Hall of Financial Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes, especially me. Sometimes people are surprised by how comfortable I am in stressful situations where I’ve made a mistake. I tell them it’s not my first mistake, and it won’t be my last. I started keeping a tally of all my bad financial mistakes. Writing them down sets me free from the guilt, and allows me to retain the evidence of the mistake for better future decision making.
- 2019 - $1500 on a piece of modern art that my first company was selling.
- 2022 - $500 in interest and fees on St. Louis city income tax that I forgot to pay. The total bill is now in excess of $800, and I only realized this now. It took them four years to track me down because I always moved apartments.
- 2026 - $2745 for towing and storage on the car I crashed in Chicago. I should not have signed with one of the parasites who showed up to the scene of the wreck.
- 2025 - $3000 mistake in not signing my new RDX up for insurance after I crashed the previous one. I don’t know exactly what the cost was. Fixing the car was $13,000, but I don’t think insurance would have covered that whole cost even if I had had the car listed on the policy. They might have covered the towing and storage though.
- 2024 - $150 sport jacket left behind chair at a conference, and never seen again. Also lost a tambourine I bought.
- 2025 - $349 to Asurion HomePlus for device insurance that I apparently didn’t notice signing up for when I made a random best buy purchase. Judging by the cost of the bills, this was for insurance on a cord of some kind. It would have been $411, but I successfully called Asurion and got two installments cancelled.
- 2026 - $33 wasted on a camera power supply adapter because I discarded the original packaging before testing whether it fit.
- 2026 - ~$150 down the drain for a late fee on the power bill because I threw away the bill without telling Quinn to pay it or remembering to pay it myself.
- 2026 - Realized I’d been subscribed to business insider for 6 years without realizing it to a tune of $544
- 2026 - $235 spent on an architecture exam that I didn’t really feel like studying for, and ultimately decided to not show up for.