Can always take the Reddit approach.
Get married at Council offices, 2 witnesses, plain clothes, meal afterwards.
BEST WEDDING EVER, ANYONE THAT SPENDS MORE THAN £500 IS AN IDIOT!!
Edit: /s because some people appear to be taking me seriously...
Oh we used to dream of imagining food at our wedding! We kept it modest though, we thought back to the last thing we ate, for no more than a few seconds, and got on with our day like it was any other.
You had access to trees?! Sounds like a cushy countryside existence you had there. We could only stare into space, or as a treat close our eyes (for a bit). But we were grateful for that and anyone who does any more than that is wasting their money
Space? And closing your eyes? You must've been extremely well off. We could do nothing but exist, an empty void around us, but we were so grateful for that and it's perfect as long as we have eachother, anything else would be unnecessary expenses and a complete waste just to show off.
When I got married the missus had to walk up the aisle, uphill both ways. Then we ate glass for a wedding breakfast and had to lick the wedding certs clean with our tongue.
Unironically because of Covid this is more or less how my wedding went.
I wore a suit, and she wore a rather lovely dress (not traditional wedding dress, something more floral) and we had around 10 family and friend present.
Then we went back to our house and had a buffet meal, mostly bought from Morrisons. Cake by a local bakery.
Had a more formal wedding anniversary party a year later with a couple times as many guests and a much bigger budget.
I'd already bought my dress so I insisted on wearing it at the registry office and we still turned up in a fancy car. It was just us and my parents with everyone else on zoom.
But then we went home and just ate kebabs!
We ended up doing it like that as covid just made us sick of waiting.
To be honest that sounds like a great approach, even now.
Takes the stress and nerves out of the actual wedding, not fretting about things going wrong or having to be perfect.
Then just a big party in a year with friends.
South Asian weddings are typically lavish extended affairs with hundreds of guests (slowly changing). I’ve always told my mum if I ever get married , it will be to a girl who agrees to just get married on the beach. Fish and chips and some donuts
I got married and did it on a very low budget, i think less than than £500 (Asda used to sell wedding dresses).
It wasn't the wedding itself that wasted a lot of money rather the following 4 years of being married to someone who always took and never paid back in that cost me.
I am also aware everything was and still is my fault.
When my husband proposed to me he did the traditional thing of asking my dad first. My dad said yes but told him not to buy me an engagement ring because we should be buying a house (2008, house prices on the floor). My dad was right, but it still stings that I was shafted out of my shiny ring moment because of my own father.
(Been married 11 years, still no engagement ring)
I never had an engagement ring, but I got an eternity ring when I gave birth to our Son. The for our Silver Wedding 3 years ago I was given a stubbing emerald ring - it’s all the more special as it was designed and made by our Niece! ❤️❤️
The funny thing is that getting married is almost always the best financial decision you'll ever make. There are very few household expenses that scale linearly with the number of household members. Getting married cuts your individual liability for most bills in half.
Marriage vastly reduces your risk exposure though. I'd be very concerned about making a big joint purchase like a house or a car without an ironclad guarantee that the other person can't just run off with it or leave me paying for it alone.
Well, there is inheritance tax.
And all that stuff about being recognised as next of kin when it comes to deciding to turn the machine off.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/
Same. I was never taught well with money and my parents were never good with money management (something which I learned later in life). The amount of money I've wasted over the years due to not saving and getting fines on CCs etc is staggering.
Never had access to credit in my 20s, and while I resented it at the time, looking at the state some of my friends are in in our mid 30s has me being quietly thankful.
Even if I have £0.00 in my accounts, I’m technically _still_ better off than a lot of people I know. I have zero debts.
At that age I can remember people not eating properly for a couple of days before payday. Then, as soon as they got paid they were out on the town and buying new trainers. I remember thinking "Haven't you learnt anything?"
People didn't use credit cards as much back then so people didn't spend what they hadn't got. I can see how these days, people get into thousands of debt.
I discovered I had ADHD in my 30s lol, so that answered a lot of things including why I was forgetful and kept putting things like setting up a DD off. It really changed for me in the last few years though when I realised I needed to buy my own home.
I set up a LISA with moneybox and maxed it out every year as soon as I could and I couldn't touch the money without a hefty 25% fine, so that put me off from ever taking any out. I also moved to Starling bank where they have 'Spaces', basically like little side accounts you can put money in every month or so so it compartmentalises everything, for example, I have an "MOT" space where I put £20 in every month automatically so when my MOT is due I have £220 ready to go towards it.
Same, went completely off the rails for a few years and somehow acquired £12k in credit card debt by 24. Approached Stepchange because I couldn’t deal with the multiple phone calls an hour, multiple letters a day and constant feeling of dread anymore.
A couple years later and I’ve paid half off and planning to be debt free next year thanks to a new job. Maybe get one letter a year from my creditors because they deal with Stepchange now and never get phone calls. They all but one (the worst one) defaulted but that’s the bed I made, the defaults won’t be on my report forever.
Anyone reading this I recommend Stepchange, apply for breathing space be honest with them and see what your best steps are, problems don’t solve themselves.
Same here at 51 I'm still useless with money, although I make sure that my bills are paid. My parents never taught me anything about money. I didn't make the same mistake with my own daughter. She has savings, a credit card that she pays off in full every month, knows that when she has money that to put some aside in her savings and no piss it all up the wall. That I'm am totally grateful for.
Yeah I was the same all through uni and into my twenties. Didn’t deal with debt, stuck my head in the sand and paid a lot of money out in overdraft charges and late payment fees. Messed up my credit score for a few years too.
My husband had a lot of credit cards in his twenties but always managed to make the payments, though they did end up swallowing up a lot of his wage. By the time we got together we’d both learned the hard lessons of money management so have always been very careful about loans and credit cards. We have one credit card and one store card between us now.
When I left school at 16 I did odd jobs to make some money. One of them was strimming nettles at a business park. I spent an hour doing it and thought I'd done a fine job.
The next day my boss told me I'd smashed almost every window in an office block along the way. The building was behind me and I had ear defenders on. I literally had no idea and was quite impressed how accurate those stones were 😅
Same happened to us, about 3 days into the first lockdown. So the glass makers weren't making glass unless it was a super emergency. So we had to cover it with basically sticky back plastic until they started up again (luckily just one side of the double glazing had shattered and as it was safety glass it stayed in place).
I paid a monthly direct debit of £14 to protect my tumble drier for about 5 years. Over that time I could have bought 4 tumble driers for the amount I paid. So I cancelled it, and my tumble drier broke down 5 months later
Our tumble dryer has broken about 3 times now. They're remarkably simple machines and thus really easy to fix (assuming it's not a heat pump dryer)
Usually it's one of three things: The impeller, the jog wheel, or the capacitor. Costs about £15 for a spare part, and 30 minutes of your time following a Youtube tutorial.
Those protection payments are a total scam. Appliances already come with warranties, and Sales of Goods Act covers the rest when those are inadequate. Argos are the worst for trying to push those payments, it's just a way to take advantage of people who aren't aware of their consumer rights.
Argos was the worst. Worked there at 16 it was insane how much pressure the staff were under to sell these ridiculous Argos cards and insurances for a £20 toaster. A manager stood behind me for my 6 hour shift watching me process every payment and eventually let me go for not asking a customer if he wanted to spread his £13 Lego set over 18 months of easy, interest free payments. Also boxing day there is literally the worst hell I've ever endured, lines out the door to return toys from 8am to 6pm
Was on holiday at a restaurant, looked at the wine list and ordered a bottle of red. The waiter asked 3 times if I was sure.
Drank the wine, got the bill. I thought I'd ordered a £30ish bottle.
It was £150.
That's painful.
To be fair to the waiter, asking if you were sure three times, if he had pointed out the price specifically it might have been seen as negative remark to the customer as in an assumption that the customer doesn't appear to be someone who would normally purchase such an expensive bottle of wine.
I think he was probably trying to be polite as possible.
Oh, I agree. Most bottles were around £30-50.
It was totally my fault for mis-reading and I do believe he was trying to stop me making a silly mistake!
