There’s a fantastic new book dropping on the scene next week and I have two copies to give away to you today!
It comes from podcaster, and (early) retired hospice doctor, Dr. Jordan Grumet:
“Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life”
I haven’t cracked it open yet but it’s already making some waves in our community, and from what I hear will be one of the next Big Ones people pass around similar to JL Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth and Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money.
I had the pleasure of being on Doc G’s podcast last summer and really liked him a lot. Super chill, super genuine and super passionate. You could tell he *really* cares about this stuff and comes from a pretty unique background – caring for people who are dying!!
Here’s the episode I hopped on if you want to check it out later:
From Sexy to Rockstar to All-Star: The Evolution of J Money — In 2019, J. sold Budgets are Sexy for an undisclosed amount in the mid 6 figure range in part to spend more time with family and in 2020 launched a curation site for The Motley Fool titled All-Star Money. He is also a husband and proud father of three boys.
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More about the book:
“Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life”
Learn what end of life can teach us about the secret to financial independence and making every moment count with this life-altering collection of tips from Dr. Jordan Grumet, host of the award-winning Earn & Invest podcast, featuring a foreword written by Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life.
Written by a hospice doctor with a unique front-row seat to the regrets of his dying patients, this book will remind you to take stock of life now, before it is too late. The goal of financial independence is to have the economic fuel to live a full life and avoid regret. Taking Stock is your guide to taking control of your finances and investing in yourself.
Inside you’ll find:
- The three basic archetypes of building wealth, and how to choose which is right for you
- Time-hacking techniques to modify your perception of time passing and fill your moments with meaning
- Tips to invest in education, family, and your own physical and mental health
- And much more!
Don’t wait until the last moment to live life to the fullest!
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It officially comes out next Friday, August 2nd, and you can learn more/pre-order it here: Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life
Here’s a pretty trailer for it too if you like such things:
Look good? Want to read it?
I have TWO free copies to give away today, and all you have to do to be entered is to answer this question down below in the comments:
What’s one financial regret you wish you could erase in life?
Leave your answer below by the end of this weekend, and I’ll randomly select the two winners Monday morning! Good luck! It really does sound like an amazing book :)
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I’ll play along too: my worst financial regret was buying our first house back in 2008 with 0% down and no budget… We were mentally and financially in no state to be buying a home back then, especially on a whim!, and a decade later when we sold we were still $15k underwater, ugh…
Of course, it did lead to this blog and alter my life for the better forever and ever and ever so can’t hate on it too much, haha, but financially it was definitely the worst decision of my 42 years… Pending the verdict at least of my bitcoins 😂
Your turn! Share away for a chance to win!
**UPDATE** Giveaway now over!! Congrats to Diane C, Amy Capone, and Katherine Euliano for winning a free copy! For everyone else make sure to pick it up off Amazon or your local library when it comes out – it’s going to be a good one! :) (UPDATE #2: Okay, I just realized I picked 3 winners instead of 2! Oops! 3rd winner’s book on me!! lol…)
*Links to book above are Amazon affiliate links
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My biggest financial regret was purchasing a lot in Mexico. Long story. Big loss.
Did it involve lots of cervezas?? ;)
I wish that I would have invested more in real estate so I could retire early.
One financial regret I have is not becoming educated and finances sooner! I remember that because of my fear from not understanding money, I simply turned my paycheck over to my ex- who I now know is an major spender!
I regret not taking more family vacations. We were so focused on saving for the kids college and retirement, that we made our budget tighter than necessary. Told ourselves we couldn’t afford a nice vacation. We should have gone camping instead of trying for Disney World.
Over trading during the jan drop
I regret being too conservative with my extra money
I regret not learning about investments until in my 30’s. I always thought saving was the key.
Worst financial regret?
Going to college ( dropped out 3 years later… sigh)
The financial and time opportunity cost could of been a game changer.
