Skip Navigation
202 comments
  • Never let the car run out of gas. I was on the highway and the destination gas station was in sight. Well, even after putting more gas in from a Jerry can it wouldn't start because debris clogged the fuel filter. Getting it towed + repaired was like $1000 when I could have just stopped at a gas station earlier.

  • That starting the work is half the work. I wasted a lot of time procrastinating, it took me shamefully long to realize that if I could just start an activity for 5 minutes, taking it to completion is then relatively easy

  • I wanted a newer car, so I rolled my existing auto loan into the newer vehicles loan. So easy right?

    I was upside down on it for years and years. It's so disheartening to drive a vehicle that's falling apart and stranding you everywhere but still owe $10k on it. It was an awful decision that took years of pain but that was my lesson on buying things I can afford.

  • As Eisenhower said,

    beware the engagement-wedding-genderreveal-kids-mortgage-divorce-childsupport-legal-industrial complex.

    I may be mis-remembering exactly what he said. but I think that was the gist.

  • I'm not actually an investment genius, I'm just gambling like the rest of them.

    • This is a great point and an important lesson: part of what makes scams so appealing is that they stroke your ego. A lot of them rely on the mark believing they're somehow better and different than all the people who got swindled, ignoring the fact that there is no correlation between all the victims besides "they all participated in this scam."

      For example, a lot of sleight-of-hand gamers will let other marks see the sleight of hand while someone is playing. This makes them feel like they're in on the secret and can't be fooled by the scammer. What they fail to realize is that the first mark was actually in on it, and the scam happens off the table when you get pickpocketed, or other plants in the crowd "accidentally" jostle you distracting you from the table, or the 6'8", 320 lbs guy named Tinkerbell with the brass knuckles is suddenly very insistent that you must be cheating to win so much and you owe homeboy his money back (and some crowd members are even saying they saw you cheat???)

      Scams above all rely on controlling the environment. If you "see through it and know how to come out on top" no you don't, and no you won't; it's almost certainly just another layer of the scam.

  • Years ago I tried my hand gambling on politics on PredictIt, and I didn't lose all that much, but there were a couple bets I lost that seemed like sure things. Mostly the lesson I learned is that talk is cheap and there's no real consequences for people saying one thing and doing the other.

    For example, in the 2016 election, there was a market on whether no-name Carly Fiona would qualify for the CNN debate, and by the rules they set she didn't qualify, but there hadn't been as many polls in the right timeframe as had been expected. Still, they released a statement days before the debate, saying "rules are rules," so I took a bet at like 90% odds thinking it was completely safe - then they let her in at the last minute and I lost big. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but I think I lost a fair bit on a market about Trump meeting with Kim Jong Un, which was a pretty chaotic market. The most chaotic market I ever saw, which I avoided and wanted no part of, was whether Bernie would win Iowa in 2020, and watching it closely in real time made it very obvious that some really shady stuff was going on. Probably the most I ever lost was Biden winning the 2020 primary, which is about when I got out of it.

    I would not recommend gambling like that because if you have money on the line there's an incentive to be glued to the news in a way that can be really unhealthy. Honestly the stress was worse than the money I lost. It's more trouble than it's worth, the fees will get you, also it's generally more about predicting what the market will think so you can profit off the swings, and personally I think it's kind of a distasteful way to engage in politics. At the same time, it can be a learning experience - it definitely got me in the habit of asking "And what consequences will this person face if they're lying off their ass?" every time I see a headline about someone saying something, and of not paying as much attention to statements in general.

  • Practice/passion/skill > gear in music

    And Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a real disorder

    Don't get into modular synths unless you have serious $$$

202 comments