@fossy paid way too much for it £5k and it costs at least a grand every time it needs an MOT. And the parts are like hens teeth. It currently needs an engine mount that is difficult to find. It sounds nice though and my son loves it - it is technically his car, I'm just responsible for the bills 🤔
Met an American woman.
Things went well, got married-ish. boring technical visa stuff didn't actually get married. Just had a very expensive party where she wore a white dress and I dressed up, we both made some vows, I kept mine and she did not.
Sold my house at a loss as it was dip in the housing market after the banking crash, quit my job, applied for a green card - expensive and got dumped for my troubles.
On the plus side everything has worked out brilliantly. It would have been nice to work out brilliantly cheaper
@oldtennisshoes I looked at possibly getting a late model Berera a few years back -£15k ish, but lots of issues generally. I spent £30k on a 3 year old people carrier van last year, but it's got great parts availability, carries people, bikes, tents and can sleep in it. It's also fast for a van. Sensible approach won.
Do I win?
Yes - you do.
But somehow I still feel like if i'm ever faced with a situation of choosing between a horse and an Alfa Romeo I'll choose the horse.
£12,000 on a horse for our daughter. Three months later, he got sepsis after a small and seemingly innocuous field injury, had three emergency surgeries and we nearly lost him each time. We hit the insurance claim limit plus another £9,000 on top.
The good news is that he pulled through. The bad news is that he is unrideable so has been retired. He is seven years old and horses can comfortably live into their twenties (some into their forties), so we are in for £225 a month for the rest of his life paying for the retirement field – conservatively that's another £20,000 plus inflation.
Do I win?
That's still properly cheap compared to some I know...
A friend (he's on here, doesn't come on very much any more, I won't name and shame even though he probably wouldn't mind if I did) is planning his retirement based around paying off the mortgage... For a house he hasn't lived in for years, and never will do again, because his (now ex) wife got it in the divorce... I don't know the ins and outs, and I'm sure there are regrets on both sides... But paying for something you will never even see or be able to appreciate ever again, beats anything where no matter how much the returns have diminished you still get to see/use the asset to some degree I'm afraid...
I think it's fair to say that if your experience doesn't involve the word "DIVORCE" then you're a rank amateur at best in terms of spending money unwisely...
Personally...? I've lost money on a number of cars over the years, but they've all been an education that I've learnt from...
Houses, I've been lucky... Took me a Loooooooong time to get on the property ladder, but since doing so I ended up with 45% equity in my first house after only 5yrs (combination of overpaying the mortgage during COVID and a healthy increase in value), and current house has gone up in value by £40k in just 18 months after I challenged the bank's valuation (AND WON!!!) when we remortgaged recently...
Being totally honest, I have very few regrets with money I've actually spent on things... I have regrets about not having earnt more at times, but that's by the by... If pushed, I'd say the worst money I've spent was on Crypto back in 2020 when I was stuck "WFH" but bored with nothing to do... I actually ended up coming out of it about £3k up over all (after having had £10k invested at one point, and being significantly down for some time), but the time, effort and heartache involved to get there probably knocked years off my life, watching the unregulated cluster**** that is crypto unfold in front of my eyes causing 90% of investors to lose all their money so that 10% can make huge gains... Absolutely wasn't worth it... The £3k I made out of crypto, at the time with my given bike trade skills, I could have serviced a load of bikes for people desperate to ride their bikes and made more money for a lot less time and heartache instead... Lesson learnt!
My second wife was called Louise.
Expensive on multiple levels.
£12,000 on a horse for our daughter. Three months later, he got sepsis after a small and seemingly innocuous field injury, had three emergency surgeries and we nearly lost him each time. We hit the insurance claim limit plus another £9,000 on top.
Ooh £350 for a rescue dog, 6 weeks later she got ill, 3 days of useless vet investigations before we got to the real vets. The illness and supporting drugs, plus eating 2 tennis balls, on separate occasions, requiring surgical intervention to remove them to prevent bowel blockages. £25k later things eventually settled down, then about another £2k on therapy resolving a lot of the marital problems resulting from it.
