Not changing my fundamental mindset about money. 99% of the time, it's better to focus on the long-term goal of increasing your income, rather than saving a small amount of your current income. Extreme frugality is almost always a waste of time and earning potential.

For example: 15% of $150,000 is more than 40% of $50,000. This is also why living in a HCOL but making proportionally more money is financially smart. If you can only save 10% of your income, that 10% number will be far higher if your total salary is higher.

I second this. Spent so many years turning down jobs in London. Took the plunge about six years ago. earning over double what I did before but more importantly got so many more opportunities and levelled up my game

Negotiating against myself, and accepting the negotiating "frame" of the bidder when I had a monopoly/monopsony asset.

I sold a four-letter common-noun .com domain to a major corporation back in the '90s when they were scooping up domains, and fell for the "name your price" trick: I asked around and named a number I thought was high and they said "that's acceptable" – I'll never know how much they might have paid if I'd tried to find another bidder and made a market.

Did I learn my lesson? A few years ago I sold a long-term residential lease to a private-equity developer after bidding them up to "enough to buy an equivalent apartment" – but really the value of the lease to them may have been much higher. I negotiated as if I were selling them my apartment, rather than pointing out that what I really held was their ability to freely develop a very valuable property into which they'd already sunk $40 or $50 million.

I can't really complain, both "mistakes" were only failures to maximize windfalls. And I'm not embarrassed – they were professional negotiators and I'm just a lucky programmer. But I do sometimes regret not being greedier!

My worst financial decision was to choose to be an academic as my “first” career. The pay wasn’t terrible in my case, but it wasn’t anywhere near my potential.

The other side of that coin, however, is that it was probably one of my best life decisions — I am a much better and happier person because of it.

Answering a slightly different question: I can definitely say that I know several people for whom getting married and later divorced was extremely expensive for them on many levels. I imagine that some folks will be reluctant to state that for themselves in a public forum, but it definitely happens. It can be a very tricky topic in terms of what constitutes a reasonable division of assets.

Dismissing Bitcoin as vapour in the very early days (back when you could feasibly mine on a CPU). I still think it’s nonsense, but it’s nonsense that’s made the people around me who bought into it very comfortable!

I am making mine right now - I spend too much money and save too little. I'm working on it, but it's proving difficult to get out of the habit. When I was a freelancer saving was easy because I didn't have the illusion of a consistent paycheck. But now I'm in a full time, stable job in a country where employee rights are good and job security is high, and I'm not prioritizing saving as much as I know I should. This is something I'll be working hard to improve.

Right there with you. One trick I've been using as of lately is pre-paying my rent by paying for 2 months each month. That way the money isn't available for me to spend uselessly. I'm still spending it, but on a bill that I'd hav to pay anyways. I'm up to 3 months of pre-paid rent and feels good to know that if something happened to my job, at least I won't lose my apartment.

This is good but you are better putting this in a GIC instead and then pay rent from there. Ladder GIC's or a HISA account.

If you pre-pay rent, which is good to have it paid and not worry about, you aren't earning interest with that money which can add up, suppose you get to saving 12-months rent in advance.

Good point, very true. The issue I struggle with is discipline - if I have any way to access the funds, I will end up spending them, doesn't matter how many accounts I have to transfer through. Hence why I went with the pre-pay rent route - it's technically already "spent" and I can't simply take it back or acccess if after that. The goal is to recalibrate my spending habits after paying double rent for some time, and then begin to reallocate that monthly budget to better investments as you have mentioned.

Get a savings only account at a bank far from you. Throw the bank card out. Set automatic withdrawal to that account. This way you have to go to the physical bank to withdraw money. This may work for you. Good luck, it is really a challenge.

That’s a solid idea, thanks for the tips!

I'm not sure what GIC and HISA are, but it sounds like they may be US-specific? I'm in Europe, not sure what the equivalent is here if any.

GIC is a guaranteed investment certificate. HISA is a high interest savings account. They may be named alternatively in Europe. I am not familiar with EU banking.

You might have to research it further with your bank for GIC and look for online only banks for the HISA option.

The best way to do this, IMO, is to have automatic withdrawals from your account into another account.

You are correct! It is a fully time tested method that can work for anyone.

I do have automatic withdrawals, but unfortunately I often end up taking some of that back into my main account. I also have 10% being kept from me each month by my employer as part of the Employee Stock Purchase Plan - it is my one bit of savings that I literally cannot touch until the shares are actually purchased. The next purchase period is in February and my plan is to immediately pay off my thankfully fairly minor debt and then learn not to touch the rest.

If you are able to move it back easily, then you did not move it far enough away. Have the auto withdraws go somewhere harder to access. A mutual fund or something. Or a bank with a saving account where you need to GO to the bank to get the money back out.

