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99 money mistakes and a $999.99 giveaway!

by Pauline Paquin

money problem

99 money mistakes? Can you possibly make that many? Possibly, and more! I managed to list 40 things that cost me lots of money over the years in just 15 minutes, meaning we are probably looking at a realistic three to four digits money mistakes over life. Enjoy.

  1. Forgot to fund current account when monthly payments are due.

  2. Paid debit interest to earn appalling credit interest.

  3. Didn’t check the authenticity of a check and let the guy leave with my piano.

  4. Thought ”this jeans is a bit tight, but I’ll lose weight”. Never lost a pound, never used the jeans.

  5. Exchanged currencies too early for fear the rate would go down. It went up.

  6. Didn’t read the debit card’s fine print on ATM withdrawals abroad.

  7. Lost money from my jean’s pocket

  8. Left money in same jean’s pocket and washed it.

  9. Lost the whole purse

  10. And the whole bag.

  11. Didn’t check Ebay backgrounds and bought from crappy seller.

  12. Gave notice three days before leaving a rental. Lost deposit.

  13. Bought way too much food for a party when people just wanted booze. Threw lots away.

  14. Forgot to turn the heat off and left for a holiday.

  15. Lost a passport during a holiday.

  16. Didn’t check where the train was going, got in, it was the wrong train. Paid fine.

  17. Drove 33 mph on a 30mph zone. Paid fine.

  18. Gave back the rental car two hours late.

  19. Forgot student ID to go to the museum

  20. Packed poorly and had bottle of red wine broken in backpack during the flight.

  21. Didn’t send the insurance paper to cover a broken car window.

  22. Bought short lifespan food, left for trip.

  23. Didn’t take advantage of company healthcare plan. Had travel shots just after.

  24. Booked hotel on the wrong date.

  25. Lent money to a friend (not a friend anymore).

  26. Bought a first property without doing homework on the neighborhood.

  27. Brought a carton of cigarettes to Singapore. The only country that has no duty free allowance. Paid fine.

  28. Didn’t claim insurance when the flight was late.

  29. Didn’t remind family member they didn’t pitch in for gift as they said. Paid their share.

  30. Bought plane tickets in advance only to see them go on sale the next week.

  31. Hid money in my socks, got changed, lost it.

  32. Forgot to bring discount card to the supermarket

  33. Didn’t buy a big enough lock for bicycle. Bought a new wheel.

  34. And a new bicycle later on.

  35. Forgot computer, drove 100 miles home, went back, and back home.

  36. Forgot laptop charger on business trip.

  37. And international plug converter.

  38. Forgot keys inside the house.

  39. Packed one carry-on to save the check-in fee and brought a Swiss army knife to the airport.

  40. And cheese. Yes, it counts as a liquid.

As you can see, most of those mistakes were because of one of my big defaults: the lack of attention to details. I want to go quick, and end up making mistakes on the way. Forget to bring a key object or to claim money in due time. I am working on it. Slowly.

Now to make up for it, I am co hosting an awesome $999.99 cash giveaway thanks to Jeremy at Modest Money’s structured settlements company!

All you have to do is complete the different entries on the widget below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

 

What is your worst, dumbest, funniest, or biggest money mistake?

 

 

Lovely comments

  1. Thanks for the giggles, Pauline. As I sit here, pondering the money mistakes we’ve made, I’m just not sure I can narrow it down to one. In a nutshell, our biggest was not being financially responsible from the get-go of our marriage 17 years ago. All of the little mistakes can be rolled up into that big one. But alas, we move on… 🙂

  2. Thanks for the Giveaway, Pauline!

    So, hold on….cheese counts as a liquid??? No. Way.

    Anyways, thanks for pointing out the mistakes. I don’t even want to think of how much money I have wasted in my life. So depressing 🙁

    • Yes, it is liquid unless it is a super hard old cheese like Parmesan… I even passed a foie gras once and on the transit flight the girl in X ray wanted to confiscate it because the grease had lightly melted.

  3. I love the list Pauline. Especially number 38 I forgot the keys in my house once and luckily I was able to break in through a window to get in. I like the contest, I signed up and look forward to winning, hopefully.

    • Good luck Chris! Yeah, i did that recently, came back in through the window, not my finest moment. That #38 I had to pay way too much to have a locksmith open.

  4. I once ran out of gas, borrowed some from my neighbor, drove to the nearest gas station in a horrible part of town, was so nervous I locked the keys in my car, and had to pay a locksmith to get them out. Never let your car run out of gas!

