The 7 Dumbest Purchases I’ve Made In My 20’s (so far)
I will be the first to say that your 20’s are a very strange time in terms of understanding personal finances and financial literacy as most of us weren’t taught and it’s the first time you’re on your own. Between life, bills, and more life sometimes our bank accounts aren’t set up the way we want them to be.
I realized early on things I thought I would never buy I did just because I had disposable income and thought it would be forever instead of realizing I should be saving just a little for my future. Who needs to save when money comes and goes right? We could die tomorrow, but now being 27 I feel like I can look back and reflect on my poor decisions as well as be grateful for what I’ve learned along the way.
Let us start with FINANCING CLOTHING
I started building credit as soon as I could which is 18 in the United States, now this was a great thing to start building a future for myself and to this day I still believe that credit is a powerful tool as long as you’re disciplined. But there is also a very dark side to credit when you decide to overspend and forget or neglect payments. I started with a store credit card and immediately went on a shopping spree and ended up completely forgetting about the balance. So not only I was financing clothes If you are late by so many days on the payment it can potentially go to collections and it can ding your credit for years. Between possibly ruing my credit before it even started I also had to pay a late fee as well as interest on clothes that I already had the money for in my account. That $300 I spent ended up costing me over $600! LESSON LEARNED.
RESELLING SNEAKERS
I will keep this one brief. In college I had a sneaker resell business called A Sneaker Life and ended up taking pre-orders for my customers. I had a connection at the time and had done a lot of business with him prior, I wired him money and he just disappeared. $16,000 GONE and later I learned he had scammed a lot of other people I had known and the whole situation was very bad. In the end, I managed to still get my customers shoes or refunds the most important taking for this is to always take care of your customers. One bad experience can affect you in the worst way possible. One customer may tell 10 people and so on. Let’s just say I’m happy to be a full-time content creator now, it was a very tough lesson to learn.
SUPPLEMENTS
I have been an athlete all my life and when it comes to new research, and scientific studies for supplementation I am a huge sucker for buying anything that may help build muscle and reduce fat. The ads screaming about how this new breakthrough magic pill will help you and is only $59.99, I buy it it doesn’t work and here I am looking like a clown with $60 less than I had before. But the reality of it all is Diet and exercise are very simple I was just too focused on the shortcuts. All it takes is making a plan and sticking to it. Consistency always wins and when you eat whole foods do something active every day it all adds up. Yes there are supplements that really help and it’s been proven but for the most part that new magic pill will not help, most of the timeless is really more. SAVE YOUR MONEY.
CARS
Some things you just have to learn on your own and I will say in my 20s I have had 3 cars. For my first car, I got at 0% interest meaning they just most likely overcharged me for the car. The second car I financed was a Mercedes C300 just because I was caught up in the I NEED TO BE DRIVING A NICER CAR to impress people so they know I am doing something in life. Now I did get a good deal on this car as well as a low 1.99% interest rate to this day the car is now worth more than I paid but it doesn’t stop there. I kept leveling up in my career making more and figured I would set a new goal of getting a Range Rover Sport my dream car still to this day but instead of being patient, I rushed into what I know I would be able to afford no matter what it took. So I back peddled taking on another loan and a 10% interest rate. Granted I have refinanced the car since and both my Benz is almost fully paid off but if I could go back I would have been more patient and saved up the cash, financed the car for two years then just paid it in full for credit purposes. We all have to learn and these mistakes I made only made me work harder and know what to do next time around.
RENT
Renting is inevitable for most people and I have spent tens of thousands on rent so far in my 20s I could be completely debt-free at this point if I moved smarted but like I said these dumb purchases make you who you are, wiser sometimes growing comes at a cost. My first house in college was a two-bedroom for $850 then I moved to Los Angeles and paid about $3,500 for 600sqft and now I live in Denver where I pay about $3,100 for 2000sqft. I call this a lot of dumb purchases because I could have purchased a house and lived below my means, housing is a very slippery slope and I am still very indifferent about it all.