I bought way too much of a penny stock one time. Like a classic fool, I believed the ‘story’ of the company. When this penny stock shot up over 1,000 percent, I didn’t sell it, bc I thought it would continue to go up another few hundred percent, if not 1,000 percent yet again. Luckily I sold some as it cratered back down, but nowhere near as much as I should have. Fear, greed, pride and hope lead to the demise of most traders. In this case, greed was a huge issue for me, but also the hope that I could FIRE ten years earlier than planned if this stock really took off. Instead of that happening, I just have this sad story to share in the comments of this awesome blog…
I regret that I didn’t educate myself about money when I was young. My family didn’t have any extra money most likely because my parents used credit cards and always carried a balance. They went bankrupt twice! I followed in their path for several years until I realized I had the power to live differently.
My financial regret is that I didn’t start index investing earlier when I first started working.
Haha… yes, but also it could have gone the other way too? maybe the next question I should pose is what WINS did people get that almost became fails?! sometime the only difference in the stories is the length of time involved…
My greatest regret is that I didn’t know the value of saving money when I was younger.
I regret not saving for retirement in my 20s, 30s and 40s. Now I’m scrambling to make a last minute plan. Thank you for the giveaway J! This book sounds amazing! ❤️
🙌 🙌
I regret taking our credits cards my freshman year in college.
I regret not starting intentional savings into IRA/401K sooner and at a higher % of my income.
I regret upgrading our home and buying a bigger one. Didn’t need all the extra space and more to clean. Ended up selling 5 years later for break even.
Hey – great job getting rid of it at least!! Most people would just keep bitching and live with their decision when at *any time* you can reverse them in reality!
What’s one financial regret you wish you could erase in life?
I regret, starting my financial independence journey late. Very late in fact. But fortunate I was, to get into action soon after I realised. And ran faster.
My financial regret goes back to high school and college. I wish I did better in HS and earned a college degree. I know it is not necessary and I’ve done OK without it but in my field I can get paid considerably more for having the degree and therefore could save and invest more. That’s why at almost 40 I’m finally earning a degree.
Good for you 👊
My financial regret, at 19 I received approximately $20,000 from a car accident, I blew that money quick, it didn’t stand a chance. I regret not investing it, buying real estate, something other blowing it on junk.
HAH! that would have been the case for almost all of us at 20-something :) I bet you did actually have some fun though that you’ve long forgotten about…
My biggest regret is not being smarter with my money earlier. Time is your biggest tool, being smarter in my 20s would have let me play more in my 40s.
My greatest financial regret was continuing to borrow personally including taking out a Heloc to fund an unprofitable business. Should have cut our losses and run, but…
I regret not starting my journey earlier. Ever since I found personal finance, I’ve been pushing it on my kids (and now grandkids)
I regret not listening to my father to contribute more than the minimum to my retirement plans early on in my career. (Happy to report my daughter listened to me and started at age 18!)
I don’t regret our wedding day, but I would do things differently today if I could. I believe I could have the same wonderful memories without some of the big, fancy items we really thought we needed 20 years ago!
AGREED.
I have always been a huge fan of music. In the early 1990’s I spent thousands of dollars on CDs. That is to say compact discs and not certificates of deposit. I did not know at the time, as none of us can foretell the future, that 30 years hence nearly all the music I own would be available to listen to for free or nearly free. Now I have over 4,000 CDs in boxes that have not been opened in years and that are taking up space in my home. Had I instead just invested the money in the S&P 500, it would now be worth over $120,000. This is the price of folly and quenching the desires of youth rather than thinking of the future.
HAH!
BUT BUT BUT You got to listen to alll that sweet music back then!! Or at least i hope you did???
Hard to separate that joy from the costs and not like there was an option for FREE streaming back then :)
I regret not putting enough money into my 401K and preparing for retirement, I’m now 59 yrs. old and worrying about my future. All my fault.
OMG in my 20’s (back in the aughts) I signed up for this shady real estate investing course/internship that cost me big bucks (a couple grand but at this time I had nothing in my savings account). I realized I wasn’t interested in cold-calling folks who were on hard times with their real estate – wish I put that money in savings or investments! I try to view my mistakes as expensive lessons to let go of the regret. :-)
Not starting investing in real estate in my 20’s! I started in my 50’s and lost out on many opportunities.