  5. It’s a long story. One that can keep you up most of the night wondering about it. Had a job I liked, had a nice savings account,got hurt, can’t get disability….poverty, food stamps, pain for 12 years now..wondering why why why

    • Sorry to hear that Lisa. Thanks for sharing, hopefully your story can help people prepare so they are covered if something happens to them.

  7. from my childhood I have made like thousands of mistake and it is really difficult to choose the biggest mistake. But I can share one, in September, 2005 (I don’t remember the exact date) I was sleeping in my room and in the whole house I was alone. Next morning I woke up and it felt like I was dreaming there wasn’t a single gadget in my house. The thief took everything including my car, TV, fridge, washing machine..etc. After calling the police they couldn’t find that bugger. I was in shock for one week.

  9. Probably done all of these, Pauline. I think the most ridulous ones are all to do with flying. A could of years or so ago we spotted a halogen oven in Aldi for £29 or something like that. The oven in our apartment in Sofia was an old inefficient electric one and we had a gas hob anyway. So we bought the oven and carefully packed it into one of our two suitcases that we generally take on EasyJet direct Manchester-Sofia. This oven was about 6kg in weight, which was exactly the amount over the measly 20kg each. Had we taken another suitcase with us, it would have cost £28 to book it but we got charged £10 a kg so the oven ended up costing £89!

    Since then we bought two cabin suitcases specifically made for EasyJet that we can stuff things into. The packing order is always – get as much into the cabin bags as possible (they aren’t weighed you see!) then if we need a hold suitcase we can book it at the last minute online. As we are generally 3 people travelling, apart from liquids we generally don’t need hold baggage.

    BTW we have often taken cheese to France and Switzerland without a problem. Maybe they are so shocked at the British taking any food out of the country but our friends in those countries love English cheese and can’t get it in their supermarkets.

    • I hate Easyjet! It is so hard to get over the extra fees when tickets are so cheap. I know it’s just a mind game, in the end you still pay less but it is annoying.
      Really, cheese can get out of the UK? I had problems with the soft ones, not the hard ones, but never dared to try again!

      • If you hate EasyJet never even consider flying Ryanair!

        We frequently use EJ as Manchester is a major hub for them and have had some problems but generally the staff are good, the aircraft clean and they run a very efficient ship. They have now moved to reserved seats which you get when you check in online. Only when a flight to Geneva was cancelled, or when Maria had a problem in Copenhagen because they eventually had to fly a replacement aircraft out from the UK, did they not come up to scratch and in both cases it was information that was the problem. Aircraft are complex pieces of machinery and things do go wrong.

        Ryanair on the other hand are not so nice as you will see from the statements from their very aggressive CEO. I’m so glad they didn’t manage to buy Stansted Airport as they would have piled cost on cost and made BA/Heathrow look like a minor squabble. It has been bought by Manchester Airport Group instead. In my dreams, Ryanair would be bought by EasyJet!

        The sad thing about cheese and the UK is that it is symptomatic of bad management of the food industry here. We have some really good food, local produce and all sorts of things that never make it off our shores. In fact I sometimes wind up our French friends by saying we can eat better within a mile of our house than pretty nearly anywhere in Paris (at least during August when all the restauranteurs are on holiday of course!). And when they come to see, we show them exactly what we mean.

        Some years ago we spent a couple of weeks in Normandy where we were billeted with an elderly French lady who had been a teenager during the invasion. She kindly gave us a bottle of local cider (cidre) and an interesting conversation ensued when I explained that in Britain we have real cider (West Country stuff – it blows your head off!). It was all done in the best possible Anglo-French taste of course. And of course, don’t mention the cheese (in the departement of Camembert etc!). It was a great conversation over a few hours – one of many as her experiences were fascinating including going to London for hte first time when she was 18. Her house was on the banks of the Seine where the Scots Guards had fought a tremendous battle – the area was devastated and we should not forget the sacrifices of the people in her area, in Caen, Falaise etc in 1944.

        When we got back I went to our local cheese shop (The Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury – it’s online. This is quite an elite part of Manchester) and had 100g of a number of English cheeses cut and vacuum packed and sent them to her. She was overwhelmed, not only with the gesture I think but there are wonderful cheeses here. And when we go to Lausanne, we do the same for our good friends there. Maybe because it is vacuum packed there isn’t a problem.