IMO beyond about £20 wine doesn't get *better* per se - it just gets *different* \- It's about knowing where it came from, appreciating the small growers and nuances of taste produced by certain grapes grown in certain areas.
I say this not as someone who likes expensive wine, but as someone who has tried it - and much like yourself not really appreciated the extra expense.
It's kinda the same with most food and drinks. You have cheap shit which tastes awful, then the normal nice stuff, and then you have stuff thats just as nice but is unusual or took a lot of man hours to craft.
On the flip side to this , we were in Barbados and getting lunch at the beach. The prices were crazy expensive, so we restricted ourselves to just one drink each and a small lunch. When we came to pay, we realised that (obviously) the menu prices were Caribbean dollars, not US dollars, as we had thought!
God you've just reminded me of a time I went into a random Scottish pub while hiking in the rain and spent £78 on a wagyu steak because I though the 7 was a 1. It wasn't crossed and the handwritten chalk looked like a 1 to me. When I ordered it, the chef said "good girl!" And I was confused, but it slowly dawned on me as it was cooking.
Everything else on the menu was between £12-16. It was so out of place.
Oh you reminded me of a time I was at an all you can eat sushi bar and ordered the plum wine as my GF seemed to be intrigued by it. I thought it would be like £15 or something but nope. It was £65, for the equivalent or 4 little shots each served in this stupid vase. This was 2018. (The all you can eat entry cost was £18 so I thought there's no way drinks would be that much)
I signed up for BT Broadband after being cold called for a great deal. They didn't set up my Direct Debit and I didn't notice. Fast forward three months and I get an email saying my internet is gonna be cut off. Called them up and they told me that I needed to pay what I owed, plus a few hundred pounds late fees. They also closed my account, but there were 21 months left on my contract, so I would either have to pay out the rest of my contract or sign up again. The deal that I originally signed up for was no longer available and the new rate was twice as much.
Edit: Thanks for your advice everyone. When I get some time in the next few days I'll try and dig up as much info as I can from my emails and data requests and see what I can do.
That seems like a them problem. I had something similar with a sofa I bought on 0%. Had all the paperwork saying what the payment schedule was and the exact date of the final payment. A bit after that date I cancelled the DD through my online banking.
Fast forward a few months, I had debt collectors saying I owed like £100 plus fees. Turns out SCS didn't start taking payments until 3 months after they stated on their schedule. Fuming.
It’s not. It’s mine. But giving you a payment schedule with specific dates then delaying for three months is a bit shitty. It’s not like they said the 19th and took it on the 22nd.
Unfortunately not. It’s a you problem for not checking your direct debit was coming out. Same thing happened to me with EON and now my parents with SSE. I went to the ombudsman with mine and didn’t win.
BT are Shit, they did a similar "error" with me when I was a student. I now work in IT and I cancel any BT contract my employers have and move to a competitor ASAP in every new job. I've cost those bastards 100's of thousands of Pounds over the last 13 years of my career, maybe millions
providing internet to our offices, fuck you BT contact not renewed move to a competitor. providing MPLS services to our US office, fuck you BT we are moving to a competitor. BT providing the corporate mobile phone contracts! well guess what, fuck you BT we are moving to a competitor. its frustrating that BT control a large part of the physical internet infrastructure in the UK, if you can move to an independent ISP. Gigaclear are great but slowing degrading their service :(
BT switched me to paying three months in advance with no permission. I called multiple times to tell them that it was not acceptable and I was repeatedly told that's the normal way to pay for the internet. They had zero understanding and were pretty forceful about getting their money.
I wouldn't use them if it were free.
Once I rang up to a radio competition that was offering £6,000 for the summer. I was a supply teacher at the time so that would have been useful. All I had to do was pick up the phone.
I was working a long supply contract in a school, and constantly checking my phone (even though this was slightly against the rules). I had a good feeling and since it was the last week of term, there's no harm in jumping in the supply cupboard right?
Well a snot nosed child whose face will always be imprinted in my memory asked me a daft question about turtles. Rather than tell him to get back to whatever it was he should have been doing, I entertained him with a daft answer. I'm sure the conversation couldn't have lasted more than 30 seconds.
I checked my phone. Missed call. Rang back. Nothing. Googled number. Bauer media, the owners of the radio station. I was absolutely livid.
Put on the ringer?
Unless your misses or mum rings you seven times a day to ask your opinion on drapes versus curtains, I see no issue with a phone making a noise.
If any of the snot nose kids grass you, say it's a new phone and you haven't figured out how to turn the ringer off.
Had a few days around Scandinavia, got my work holidays wrong and booked the flights for a wrong day.
Cost me about £100 to reschedule, not the end of the world but really annoying when I’m normally excellent at things like this. Complacency and nothing else.
I did this. I put in two dates on sky scanner, one out and one back. London to Edinburgh. Moved the return flight forward one day and didn't realise this automatically (or used to) moved the outbound flight forward a day too.
Turned up to the flight a day early. Scanned the ticket on the security gate and it said 'wrong day'. Fuck.
To be fair to the Ryan Air staff they were actually really good and swapped it very quickly so I could get on the planned flight. Cost 100 quid but I didn't really have an option.
15 years ago or so I went into the back of another car. Totally my fault.
I hadn't been driving all that long and was making shit money so was terrified of insurance excess and rocketing premiums so I swapped details with the other driver and said I'd pay for the damages (there really wasn't any to their car) after they got it assessed.
Next day he called me and said a figure that I thought was pretty high. I actually worked in the automotive industry at the time so asked him to tell me what parts he needed and I could probably get them far cheaper. He told me and I went and asked our procurement team to price them up. Turns out that car didn't even have the part he told me was damaged. That was red flag number 1.
I also asked to come over and see the damage in the light of day. He said the boot was damaged so it was very difficult to close after the accident. I asked if I could try it to see for myself. As I was closing it I noticed him holding the boot lid, intentionally hindering me from closing it! Red flag number 2.
In the end I just lost my patience and said "I'll give you £400 (less than the figure he told me earlier) to stop pissing about, otherwise we go through insurance." while hoping and praying he didn't opt for the insurance option. He immediately agreed. Red flag number 3.
To this day, looking back I dont think he had valid insurance and I kick myself for not just telling him to go fuck himself and giving him my insurance details.
To save money. If for example, the repair costs £75 but your excess is £150 and you’re going to lose your no claims and have your premium go up it makes sense.
If it’s a lot of money or you suspect the other person is pulling a fast one then insurance is the better option.
>To this day, looking back I dont think he had valid insurance and I kick myself for not just telling him to go fuck himself and giving him my insurance details.
He could still claim from you, but of course risks that someone mentions to the police he hasn't got insurance.
Well it didn’t me cost a lot, but I signed up to something without using the 10% discount code I’d carefully tracked down. There’s £45 I could have spent elsewhere, gone…
My partner was buying a superking mattress for a new bed base a few years ago. I helped him research places and we went to a few shops. Eventually we settled on one and I sent him the link plus discount code as I'd signed up for emails. He promptly bought the mattress without the code which cost him £109 of savings. I was so mad about it. How annoying!! That would have paid for the actual new bedding for his giant bed. Wally.
The window closing mechanism broke on one of my double-glazed windows. Rang up the company that fitted them and was quoted £70 for a replacement. Went to the place to pick it up at the weekend - the person who was there was just minding the office and said "I don't know the price how about £20" - I said like an idiot "Really I was told £70 on the phone".
Well done mate... please was signed and 4 mo ths of renovation done on my end. Absolute worse timing. Cost me about 250k in loss as best estimate. Retirement fund completely fucked. Scraping it back SLOWLY.
Happened to a pizza place a few doors down from me. They are still open so god knows what drugs they are selling, because I have never seen anyone order from them.
I lent £280 to a girlfriend’s best mate so she could make her rent, then split up with the girlfriend about a week later. Never got the money back. That was about 2015 and I think about it a lot.
Should 100% ask for that back, make a joke about it and say if you average the past 8 years of interest rates at an average of 1.21% with compound interest she technically owes you £310 but you'll happily take the £280.
Find it crazy that someone could borrow money and then squirrel away from paying it back like that, sounds like a blessing you don't have to be involved with her because of your ex anymore.