My biggest financial regret that I wish I had done in my 20’s is finding a great system, and implementing that wealth generating system. Also, being disciplined staying on course, I can now see the years of leading an undisciplined life and where that has gotten me, financially, physically, and even relationally.
I wish I had not taken a distribution and cashed in my NYS retirement plan when I left my first job 40+ years ago. I wonder today how much it would have been worth!
Timeshares! Yes – plural :( Fortunately we have gotten out of one of them, but still have another. Most of “our” financial mistakes as a couple are due to my hubs impulsive ideas. He justified them as if it would force us to take frequent vacations – but instead we pay for them and don’t use them, or if we do – we have to pay more for exchanging the location, crazy high fees, etc. He also bought an RV on a whim one day, and even our house (which I didn’t get to see in person before we bought it and dislike even after 25 years living here). He has gotten better about spending random large sums, and I’ve gotten more control of the $$ over the years – thankfully!
yeah, timeshares are no joke :(
The financial regret I wish I could erase most from my life so far is not caring what I had when I was getting divorced. I wanted “out “so bad I didn’t even care about 401(k)s that we had that would’ve been rightly mine. As I am older now it would’ve been nice to have.
My biggest money regret is not spending enough on people I love. This includes buying back my time from the company I worked for. They don’t give a $hit about me as an employee. I wasted the years when my kids were young by always working, trying to climb that ladder. It’s not too late though, I can still enjoy time with them, starting today!
Thank you for the giveaway opportunity! My biggest regret is being afraid of the stock market and avoiding it – playing catch up in my late 30s :(
Staying in cash in my retirement accounts for too many years. Now I’m 62 and can’t retire until I’m 70.
I ended up with a small life insurance payout when my Mom passed away in 1996. I invested it into tech and watched it triple very quickly. When it tanked in 2000 I sold what little was left and bought a motorcycle. Learned my lesson about locking in a loss.
Do you still ride that motorcycle?? :)
I didn’t invest aggressively enough, early enough. I’m trying to guide my kids such that they do better than I did at the early ages.
Taking cash out of my 401k for some online investment deal. The deal went belly up and I lost it all :(
Working off the books for two many years in my youth and buying useless stuff for a lot of those years. Id love to erase that bit.
My biggest financial regret was leaving my first house to my ex-husband because I couldn’t afford to make the payments by myself. I was inexperienced and didn’t know that I could have found a way to afford the house on my own. We only paid $60,000 for that house back in 1988!! He reaped the benefit when he and his new girlfriend, a.k.a. homewrecker, sold it. I’m not still bitter but I was for quite sometime. Time does have a way to heal a broken heart. I wish I knew then what I now know about personal finance and side hustles. I’d really love to receive a copy of that book.
I regret buying a house. Should have just rented to keep the extra flexibility.
I regret my first husband- he didn’t understand money and didn’t make much money either. His parents had always paid for everything in cash and he followed their example-when he couldn’t get a car loan he was shocked. He didn’t even have a debit or credit card and couldn’t qualify for one as he had no credit history. There is more that I regret about that marriage, but financially we did not discuss finances since we were just starting out and assumed we would just figure it out as we went along. He also tried to work jobs where he would get paid under the table. We eventually had to part ways. Years later he still hasn’t figured it out and at retirement age he still NEEDS to work and will likely have to work until he can no longer physically do it. He took money left by his parents for their granddaughter (our child) because he thought if she wasn’t using it he could. Needless to say he alienated his daughter as well.
That is unfortunate in so many ways :(
Luckily haven’t really had that bad of luck, but top 2 regrets:
1) not buying our first house we rented – our landlord tried to sell it to us when we told her we were leaving to buy a house. Would’ve been a great rental!!!
2) the one time i tried to time the market with $1k on WAITR stock… lost most of it! But not a horrible loss to learn a great lesson!
