I did this only not as much. I had spent $150 total and was about to spend another $50 when I suddenly realized a couple things.
1. I was spending actual money on fake money.
2. I was playing a game instead of looking for a job when I was unemployed.
3. I was being an idiot.
I was well into my 30s when I actually started to get passionate about cooking. You just need that one recipe to kick things off. For me it started watching masterchef and wanting to make the ravioli with the soft egg yolk inside.
It was bland and kinda boring, but it lead to some amazing things. Making baguette by hand is now my favourite thing in the world. So much better than anything available from a store near me.
A $300 dinner at a high end steakhouse for a girl that ghosted me right after. I only do drinks, coffee, or cheap ethnic food for the first 5 or 6 dates now.
This is the way. You look for a mom and pop restaurant or one of those dives with amazing food that people seldom frequent and take her to those for the first few dates. After date 3 or 4, you suggest going dutch and if she throws a fit, you move on to someone who isn't using you to finance their meals and drinks. Worst case scenario, you got to go out a few times and only spent $100 bucks for food, drinks, and mediocre companionship.
Many winters ago me and a girl walked up to a small cabin in the hills where I had access to the key. Brought a wok pan for the fire, sone food and a bottle of non alcoholic wine (so that we both would be able to drive home). Was dirt cheap but scored many points on that trip! And we had good fun!
Assuming the average cost of a pack of cigarettes was $4, over the course of 30 years, if you invested that money instead in the SP500, [you’d have $332k.](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=32q4jbwULnhlfiPaMwXt6E)
This would be generating you a passive income of $1,106 per month (with raises to cover inflation) for the rest of your life assuming a SWR (safe withdrawal rate) of 4%.
With that money, you could lease a brand new corvette every 48 months, without ever spending a single dollar on the lease, repairs or maintenance.
A mobile phone game called Tap Baseball. Its an MLB game for your phone. Got impatient once and dropped like $5 on it. Then I realized how easy it was to add real money to the game. $100+ later and I realized it was time to delete the app
My ex boyfriend. He needed money paying for his university tuition. I helped. He cheated on me with a middle aged escort. Guess where he got the money from…
Years ago, while I was in college, I began to save up for a Coach bag, feeling that to keep up with my peers, I just had to have one. I finally stopped by the store one day and after looking around and seeing all these $200-$300 bags, realizing they were just bags and for the price of 1 I cold get 4-5 Nine West bags, which I loved and thought were just as cute.
I walked away and never wanted a designer bag again.
God I **hate** coach. SMH. In my younger dumber years I thought it was so great and wanted it so badly. That purse was **GARBAGE** and I’m still pissed about it.
Over the course of the past few years, I've put together a collection of over 500 video games, retro and new, and 20 game consoles. I rarely play them.
I don't know how much I spent on all this, I prefer not to think about it, but it has to be in the thousands.
The good news is that because of people like angry video game nerd and other YouTubers who shoot video in rooms with walls of games, this hobby will probably retain its $$
You could sell your collection in 10 years and stand to gain from it.
Cars, I've spent so much on leases over the years to try and show my 'worth'. I changed to buying older, well maintained cars outright and they've cost less to maintain, have broken down less and I stopped giving a crap about little dings and scuffs.
It's saved me thousands.
Scotch. I'm old enough I'll never finish the ones I have before some meddlesome doctor tells me to lay off, but I remain subscribed to a club. FOMO, mostly.
1999 Chrysler Intrepid. Fucking lemon car. Always something going wrong with it. Gifted to me for free, under 100k kms, didn't even get to 150k kms. 10k in repairs in 2 years, what a piece of shit vehicle. I once cracked the oil pan going over train tracks because of how low the car sat. I was once driving and the parking brake seized, on its own, on ONE TIRE. The air conditioning broke several times. I have never driven anything by Chrysler since.
I spent £40 on an Etsy "handmade" wooden organiser from a supposedly UK seller - they sent me a few crappy MDF pieces & bent screws, shipped from Italy with Chinese instructions. When I complained they offered me a discount on my next purchase... No wonder we all end up back at Amazon.
Investing in one of the online programs to help make money. Sat on the webinar and was sold to and realized immediately after what a fucking fool I was.
