Ways I've wasted my money I regret a lot

1. Horrible apartments

0

I had so many different horrible apartments/roommates.

Having a stable place that I enjoyed would have allowed me to flourish a lot more.

2. Investing without knowing what the hell I was doing

0

When I started investing it cost $10 per trade.

I knew people were making money in the stock market, but I had no idea what I was doing.

I bought an oil stock, because it paid a dividend and then the price of oil went down and the business quickly went under.

Lesson: read and understand the basics before taking action.

I wish YouTube was around when I was growing up.

3. College

0

I wasted a lot of time and money in the beginning.

I did not really want to go to college. My parents wanted me to go and I did not want to disappoint them.

I wasted a lot of time in classes that I knew I was never going to use. It would have been a better use of my time to go to a technical school and learn a craft rather than pay thousands in school and housing costs.

Traditional college is just not right for me.

Now, I am also in the tech field. If I were a lawyer or doctor like my sister then you really need to spend the money on college.

4. Paying fines

0

Parking tickets, credit card late fees etc.

I don't want to know how much I have paid in fines and other miscellaneous bullshit.

I should have just ignored those things and kept the money.

5. I regret not spending enough money, aka being cheap, when I first started traveling

0

Today, I travel around the world and I really enjoy it.

Most people probably enjoy traveling. When I was growing up I really thought traveling was for rich and people and that was not me.

But traveling is really like the rest of life. You can do it cheap or you can do the Ritz Carlton level.

I learned the hard way not to be cheap.

I was traveling from Texas to NYC and back.

Flying to NYC was great. Direct flight. NYC was great: Time Square, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty.

The problem happened when I was flying back. My flight was originally supposed to be out of NY, but after doing some research I found that it would be cheaper for me to take the train down to Philadelphia and then take a flight from there back to Dallas.

So I took the train down to Philly, I arrived at the train station at 11:00pm. When I stepped off the train I realized that the train station was no where near the airport. This was before Uber and there were no taxis because it was late.

I had to walk with my luggage to the nearest bus stop. Which was not very close, through the dark streets of Philly, in not the greatest neighborhood.

The bus did not end up going to the airport so I told the bus drive to let me off as close as possible which was a police station. I waited there for an before a taxi came and dropped someone off and I was able to get the taxi to take me to the airport.

The airport was CLOSED.

I did not know that airports could close. I thought they were 24/7. The Philly airport is not 24/7 and they lock the doors after certain hour.

So I had to wait on the bench for the airport to open.

Then I got to fly home.

Pay for convenience/safety when you are traveling. Lesson learned.

6. Paying to go to events out of expectation, but not enjoying it

0

People might not like me for this one.

Football games are really boring.

I cannot tell you how many live football games I have been and sat there wondering why I was there.

Everyone around me seemed to be having fun, but I did not really get it. Football games have a lot of downtime. It feel like 2 plays and then a commercial break. And then you are sitting there in the hot sun.

And the games last forever so it eats up your whole day.

I don't really like beer. It is a heavy drink. I would rather have a cocktail.

You pay a lot of money for a seat. And spend an entire day talking about sports and then sit/stand there for 3 hours and your team could lose. But I really do not care which teams wins, because it makes no difference in my life.

Waste of a day.

At least for me.

I would love to have that money sitting in bank account instead.