Dumb Money Mistakes

Have you ever done anything stupid that cost you money?

My list is long, and illuminating.  It shines a bright light on my never ending effort to waste my hard-earned cash.

My most recent screw-up was ordering a microphone for the “Worst of the Free Financial Advisor Podcast”-which foolishly invited me to be a panelist.

Average Joe, the Podcast asshat chief made disparaging remarks about my microphone quality.

Instead of telling him where he could stick his podcast, I ordered a microphone.  (After an extensive price search-I got a great deal at Amazon-I am a personal finance guru Podcaster you know.)

Somehow, Amazon had the winner of a previous gift card giveaway from this blog as its default “Shipping Address” on my account.

I didn’t notice the error until the damn microphone didn’t show up, even though “Your Item Has Been Delivered!” was announced  by the great tracking system at Amazon.

So congratulations Kyya on your early Christmas present.  If you have a garage band, or participate in a chat room, you’ll be the bomb. (There may be a Podcast Panelist opening soon…)

In honor of my stupid money trick this week, I decided on a Top Ten Stupid Things People Do with Money and Their Personal Finances post.  It quickly turned into more than twenty.  I’m movin’, I’m groovin’….

Stupid Money Moves

1. Don’t have savings automatically taken out of your paycheck.
2. Don’t participate in your companies’ free 401k, (403b) match.  Throwing away free cash is always stupid.
3. You have all your retirement money invested in YOUR COMPANY stock.
4. You have all your retirement money invested in stocks with no bonds, or other diversification.
5. Don’t have an emergency fund.
6. You don’t pay off your credit card every month.
7. You have children, a wife, and a mortgage, but no term life insurance.
8. You have Whole Life Insurance.
9. You have Whole Life insurance on your kids. (counts as two!)
10. You don’t keep the minimum balance required to make your checking free.
11. You support your hobby using borrowed money.   This means all you folks who bought that Harley or Bass Boat on credit. You know who you are.
12. You put your Carnival Cruise or other vacation on your credit card, and then your bar tab (also on credit) doubles your vacation cost. (Counts as two!)
13. You always have had, and always will have, a car payment/lease.
14. You plan on using your inheritance to fund your retirement.
15. You have no health insurance.
16. You always put Christmas on your credit card.
17. You regularly have overdraft charges.
18. You refinanced your mortgage and spent the equity.
19. You loan money to your grown children.
20. You borrow money to pay for private school for your children.
21. All your savings and retirement money is in government bills/bonds for safety.
22. You buy lottery tickets every week.
23. You use borrowed money to invest, and yes, this means using a Margin Account.  (Margin means living on a cliff.)
24. You have assets but no Last Will and Testament.

How did you score?

Dean’s dumb money ranking system:

If you are regularly guilty of:

• 15-20 dumb money moves:  Bankruptcy predicted.
• 10-14 dumb money moves:  Social Security better be there for you.
• 8-10 dumb money moves:  Hope your Mother-In-Law lets you live in her basement.
• 4-7 dumb money moves:  You have hopes of retiring with at least some nest egg.
• 0-3 dumb money moves:  If you are being honest with yourself, congratulations.  Do the baby happy dance, pat yourself on the back, bust a move, crack open an adult beverage, cheers….You should have a successful financial life unless you always do number 3 or 4, if so, hope your luck holds….

Many of you will have or are going through tough times, and have had to do a couple of these dumb money moves for a short time.   {Or you used to do them before you signed up for the famous Millionaire Nurse Money Letter,  my five star newsletter and the free e-book….(yes, the stars are self-awarded, what’s the big deal?)}

Give yourself a break, nobody’s perfect.  If, however,  you find you are going back and forth between several of these items…, stop it.

You have to tell yourself: “Self, I’m not going to do stupid things with my money anymore. Today is the last day I’m consciously dumb with money!”

Say it out loud, and then write it down.  You can do it.

May the smart money force be with you, and if you see my microphone give me a call.

Dr Dean

{photo credit: Images-Of-Money c.c.}

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Tags: 24 money mistakes people make, a list of dumb money decisions, a list of stupid money decisions, common money mistakes

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under personal finance, Personal Finance 101, Quality of Life, Wealth building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.