        • What a kind gesture! When I lived in Surrey, during the first weeks I didn’t know where to eat or what to buy in the supermarket so I declared this country had nothing interesting food-wise but its migrant cuisine like Thai restaurants. Then little by little I got acquainted with very interesting products, like cheese, rock oysters, even haggis I grew to like! My BF was volunteering with Slow Food and they always had good food events. Local products from the farmers market were very good too and I enjoyed cycling to a nearby farm to pick up some milk and eggs. That is what I loved most about Guildford, even though you are 30 min from London and have all the high street shops you can be in rural areas in five minutes. I don’t know what it is with the food in the UK, maybe because even in the country only a minority enjoy good food (all my colleagues had triangle sandwiches and crisps for lunch, 5 days a week), or because you don’t have signature dishes that you export, people aren’t interested in your food. I’ll think about vacuum packing the next time I bring cheese over here!

          • The Industrial Revolution ruined our indigenous cuisine – people ended up moving from poverty on a farm to poverty in the city where they lived on sugar loaf and lard. 100+ years of that and people forgot about the wonderful dishes that thankfully were retained in the local communities. But instead many survive on what can be called sandwiches and plastic bread!

            English ‘cuisine’ survived only in non-industrialised parts – Scotland, Wales and Ireland. However migrant cuisine has provided an interesting restaurant environment and also home cooking. We also live not far from Rusholme which is fully of all sorts of Asian cooking. Our Parisian friend salivates at the thought of a decent curry but I think such foods are now becoming available in France as well. So perhaps after a few hundred years there will be a convergence, as long as the ghost of Chirac is kept at bay of course!

  10. Lately, I had an issue in a restaurant where I completely misread a menu and ordered what I thought was a small pizza at a great deal. It turns out, I had completely misread the menu and ordered a MUCH larger pizza for a more expensive price (I checked, it was my fault).

    So, I took my lumps and had leftover pizza a lot for the next week. It was delicious, but I certainly paid for it!

  11. I loved this list Pauline! Too cute 🙂

    I can’t even tell you how many times I have committed #4 lol. I even use to do it with shoes too, even though I can’t lose any weight in my feet haha.

  12. I’ve made more than a few, as have a lot of us. As I type my comment, I realize that a few of my mistakes are painful to think about and type right now, so I’ll hold off. Maybe future blog posts 🙂 The important thing is to learn from them, which I have tried hard to do!

  15. Oh #4, wish I didn’t have to fess up to that one. Ticket for 33 in a 30, that cop was having a bad day. When I was about 14 I threw away (literally) $100 in cash that I received for Christmas. The next morning I was looking everywhere for the money and couldnt’ find it. Fortunately mom figured it out. The card I’d put it in for safe keeping was tossed with the wrapping paper. Let’s just say I’ll never do that again and always put cash directly into my wallet when I receive it in a car.

  16. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who’s instinct is to put their bank at the top of the ‘wasted money’ list Pauline. Like you, I’ve lost a lot of money over the years through unilateral bank charges. In the UK they used to quite routinely charge £35.00 for every failed direct debit, and would keep on doing so, even when the charges were the cause of further bounced direct debits. I almost starved to death as a student 🙂 Glad to see I’m not the only one to who’s had to buy a train ticket twice for stepping on the wrong train going in the right direction either.

    Like you, I’ve learned from my mistakes. I don’t buy anything unless it’s on special offer and I never go near a direct debit mandate anymore 🙂

    Keep up the great work!

    • Thanks Gareth! I am with HSBC in the UK and they have rules I believe they call “fair” such as if what causes the overdraft is a bank fee you are not charged overdrafts or if you put the money back on the same day they don’t charge either. They are not perfect but at least those rules aren’t too bad.

      • Cheers Pauline, if you’re in the UK nice to meet a fellow night owl (or insomniac). The root of the problem is always the vast discrepancy between the financial industry’s perspective of fairness and that shared by the rest of humanity, particularly in the UK. Bleed ’em dry has always been the covert motto I’ve found; a sentiment that is only just starting to be reversed thanks to the albeit unsuccessful legal challenge of current account charges in 2011 and the more successful redress of PPI miss-selling last year. Anyway, back to Rambo III on Sky now 🙂

  17. A couple of my money mistakes include:
    Forgetting to take my money I withdrew from the ATM machine. It was flashing and there’s a message on the screen that says to take your money!! I must have been braindead that day. Thankfully, it was only $60, but still!

    Paying over $300 for running through a red light. There was a red light camera at the intersection, so it caught me and had solid proof. I am now paranoid about going through the intersection when the traffic light is yellow and about to change to red.

    • ouch and ouch! I never forgot the ATM money but had one recently that made it very hard to grab the cash, I was already uncomfortable because I needed $300 and it is not very safe to get so much cash around here, but on top of that had to kneel down to get my money! super obvious.

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