I just got rid of my 2021 financed car that was costing me £650 a month - god knows what I was thinking when I decided to finance it. Absolute money pit!
My gf got a parking ticket in my car. I couldn't drive at the time as I'd just had spinal surgery. I replied to the original notice but wasn't really with it at the time and we moved so it all got lost & I couldn't really remember what happened with the ticket. Fast forward a few years & I was declined credit for a mobile phone. When I checked, I had a CCJ for that parking ticket! Had to get it set aside & pay the fine. Total bill was about £3,500!
It's criminal that a fine is allowed to accrue costs like that, there should be rules against something that costs £30 as a fine spiralling to thousands of pounds in fees.
I went on holiday abroad for 2 weeks. Being a good *new* home owner I remembered to switch all the plugs off before I went, you know, to save energy and to stop any electrical fires. Came back after my lovely relaxing 2 weeks holiday to a house that stunk of rotting food. Everything in the fridge and freezer was rotting away and there was a massive puddle of water that had ruined the floor and the kick boards and skirting boards.
This I don't get. When the power goes out my first worry/thought is always the stuff that is in my fridge/freezer. I'm super paranoid about that even if there is a blackout that last just a few minutes.
Do people think their freezer/fridge will keep stuff cooled for weeks and it will be fine? Do they forget their fridge/freezer needs electricity at all? Do they forget fridge/freezers are a thing?
Making sure nothing is gonna spoil when I'm gone is always a bit of a hassle going into a long holiday. So I guess the fact other people don't worry about that kind of stuff surprises me. Emptying out the fridge of all perishables usually takes quite a bit of planning on my end.
Went to university when I was 18 without really knowing why, or without really knowing what I wanted to study.
Officially lasted the first semester.
Unofficially I went to two lectures, claimed my bursaries and student loans and then didn't go again.
Paid back the bursaries and living allowances then spent the next decade paying off the tuition fees for the 2 lectures I sat through.
My partner does this with freezer door. It annoys the F out of me because I buy all the food. Our freezer is old, you cant just swing the door and it closes, you have to make sure its closed. He'll forget and I come home to our freezer door open and the chicken in there just internal screaming.
On a Sunday afternoon I had been digging part of the lawn up and I didn’t check for any stones before I then mowed the lawn.
As a result I caught a stone and shattered the glass of the back door (one of those French doors which is a whole window).
Had to call a guy out to fix it - cost me about £1,500 overall due to it being late on a Sunday.
Bleak.
I actually agree with you. It was a stag night in the city that I was invited to by a work colleague and it was someone else's bright idea to visit the strip club when they called us over and let us in for free. As soon as we entered, I was taken by the hand by a stripper and lead to the basement to a room where I received a lap dance. At the same time, she kept getting my wallet out of my pocket, but I was too fucked to realise that given her my pin, like an absolute moron. I will be honest and say that I was terrified, I didn't understand exactly what was happening and didn't know what to do. I'm not really a sexual person anyway. I have learning difficulties and a disability that causes me to be vulnerable without realising it, which is why friends usually look after me on a night out.
Booked a conference and paid for everything outright, including ticket and hotel, only to realise it was on a train strike day and I had no way to get there. Hotel wouldn't refund me, and conference refused to let me attend online unless I paid an additional sum, which I couldn't afford, and work wouldn't reimburse me, which they had said they would, because I wasn't able to attend. Lost out on the whole thing, which totalled about £400.
Always pay on a credit card and reclaim in these situations. I've done it multiple times for work when travel/hotel refuse to refund and have always got the money back.
My mate spent £3k on a 8x12 shed. I was gobsmacked because he's really tight but 15 years later when he sold the house, the shed was in immaculate condition and really solid. Goes to show - buy cheap, buy twice.
People say this a lot but it really isn't true. Buy cheap first and work out if you will use it enough to justify the expensive one. There's loads of examples.
For example, If you're not a professional mechanic why are you buying top of the range tools? You only do a tune up on your car once a year.
Or You go into a hobby and you buy the best kit. You fall out of love with that hobby and now stuck with kit that has depreciated massively or has no value.
By far the worst one that sticks in my head is making a split second decision to try and drive through a flood and getting my car stuck with my engine hydro locked in the middle of a very wet December. 6 cold hours later (obviously no heating) after initially saying they’d be here within the hour, AA finally show up and take it to my local garage, the hilarious part being I was only 5 minutes from my house. Ended up having to rent a trailer and have my dad take it down to another garage to do the engine repair and rebuild, whole thing cost me about 2 grand and a sizeable portion of my sanity. Still can’t drive through a medium sized puddle without getting nervous lol.
When my husband booked our flights over to Lisbon for a kid-free weekend. He'd booked the flight in my maiden name but I had since renewed my passport into my married name. Had to change the ticket at the airport (luckily I noticed just before we went through security). It cost about £100 and the nice lady at the desk said I would be able to apply for a refund but then I lost the receipt while we were away.
A few years ago I was rushing to get to work; it was winter. Opened car and put keys in the ignition to de-ice, went round the other side to put bag etc. on passenger seat. Gust of wind the and driver side door shut and then (for whatever reason Nissan decided to put this in) the doors locked with the keys in the ignition and engine going, everything phone, house keys were in bag now in the passenger seat. Parents were on holiday (they live about 10 minutes from me) ....
It was 6:30am (ish) so I walked over to the local Esso/Tesco and explained what was happening and one of the chaps lent me a phone, called RAC (who I am with) explained and they started by saying they couldn't do anything unless I could supply my customer number, which was in my car, then saying 'well we could call you on your mobile to confirm it's you' ... again phone is locked in car. Eventually they gave me a local emergency mechanic number, which I called and they said they could be with me in about 45 minutes.
Went back to my car, couldn't get in my house and stood about for 45 minutes.. Then got charged £200 for it all
Such an idiot!
I accidentally declared a dangerous/restricted liquid as 5 kg instead of 5 L and had to have a 4 hr meeting with the CAA.
Few hours and £500 later, they were satisfied I won’t make the same mistake again
I did the same thing twice, took out two full freezer loads. I ended up buying a little battery powered alarm that beeps at increasing volumes until two magnets renegade - It really does get quite loud!
Working from home. Bored and horny I signed up to Only Fans, mainly coz I knew someone I had a crush on and was way out of my league did OF, so I wanted to see what I was missing out on.
Couple of days later, work is winding down, i look at my phone and I have dozens of notifications.
"Thank you for subscribing to X model" over and and over again.
Turns out OF security is dog shit and I had been hacked and as my debit card was linked to my account, they spent approx £900 subbing to loads of different models.
I deleted my card from the account and thankfully OF support were extremely helpful and I got all my money back.
Never again will I use OF
I had to get a few lengths of decking and only had my girlfriends car to get them. I knew they would fit if they were fed through the boot and in between the two front seats. On the third one I slid it too fast and went straight through the windscreen, that was a £350 mistake
I took a £7.5k loan out to do a course to be an electrician. It wasn't for me and I tried to cancel it one day after the grace period. I ended up not doing the course and paying about £7k before they let me off the rest.
Believing the Rated People website's claims that they rigorously check the identity of traders on their website and if they have any CCJs against them.
Hired a guy to repaint the front of my old house and do some other things. Turned out to be a cowboy and rogue trader. Address details were false. Name was false. Rated People's only response was that they just introduced him as a contact and washed their hands of the matter.
A few months later I discovered the guy was back on Rated People using another false name and address.
Fitted an outside tap at the back of our property.
Used a premade kit to do so.
The only place to tap into the current water supply was under the bath, which is upstairs.
I connected it up and ran a hose from the connector under the bath to the garden tap. Tacked it all the wall. Insulated it.
It worked a treat for approx 2 years...
Then one night I'm laying in bed and can hear an odd noise. I fucking laid there thinking how weird. What is that. I finally went to investigate and to my horror it was the sound of very high pressure water going absolutely everywhere in my bathroom, from under the bath.
I ran downstairs to turn the water supply off only to be met with a sight I won't ever forget. It was simply raining, like a storm. In my living room.. pc, TV, couch everything drenched.