However, I love the furry idiot and I'd probably do the same again if I had to, she the best-worst dog ever.
Lottery tickets. Probably thousands of the bloody things over the 30 years it's been going. Most I've won is £140. I've won over £100 three times. Muppet tax.
Lottery tickets. Muppet tax.
On the rare occasions I buy a lucky dip I tell myself it's a charitable donation and will help others. With a lot of luck it might also help me.
£12,000 on a horse for our daughter. Three months later, he got sepsis after a small and seemingly innocuous field injury, had three emergency surgeries and we nearly lost him each time. We hit the insurance claim limit plus another £9,000 on top.
Ooh £350 for a rescue dog, 6 weeks later she got ill, 3 days of useless vet investigations before we got to the real vets. The illness and supporting drugs, plus eating 2 tennis balls, on separate occasions, requiring surgical intervention to remove them to prevent bowel blockages. £25k later things eventually settled down, then about another £2k on therapy resolving a lot of the marital problems resulting from it.
However, I love the furry idiot and I'd probably do the same again if I had to, she the best-worst dog ever.
We hit about £12k on cancer treatment for our previous angel of a black lab. No regrets whatsoever.
Some of the buys I,ve made on eBay have been a bit of a disaster
Many years ago I bought one of the last G5 IMacs for mega money (for me) - 18 months after I bought it they ditched IBM and went with Intel and then almost immediately stopped supporting the old G5s with operating system updates which meant among many other things that Itunes stopped working with my Ipod rendering it unuseable as well. Thanks Apple. ****s
That’s odd, a friend and former work colleague has a G5 Mac tower that was mine at our former place of work, back in the early 2000’s. He managed to sneak it out after the actions of a third party forced the place into receivership, along with the entire tape backup system. He continues to get enquiries from former customers for print files in QarkExpress, Photoshop, etc, and that machine continues to function perfectly well. There’s no reason for iTunes to stop working, a mate has been through three iMacs, one after a lightning strike fried all of his computer and hifi gear, he started with the anglepoise Mac, now has a fairly recent iMac, has been using iTunes for years, and apart from a few changes, still has all of the files that he started with, and hasn’t had any significant issues. Sounds like a you problem, not an Apple problem.
I had two Sony mobile phones, the charging ports were completely different and incompatible a couple of years apart, and Sony have been one of the worst companies for proprietary software and connectivity.
After getting a Nokia N95, after reading glowing reviews, it turned out to be a complete heap of garbage - a 5mp camera that couldn’t focus on a bike six feet away, an internet connection that kept demanding Flash be installed, when Adobe never, ever made a working mobile version of Flash, its GPS system would only work with the phone slide open, so an extra GPS unit was required to use with the phone closed, all the connections were non-standard, like 2.5mm Jack plugs…
So when the iPhone 3G came out, I got one. I now have a 17ProMax, and I’ve never had any issues with connectivity with any of the previous versions - 4/5/6/11/12/15ProMax/16ProMax/17ProMax…
I’ve still got a couple of 32-pin cables, a number of Lightning cables, one is used with my 6 year old iPad Pro, which is what I’m using now.
Honestly, iPhones used to come with cables and a charger in the box, they still come with a cable in the damned box! 😖
Probably the VW T6.1 California sat on my drive now. Seeing as I've been told we are not doing weekends away it's a lot of money to shuffle bikes around. One of us bought into an idea and the reality is different....
MOT / TüV in August then it's back to the VW Caddy.
Probably the VW T6.1 California sat on my drive now. Seeing as I've been told we are not doing weekends away it's a lot of money to shuffle bikes around. One of us bought into an idea and the reality is different....
I also have a wife who doesn't particularly like a VW camper.
I'll probably not lose quite as much money as the (already 3 years old when I bought it, so was hoping that someone else had taken the big hit) Land Rover Discovery 5. Paid strong money for it as it was probably the best specced one I'd ever seen and prices were high anyway. The inflated prices decided to take a dip the second I had the keys and keeping it for a year (not including servicing, insurance, RFL and fuel) cost me £18k
A Landrover Lightweight which had a 3.5 litre V8 engine shoehorned into it. Great fun when it went but much of the time it didn't.
