My First Financial Mistake

Living Almost Large asks: “What was your first financial mistake?”

I made a lot of financial mistakes when I was younger, it’s hard to tell where my first big one started. I I’ve had a job since I was 14, so I could easily say that wasting the money that I earned throughout my teen years is a mistake, but most people do that and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference now.

My first huge mistake was probably moving onto the Naval Base when I was 19. It cost money to move, it cost money to rent, pay utilities, and pile up credit card debt, only to eventually move back home in 2001 after my dad’s stroke.

If I had stayed up here I could have saved a lot more money and probably had a better job. But I doubt very much I would have changed my financial habits. I never changed them when I moved back home to be with my dad until only a couple years ago, and that was mainly because I couldn’t buy a damn car.

I can’t say that buying the mustang was a mistake, because I did get it cheap enough and new enough for what I needed. I needed something reliable that I could wear down driving to the Grove and to work regularly. It’s been a very good car the last 3 years.

And I can’t say the house was a mistake either, because we were homeless and this was the perfect place that we could afford.

I will say that I did avoid a HUGE financial mistake by not buying the condemned estate we were living on. That would have been a disaster financially.