The water tap kit came with a Plastic hose fitting. Not a metal one. The plastic I assume had turned brittle and snapped.
That was an expensive mistake I still have flashbacks to and it was years ago!
It's not a massive thing but getting a speeding fine - it was a genuine mistake - the road opened up as it left a village into a wide rural road. I don't drive that way very often, it was dark and raining so I wasn't really looking out for the signs, and for some reason I thought it had changed to national speed limit, when it was still 30. There was a police speed camera van waiting over the brow of the hill, clearly they catch a few people there. I would never deliberately drive at 45 in a 30 but apparently that's what I was doing. I was too far over the limit for the speed awareness course so I had to pay a £100 fine and take 3 points, and therefore have higher insurance premiums for a few years...
Went into the back of a lorry yesterday which had to brake hard as the car in front of it braked hard to turn right. I was breaking but not quick enough. £1500 of damage in a split second.
If u can't brake faster than a lorry there's a bit more to this unless your brakes are made of butter, were u speeding, too close, distracted or all the above?
Some of the newer lorries have incredible brakes, a moment of distraction and following just a little too close and you could easily end up in the arse of a truck, still doesn't get away from the fact you should always give enough space for an emergency stop, been there done that myself and I hold my hands up to it
My 2010 car went in for MOT and failed. I told them to do the necessary work without asking the cost, thinking it would be like £200. It came to £900 and the car was only worth £1000 by that point. I sold it back to the same place a few months later for money off a new one. Not the worst thing in the world but kicked myself for ages afterwards.
Investing in a new franchise and trusting the franchisor.
He stole money in more ways than I could have imagined. Probably ended up costing our marriage.
Bought a house, the solicitor/conveyancer left the garden off of the deal...
The solicitor denied responsibility 'how would we know'
3 years later and it still isn't sorted, it's with the legal ombudsman, it's a fucking nightmare. It looks like I will end up out of pocket significantly.
I bought a new (to me) car a couple of months ago, and the key fob wasn't in the best shape: spring knackered and it's starting to come apart - I figured 'ehh' and I'd get a replacement; turns out a new fob is £350
I got talked into having my name as the main driver on a car hire agreement in the Netherlands with a "friend" but wasn't actually going to be driving. We needed a debit card for the deposit and my friend didn't have a working card at that time. We had initially agreed to only a week's hire, but my friend ended up holding onto it for longer, at my expense. My friend accumulated over £3000 worth of fines over a month and these were paid by me as the named driver (my friend refused to pay them even though he was the one driving). And that was before the car got stolen and I got lumped with the E17,000 bill to replace it.
I don't know why the car company sent me the bill, I got a lawyer to write them a letter explaining how unfair this all was on me and managed to get the request written off. I still had to pay a good sum for the legal fees though.
Lived with my uncle for a bit and bought a motorcycle. When I moved out, he said he’d sell it for me.
Fella he sold it to didn’t register the vehicle or declare it SORN, so was sitting untaxed for a few years.
A couple of years later he tells me he opened a letter addressed to me, and there’s a warrant out for my arrest due to an unpaid fine 😂.
Cost me £2,500 to sort that out.
I switched my car's odometer to kilometres. No particular reason, just felt like being a bit more metric. Only the MOT mechanics didn't notice (seems fair, as they probably don't see many kilometre users) and recorded the kilometre number as mileage 2-3 years running, and I didn't spot the errors.
I was informed of this when I went to sell the car, at which point the "mileage discrepancy" knocked about £300 off the price.
A few lessons were learned.
Getting married; not once, but twice because I'm stupid like that.
I'm not a lad, I'm a soft-hearted female who let my first ex (20 years) keep all our savings and retirement (we didn't own a home), and my second ex (11 years) keep the house (which was fair because it was his before we married) without asking for fair-value compensation for all of the money I poured into it (which was not fair because I invested a lot of money in that house).
If there is a third time, someone come find me and put me out of my misery because I will have lost my mind.
Didn't read the UK visa requirements close enough. Spent 6k to learn that the US was not a commonwealth. Made it over anyway, the best decision I ever made.
Three related mistakes:
1. going into the back of a car at about 1mph at a roundabout
2. Actually having the decency to stop and swap insurance details despite literally zero damage done to car, which allowed the lady to make a claim
3. Forgetting about this incident when applying for the following year's car insurance, leading to them finding out and insurance getting cancelled
now whenever im in the market for insurance I have to tick the 'have you ever had insurance cancelled?' box which adds probably a few hundred onto my insurance every year forever.
Thanks Karen, hope you fixed your imaginary scratch
GETTING MARRIED AM I RIGHT LADS
Can always take the Reddit approach. Get married at Council offices, 2 witnesses, plain clothes, meal afterwards. BEST WEDDING EVER, ANYONE THAT SPENDS MORE THAN £500 IS AN IDIOT!! Edit: /s because some people appear to be taking me seriously...
A meal? We just ate some crisps in the street because we’re so different and not like everyone else.
Crisps? Pfff back when we got married we just looked at the menu and imagined eating the food. Those were the days, we had nothing, but we were happy.
A menu? Lah-dee-fucking-dah. We imagined what we were given. And glad of it
Oh we used to dream of imagining food at our wedding! We kept it modest though, we thought back to the last thing we ate, for no more than a few seconds, and got on with our day like it was any other.
Pah! Memories, we never had time for memories. We just used to stare blankly at trees, but we were grateful for what we had.
You had access to trees?! Sounds like a cushy countryside existence you had there. We could only stare into space, or as a treat close our eyes (for a bit). But we were grateful for that and anyone who does any more than that is wasting their money
Space? And closing your eyes? You must've been extremely well off. We could do nothing but exist, an empty void around us, but we were so grateful for that and it's perfect as long as we have eachother, anything else would be unnecessary expenses and a complete waste just to show off.
This is why I love Reddit I’ve enjoyed reading every single response in this little chain 😭😭
>We could do nothing but exist Check out Mr money bags being able to exist! I'm just a figment of your imagination.
Indeed. If I'd closed my eyes I'd have been involuntary married off to the nearest incel.
Luxury!
They just served us hot gravel and then sawed us in half with a chainsaw
*Hot* gravel!? Bloody 'ell, imagine that...
When I got married the missus had to walk up the aisle, uphill both ways. Then we ate glass for a wedding breakfast and had to lick the wedding certs clean with our tongue.
Unironically because of Covid this is more or less how my wedding went. I wore a suit, and she wore a rather lovely dress (not traditional wedding dress, something more floral) and we had around 10 family and friend present. Then we went back to our house and had a buffet meal, mostly bought from Morrisons. Cake by a local bakery. Had a more formal wedding anniversary party a year later with a couple times as many guests and a much bigger budget.
I'd already bought my dress so I insisted on wearing it at the registry office and we still turned up in a fancy car. It was just us and my parents with everyone else on zoom. But then we went home and just ate kebabs! We ended up doing it like that as covid just made us sick of waiting.
To be honest that sounds like a great approach, even now. Takes the stress and nerves out of the actual wedding, not fretting about things going wrong or having to be perfect. Then just a big party in a year with friends.
Wouldn't want to waste any of that £190k junior level software engineer wage that we're all earning, amirite.
*goes back to r/relationships to continue telling people to divorce their partner because the use a soup spoon to eat their cereal*
South Asian weddings are typically lavish extended affairs with hundreds of guests (slowly changing). I’ve always told my mum if I ever get married , it will be to a girl who agrees to just get married on the beach. Fish and chips and some donuts
I got married and did it on a very low budget, i think less than than £500 (Asda used to sell wedding dresses). It wasn't the wedding itself that wasted a lot of money rather the following 4 years of being married to someone who always took and never paid back in that cost me. I am also aware everything was and still is my fault.
Weeeeeeeyyyyy OOOOOH OOOOH OOOOH!!!!!