Many years ago I bought one of the last G5 IMacs for mega money (for me) - 18 months after I bought it they ditched IBM and went with Intel and then almost immediately stopped supporting the old G5s with operating system updates which meant among many other things that Itunes stopped working with my Ipod rendering it unuseable as well. Thanks Apple. ****s.
is this a false memory?
The internet says apple discontinued the G5 in March 2006, the first OS that is wouldn't run was released in August 2009 and it got security updates until 2011. So you should have had full OS updates for 5 years (which IME was a pretty good life for a computer back then) and iTunes/iPod link shouldn't have broken in any case.
I've been told we are not doing weekends away it's a lot of money to shuffle bikes around
Cant you go out on your own? Weekenders riding further afield.
I bought a Microsoft OS mobile. To be fair it worked really well and was actually a nice os. Then they pulled out unreasonably quickly and it eventually died a death. Probably no sooner than expected but..
I bought some herbs to smoke that really was marjoram
A rite of passage.
American friend paid 20 quid for a Black Jack (one of the big 2p ones, mind) once ... but he'd never seen either hash or Black Jacks so he wasn't to know.
I bought a Microsoft OS mobile. To be fair it worked really well and was actually a nice os. Then they pulled out unreasonably quickly and it eventually died a death. Probably no sooner than expected but..
I bought a Microsoft fitness band. I think I got version 2 cheap because they were just about to release version 3. Then, MS abandoned the wearables market and scrapped version 3 - they had apparently manufactured them and had them ready to ship, but had them all destroyed. My one worked fine until they ended support, then it was just useless junk. At least I didn't pay full price, I guess.
I think the horse wins
But on a similar level
A friends dad spent £50k on this dream yacht for retirement, this was when that was proper money. He spent £3k a year for at least 10 years on moorings. I’ll health meant he never sailed it. I mean not even once. She eventually managed to give it away
The two best days in a boat owners life are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.
I was reading the thread trying to think of my worst purchase decision.
I think the horse wins
But on a similar level
A friends dad spent £50k on this dream yacht
I mean technically they haven’t been my purchases, but…horses. “We’ve” had four, three have resulted in significant and occasionally eye watering vet bills, and three never really got going with the intended job in hand (eventing). So the current one has switched to showjumping.
I’ve always joked that if we ever stop having a horse, I want a yacht…
But they keep my wife happy. I’m strongly of the opinion that pretty much any horse publicly advertised is either broken, or a fruitloop requiring a professional rider to actually get round a course successfully, irrespective of its competitive record. Anything that is half decent would sell to a friend of a friend via word of mouth fairly easily!
£5.5k on paypal credit card for IVF, 2nd attempt after the failed free one. Same place and the same well thumbed **** mags.
15 years later and he has cost me a fortune, on going also.
Horses eh.
Vet gives horse a routine vacination. Vet's lousy technique means a germ goes in with the needle and the injection site turns into a huge infected boil. Now you'd think that having ****ed up the vet might be inclined to sort things out for free. No chance, another eye-watering bill.
But they keep my wife happy
Which is the best money you'll spend so we're in the wrong thread.
Buying a horse is like buying a second-hand car, except for the test drive. So here I am on a horse I've just met on a borrowed saddle, no air bag and I really need to know if this thing: 1/ is going to try and get rid of me 2/ can be stopped once I've got it going 3/ leaps sideways at the sight of a pile of stones 4/ bites, headbutts or kicks shit out of anything within range 5/ goes where pointed 6/ will continue to go if faced with a manhole cover/jump/puddle/river/bus/combine harvester/bin men/quad/mtb 7/ can be caught 8/ will get in the horse box 10/ will do anything at all without its mates from the herd. Current one scored 8 and a bit, we bought her, she's lovely. As with dogs I've noted people buy horses similar to themselves.
