what's the most expensive mistake you've ever made?

[dellzeqq]

Mine's about £15,000. I inherited the design for a car park ramp in a confined space and decided to check it. I got turning circles from Mercedes and Volvo, which was clever. I didn't get turning circles from Vauxhall which was schtoopid, because it turned out that an S-class Merc could turn where a Cavalier couldn't......

However....that pales into insignificance when you read this - http://www.guardian....er-man-arrested

£1,300,000,000 - now that's impressive!

 

[XmisterIS]

Hooo! That makes me feel better at least, the most expensive mistake I ever made was when I was a 16-year-old nipper, I reversed a transit van into somebody's car, did £1200 of combined damage. The trouble is, being only 16, I had no driving licence or insurance and the van had no tax or MOT. I won't go into details, but I was royally in the sh*t for that one!

 

[jonny jeez]

Making the assumption that by getting a decent education and going to work...I'd somehow be better off than those that don't bother

Sociology apart...by far the most expensive mistakes I've made have revolved around the purchase, use and subsequent sale of motorcars...you never do anything other than loose money on the average car (let alone the expensive ones).

I'm ashamed to say how much I spent/lost on one car but it was enough to put your parking ramp into the shade

never again

 

[wiggydiggy]

Mine's about £15,000. I inherited the design for a car park ramp in a confined space and decided to check it. I got turning circles from Mercedes and Volvo, which was clever. I didn't get turning circles from Vauxhall which was schtoopid, because it turned out that an S-class Merc could turn where a Cavalier couldn't......

Sorry what, did you buy a car which doesnt fit?

Mine is around £12k, not on any one purchase but I reached the end of my 20's with that amount of unsecured debt on credit cards, loans etc Mostly as a result of pissing it up the wall, wasting it on stupid purchases and generally having no regard for money management. Have since had a light bulb moment and have paid off £5.5k in last 2 years, £6.5 to go

 

[dan_bo]

Piffle. I once didn't get in the way of a 1500 Kilo Autospec when it fell off a tail lift. £400000 down the shitter.

 

[david1701]

I got the 2nd mistaken for the 12th on a letter so payed off a 0 interest finance thing late and got lumped with £300 of interest

 

[ianrauk]

6 years ago we booked a tour for a band from LA at about 6/7 good size UK venues. I totally misjudged the popularity of the band massively.
Watching them play to 25 people at the Clapham Grand wasn't nice..

We lost a lot of money. Five figures in £'s on that tour.

 

[mickle]

Let my sister swindle me out of £100,000.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Let my sister swindle me out of £100,000.

Ouch!!!!

 

[cd365]

Getting married and having kids

 

[asterix]

When I started my first job (proper job) I had responsibility for telling the dock supervisor if we had any cargo with special requirements. Occasionally a trailer would need to be plugged in to keep the contents at the right temperature.

One day I may have forgotten because my team leader told me that £150,000 of caviar had gone off through not being plugged in (my salary was then about £1200 p.a.). For days I was of course extremely worried about the repercussions and took extra care, however, nothing came of it and ever since I have a suspicion it was a common trick to be paid on a newbie!

 

[coffeejo]

Phew, feeling a lot better about managing to rip the cadence sensor off the wires this morning whilst installing it

 

[ColinJ]

Not my mistake, but a colleague once let out a horrified scream when the hard disk drive (HDD) on his company PC died, taking with it more than a year's worth of work which he hadn't backed up!

I think the company had to pay thousands of pounds to get the HDD rebuilt in a clean room by data recovery specialists ...

At least 3 other colleagues lost work due to dead HDDs. I lost quite a lot of data when my personal PC HDD failed.

REGULARLY BACK UP YOUR DATA, FOLKS!
(Note to self - it's a month since you did your last backup!)





I spoke to someone who remembered an incident when a programmer introduced a bug into the embedded control software for a microcontroller which controlled a huge mechanical hoist in a carpet factory. When the microcontroller tried to slow down the hoist, it actually started moving faster. A large roll of carpet ended up knocking a massive hole in the factory wall!

 

[Silver Fox]

Getting married and having kids

Tell me about it, the getting married thing, not having kids. Bolt a divorce on the end and when everything was done I was close on £500,000 lighter.

Still, at least I still have my health and good looks .

 

[goo_mason]

Marrying my ex!

She paid & contributed NOTHING in all the years we were married. I paid the bills, rent, council tax, food, entertainment, her credit card bills for 11 years, etc etc; then when we divorced I had to give her half of the contents and half of the profit of the sale price of the flat!

Sigh.