When my husband proposed to me he did the traditional thing of asking my dad first. My dad said yes but told him not to buy me an engagement ring because we should be buying a house (2008, house prices on the floor). My dad was right, but it still stings that I was shafted out of my shiny ring moment because of my own father. (Been married 11 years, still no engagement ring)
I never had an engagement ring, but I got an eternity ring when I gave birth to our Son. The for our Silver Wedding 3 years ago I was given a stubbing emerald ring - it’s all the more special as it was designed and made by our Niece! ❤️❤️
The funny thing is that getting married is almost always the best financial decision you'll ever make. There are very few household expenses that scale linearly with the number of household members. Getting married cuts your individual liability for most bills in half.
You could just live with your partner and get those same benefits though. The marriage part isn't required.
Marriage vastly reduces your risk exposure though. I'd be very concerned about making a big joint purchase like a house or a car without an ironclad guarantee that the other person can't just run off with it or leave me paying for it alone.
A joint mortgage does that already though, nobody can run off (metaphorically) with a house you half own.
Well, there is inheritance tax. And all that stuff about being recognised as next of kin when it comes to deciding to turn the machine off. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/
Can you explain this like I'm a bloody idiot? I've been married a year and I haven't seen any financial benefits!
Really it’s cohabiting that saves money, not the actual marriage
The wedding wasn't expensive, but the divorce was.
My wife makes more money than I do 🤷🏻♂️ Of course, she also spends most of it.
I'd say poor money management/credit card debt at 18.
Same. I was never taught well with money and my parents were never good with money management (something which I learned later in life). The amount of money I've wasted over the years due to not saving and getting fines on CCs etc is staggering.
Never had access to credit in my 20s, and while I resented it at the time, looking at the state some of my friends are in in our mid 30s has me being quietly thankful. Even if I have £0.00 in my accounts, I’m technically _still_ better off than a lot of people I know. I have zero debts.
At that age I can remember people not eating properly for a couple of days before payday. Then, as soon as they got paid they were out on the town and buying new trainers. I remember thinking "Haven't you learnt anything?" People didn't use credit cards as much back then so people didn't spend what they hadn't got. I can see how these days, people get into thousands of debt.
Could you give an insight on where you went wrong? How did you improve?
I discovered I had ADHD in my 30s lol, so that answered a lot of things including why I was forgetful and kept putting things like setting up a DD off. It really changed for me in the last few years though when I realised I needed to buy my own home. I set up a LISA with moneybox and maxed it out every year as soon as I could and I couldn't touch the money without a hefty 25% fine, so that put me off from ever taking any out. I also moved to Starling bank where they have 'Spaces', basically like little side accounts you can put money in every month or so so it compartmentalises everything, for example, I have an "MOT" space where I put £20 in every month automatically so when my MOT is due I have £220 ready to go towards it.
Same, went completely off the rails for a few years and somehow acquired £12k in credit card debt by 24. Approached Stepchange because I couldn’t deal with the multiple phone calls an hour, multiple letters a day and constant feeling of dread anymore. A couple years later and I’ve paid half off and planning to be debt free next year thanks to a new job. Maybe get one letter a year from my creditors because they deal with Stepchange now and never get phone calls. They all but one (the worst one) defaulted but that’s the bed I made, the defaults won’t be on my report forever. Anyone reading this I recommend Stepchange, apply for breathing space be honest with them and see what your best steps are, problems don’t solve themselves.
Credit cards and shit spending habits. Should have fought more because 2 ccs offered more line of credit when really they shouldn't have
Same here at 51 I'm still useless with money, although I make sure that my bills are paid. My parents never taught me anything about money. I didn't make the same mistake with my own daughter. She has savings, a credit card that she pays off in full every month, knows that when she has money that to put some aside in her savings and no piss it all up the wall. That I'm am totally grateful for.
Yeah I was the same all through uni and into my twenties. Didn’t deal with debt, stuck my head in the sand and paid a lot of money out in overdraft charges and late payment fees. Messed up my credit score for a few years too. My husband had a lot of credit cards in his twenties but always managed to make the payments, though they did end up swallowing up a lot of his wage. By the time we got together we’d both learned the hard lessons of money management so have always been very careful about loans and credit cards. We have one credit card and one store card between us now.
Was using the strimmer and managed to catch a stone just right it flew 20 metres and took out the fullsize glass door.
Ouch. That's the kind of thing that would make me smash the strimmer to pieces.
Then you have to replace the strimmer and cost even more money!
I'm so mad I'm gonna break the hammer I used!
Shame you weren’t recording, that’s a guaranteed £250 on You’ve Been Framed.
I did that with the lawnmower. Looked at door and thought ‘Oh it’s raining..’ then ‘Wait, why’s it only raining on that one panel - ah shit!’.
When I left school at 16 I did odd jobs to make some money. One of them was strimming nettles at a business park. I spent an hour doing it and thought I'd done a fine job. The next day my boss told me I'd smashed almost every window in an office block along the way. The building was behind me and I had ear defenders on. I literally had no idea and was quite impressed how accurate those stones were 😅
Same happened to us, about 3 days into the first lockdown. So the glass makers weren't making glass unless it was a super emergency. So we had to cover it with basically sticky back plastic until they started up again (luckily just one side of the double glazing had shattered and as it was safety glass it stayed in place).
I paid a monthly direct debit of £14 to protect my tumble drier for about 5 years. Over that time I could have bought 4 tumble driers for the amount I paid. So I cancelled it, and my tumble drier broke down 5 months later
Our tumble dryer has broken about 3 times now. They're remarkably simple machines and thus really easy to fix (assuming it's not a heat pump dryer) Usually it's one of three things: The impeller, the jog wheel, or the capacitor. Costs about £15 for a spare part, and 30 minutes of your time following a Youtube tutorial.
Those protection payments are a total scam. Appliances already come with warranties, and Sales of Goods Act covers the rest when those are inadequate. Argos are the worst for trying to push those payments, it's just a way to take advantage of people who aren't aware of their consumer rights.
Argos was the worst. Worked there at 16 it was insane how much pressure the staff were under to sell these ridiculous Argos cards and insurances for a £20 toaster. A manager stood behind me for my 6 hour shift watching me process every payment and eventually let me go for not asking a customer if he wanted to spread his £13 Lego set over 18 months of easy, interest free payments. Also boxing day there is literally the worst hell I've ever endured, lines out the door to return toys from 8am to 6pm
Was on holiday at a restaurant, looked at the wine list and ordered a bottle of red. The waiter asked 3 times if I was sure. Drank the wine, got the bill. I thought I'd ordered a £30ish bottle. It was £150.
That's painful. To be fair to the waiter, asking if you were sure three times, if he had pointed out the price specifically it might have been seen as negative remark to the customer as in an assumption that the customer doesn't appear to be someone who would normally purchase such an expensive bottle of wine. I think he was probably trying to be polite as possible.
Oh, I agree. Most bottles were around £30-50. It was totally my fault for mis-reading and I do believe he was trying to stop me making a silly mistake!
atleast you got to enjoy the wine.
Honestly, it was average to me. I'm no snob and have no idea why a bottle would be that price. It tasted like an £8 bottle from tesco.
The irony being if you knew it was £150 it would have tasted better.
IMO beyond about £20 wine doesn't get *better* per se - it just gets *different* \- It's about knowing where it came from, appreciating the small growers and nuances of taste produced by certain grapes grown in certain areas. I say this not as someone who likes expensive wine, but as someone who has tried it - and much like yourself not really appreciated the extra expense. It's kinda the same with most food and drinks. You have cheap shit which tastes awful, then the normal nice stuff, and then you have stuff thats just as nice but is unusual or took a lot of man hours to craft.
True, but that's £20 wine in a shop. £30 wine in a restaurant is probably about £8 in Tesco.
That happened to a co worker, the clue was when 3 waiters turned up to serve the bottle.
I would like this when I next order the Echo Falls chardonnay
If you'll pay £150 for a £6 bottle of wine, my dining room is open tonight
Discount offer at my place tonight - **TWO £6 BOTTLES for ONLY £250** ?
On the flip side to this , we were in Barbados and getting lunch at the beach. The prices were crazy expensive, so we restricted ourselves to just one drink each and a small lunch. When we came to pay, we realised that (obviously) the menu prices were Caribbean dollars, not US dollars, as we had thought!
Why would they be in US dollars in Barbados and not the local currency?
Because they accept US dollars there, and we just weren't thinking.