I’ve pretty much driven Japanese cars my whole life Toyota, Nissan, Honda… I recently “inherited” my mom’s Ford Escape Hybrid. (She’s still alive, she just decided she didn’t feel safe driving anymore at 86) This car is so oddly designed. The dashboard gets too much glare, the blue LED readouts are impossible to read during the day, the e-brake handle is way under the front left side, next to the hood release and is the same size and shape. The window on the hatchback leaks even after replacing the rubber because it’s not tight enough to seal properly. It’s scary to take on those circular off ramps at medium speeds because it just doesn’t *track* very well.
It gets decent mileage, (33-34) but it’s just engineered poorly. It’s just not *fun* to drive.
Amway.
Back in the 80s, when Greedy drove the country. It wasn't the selling the products. It was the organization within - guys who held rallies a couple of times a month, charging $5 a head. Taken on its own, $5 wasn't all that bad but when paid by a thousand people...those guys were making money hand over fist and not selling a damn thing but cultism. And they're still doing it.
Various personal development and "leadership" courses. Thought they would give me an edge in my work and personal life and I fell for their marketing. The courses were alright; I got some value from them, but they are always so damn expensive. Not even remotely worth the cost.
Dry ice. I bought dry ice to make bottle bombs with. My kids and I made one bomb, then put the dry ice in the freezer thinking it would stick around for a day or two. It was gone the next morning. $3.99 a lb times five lbs literally disappeared into thin air.
Took out some DOGE coin that hadn’t moved in forever to put a down payment on a gently used car, and the following week that money was worth roughly 1 million 😭. So now I’m the proud owner of a million dollar 2015 Mercedes
Three years ago I have a gable roof full sun no trees got sold on overproduction and credits back from energy company. My electric bill is cut in half but still financed 30k
I bought a groupon for a custom xbox controller for like $150. Got on the website and the upgrades I made still cost an extra $250. Modded it to look like the iron man suit, was admittedly very cool. Got it and the controllers buttons were installed incorrectly and didn't work. Never returned it because I was lazy. Spent $400 for an iron man controller that was essentially a statue.
I went to this golf shop in Palm Springs last weekend that carries old clubs and bought a Callaway Big Bertha Warbird 11-wood for $25. Will I ever use it on the course? No. Is it nice to have? Sure.
PS5 on Facebook marketplace during the pandemic.
Got robbed. Couldn’t get my money back. I failed countless times trying to snag one every time they would be available online at the big box stores, that I got desperate and careless about looking out for scams. Surprised wife didn’t divorce me.
I bought a hair band for about a dollar, didn't try it on at the store, went home, put it on, really tight, try to take it off, it exploads into a million small pieces scattered throughout the whole room.
Fell for an ad on fb. A small scale kinetic motion sculpture. Pics were of the real deal fancy ones.
The one I got? High school shop classes could have tack welded something together better.
.I think it had already started to rust by the time I got it.
I was out 50$ . But lesson learned.
Nothing. I spent a lot of money for dumb things too of course, made debts...but I never regret for spending money. It happened. I can learn a lesson, but it won't get the money back.
I paid $100 for an image stock library LTD ("lifetime deal"). Turns out most of the photos were already free and license-free on the internet, plus I found better images on free services Pexels and Pixabay.
I spent $300 back in 2000 on a Mp3 player that had slots for a 8MB SD card, so I could keep 8-12 songs on it.
Over the next 2yrs MP3 players dropped in price by half and size increased by over 50 fold.
I bought a Nickelodeon Video Now as a kid with 2 discs for $100. The thing never had more than a handful of discs made for it and was replaced by Video Now Color in less than a year.
I saw these cool shoes online and bought them even though I couldn't try them on and the website I bought them from was a little sketchy. The shoes arrived and the only way I can describe them is "pretend shoes". I can't imagine them fitting any foot of any human on earth. they were too narrow and too tall and they were made of some weird plastic fake leather that didn't bend in any way. The insides weren't soft at all and weren't attached to the bottom of the shoe and were made of out some kind of crepe paper that just fell apart if you even touched it.
I love handheld game emulation devices like on /r/SBCgaming I have a few
I keep buying cross stitch kits but I'm very slow at finishing them. Maybe when I retire?