I regret taking the first job that came along after going back to school for a second time (with more loans involved), which job caused me to spend a lot of time away on the road. I enjoyed some very neat experiences with the job, but in retrospect, these experiences are distant memory which no longer impact me versus the valuable time that I spent away from my family and, particularly, tucking my kids into bed at night.
I regret not learning more about investing before I was risk-averse. Being a single mom makes every penny count and it’s a challenge to play the game knowing I may lose. But I’m learning as much as I can now so I can teach my daughter.
One financial regret I wish I could erase in life is one I’m currently living through: Putting our “New (to us) Car Fund” into USDC via Voyager, which has now filed for Chapter 11. Though I may not lose it all, I’ll definitely lose most of it (a few thousand bucks no matter what). As I expected, my wife has been extremely gracious even in the face of a huge loss. And as I do with with all regrets or failures, I’m taking time to process why all of this went sideways so that I can protect our hard earned money and turn it into a true asset for our family. It’s a regret but a great learning moment too.
Gosh yeah, that’s always harsh I’m sorry.
My biggest financial regret is getting sucked into a time share!UGH!
My biggest regret is getting married to someone who couldn’t save a penny and I stopped working when we had kids. (I guess that’s two regrets) This marriage didn’t last and I ended up with nothing financially and had to start over in my career at the same time. Now with 2 kids to support and making less $$ then if I just continued to work and didn’t take a break.
No real or big regrets. Maybe starting out in a HCOL area.
Taking FI too seriously, at least at first. We become what we pay attention to, and I became a financial bully and passive aggressive jerk when I couldn’t get my spouse onboard. At the time it felt like the sacrifice I was making as the working individual was not being acknowledged. All I wanted in that moment was an understanding that I was sacrificing a portion of my life so that my family could live a certain way. What that looked like for me was responsible use of the resources we had because I viewed that as my time and life meaning something to my family.
Anyway, fast forward many years. I realize that line of thinking was severely messed up, and those connections I made were only in my head, not reality. It’s taken years for us to move past it. The reality of the situation is life isn’t about money, its about the experience of living, and money can either help or hinder that experience depending on an individuals relationship with it. Also, If both individuals do not share the same goals then it is only going to drive a wedge.
Man, deep!! But so insightful! I’m glad you guys were able to work your way past it, even if it’s been a slow process!
My Dad died early, I was in my early 40’s. He handled everything for my Mom…suddenly I was handling everything for my Mom. Dad talked a good game on finances..reality my now widow Mom in her early 70’s was left with a pretty sizeable mortgage and ever increasing flood insurance and property taxes. She had a retirement from TIAA/CREF that I converted to an annuity for her….I regret not cashing it out and taking the tax hit. So many emotions I wish I had known more…we ended up selling the house when she said it was time.
Not even HAVING a budget or intentionally controlling our $$ choices for so long I can’t even admit here! We were 80s kids and (gasp!) the internet, smartphones, and thus the opp to learn from you & others didn’t even exist. As a teacher paid once a month, and my husband’s a home builder paid large amounts at random times when a home sold…budgeting was always ‘too hard.’ We’ve always worked hard and done well, but wish we would’ve known earlier what we know now to make some different choices. Happy to say I’m retiring this year at 56, which wouldn’t have happened had we not gotten our s*** together 6 years or so ago and started budgeting. Thx for the opp to share here and have a chance for the giveaway!
Congrats on the turn around!! :)
Working for free. In my last position I was developed a bad habit of working late, working through unpaid lunch breaks, working weekends, working Saturdays or holidays without requesting overtime or “comp” time (equivalent to PTO). My coworkers would say “make sure you put in for your time” but it became such a habit I’d often forget or not bother, thinking one more afternoon would get me “caught up”. It was not uncommon for most people in my agency to work beyond their designated shift, so I guess I felt a little guilty for asking for compensation or admitting I could not meet the demands of the job within the allotted 8 hours. I eventually took a new job where the lower pay was offset by the benefit of working from home. Even after giving 6 weeks’ notice, I continued to work over and when it came down to my last day on the job I worked late. For free.