God you've just reminded me of a time I went into a random Scottish pub while hiking in the rain and spent £78 on a wagyu steak because I though the 7 was a 1. It wasn't crossed and the handwritten chalk looked like a 1 to me. When I ordered it, the chef said "good girl!" And I was confused, but it slowly dawned on me as it was cooking. Everything else on the menu was between £12-16. It was so out of place.
Oh you reminded me of a time I was at an all you can eat sushi bar and ordered the plum wine as my GF seemed to be intrigued by it. I thought it would be like £15 or something but nope. It was £65, for the equivalent or 4 little shots each served in this stupid vase. This was 2018. (The all you can eat entry cost was £18 so I thought there's no way drinks would be that much)
The drinks is where they make their money.
Bet it wasn’t even proper delicious like hot chocolate or coke
I signed up for BT Broadband after being cold called for a great deal. They didn't set up my Direct Debit and I didn't notice. Fast forward three months and I get an email saying my internet is gonna be cut off. Called them up and they told me that I needed to pay what I owed, plus a few hundred pounds late fees. They also closed my account, but there were 21 months left on my contract, so I would either have to pay out the rest of my contract or sign up again. The deal that I originally signed up for was no longer available and the new rate was twice as much. Edit: Thanks for your advice everyone. When I get some time in the next few days I'll try and dig up as much info as I can from my emails and data requests and see what I can do.
That seems like a them problem. I had something similar with a sofa I bought on 0%. Had all the paperwork saying what the payment schedule was and the exact date of the final payment. A bit after that date I cancelled the DD through my online banking. Fast forward a few months, I had debt collectors saying I owed like £100 plus fees. Turns out SCS didn't start taking payments until 3 months after they stated on their schedule. Fuming.
You didn't read their T&Cs properly *and* failed to notice payment was not withdrawn for 3 months, how is that their fault?
It’s not. It’s mine. But giving you a payment schedule with specific dates then delaying for three months is a bit shitty. It’s not like they said the 19th and took it on the 22nd.
Unfortunately not. It’s a you problem for not checking your direct debit was coming out. Same thing happened to me with EON and now my parents with SSE. I went to the ombudsman with mine and didn’t win.
BT are Shit, they did a similar "error" with me when I was a student. I now work in IT and I cancel any BT contract my employers have and move to a competitor ASAP in every new job. I've cost those bastards 100's of thousands of Pounds over the last 13 years of my career, maybe millions
providing internet to our offices, fuck you BT contact not renewed move to a competitor. providing MPLS services to our US office, fuck you BT we are moving to a competitor. BT providing the corporate mobile phone contracts! well guess what, fuck you BT we are moving to a competitor. its frustrating that BT control a large part of the physical internet infrastructure in the UK, if you can move to an independent ISP. Gigaclear are great but slowing degrading their service :(
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>It was their fault, not yours? You gave correct bank details? Well that's the thing, I have no idea if I did or not because it was ages ago.
BT switched me to paying three months in advance with no permission. I called multiple times to tell them that it was not acceptable and I was repeatedly told that's the normal way to pay for the internet. They had zero understanding and were pretty forceful about getting their money. I wouldn't use them if it were free.
Once I rang up to a radio competition that was offering £6,000 for the summer. I was a supply teacher at the time so that would have been useful. All I had to do was pick up the phone. I was working a long supply contract in a school, and constantly checking my phone (even though this was slightly against the rules). I had a good feeling and since it was the last week of term, there's no harm in jumping in the supply cupboard right? Well a snot nosed child whose face will always be imprinted in my memory asked me a daft question about turtles. Rather than tell him to get back to whatever it was he should have been doing, I entertained him with a daft answer. I'm sure the conversation couldn't have lasted more than 30 seconds. I checked my phone. Missed call. Rang back. Nothing. Googled number. Bauer media, the owners of the radio station. I was absolutely livid.
Omg you’re one of those. My heart sinks for folk when that happens
Put on the ringer? Unless your misses or mum rings you seven times a day to ask your opinion on drapes versus curtains, I see no issue with a phone making a noise. If any of the snot nose kids grass you, say it's a new phone and you haven't figured out how to turn the ringer off.
Had a few days around Scandinavia, got my work holidays wrong and booked the flights for a wrong day. Cost me about £100 to reschedule, not the end of the world but really annoying when I’m normally excellent at things like this. Complacency and nothing else.
I did this. I put in two dates on sky scanner, one out and one back. London to Edinburgh. Moved the return flight forward one day and didn't realise this automatically (or used to) moved the outbound flight forward a day too. Turned up to the flight a day early. Scanned the ticket on the security gate and it said 'wrong day'. Fuck. To be fair to the Ryan Air staff they were actually really good and swapped it very quickly so I could get on the planned flight. Cost 100 quid but I didn't really have an option.
15 years ago or so I went into the back of another car. Totally my fault. I hadn't been driving all that long and was making shit money so was terrified of insurance excess and rocketing premiums so I swapped details with the other driver and said I'd pay for the damages (there really wasn't any to their car) after they got it assessed. Next day he called me and said a figure that I thought was pretty high. I actually worked in the automotive industry at the time so asked him to tell me what parts he needed and I could probably get them far cheaper. He told me and I went and asked our procurement team to price them up. Turns out that car didn't even have the part he told me was damaged. That was red flag number 1. I also asked to come over and see the damage in the light of day. He said the boot was damaged so it was very difficult to close after the accident. I asked if I could try it to see for myself. As I was closing it I noticed him holding the boot lid, intentionally hindering me from closing it! Red flag number 2. In the end I just lost my patience and said "I'll give you £400 (less than the figure he told me earlier) to stop pissing about, otherwise we go through insurance." while hoping and praying he didn't opt for the insurance option. He immediately agreed. Red flag number 3. To this day, looking back I dont think he had valid insurance and I kick myself for not just telling him to go fuck himself and giving him my insurance details.
I don't get why people even bother trying to pay off privately rather than going through insurance. That's what insurance is for.
To save money. If for example, the repair costs £75 but your excess is £150 and you’re going to lose your no claims and have your premium go up it makes sense. If it’s a lot of money or you suspect the other person is pulling a fast one then insurance is the better option.
It *could* be cheaper rather than pay any insurance excess plus 5 years of increased premiums for having to declare the accident. It's guess work.
>To this day, looking back I dont think he had valid insurance and I kick myself for not just telling him to go fuck himself and giving him my insurance details. He could still claim from you, but of course risks that someone mentions to the police he hasn't got insurance.
Well it didn’t me cost a lot, but I signed up to something without using the 10% discount code I’d carefully tracked down. There’s £45 I could have spent elsewhere, gone…
My partner was buying a superking mattress for a new bed base a few years ago. I helped him research places and we went to a few shops. Eventually we settled on one and I sent him the link plus discount code as I'd signed up for emails. He promptly bought the mattress without the code which cost him £109 of savings. I was so mad about it. How annoying!! That would have paid for the actual new bedding for his giant bed. Wally.
Deciding to stop and chat to the cute brunette I met on the staircase at a house party. That ended up costing me about 350K.
Hush money? Lawyers fees?
Marriage and divorce.
I'm sure there were some benefits along the way.
The window closing mechanism broke on one of my double-glazed windows. Rang up the company that fitted them and was quoted £70 for a replacement. Went to the place to pick it up at the weekend - the person who was there was just minding the office and said "I don't know the price how about £20" - I said like an idiot "Really I was told £70 on the phone".
Don’t tell me they had the cheek to charge you the higher price after admitting they don’t know their own prices and offering you the lower price
I wouldn't be writing in this thread if I had paid the lower price😁
Opening a restaurant, launch day was 6 days before covid lockdown and full uk hospitality lockdown. Needless to say I lost a LOT of money
I was drawing up plans to open a small cinema when Covid hit. Really dodged a bullet there
Well done mate... please was signed and 4 mo ths of renovation done on my end. Absolute worse timing. Cost me about 250k in loss as best estimate. Retirement fund completely fucked. Scraping it back SLOWLY.
Happened to a pizza place a few doors down from me. They are still open so god knows what drugs they are selling, because I have never seen anyone order from them.
