What Didn't Kill You But Ruined You Financially? 5 Tales of Fumbles and Misfortune

While becoming an independent adult has a lot of perks, it also comes with great responsibilities. The most important of them is financial management. It can be surprisingly easy to get carried away which can drain your finances. However, it is best to learn from the mistakes of others. For this, a Reddit u/createanewaccountuse asked fellow Redditors, "What didn't kill you but ruined you financially?" The post on the forum, r/AskReddit gathered thousands of replies with many sharing stories of how they went broke. Here are some lessons that people can learn from them.

1. Be Prepared Even for Bad Luck

The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the most devastating crises of all time. One user, u/AnotherDrunkCanadian went broke during the pandemic. The user wrote on the post that they quit their jobs in Canada to move to Tahiti and open a VR arcade. Unfortunately, they opened just a week before the pandemic hit and they are still in the hole. They added that one of their friends who soft-launched a food truck in the fall of 2019 also failed. Thus, while opening a business, even the most unlikely disasters need to be accounted for.

2. Remember Nothing’s Forever

One user, u/strugglingwell, shared how their divorce ruined their future financial plans. The user wrote that their divorce didn’t cost them much, but it put their plan of paying off the house in 15 years, in jeopardy. Furthermore, the couple had planned to maintain enough cash flow for their college and kids while still building for retirement. However, after the divorce, the user is struggling with their living expenses while college is on loans. “Let’s not talk about retirement,” the user wrote.

3. Check Insurance Coverage

Another user, u/isimplycannotdothis shared they were sober for almost three years, but it came at a cost. The user said that they "were out of their mind" while being taken to a rehab. However, the user was in a lot more trouble as the rehab was not covered in their insurace policy. "Ended up owing like 35 grand for three weeks of in-patient," the user wrote.

4. Don’t Fall for Multi-Level Marketing Schemes

A user, u/ChippyVonMaker who recently got married, shared their story of how they fell for a MLM scheme. The user said since his wife had gone back to school, they were nearly broke at the time. So when a friend of hers was pitched the idea of selling Mary Kay, his wife thought it would help her make a little more income.

Their friend even convinced her to increase their credit card limit to buy the cosmetics at the best value. “It was around $4,000 bucks (in 1990) and absolutely devastating for us to pay back at 28% interest,” the user wrote. They learned that MLMs only work with people who know a ton of other people to “ruin over apparently.” 

5. Addiction is Bad

Redditor u/jerseygirl1105 shared how alcoholism ruined their life. The user expressed that she lost her husband, kids, home, cars, etc., after taking a huge fall and ending up as “a pathetic drunk, living on the streets.” However, the user said that she had turned their lives around and had been sober for 14 years. However, the user regretted her actions as she wrote, “I'll never get close to the kind of life I was living before alcohol took over.”