It may shock you to learn this, but I’m only human. Yep, I’m not a robot.
As much as I’ve learned about life, money, and myself in the past couple of years, I still have a lot left to learn too. And I still make money mistakes frequently. In fact, I’ve made quite a few money mistakes in the last month or so. Here are 4 stupid money mistakes I’ve made lately and, more importantly, what I’ve learned so they don’t happen again.
Compare Price Before You Buy
This seems like a no-brainer, but you should always compare prices before you buy something. Surprisingly, I do this quite a bit but a couple of weeks ago I didn’t and it cost me about $15.
Every time my fancy refrigerator with water in the door tells me it’s time for a new filter, I waltz down to the local appliance store (where I bought the fridge) and buy a new filter for $47.99 plus tax.
I hate shelling out for it, but it never occurred to me to try to find one somewhere else, like Walmart or even online at Amazon, until this year after I bought my new filter. I looked it up on Amazon and I can get a new filter on there with free shipping for only about $33.
Try the Free Things First
This personal finance tip can really be applicable to a lot of things, like trying to find fun free things to do before spending money on entertainment, or trying free food samples at the grocery store before you buy the new product, but in this case it means trying the free fixes for things that are broken before calling a repairman.
The repairman arrived, cleared out the drainpipe on my washing machine and was gone within 10 minutes of his arrival. My bill was an outrageous $45. Ugh!
Turn off the Lights
My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I got my energy bill this month. It was nearly $35 higher than in past months. I attribute part of that to the fact that I had to water my grass more in August, but the other part of it is probably that I work from home and use more energy during the day.
I definitely don’t want to go back to working in an office to lower my energy bill so instead I’ve been putting in a conscious effort to make sure I turn off the lights when I leave rooms and not to use them at all in the middle of the day when I can use natural light instead. We’ll see if this makes a difference on my next energy bill.
Don’t Fall for the Up-Sell
Also on my string of bad luck, I had to get my car repaired last week too. After going in and deciding I was only going to pay for the repair I needed and not the one that wasn’t as immediate, I was up-sold into getting them both done at the same time. This may not always be a bad option, but in this case it probably wasn’t the best idea since I’ve been bleeding money this month and we’re only on Day 8. I sure hope things turn around the rest of this month.
Are you human or are you a robot? What financial mistakes have you made lately?