I lent £280 to a girlfriend’s best mate so she could make her rent, then split up with the girlfriend about a week later. Never got the money back. That was about 2015 and I think about it a lot.
Don’t mean to make this worse but the best mate probably knew it was coming and wouldn’t have to pay you back.
Should 100% ask for that back, make a joke about it and say if you average the past 8 years of interest rates at an average of 1.21% with compound interest she technically owes you £310 but you'll happily take the £280. Find it crazy that someone could borrow money and then squirrel away from paying it back like that, sounds like a blessing you don't have to be involved with her because of your ex anymore.
Ask for it back, go on :)
Bought a new car in 2021
I just got rid of my 2021 financed car that was costing me £650 a month - god knows what I was thinking when I decided to finance it. Absolute money pit!
Jesus what we’re you driving, a tank? £650 😂
Audi RS4. Beautiful car, totally unreliable!
I mean, that's a cracking car. Not for £650 a month tho.
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My gf got a parking ticket in my car. I couldn't drive at the time as I'd just had spinal surgery. I replied to the original notice but wasn't really with it at the time and we moved so it all got lost & I couldn't really remember what happened with the ticket. Fast forward a few years & I was declined credit for a mobile phone. When I checked, I had a CCJ for that parking ticket! Had to get it set aside & pay the fine. Total bill was about £3,500!
It's criminal that a fine is allowed to accrue costs like that, there should be rules against something that costs £30 as a fine spiralling to thousands of pounds in fees.
What a bitch. That was hers to deal with.
Depends on the details. OP admits they can't really remember.
I went on holiday abroad for 2 weeks. Being a good *new* home owner I remembered to switch all the plugs off before I went, you know, to save energy and to stop any electrical fires. Came back after my lovely relaxing 2 weeks holiday to a house that stunk of rotting food. Everything in the fridge and freezer was rotting away and there was a massive puddle of water that had ruined the floor and the kick boards and skirting boards.
This is actually more common then you think my friend. Don't feel bad.
This I don't get. When the power goes out my first worry/thought is always the stuff that is in my fridge/freezer. I'm super paranoid about that even if there is a blackout that last just a few minutes. Do people think their freezer/fridge will keep stuff cooled for weeks and it will be fine? Do they forget their fridge/freezer needs electricity at all? Do they forget fridge/freezers are a thing? Making sure nothing is gonna spoil when I'm gone is always a bit of a hassle going into a long holiday. So I guess the fact other people don't worry about that kind of stuff surprises me. Emptying out the fridge of all perishables usually takes quite a bit of planning on my end.
I did this too, but shut off the main power. The freezer was still sealed, but there were maggoty things in the meat. Worst. Small. Ever!
Your freezer wasn’t sealed if there were maggots. Maggots don’t just appear in rotten meat they need to be laid there.
Went to university when I was 18 without really knowing why, or without really knowing what I wanted to study. Officially lasted the first semester. Unofficially I went to two lectures, claimed my bursaries and student loans and then didn't go again. Paid back the bursaries and living allowances then spent the next decade paying off the tuition fees for the 2 lectures I sat through.
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my gf has a problem closing doors. she's done this a few times with our freezer, and the main door of our house!!
I've threatened to spring-load every door in our house because my wife will leave everything wide open - cupboards, dishwasher, shed, car ...
Dare you to leave the toilet seat up in retaliation.
My partner does this with freezer door. It annoys the F out of me because I buy all the food. Our freezer is old, you cant just swing the door and it closes, you have to make sure its closed. He'll forget and I come home to our freezer door open and the chicken in there just internal screaming.
How does someone fail at something so simple that children can manage? Is he untreated adhd or something
You can get little alarms on Amazon for less than £20. They go off continuously until the door is closed and are pretty loud.
On a Sunday afternoon I had been digging part of the lawn up and I didn’t check for any stones before I then mowed the lawn. As a result I caught a stone and shattered the glass of the back door (one of those French doors which is a whole window). Had to call a guy out to fix it - cost me about £1,500 overall due to it being late on a Sunday. Bleak.
When people see you now do they say that's the chap that blew 1.5k on a Sunday
Becoming an adult
Getting wasted on alcohol and then spending almost £1,000 of money I don't have in a strip club.
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I actually agree with you. It was a stag night in the city that I was invited to by a work colleague and it was someone else's bright idea to visit the strip club when they called us over and let us in for free. As soon as we entered, I was taken by the hand by a stripper and lead to the basement to a room where I received a lap dance. At the same time, she kept getting my wallet out of my pocket, but I was too fucked to realise that given her my pin, like an absolute moron. I will be honest and say that I was terrified, I didn't understand exactly what was happening and didn't know what to do. I'm not really a sexual person anyway. I have learning difficulties and a disability that causes me to be vulnerable without realising it, which is why friends usually look after me on a night out.
Awh this broke my heart, I'm sorry you went through that :(
Boobs
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Thought I was Warren Buffet during the pandemic. Lost a lot of money with stocks/shares that still hangs over me today. Learned a lesson though.
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Booked a conference and paid for everything outright, including ticket and hotel, only to realise it was on a train strike day and I had no way to get there. Hotel wouldn't refund me, and conference refused to let me attend online unless I paid an additional sum, which I couldn't afford, and work wouldn't reimburse me, which they had said they would, because I wasn't able to attend. Lost out on the whole thing, which totalled about £400.
Always pay on a credit card and reclaim in these situations. I've done it multiple times for work when travel/hotel refuse to refund and have always got the money back.
Working two years for a shit crypto company getting paid in their shit crypto and believing the bullshit the owners were telling me.
Name and shame the coin
All of them
bought a cheap shed. really really poor construction given that for about 100 quid more i could have built one myself that would have been solid
My mate spent £3k on a 8x12 shed. I was gobsmacked because he's really tight but 15 years later when he sold the house, the shed was in immaculate condition and really solid. Goes to show - buy cheap, buy twice.
People say this a lot but it really isn't true. Buy cheap first and work out if you will use it enough to justify the expensive one. There's loads of examples. For example, If you're not a professional mechanic why are you buying top of the range tools? You only do a tune up on your car once a year. Or You go into a hobby and you buy the best kit. You fall out of love with that hobby and now stuck with kit that has depreciated massively or has no value.
By far the worst one that sticks in my head is making a split second decision to try and drive through a flood and getting my car stuck with my engine hydro locked in the middle of a very wet December. 6 cold hours later (obviously no heating) after initially saying they’d be here within the hour, AA finally show up and take it to my local garage, the hilarious part being I was only 5 minutes from my house. Ended up having to rent a trailer and have my dad take it down to another garage to do the engine repair and rebuild, whole thing cost me about 2 grand and a sizeable portion of my sanity. Still can’t drive through a medium sized puddle without getting nervous lol.
University.
"You're poor? You should have gone to university. Fucking idiot." "You're poor? You shouldn't have gone to university. Fucking idiot."
When my husband booked our flights over to Lisbon for a kid-free weekend. He'd booked the flight in my maiden name but I had since renewed my passport into my married name. Had to change the ticket at the airport (luckily I noticed just before we went through security). It cost about £100 and the nice lady at the desk said I would be able to apply for a refund but then I lost the receipt while we were away.
A few years ago I was rushing to get to work; it was winter. Opened car and put keys in the ignition to de-ice, went round the other side to put bag etc. on passenger seat. Gust of wind the and driver side door shut and then (for whatever reason Nissan decided to put this in) the doors locked with the keys in the ignition and engine going, everything phone, house keys were in bag now in the passenger seat. Parents were on holiday (they live about 10 minutes from me) .... It was 6:30am (ish) so I walked over to the local Esso/Tesco and explained what was happening and one of the chaps lent me a phone, called RAC (who I am with) explained and they started by saying they couldn't do anything unless I could supply my customer number, which was in my car, then saying 'well we could call you on your mobile to confirm it's you' ... again phone is locked in car. Eventually they gave me a local emergency mechanic number, which I called and they said they could be with me in about 45 minutes. Went back to my car, couldn't get in my house and stood about for 45 minutes.. Then got charged £200 for it all Such an idiot!
