it pays more then  they die and the wife don't get jack.

I turned down a $250k fed job offer to be a professor at a community college.

How's that?

I pay all kinds of money into my retirement account each month.  I had the projections assume retirement at age 55, the income I want to recieve until age 90, no SS contribution to my retirement income - so that's what's driving the amount I put away each month.  And it's fucking stupid and pointless.  

I mean, why am I saving for my retirement?  It's not like I'm going to use any of it since I plan to die young in a fabulously entertaining way, like a failed chute while nude skydiving, or smothered to death by a face-sitting domina, or something that involves an internal combustion engine and begins with "hey, watch this"...

Holy shit!  Pay off those cards with your cash on hand.

If you had a paid off house, would you take a loan out on it to play the market?

Old Jewish guy taught me a lesson that would have served this guy well

He had a saying about avoiding unneeded litigation.  He said " Never get mad at your pocket book."

I'm like a poster child of horrible financial decisions...

At 25 I had paid off all of my debts and had my car paid off in 3 years on a 4 year loan, I was doing great. I was renting a place by myself and could afford it, but wanted something a little bigger but couldn't afford it without a roommate. I decided to help my mom who had moved a few hours away and wasn't really happy with her life. We agreed to split the rent on a house and that would help me to afford the place as well as help my mom to get her life back together. Things went well the first 3 years. I had more money to spend and even bought my affordable dream car (2005 STi) since I could afford it. In the 4th year my mom tells me she wants to move to her boyfriend's house (after she never really got her life straight in that time). I'm not happy about the situation, but tell her fine she can move, but she has to give me 60 days notice to find another roommate. 2 weeks later she gets fired from her job, so I tell her she should go ahead and move to her boyfriends since he can support her financially and without her half of the bills I'm going to struggle to get everything paid. Unfortunately after I bought the car there wasn't enough room left in my finances to be able to pay for both halves of the bills as well as food, gas, etc and I refused to get rid of my car because of somebody else's mistakes (she got fired because of herself and wasn't even trying to look for a job, it would have been different if she had a health issue or something).

For some reason my mom refused to move out after this and that's when things began to really spiral out of control (it really isn't as easy as you think to evict someone legally and if you throw their shit out you may end up getting sued for a lot more than it's worth). I started using my CCs to cover the difference in bills. Then when I went to apply for a small loan the bank told me about the great option of refinancing my car (it was worth about $5k more than what I owed on it at that time). Unfortunately I ended up refinancing the car a 2nd time to borrow more money to stay afloat. As luck would have it the headgasket went on my car in the middle of everything, there went another couple thousand. After 9 months my mom finally moved out, but at that point my monthly debt had outgrown my monthly income. I traded in the car and spent the next 2 years trying to lower my expenses and pay down the debt, but ultimately it was impossible by that point (if only I could have stopped the interest it would have been possible). I ended up filing chapter 13 bankruptcy at 30 years old on $38k worth of debt that I had nothing to show for, just 5 years after I had been completely debt free. With chapter 13 I am paying back $28k of the $38k over 5 years and will be released from my bankruptcy after that. Then it's another 2 years before I can buy a house.

I'm not proud of the mistakes I made or the fact that I ended up filing bankruptcy, but I wanted to share this so that hopefully at least some people can learn from this. I can say I learned a LOT from those 5 years. Of course hindsight is always 20/20 and I would have done a lot of things differently, but at the time I felt like I was making the best decisions I could to stay afloat.
- Never put yourself in a position helping someone that you can get screwed in the end. If you can't afford all of the bills yourself, make sure you have a plan in case the other person skips out on you (marriage is different obviously).
- Never count on the future... Many decisions I made on taking on more debt were based on being able to pay the debt back after raises or bonuses and either got a smaller raise than expected or shorted on a bonus.
- Buy a house and start building equity as young as you can. Right before things started going downhill I was starting to save up to buy a house, now I can't buy one until I'm 37 years old.
- Swallow your pride and do what you have to do to keep your finances intact. In hindsight I should have sold my car early on and got rid of the car payment as well as the costly repairs that kept popping up. Also due to the complexity of kicking my mom out, I would have been better off to have not paid the rent for 2 months and both of us would have gotten evicted (my credit would have taken a hit, but nowhere near as bad as filing bankruptcy did). I should have also moved back home with my dad at least 2 years before filing bankruptcy and it would have prevented it.