At some point I read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and was really struck by the question posed to readers: “What’s your business?” I realized two things: I was not only ignoring my business (a small rental income property) but making additional poor business decisions by giving away my time and energy for free to my employer, at significant cost to my family and me.
I know I made the right move at the right time by switching jobs. My overall health and my available mental bandwidth have increased tremendously. But had I asked for reimbursement for that time, either in PTO or wages, I’d have more savings available to cushion a leaner salary.
Damn, you’re definitely a hard worker though – a really great trait!
Regrets? I’ve had a few….oh, sorry. My biggest? Back in the 1980s a stock broker talking me into buying stocks on margin. Then came the big late 80s crash. I lost every penny. And the broker had the nerve to tell me “well, at least you still have your health.” I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. But it was a valuable life lesson and I had plenty of time before retirement to recover, although it was very painful at the time and I really felt stupid for allowing someone to talk me into doing something I wasn’t comfortable with. Lesson learned.
I regret the amount of credit card debt I racked up in my 20’s along with an old truck I randomly purchased on EBay for $10k that gave me all kinds of issues for several years.
My biggest financial regret was not taking action in my early 20’s when my boss at the time told me to open a Roth IRA and start contributing. (I didn’t open one up until more than a decade later after I read ‘I’ll Teach You to be Rich’ by Ramit Sethi and was kicking myself over losing a decade’s worth of compounding value from my early years.)
My big regret was not loaning the money to my son for law school. As a result he took loans and is weighted down both financially and psychologically.
Bonding a boyfriend out of jail at 19 and putting a retainer fee for a lawyer on a credit card check. Dumbest. Move. Ever. The boyfriend and financially.
Hah! The bad boys always get the good girls! 😂
My biggest financial regret is not investing money sooner…I wish that I had started putting something/anything away in the stock market when I started my first real job in my early 20s. Compounding interest and lots of time is magic!
Wow this sounds like a great book!
I’m the opposite-one of my biggest financial achievements was buying a house that more than doubled in value in 7 years.
Biggest regret- Not starting sooner but back then knowledge was not as easily obtained on these topics so it took me loner to figure out finances, investing and entrepreneurship.
I wish I would have stuck it out for 20 years in Reserves. I made it 9 years then got out. The medical benefit along would have been worth it. Now I am likely working an extra couple of years just to cover medical cost in the future.
Biggest financial regret? Easy. When we moved from our starter home to our current home, the market dropped and we ended up selling for 20K below what we really wanted. I wish we’d held on that property and rented it out. We’d already done a lot of work to it, the mortgage wasn’t that bad, and it’s now worth 100K more than we sold it for!
This book looks incredibly interesting and I’d love to read it with my husband. His current career isn’t the best fit for him and I want to inspire him to look for something that’s more fulfilling.
Congratulations to the lucky winners, whoever you are!
Purchasing a time share.
One of my biggest financial regrets is not spending more money on travel and spontaneous opportunities during my 20’s, thinking I needed to build a bigger net worth before splurging on unique experiences
My biggest financial regret is not understanding and managing the money I had been left by grandparents. What an incredible gift and I did not save it/use it well.
My biggest financial regret was going to college and taking out student loans.
As an anarcho-punk kid in the 90s I didn’t trust government, institutions, or corporations, which led to an idealistic youth taking a job in NYC making $21k/year at a non-profit despite having a graduate degree. Those two things combined have cost me hundreds of thousands in lost income and lost compounding because of mistrust of the market. It wasn’t until my late 30s that I started making good money and opened an IRA and 401k. Still on track to retire early, but oh, what could’ve been.
I bet you had some good times back then though :)
Biggest financial regret was selling Apple wayyyyy to early for a small short term gain. Not a huge regret, but would have been nice to still be holding some.
my regret is not having started investing earlier/younger
I deeply regret letting a financial advisor talk me into front-end loaded mutual funds.