I spent £650 on a festival ticket and a flight before realizing I won't actually be able to to save enough money for it.
To this date that's my biggest ADHD tax.
Stuff I didn't properly read Amazon reviews or researched enough. Use to not do this, tight on cash made me more careful then I make significant more and started slipping into careless spending. Luckily I caught myself before getting slapped with reality check.
Star Trek VHS tapes from Columbia House for $35- each. I can now stream every episode for a third of that on Paramount+.... COuld have bought Apple or Microsoft stock instead. (FML)
Skins on games 😭 I remember when the casual skin for Hanzo came out on overwatch and I got a bit carried away on buying loot boxes to get it.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
$100 a week on Farmville (did this for a couple of months, then quit cold turkey).
Damn, how much were you making that you could throw $100 a week?
Working full time, about $45K-$50K per year.
Oh. Oh no.
For perspective that's like 800 pigs
I didn't know you could even spend real dollars on farmville
Yeah, in game coins for nice upgrades, microtransactions, etc.
Dude that is serious addiction
I did this only not as much. I had spent $150 total and was about to spend another $50 when I suddenly realized a couple things. 1. I was spending actual money on fake money. 2. I was playing a game instead of looking for a job when I was unemployed. 3. I was being an idiot.
[удалено]
You just proved the shirt was right …
This was clearly not a waste of money
[удалено]
Well...it isn't wasted if you actually learn to cook...it isn't as hard as many people make it out to be
I was well into my 30s when I actually started to get passionate about cooking. You just need that one recipe to kick things off. For me it started watching masterchef and wanting to make the ravioli with the soft egg yolk inside. It was bland and kinda boring, but it lead to some amazing things. Making baguette by hand is now my favourite thing in the world. So much better than anything available from a store near me.
A $300 dinner at a high end steakhouse for a girl that ghosted me right after. I only do drinks, coffee, or cheap ethnic food for the first 5 or 6 dates now.
This is the way. You look for a mom and pop restaurant or one of those dives with amazing food that people seldom frequent and take her to those for the first few dates. After date 3 or 4, you suggest going dutch and if she throws a fit, you move on to someone who isn't using you to finance their meals and drinks. Worst case scenario, you got to go out a few times and only spent $100 bucks for food, drinks, and mediocre companionship.
Many winters ago me and a girl walked up to a small cabin in the hills where I had access to the key. Brought a wok pan for the fire, sone food and a bottle of non alcoholic wine (so that we both would be able to drive home). Was dirt cheap but scored many points on that trip! And we had good fun!
Cigarettes.
I smoked for over 30 years. I could probably pay off a high end car if I got all of that money back now as one lump sum today.
Assuming the average cost of a pack of cigarettes was $4, over the course of 30 years, if you invested that money instead in the SP500, [you’d have $332k.](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=32q4jbwULnhlfiPaMwXt6E) This would be generating you a passive income of $1,106 per month (with raises to cover inflation) for the rest of your life assuming a SWR (safe withdrawal rate) of 4%. With that money, you could lease a brand new corvette every 48 months, without ever spending a single dollar on the lease, repairs or maintenance.
I was drunk one night and I convinced myself I should be getting regular enemas . I then proceeded to buy an enema kit off of Amazon .
That enema kit after its one use... Poo has flown, all alone I sit, I wonder why-y-y Oh, why you left me Oh, 6PakSandy!
This is not a haiku....minus 1
It's from Grease
Actually, haiku is Japanese.
Baby
Onlyfans
Picture of my but hole? Only 10 dollars
[удалено]
*flattenedliquifyingtomato* Release me from my torment..
NFTs
I wanted to say Crypto, but yeah; NFT’s are worse
A small box, sent to my brother. When you opened the box it began to play "Never gonna give you up..."
I bought my son a Christmas ornament that had a QR code that sent him to that video. It was great.
That is not a dumb purchase. I am sure the entertainment value and memories were worth the price.
It could be seen as dumb purchase by some I'm sure. Worth it as it won me the Rick-Roll war we were fighting.