During this entire time I had the same job I've had for 13.5 years. I worked my ass off and felt I did a lot of things right in life, but totally fucked up by getting my debt to income ratio out of control. Once I filed bankruptcy nobody gives a shit about how much I make, how great my credit was for so many years, none of the past matters, just the bankruptcy, no business will even rent to me until I am released at the end of my 5 years, my options are private landlord or a roommate.

When I was in college I drank a bit too much one night and amazon prime one clicked a hot tub for 7200.  Didn't realize I bought it until the freight truck was in my driveway.  Ended up keeping it but it was still a horrid decision.

Well,

Dont know about you boys, but im feelin purty good about life after reading this thread!

A former co-worker cashed out 100% of his 401k to buy a fully custom motorcycle of his dreams at age 50. Crashed the motorcycle, permanently injured his back, lost his job.

A current co-worker's parents retired early, sold their paid-off home in Colorado, and bought a fully custom $250,000 motorhome. After 2 years, they are living in an apartment and working at Walmart.

I bought a timeshare I couldn't afford, financed at 15% interest. Luckily it's mostly paid-off now and we refinanced to 4% but yeah... that was dumb.

+1

One of my friends was a meticulous saver. He never made much money, but always saved a big portion of his income.

Bought a 1-year-old Chevy Impala. His first big purchse- $18,000 in cash.  Crashed it 2 months later during the first snowstorm. Only had liability insurance because it was paid off.

Easy fix.  
Go get another mortgage,
pay interest,
have tax deduction

- profit

What was his gig?

I, like most, have had my share.

However, I grew up around a lot of crusty old hillbillies who I dearly loved. Old codgers who hunted and fished no matter the season. Guys who never had much, and if they did, would gladly give it to someone more needing.
They always supported me in furthering education or taking that risk to make something of myself. I loved those guys...and respected those guys......but I never wanted to become one of those guys. They were the best teachers in the world.

So.....at 19 years old. I read everything I could on the stock market, bond market, high yield bonds, etc.

I had nothing. I was working for pennies. I was busting my ass, but I always found 10-15 bucks to throw on the side. I opened an account at Vanguard and still have the initial investment Cashier's Check slip in a frame. The DOW was the same year I was born. 1965. I decided to try to make some money while I was busy making money. I figured if it didn't work out, I would at least have enough for a downpayment on a used pick up truck at some point......but stuck with it.

I slowly worked up from $10 to $15-$25 steadily. I invested in other things. I read more and more and people, including family, thought I was nuts. I stayed debt free. I soaked up knowledge, helping friends do their auto and home maintenance so I would know how to do it myself. I busted ass every day. Yes....I lived in a slide in camper in my truck. Yes.....I ate buttered noodles and trout I had poached from local streams.
But, after 9 long years.......I saw the trend and saw I was making money. By this time, I was adding more and more. All I could. I never made much.....but I knew how to save and knew to stay as debt free as possible.....without being cheap or cheating myself out of the fun things in life.

Fast forward to 50 years old......I semi retired. I could have fully retired at 48. The wife is fully retiring in two months. I run a small pest control business. 7 months of the year, I have 3 weeks off per month. The rest of the year, I try to keep it under 30 hours. It's the only thing that really ever worked out for me.

No shit that's hard to beat

Yep. He can always contribute more to a tax deferred retirement account and save in taxes that way, plus have money.

Check and we all breath air too.

For me, people living in houses for barely 10 years. Constantly.

Did the timeshare thing. It was a Hilton timeshare and not that bad of a deal. But with our traveling habits, we didn't make full use of it.

Just gave it to my wifes parents. They are retired so they will be able to use it to it's fullest.

After my parents died, I inherited the house. It was free and clear. But the house was trapped in the 1970's. Wife and I took out a mortgage for about $175 to remodel it from roof to floor.

Looks great now and we are really happy with it but in hindsight, I wish I would have purchased a condo in downtown San Diego during the 08 slump and had that piece of property to have for fun and use on AirBNB. Oh well.

Here's hoping he SoCal housing market will crash again!!

I'll admit that describes me to a T.  At the end of the year, my bank account is shot, but I have totes full of crap.