Okay, I will take a stab. I have tried to live my life having the goal of no regrets but I have made my share of mistakes.
1. I regret taking chemistry my first semester of college. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have lost my scholarship and that would have saved me 20k in student loans.
2. I regret not discussing money issues with husband before marrying. If I had, I would have discovered that my husband didn't really know anything about personal finances and we could have saved ourselves at least 10k of credit card debt, if not more.
3. I regret that we expanded to fill our income and then some when we moved out here. Its as if I forgot everything I already knew about money simply because I suddenly had more of it.
4. I regret that I didn't restart my retirement savings until last year. Poor financial decisions on my part resulted in my retirement savings starting over at age 26 when originally I had started at age 23.
5. I regret that I have a spender mentality. I am not sure why I have a spender mentality but its definitely been something I have had to work around.
6. I regret not trying to talk my friend out of buying a car at a dealership on her own. I have paid dearly (enough to buy a decent car outright) for her mistake because I wasn't actually willing to let her lose her apartment and wreck her credit further. While she still probably would have bought a car, I might have convinced her to pay attention to the total cost instead of focusing solely on the monthly payment.
7. I regret that I didn't realize immediately that my husband was incapable of telling me no. Simply being aware of this fact would have made me examine his side of the finances more closely. Now I know to interrogate my husband if I want to do something beyond what is budgeted.
8. I regret never having a written down budget until this past year. I always tried to keep monthly bills low but never had an overall plan.
9. In relation to number 8, I regret never having saved up for my really big ticket items. Its only been in the past year that I have actually saved in advance instead of taking a couple of months to pay off the financing. While I never paid a lot in interest, it was still a very bad habit to get into and lead to higher debt in the long run.
10. I regret that I let my obsession with food consume so much of our disposable income. I don't even want to consider how much money we have spent on food over the past 7 years together. I will never stop being obsessed with food but I can restrict it to a reasonable portion of our income.
10 Things I Regret
May 20th, 2008 at 09:36 pm
May 21st, 2008 at 12:33 pm 1211373205
I'm not going to lie. If I was well, well beyond my needed means, I'd be spending too. For now, I am learning to work around my spending habits too....
May 21st, 2008 at 03:42 pm 1211384579