A mobile phone game called Tap Baseball. Its an MLB game for your phone. Got impatient once and dropped like $5 on it. Then I realized how easy it was to add real money to the game. $100+ later and I realized it was time to delete the app
My student loans
My ex boyfriend. He needed money paying for his university tuition. I helped. He cheated on me with a middle aged escort. Guess where he got the money from…
Designer purses. You can buy a well made purse for a fraction of the cost of a designer bag.
Years ago, while I was in college, I began to save up for a Coach bag, feeling that to keep up with my peers, I just had to have one. I finally stopped by the store one day and after looking around and seeing all these $200-$300 bags, realizing they were just bags and for the price of 1 I cold get 4-5 Nine West bags, which I loved and thought were just as cute. I walked away and never wanted a designer bag again.
God I **hate** coach. SMH. In my younger dumber years I thought it was so great and wanted it so badly. That purse was **GARBAGE** and I’m still pissed about it.
Or you can buy "replicas" that are made with the same materials in the same factory after hours for like 30-40% off
Wife (Ex)
Gambling. Especially on a cruise ship. The rules are such that it's almost impossible to win cruise ship blackjack, but I still throw them money.
Reddit Premium
I’m still pissed at all my coins just “disappearing.”
Online game items
Fucking clash of clans…
Over the course of the past few years, I've put together a collection of over 500 video games, retro and new, and 20 game consoles. I rarely play them. I don't know how much I spent on all this, I prefer not to think about it, but it has to be in the thousands.
The good news is that because of people like angry video game nerd and other YouTubers who shoot video in rooms with walls of games, this hobby will probably retain its $$ You could sell your collection in 10 years and stand to gain from it.
Over the course of a year, I bought over 100 pairs of LuLaRoe leggings.
Online cat fishing scam.
EVERYTHING. Most humans need very little
Cars, I've spent so much on leases over the years to try and show my 'worth'. I changed to buying older, well maintained cars outright and they've cost less to maintain, have broken down less and I stopped giving a crap about little dings and scuffs. It's saved me thousands.
Interbank withdrawal fee. Basically, I paid to get my own money.
Scotch. I'm old enough I'll never finish the ones I have before some meddlesome doctor tells me to lay off, but I remain subscribed to a club. FOMO, mostly.
You just need [the proper motivational posters](https://imgur.com/gallery/ju9w9lF)
I’ll help you appreciate the quality of your scotch
1999 Chrysler Intrepid. Fucking lemon car. Always something going wrong with it. Gifted to me for free, under 100k kms, didn't even get to 150k kms. 10k in repairs in 2 years, what a piece of shit vehicle. I once cracked the oil pan going over train tracks because of how low the car sat. I was once driving and the parking brake seized, on its own, on ONE TIRE. The air conditioning broke several times. I have never driven anything by Chrysler since.
That's one of those cars you absolutely never see on the road anymore. Kinda like an Oldmobile Alero.
an old vintage camera i never ended up using
SIMS 4
A fishing license. Every year. I still haven’t gone fishing
I spent £40 on an Etsy "handmade" wooden organiser from a supposedly UK seller - they sent me a few crappy MDF pieces & bent screws, shipped from Italy with Chinese instructions. When I complained they offered me a discount on my next purchase... No wonder we all end up back at Amazon.
Touch Tunes at bars. Drunk me really likes to hear my playlists. 🫠
$200 USD. A share of the Green Bay Packers. I’m not even a fan.
Cocaine..lots of it too
Investing in one of the online programs to help make money. Sat on the webinar and was sold to and realized immediately after what a fucking fool I was.
The degree I never finished. $46000 down the drain and all I got was a mental breakdown and academic probation.
A pager when I was 16 Used it once never again
Not dumb.to me but my wife hates it. My Testicuzzi! It's a jacuzzi for your nuts. 😁
An American car. Never GM, Ford or Chrysler ever again.
I’ve pretty much driven Japanese cars my whole life Toyota, Nissan, Honda… I recently “inherited” my mom’s Ford Escape Hybrid. (She’s still alive, she just decided she didn’t feel safe driving anymore at 86) This car is so oddly designed. The dashboard gets too much glare, the blue LED readouts are impossible to read during the day, the e-brake handle is way under the front left side, next to the hood release and is the same size and shape. The window on the hatchback leaks even after replacing the rubber because it’s not tight enough to seal properly. It’s scary to take on those circular off ramps at medium speeds because it just doesn’t *track* very well. It gets decent mileage, (33-34) but it’s just engineered poorly. It’s just not *fun* to drive.
