Thought it might be interesting to start a topic about regrets when it comes to financial decisions made over the years.
For me, not investing early enough when I was younger but guess we all share this. Those paper round wages would of gone far!
Other regrets around taking credit cards out whilst at university and maxing them out without a care in the world - still dealing with the aftermath now.
Deciding how much to invest in crowdfunding companies is an interesting one. No regrets as such but do some of us feel we could of pledged more to the likes of Freetrade or Monzo?
Yes, my main regret would be not knowing about investing when I was younger. I’ll be teaching my daughter about this from an early age.
I had some minor regret over not getting in on the ground floor with Freetrade, but really investing in a startup isn’t a very wise investment strategy. I might miss out on a big pay day someday… or I might not. I’ll take growing with the market instead.
I definitely share this one, although for me it was taking out a too big student overdraft while it was interest free & then not paying it off before the interest free bit went away
I wish I’d recognised the value of zero interest balance transfers for credit cards sooner too!
Just to mix it up a bit, one ‘waste of time’ that I don’t regret was ‘investing’ in gold in 2012. I held it for a year & then sold at break even. I didn’t make any money but I learnt a lot from the experience.
Flashback to my late 10’s/early 20’s.
I’m walking towards the train station. The local branch of the bank I work with advertises a mutual fund with average annual returns of 25%. It also mentions that past results are not guaranteed to occur in the future.
I’m impressed with the 25% figure. And I was yet miles away from grasping the concept of compound interest. I want to know more.
Eventually I go in. I talk to someone about it. The guy asks me questions I don’t know how to answer. Today I know he was trying to assess my risk tolerance.
I regret not asking for books to read. Instead I felt overwhelmed by his questions, believing that the whole thing was just too much. I ended up not investing in anything, which I don’t necessarily regret. The real regret is in not asking for books to read due to the feeling I wouldn’t understand any of it anyway, or that I would be incapable of applying it… Who knows… I could have come across the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham or one of the many books advocating low cost indexing back then…
but I think you can spot the more wise investments I.e. Freetrade & Monzo