People shared the times they splashed some serious cash and lived to regret it – 21 exquisite cases of severe buyers’ remorse
There’s no doubt that splurging money is fun, as anyone who has ever let themselves go a bit wild in an M&S food hall will know.
However, there is a point where spending stops being gratifying and suddenly becomes highly regrettable. The exact threshold varies from person to person, but for SeaElk333, who posted the following on the AskUK subreddit, it was here…
‘What’s the stupidest purchase you’ve made over £2k?
‘I need some reassurance. I was trying to get into ancient jewellery collecting, bid on my first online live auction and a delay in my connection meant clicking the ‘bid now’ button (you don’t enter a price) didn’t seem to process until the price was a lot higher than I’d intended. Ended up getting the winning bid for £2000.
‘It’s not that I can’t afford it, although it’s 12% ish of my total savings so it’s not like I won’t feel it. And I have a baby on the way so I feel extra stupid and anxious. It could have gone on something lovely for the baby.
‘I had set myself a 2k total budget for the next 2 years for this little self project and I’ve blown it all in one punt on something I kind of liked but not that much!
‘Anyway, I’m waiting to hear back from the auction house to see if they will forgive me and cancel my bid but I’m not holding my breath as I understand it’s legally binding 🙁
‘Anyway, please help me feel better about making such a stupid purchase. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever spent money on over £2k.
Luckily, lots of people were only to willing to step in with comforting stories of their own ridiculous financial incontinence, like these…
1.
‘£3500 Roulette spin when I was 19 and was making £18,000 a year.’
–Mindless_Guitar8722
2.
‘I bought a boat. Nothing good financially ever stems from owning a boat.’
–cognitiveglitch
3.
‘After a going through a miserable divorce, I impulse brought myself a £2k Gucci bag.
‘It was beautiful but i was too nervous to ever use it so it stayed in the box, fully wrapped up for over two years. I then sold it on and got about 70% back but effectively paid £500+ to have a shiny box in my wardrobe.
‘But it was a good day when I brought it :)’
–BamshamBananas
4.
‘A dog. `Love him, but in retrospect, silly behaviour.’
–AmbitionParty5444
5.
‘The wedding we planned was hardly extortionate, but 8K is an extraordinary amount of money to lose when the groom tells me four days before that ‘I fell out of love with you a long time ago and thought proposing would help things’.
‘You don’t get fuck all money back when a wedding is cancelled four days before. Though shout out to Majestic Wine for not only not charging anything for the wine or the retrieval of it, but also giving me a free crate out of sympathy.
‘Safe to say the second wedding I planned was an elopement for about £750. We may have only been together three years but I think that’s my money’s worth.’
–Turbulent-Adagio88
6.
‘My home gym that I used for about 2 weeks. It now just gets my days clothes thrown on it.’
–Eaidsisreal
7.
‘Bought an e-bike to get to work. It was a good one but probably not the best suited type of e-bike for hilly areas. Also I have very little experience cycling and didn’t feel confident on the road with one. I could cycle but just didn’t feel confident on the road.
‘Anyway I ended up having to sell it for a fraction of the cost and buying a car with it. I probably could have got a nicer car if I hadn’t bought the e-bike’
–gameovervip
8.
‘My home. It’s a Georgian property with a modern extension and we fell in love with its charm and its history, but the bit that hasn’t been modernised is very rough around the edges. We were already one kid deep when we bought it and now we have a second it’s impossible to get on top of everything that needs doing to it.
‘I’m sure we’ll get there before we retire.’
–MoseSchrute70
9.
‘Spent 10k on a converted Iveco van camper. When it came to its next MOT it was basically uneconomical to repair. Sold it for 2k.’
–Imstuckintheupsdedwn
10.
‘Not all in one go, but I did have a collection of over 300 DVDs. All bought in the late 90s/early 00s, at probably an average of £15 each.
I didn’t even watch all of them. I just wanted to have an impressive collection. I sold most of them around 10 years ago for next to nothing.’
–MoneySaverPete
11.
‘It’s flooding back to me how I spent almost £2000 on a mountain bike. Living in central London, I used it precisely once in almost 4 years, until one day I decided ‘that’s it, I’m going to really start using this thing’.
‘I went down to the underground car park in my block of flats to find a wheel and a bike lock. Never found out how it got stolen, or even when, could have been any time in a 4 year period.
‘Every time anyone asked me where that expensive bike of mine was, I would just tell them I sold it out of sheer embarrassment!’
–BKAFC
12.
‘A Louis Vuitton bag that got stolen on the train a month later.’
–Worried_Patience_117