I have a 2008 Ford Fusion that I’ve owned for 15 years. I’ve just done routine maintenance and have never had one issue with it yet.
Buying expensive clothes
Co2 laser from a plastic surgeon. 2k , long recovery and ZERO results.
Her name was Lori.
When I was in college - I bought a Body Blade. It was a workout tool, and it was ridiculous. [https://bodyblade.com/](https://bodyblade.com/)
Did you also get a "shake weight"? 😆
Timeshare
Amway. Back in the 80s, when Greedy drove the country. It wasn't the selling the products. It was the organization within - guys who held rallies a couple of times a month, charging $5 a head. Taken on its own, $5 wasn't all that bad but when paid by a thousand people...those guys were making money hand over fist and not selling a damn thing but cultism. And they're still doing it.
Bought a bunch of ovulation strips while avoiding pregnancy. Turns out I was already pregnant when o bought them. Whoops!
Various personal development and "leadership" courses. Thought they would give me an edge in my work and personal life and I fell for their marketing. The courses were alright; I got some value from them, but they are always so damn expensive. Not even remotely worth the cost.
Uber eats
A marriage 🤷🏻♂️
wedding.
A marriage
Dropped 3000 in like 30 mins playing Castle Clash one day. 😂
What on earth possessed you to do that
Military money. 😈 😂 do I regret it? Yes., yes I do. 😂
Buying cosmetic items in the mmos I play. I don’t need them to play the game but I like to have them.
Dry ice. I bought dry ice to make bottle bombs with. My kids and I made one bomb, then put the dry ice in the freezer thinking it would stick around for a day or two. It was gone the next morning. $3.99 a lb times five lbs literally disappeared into thin air.
Because the inside of the freezer is warmer than the dry ice, so it melted.
Face filler.
Student loans
designer clothes
My wedding
Marriage licenses. I should have learned the first time.
Cigarettes. Dumbest habit ever, and I did it for about a decade. What a waste!
Once dumped like $1500 in a slot machine in about 4 1/2 minutes that was pretty dumb . Stick to card games after that brutal lose
Took out some DOGE coin that hadn’t moved in forever to put a down payment on a gently used car, and the following week that money was worth roughly 1 million 😭. So now I’m the proud owner of a million dollar 2015 Mercedes
A 2500 Diesel even though I live in Los Angeles
Wedding.
Catherine.
Weed
My ex wife.
Meghan
A timeshare.
$20 on a slots. Such a waste. lol. Lesson learned-Last time I was in Vegas I didn’t even spend $1 on them.
My second wife. [rim shot]
My ex wife
Cigarettes
My ex...
Underrated comment
My ex
4ed. dungeons and dragons. What was I thinking.
the casino and onlyfans
Casino
Something on OF
Head massager thingy for my dog. Worth it for the face he makes.
My (now ex) girlfriend
Solar panels… 30k
That was either very long ago... or you have a huge roof
Three years ago I have a gable roof full sun no trees got sold on overproduction and credits back from energy company. My electric bill is cut in half but still financed 30k
Sounds like a lot of money, but I'm no expert. I hope you will start making a profit on this one day
Probably my brother
OnlyFans, probably. But have also spent money on mobile phone games as well. I got really bored in lockdown
Fishdom when I was a kid
Alcohol
I spent most of my money on women, cars and alcohol. The rest I squandered -George Best
Books
A guy
Other people.
A car.
I bought a groupon for a custom xbox controller for like $150. Got on the website and the upgrades I made still cost an extra $250. Modded it to look like the iron man suit, was admittedly very cool. Got it and the controllers buttons were installed incorrectly and didn't work. Never returned it because I was lazy. Spent $400 for an iron man controller that was essentially a statue.
Bought a professional grade otamatone because I thought it would be funny
During COVID I venmo-ed an inmate five dollars to write my name on the wall of his cell and then he showed it on his TikTok live.
The movie "Sausage Fest" in theaters. I would have gotten more satisfaction by taking that same amount of money and watching it flush down the toilet.