My biggest financial regret is not saving money when I lived at home with my parents. I worked since I was 13, money came in birthday cards and for every holiday, allowance was giving to me every Friday. I could have probably saved one hundred thousand dollars if I tried. Everything was provided to me at the time & I didn’t have any bills.
Not understanding what I was doing with stocks back in 2007 and taking out loans to buy equities on margin. The summer of 2007 wiped me out and I lost 17K that I did not have.
I regret not investing in real estate when the market was so cheap.
My biggest financial regret was going into debt using credit cards 20-25 years ago that ultimately led me to withdraw from a retirement account. I can’t even remember what all that credit spending bought us!!!
My big financial regret… I wish I could erase transferring my investment account early in my career from a discount broker to a commissioned “financial advisor”. I was young and stupid. And it cost me a lot over many decades. A lot!
I regret getting into credit card debt with stupid, frivolous things and also not investing until I was in my 30’s.
Fail: not understanding how to invest my work 401K funds….$$ sat in super conservative funds for 5+ years! doh.
Biggest regret: being too generous. If friends were broke I’d pay for them because I wanted to go out. It was fun but I wasted a lot of money!
I regret charging so much on my credit card at a young age and having to pay that off slowly with high interest rates (won’t do that again!). I also regret not being kinder to myself in that moment and either talking to someone else about it or taking out a loan that would have had better interest rates. I thought I had to punish my way through it instead of being kind to myself.
Awwwww….
Financial regret is allowing money to control my life for too long. Now I control money and my life, so much happier and the regret is small as the future is very bright.
Not being aggressive early in my financial journey.
Regret: buying a sports car just out of college. What a money pit!
Selling our townhouse two years ago… At the time, we’d just bought a big new house that needed a lot of work, and I couldn’t stomach the stress of owning two houses (plus landlording or dealing with a property manager). Hindsight is 20-20 and I now realize how amazing it would have been as an investment, and what a boost to FI it would be. We will never, ever again have a chance to buy real estate of that quality, in such a great location for under $150k again!
Right there with you! I wish we’d held on to our previous property too!
I regret buying a 1981 Ford Mustang. What a piece of junk!
My biggest financial regret is waiting too long to start vigorously saving for retirement.
My biggest regret was letting my husband run all the finances for the 20 years we were married. He actually did fine but I didn’t know how to do anything when we got a divorce and had to learn from scratch at 50. It took me a couple years to get up to speed and now I can but it was a very scary couple of years. It’s not hard and all adults should know the basics. Spouses often leave this up to their “better half” and then when they’re alone again, they don’t know what to do. It could have been much worse–my husband did invest and we did have a nest egg at the end of our marriage. If I had known more, though, we would have had a much bigger egg.
Great message to spread!!
Thanks for the giveaway. My financial regret is not understanding opportunity costs as a young adult.
Not being financially wiser sooner in life which would have given me the chance to share the wisdom with my children at a younger age. They are adults now and I do share and model better financial decisions. I wish I would have started sooner but better late than never!
I had always saving for my first home since a teenager n finally got it at age 25 with a 15% deposit. My worst financial regret is not something I did ( I believe mistakes I can learn from), its from something I didnt do…I should have put my savings in ETF, I would have got my first home much earlier or a 30% deposit! I had it in savings account all along!! I felt secure and happy then looking at the numbers in my account but if I can travel back to myself, I would have said: ” STOP WATCHING THOSE KOREAN DRAMA AND START READING BUDGETS ARE SEXY!” Lol.
P/s welcome back J.Money! I found you after my 3rd house purchase and learned 3 important words: ETF, networth, early-retirement.
YAY!!!
All great words, and all pretty impressive putting down 15% for your first house and saving for so long!! Do you know how much I put down on my first house??? 0%, lol…
You’re gonna do just fine ;)
(And if you’re writing from Korea, eat some bulgogi for me!!! It’s been two decades since I was last there and miss it so much!)
My worst financial decision was selling my 3 family house when I was in my mid 20’s and only had a $14,000 mortgage.