I accidentally declared a dangerous/restricted liquid as 5 kg instead of 5 L and had to have a 4 hr meeting with the CAA. Few hours and £500 later, they were satisfied I won’t make the same mistake again
I did the same thing twice, took out two full freezer loads. I ended up buying a little battery powered alarm that beeps at increasing volumes until two magnets renegade - It really does get quite loud!
Annoyingly the fridge part of my fridge/freezer has a beep when the doors been open a few minutes but not the freezer.
Pulled the plane ticket out of my pocket at Stansted only to realise that I'd mistakenly booked to fly from Gatwick.
Working from home. Bored and horny I signed up to Only Fans, mainly coz I knew someone I had a crush on and was way out of my league did OF, so I wanted to see what I was missing out on. Couple of days later, work is winding down, i look at my phone and I have dozens of notifications. "Thank you for subscribing to X model" over and and over again. Turns out OF security is dog shit and I had been hacked and as my debit card was linked to my account, they spent approx £900 subbing to loads of different models. I deleted my card from the account and thankfully OF support were extremely helpful and I got all my money back. Never again will I use OF
I take trading advice from r/wallstreetbets At least I'm entertained by the memes and loss porn.
I had to get a few lengths of decking and only had my girlfriends car to get them. I knew they would fit if they were fed through the boot and in between the two front seats. On the third one I slid it too fast and went straight through the windscreen, that was a £350 mistake
Buying a corner couch that had the corner the wrong way
Having a few beers and deciding to take a rental scooter/bike home, then losing your license over it.
I took a £7.5k loan out to do a course to be an electrician. It wasn't for me and I tried to cancel it one day after the grace period. I ended up not doing the course and paying about £7k before they let me off the rest.
Bought the wrong train ticket resulting in a fine (wrong origin station)
That's shit luck, they're usually fairly lenient and helpful about that, you do get the odd jobsworth though.
Believing the Rated People website's claims that they rigorously check the identity of traders on their website and if they have any CCJs against them. Hired a guy to repaint the front of my old house and do some other things. Turned out to be a cowboy and rogue trader. Address details were false. Name was false. Rated People's only response was that they just introduced him as a contact and washed their hands of the matter. A few months later I discovered the guy was back on Rated People using another false name and address.
Fitted an outside tap at the back of our property. Used a premade kit to do so. The only place to tap into the current water supply was under the bath, which is upstairs. I connected it up and ran a hose from the connector under the bath to the garden tap. Tacked it all the wall. Insulated it. It worked a treat for approx 2 years... Then one night I'm laying in bed and can hear an odd noise. I fucking laid there thinking how weird. What is that. I finally went to investigate and to my horror it was the sound of very high pressure water going absolutely everywhere in my bathroom, from under the bath. I ran downstairs to turn the water supply off only to be met with a sight I won't ever forget. It was simply raining, like a storm. In my living room.. pc, TV, couch everything drenched. The water tap kit came with a Plastic hose fitting. Not a metal one. The plastic I assume had turned brittle and snapped. That was an expensive mistake I still have flashbacks to and it was years ago!
It's not a massive thing but getting a speeding fine - it was a genuine mistake - the road opened up as it left a village into a wide rural road. I don't drive that way very often, it was dark and raining so I wasn't really looking out for the signs, and for some reason I thought it had changed to national speed limit, when it was still 30. There was a police speed camera van waiting over the brow of the hill, clearly they catch a few people there. I would never deliberately drive at 45 in a 30 but apparently that's what I was doing. I was too far over the limit for the speed awareness course so I had to pay a £100 fine and take 3 points, and therefore have higher insurance premiums for a few years...
Went into the back of a lorry yesterday which had to brake hard as the car in front of it braked hard to turn right. I was breaking but not quick enough. £1500 of damage in a split second.
If u can't brake faster than a lorry there's a bit more to this unless your brakes are made of butter, were u speeding, too close, distracted or all the above?
This, I drive a truck and there's no way I'm stopping faster then a car unless the driver of the car isn't paying full attention/braking hard enough
The answer is they were too close. If they can't stop in time at the speed they were going they were too close.
Some of the newer lorries have incredible brakes, a moment of distraction and following just a little too close and you could easily end up in the arse of a truck, still doesn't get away from the fact you should always give enough space for an emergency stop, been there done that myself and I hold my hands up to it
I employed English builders to do a load of work on my house. It was my first home, I was clueless, and they absolutely fleeced me.
What has their nationality got to do with it?
My 2010 car went in for MOT and failed. I told them to do the necessary work without asking the cost, thinking it would be like £200. It came to £900 and the car was only worth £1000 by that point. I sold it back to the same place a few months later for money off a new one. Not the worst thing in the world but kicked myself for ages afterwards.
It's a real problem at the lower end of the car market. Repairs cost an arm and a leg and it's very often not worth it to fix cheap cars anymore
With the way car prices currently are, it's becoming a lot more sensible to just stomach the cost to repair the car
Parking ticket, thought the car park was still 2 hour but is now 90 minutes... £60
Investing in a new franchise and trusting the franchisor. He stole money in more ways than I could have imagined. Probably ended up costing our marriage.
Bought a house, the solicitor/conveyancer left the garden off of the deal... The solicitor denied responsibility 'how would we know' 3 years later and it still isn't sorted, it's with the legal ombudsman, it's a fucking nightmare. It looks like I will end up out of pocket significantly.
I bought a new (to me) car a couple of months ago, and the key fob wasn't in the best shape: spring knackered and it's starting to come apart - I figured 'ehh' and I'd get a replacement; turns out a new fob is £350
Having kids.
I got talked into having my name as the main driver on a car hire agreement in the Netherlands with a "friend" but wasn't actually going to be driving. We needed a debit card for the deposit and my friend didn't have a working card at that time. We had initially agreed to only a week's hire, but my friend ended up holding onto it for longer, at my expense. My friend accumulated over £3000 worth of fines over a month and these were paid by me as the named driver (my friend refused to pay them even though he was the one driving). And that was before the car got stolen and I got lumped with the E17,000 bill to replace it.
Wait, why do you have to pay for the car being stolen, don't the hire company have insurance?
I don't know why the car company sent me the bill, I got a lawyer to write them a letter explaining how unfair this all was on me and managed to get the request written off. I still had to pay a good sum for the legal fees though.
Lived with my uncle for a bit and bought a motorcycle. When I moved out, he said he’d sell it for me. Fella he sold it to didn’t register the vehicle or declare it SORN, so was sitting untaxed for a few years. A couple of years later he tells me he opened a letter addressed to me, and there’s a warrant out for my arrest due to an unpaid fine 😂. Cost me £2,500 to sort that out.
Turning slightly too early driving out of the wall surrounded drive I navigate out of daily. £720 in car body repairs.
I switched my car's odometer to kilometres. No particular reason, just felt like being a bit more metric. Only the MOT mechanics didn't notice (seems fair, as they probably don't see many kilometre users) and recorded the kilometre number as mileage 2-3 years running, and I didn't spot the errors. I was informed of this when I went to sell the car, at which point the "mileage discrepancy" knocked about £300 off the price. A few lessons were learned.
Getting married; not once, but twice because I'm stupid like that. I'm not a lad, I'm a soft-hearted female who let my first ex (20 years) keep all our savings and retirement (we didn't own a home), and my second ex (11 years) keep the house (which was fair because it was his before we married) without asking for fair-value compensation for all of the money I poured into it (which was not fair because I invested a lot of money in that house). If there is a third time, someone come find me and put me out of my misery because I will have lost my mind.
Didn't read the UK visa requirements close enough. Spent 6k to learn that the US was not a commonwealth. Made it over anyway, the best decision I ever made.
Three related mistakes: 1. going into the back of a car at about 1mph at a roundabout 2. Actually having the decency to stop and swap insurance details despite literally zero damage done to car, which allowed the lady to make a claim 3. Forgetting about this incident when applying for the following year's car insurance, leading to them finding out and insurance getting cancelled now whenever im in the market for insurance I have to tick the 'have you ever had insurance cancelled?' box which adds probably a few hundred onto my insurance every year forever. Thanks Karen, hope you fixed your imaginary scratch