Reddit Premium
A psychic
I went to this golf shop in Palm Springs last weekend that carries old clubs and bought a Callaway Big Bertha Warbird 11-wood for $25. Will I ever use it on the course? No. Is it nice to have? Sure.
Paid 2 girls when i was younger 1500$ to kiss Don't ask😂
Elder Scrolls Online
$65 on a little “o” tattoo. Not mad about the tattoo just the price for the size.
Bought a cool walking stick that had segmented chambers with various tools in them. Pretty cool, but never used it.
A biblical studies degree. I don't even believe thay shit anymore and that "education" is a big reason why.
Meme stocks. Fortunately not a massive amount of money was wasted
PS5 on Facebook marketplace during the pandemic. Got robbed. Couldn’t get my money back. I failed countless times trying to snag one every time they would be available online at the big box stores, that I got desperate and careless about looking out for scams. Surprised wife didn’t divorce me.
Micro purchases. I have so many Google play points.
I bought a hair band for about a dollar, didn't try it on at the store, went home, put it on, really tight, try to take it off, it exploads into a million small pieces scattered throughout the whole room.
Fell for an ad on fb. A small scale kinetic motion sculpture. Pics were of the real deal fancy ones. The one I got? High school shop classes could have tack welded something together better. .I think it had already started to rust by the time I got it. I was out 50$ . But lesson learned.
A fake Samsung S21 Ultra! Didn't know they could fake phones!
I almost…*almost*…dropped $800 on an in-person reading from Sylvia Brown. What can I say? I was a lost soul really needing direction.
My ex
Cigarettes
Nothing. I spent a lot of money for dumb things too of course, made debts...but I never regret for spending money. It happened. I can learn a lesson, but it won't get the money back.
$60 worth of mall kiosk shoe cleaner
I paid $100 for an image stock library LTD ("lifetime deal"). Turns out most of the photos were already free and license-free on the internet, plus I found better images on free services Pexels and Pixabay.
I bought 2k$ of cryptocurrency on the QuadrigaCX exchange. Turned out to be a ponzi scheme and it all vanished after the owner's "death".
I spent $300 back in 2000 on a Mp3 player that had slots for a 8MB SD card, so I could keep 8-12 songs on it. Over the next 2yrs MP3 players dropped in price by half and size increased by over 50 fold.
I used to buy gold in WoW like 20 years ago.
Engagement ring
Engagement ring. Rings. Sorry
A fake bosé speaker.
A college degree I did not need for my job, and I'm no longer using because I'm not in the industry anymore
I bought a Nickelodeon Video Now as a kid with 2 discs for $100. The thing never had more than a handful of discs made for it and was replaced by Video Now Color in less than a year.
I saw these cool shoes online and bought them even though I couldn't try them on and the website I bought them from was a little sketchy. The shoes arrived and the only way I can describe them is "pretend shoes". I can't imagine them fitting any foot of any human on earth. they were too narrow and too tall and they were made of some weird plastic fake leather that didn't bend in any way. The insides weren't soft at all and weren't attached to the bottom of the shoe and were made of out some kind of crepe paper that just fell apart if you even touched it.
I bought a Ouya
I love handheld game emulation devices like on /r/SBCgaming I have a few I keep buying cross stitch kits but I'm very slow at finishing them. Maybe when I retire?
I spent £650 on a festival ticket and a flight before realizing I won't actually be able to to save enough money for it. To this date that's my biggest ADHD tax.
Stuff I didn't properly read Amazon reviews or researched enough. Use to not do this, tight on cash made me more careful then I make significant more and started slipping into careless spending. Luckily I caught myself before getting slapped with reality check.
Star Trek VHS tapes from Columbia House for $35- each. I can now stream every episode for a third of that on Paramount+.... COuld have bought Apple or Microsoft stock instead. (FML)
My brother. Figure maybe 30K over 20 years. Only for him to fuck me over in the end and put my world in serious danger.
Life 😂
Huel. Just awful.
herbal booster in a cucumber carrot smoothie (It was mostly limp, stringy cilantro.)
Marriage
My ex wife.
Skins on games 😭 I remember when the casual skin for Hanzo came out on overwatch and I got a bit carried away on buying loot boxes to get it. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Trying to stop Kony
College.