Not starting retirement savings till I was 41

Ps I just started this year. Would like to see how I can understand what I have lost so far and what would I need to do to “make up”

It may be different where you live, in the UK it's often suggested that when you start out with a pension you should save minimum half your age as a percentage of your income until you retire. I.e. if you start at 41 then you should put 20.5% into your pension.

I would recommend playing around with https://www.firecalc.com/ as it seems to be a pretty customizable calculator.

Not starting to invest sooner. I should have started at 18 but I didn't know. What I would give to have those extra years of time in the market.

Without time to build not afraid to lose capital?

My Worst mistake was to give too much of my personal gains to close family out of sense of duty only to realize very late that they were simply playing me to accumulate wealth for themselves and whomsoever they considered dear.

Another big one was to invest in real estate without research.

Both were teachable moments this year.

"only to realize very late that they were simply playing me to accumulate wealth for themselves and whomsoever they considered dear."

As someone starting out a pretty successful career with a not so wealthy background, I also feel that I will soon need to give of my personal gains to my close family out of a sense of personal duty. Which doesn't really bother me, as I am very grateful for what they have done for me and they would have probably done the same for me if the roles were reversed. My question is why do you feel that they played you? They asked for too much? They asked too often? They were not grateful? You were expecting things that they did not do for you? Could you please elaborate more on this?

Yes they asked for too much and demand increased as my income levels grew so watch out for this behaviour. I would say decide what you want to share and keep the boundaries clear.

I don't mind giving at all. It's getting fooled part which pinches.

Investing about $5k into starting a cafe. Low risk businesses are actually surprisingly high risk in that the margins are really poor, sometimes even negative once you count inflation.

Also heavily underestimated inflation of developing countries - if it has high growth, it probably has high inflation. In SE Asia, prices will double every 15 years, if not faster.

If you know tech, invest in tech, because your odds are likely above average.

Waiting until 2008 to invest savings dating back to 2003.

Too frugal with money, too wasteful with time.

Taking 3 years to move from my first job, as I was underpaid and didn't realise how much until getting an offer.

1. Shooting too low and not taking enough early career risk.

2. Wiping the hard disk that contained 5 BTC from 2008 :)

Buying a lot of domain names, unfortunately selling them is a lot harder than expected.

Investing in under-construction properties in developing countries which never got completed due to builder fraud and losing a large amount of money :(

- Quitting my job

- Traveling full-time

- Not selling my ETFs (I'm down 20%-30%)

I guess you did (1) in order to be able to (2). How was that a mistake? You did not have savings or a plan? (considering doing the same here...)

I am frustrated by the state of the world, and I have a urge to fix it. I can't tell if it's a legitimate concern, or if I'm being delusional. The delusion and frustration could be explained by undiagnosed depression and ADHD.

I'm traveling to force myself out of the routine I was stuck in for the past few years. I hoped it would allow and motivate me to act upon this urge to change the world. Something else must be missing, as I'm not making the progress I expected.

I'm currently trying to figure out what's preventing me from making progress. I'm doing a lot of introspection, meditation, eliminating distractions and time sinks, organizing my values, goals and commitments, using a task manager and calendar, building new healthy habits.

I'm trying to fix myself before I can fix the world.

My personal finances are currently taking a hit, but I hope it will turn out to be a good investment.

The market is fine right now. You should recover your losses fairly soon. Depending on your age, this may be value to read [1].

[1] https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market...

Leaving around 20 btc in my silkroad account.

Not cashing out some options as soon as they vested at a large corporation that then went into decline.

Short selling the S&P 500 in 2005. I saw trouble coming but I missed what the trigger would be entirely.

What would you say was the trigger?

That was actually my favorite thing about The Big Short—the author did a good job of showing how the traders first to short the market earned the least and experienced the most distress.

My theory at the time was something I called "The Syndrome" which was based on the idea that the business cycle is based on the balance of "solving problems" vs "creating problems" and thus a homology between the events surrounding 1929, 1968 and 2000.

In the "syndrome theory" there is a crisis of the private sector creating problems faster that can solve them that then leads to a change in the governing philosophy that improves matters for a time, but then we run into the limits of that regime and it happens again.

This theory called the top in 1999 (I remember watching a football game on Christmas day and the ads were for stocks and bonds and not beer and I went home and sold)

In 2005 I thought the 2nd Iraq War would lead to a government crisis (analogous to Vietnam/Watergate) but that didn't happen.

Interestingly there was no real "regime change" after 1999 but instead SOX and other regulatory changes seemed to cement a culture of rent seeking and inpunity.

Milton Keynes, the great trader, said that "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" and that is quite true.

None, I'm quite savvy with money since very young. But I surely did lost a lot of opportunities.

Buying Facebook stocks

fb isn't going anywhere. Don't worry. Everybody needs fb for data.

fb is a long term hold. I'm sure they'll do ok.

Staying in academia