My biggest financial regret was not buying property when we first got married in 2001, but waiting until 2006. It was the only house we could afford at that time and we got stuck in that house for 10 years. It was a horrible house (one of the biggest problems: if the upstairs was warm, the main level was freezing; if the main level was warm, you couldn’t breathe in the bedrooms because of how hot it was). My second regret was selling that house instead of renting it out, but that’s tempered by the knowledge that we don’t really like being landlords. But we could have made almost $200K if we had held onto that house and sold 3 years later!
I regret not taking an interest in money when I was younger. Thank you for your insightful blog.
I regret expanding my business as quickly as I did. I should have grown the biz more slowly and kept more cash in reserves rather than reinvesting it into the business.
My biggest financial regret is student loans. In your blog you talked about the upside of debt and spending on things you love well I didn’t love school and I didn’t even finish my degree. Over $20,000 (I know not as bad as some folks) but still a lot of money. It started in the early 2000 and now 22 years later still paying it off and it has held me back from ALOT. Not anymore! I have $17.000 left (not much of a budge after so long) but we have finally saved up and thanks to the pandemic(can we thank the pandemic?) we will pay it off end of May 2023 and the. Going to Spain hopefully for 2-3 weeks to celebrate being COMPLETELY DEBT FREE! Onwards and upwards my FIRE friends! What an amazing feeling it is. I can see the light. Then all the money will go to retirement and fun and do whatever the heck else we want to do. We’re in our late 30s early 40s and we don’t want to buy a house now to be stuck with another huge debt but maybe down the road we can buy it cash! Thanks for all your articles and blogs! Rock on!
Ahhh i’m soooo excited for you!!!! You’re SO CLOSE!!! And love that you’re taking a trip to celebrate – that’s fantastic! :)
I regret filing bankruptcy not 1 time but 2 times you would have thought I would have learned the first go around but I can definitely say I have learned the second go around been debt free for about 6 years
congrats!!
Pulling out of stock market when Greek debt crisis happened. Thought it would bring down the Euro and also US economies. I was wrong and uninformed.
2nd but different is that I wish I had bought bitcoin after hearing about it on a planet money podcast years ago. I was going to buy $300 worth thinking it would be about $3 per bitcoin. But when I looked it up, it was $30 and too expensive for me. Odd since I was buying based on drug lords using it to launder money. Anyway – likely I would have sold after a few dollars made vs waiting till now when in the tens of thousands. But cie la vie.
haha yup i think we all regret that one… I remember someone doing a guest post on this blog here 10 years ago and thinking “$100 is so high! no way i’d ever buy a coin at that!” and then just a handful of month ago I buy a fraction when valued at $60,000 lol…. But similar to you I would have sold it long ago anyways once it turned a profit so not like we would have reaped it entirely (and would still be kicking ourselves!).
Biggest financial regret. Buying a franchise business. Worst and most expensive mistake of my life!!
My financial regret is that I didn’t learn to manage my money until I was in my mid-30’s. So many years wasted.
One financial regret I wish I could erase is cashing out whatever I had saved in my employer retirement accounts every time I hopped around from company to company in my career instead of rolling it over and letting it compound
Investing a lot of money on dogecoin & buying a new car with little to no down.
My biggest financial regret was the keeping up with the Jones’ syndrome I had before the Great Recession. So much credit card debt! Ugh!
My biggest financial regret is selling my Apple stock in 2001.
My biggest financial regret was marrying the wrong person the first time around. He could spend all his money and all my money before I even knew we had it! Learned to look for different traits the second time around.
About 1990 I bought a stick built 20 x 24 garage that a guy had cut into 8 foot sections with a chainsaw for $1,000. I was going to reconstruct it on my property as I was in dire need of a garage. It sat for 3 years in a large pile under blue tarps and became mice infested and rotten. I burned it. That $1.000 compounded at 8% is over $13,000 up in smoke! Wish I understood the power of compound interest back in the day.
Regret: Not starting retirement savings earlier