'Every day I cycle past the £2million flat that could have been mine': SIMON MILLS and our other top writers reveal their biggest financial regrets - and the mistakes they wish they could fix | Retrui News | Retrui
'Every day I cycle past the £2million flat that could have been mine': SIMON MILLS and our other top writers reveal their biggest financial regrets - and the mistakes they wish they could fix
SOURCE:Daily Mail
If you're feeling cash-strapped this January, take comfort: you've got nothing on this lot. Four writers reveal their most epic financial fails.
‘How could I fall for a big-bird pyramid scheme?’
By Michael Odell
It was 1999, I was 35 years old and suddenly everyone was dying. My dad. My grandmother.
But then the solicitor mentioned I’d been left some money. ‘How much?’ I asked between sniffles. ‘Enough to buy a car,’ she enthused, looking down at the numbers. ‘Second hand.’
It was actually £10,000, and the financial advice came thick and fast.
‘Invest it wisely and you can afford a new motor,’ said a friend. This was the autumn before the millennium. Tech stocks were exploding. I assumed he meant the online investing frenzy. ‘No, I’m talking ostriches,’ he said, looking shiftily this way and that. He made a plausible case. Big birds. Easy to breed. Lean meat.
‘It’s the new chicken,’ he assured me.
‘This thing just might fly,’ I mused.
‘No mate, they can’t. I obviously need to get a brochure over to you.’
Michael Odell invested £10,000 in ostriches: When you see the words ‘pyramid scheme’ in an article about ostrich meat, he writes, you know you’re in trouble
But I don’t remember ever seeing a brochure. Only that greedy ‘something for nothing’ feeling. I told my girlfriend we’d soon be buying a new car, a new flat – probably a holiday home, too. Then I handed over the £10,000 and waited. And waited.
The first time I sensed something was wrong was the lack of ostrich steaks on supermarket shelves. ‘Chicken’s over there,’ the girl refilling rows of Twix told me, when I insisted I wanted an ostrich steak.
And then my girlfriend noticed a troubling news report. When you see the words ‘pyramid scheme’ in an article about ostrich meat, you know you’re in trouble. When the CEO is described as ‘on the run’ you know it’s game over.
‘How could you be so stupid?!’ my girlfriend raged at me. ‘If you’d invested in technology we’d be loaded by now!’
It wasn’t just me, there were hundreds of investors. They formed a campaign group, but I put my head in the sand. Ten grand, all gone. Of course, when the dotcom bubble burst six months later, it was something of a relief.
‘Every day I cycle past the £2 million flat that could have been mine’
By Simon Mills
Talk to any Londoner over, say, 50 and they will relay to you their very sad real-estate sob story. About the time they bought an apartment in Notting Hill for 60 grand, sold it a few years later – in the late 1990s – for the apparently astronomical price of £120k... and how, if they’d only been smart enough to hang on to it for a few years more, it would now be worth a life-changing, pensionable, three quarters of a million.
Yeah, right, Boomer. My heart bleeds for you. Sound of the world’s tiniest violins providing the mournful soundtrack, etc.
Who is this mendicant, walking financial disaster? This monetary klutz of a panhandler? The eternal pauper with the £60,000 apartment and the paltry profit margin (all spent now, obviously) was me, of course. That investment – outvestment? – being one of my better decisions.
In the 1980s, Simon Mills had the opportunity to buy a huge gaff in west London for just 50 grand, but bottled out. Now worth £2million, he has to cycle past it every day
Another key moment being the time in the 1980s (again) when I had the opportunity to buy a huge, high-ceilinged gaff in west London for just 50 grand (a massive amount back then).
I bottled out, mainly because my over-cautious father advised me that the property market in the capital was heading for a crash. Fast-forward to 2025 and that very same flat, in a leafy W2 square, is now worth around £2million. (Cruelly, I have to cycle past it every day on my way to the railway station.)
And how about the time in the early 2000s when a friend invited me to invest £1,000 in his sportswear start-up? I declined, of course, and then watched my smarter, savvier pals pick up cheques for £25,000 and £50,000 when the entrepreneur sold the business for a huge profit a decade later. Business as usual for this eternal defaulter and nearly man.
As time passes, and I grow ever poorer and even more penny-wise, it is not the big money deals that hurt – not bricks-and-mortar or start-up misses – but the small stuff that really irks me. One particularly nice wristwatch, in fact.
When I earned a bit of money in the 1990s I bought a second-hand Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date GMT-Master – you know, the classic pilot’s chronograph with the red and blue ‘Pepsi’ bezel.
The guy I bought it off told me it was a very rare, early model from the 1950s. It cost around £900 and I wore it every day. I loved that watch. Then, when things got tight in the mid Noughties, I sold it to a dealer in Mayfair for £1,000. Worst decision ever.
That very handsome vintage timepiece is now worth £50,000. And I think about it (and my complete inability to do anything clever, astute or shrewd with my hard-earned money) every time I look at my wrist, see a bare patch of skin where my nice watch used to be… and then fish around in my pocket for my phone.
‘A childhood decision has cost me almost £100,000’
By David Aaronovitch
One shilling and sixpence was a lot of money to a nine-year-old back in the 1960s. But Clive Matthews – ash blond and long shorts – was a persuasive boy. He has this book of footballing stars and I would obviously be a bit dim if I didn’t shell out that week’s pocket money and buy it from him.
It turned out the book was already a year out of date.
But that wasn’t my big financial disaster. It just meant no sweets for a few days. The catastrophe was that, as a result of the book, I became a Spurs fan and, a decade later, I started going to matches – even in a period when the team was terrible and was relegated.
A 1967 Spurs win – and another step on David Aaronovitch’s road to ruin
Tickets were cheap in those days. Just stroll up to the turnstile, pay a pound and you could shout all you wanted for nearly two hours. Bu,t in 1994, the club bought a famous German player and I bought a season ticket for around £500. Four years later I bought a second for my eldest daughter.
By last year, each season ticket cost more than £2,000.
I would reckon that since Clive Matthews ran home laughing all the way to his piggy bank, I’ve spent the best part of 100 grand and watched the team win 12 trophies.
And here’s the thing they don’t tell you: every time a team wins a football match and their supporters are happy, another team loses and theirs are sad… £50,000 to be happy, fair enough, but imagine paying £50,000 to be sad.
‘I let a rare antique go for £20’
By Mary Killen
The spectre of a triumphant Dublin book dealer, staggering out of my great aunt’s house, circa 1976, with the double folio 1765 third edition of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary Of The English Language has haunted me sporadically ever since.
The dealer had paid my parents only £20 for it. About £180 in today’s money. And it was all my fault for wearing white tights.
After years of angst, Mary Killen was somewhat relieved to discover a valuable book her parents sold to a dealer for £20 in the 1970s was not worth £250,000 but instead £50,000
I knew it must be worth far more (I had, by that point, read Boswell’s hilarious The Life Of Samuel Johnson. I knew Johnson had written the first-ever proper dictionary), but how to find out how much more? I didn’t have any book-dealer friends and the internet didn’t exist. Moreover, long-distance phone calls cost a fortune so I couldn’t ‘ring round’.
My great aunt’s heirs, my father and his brother, were charged with clearing her Victorian treasure house in three days.
They believed me that the dictionary was probably valuable, but everyone was tired, irritable and suffering from decision fatigue.
On day three, because I had cast doubt on my teenage judgment by wearing white tights, the grown-ups declined to give me more time to research and allowed the dealer to take the dictionary for £20.
Until today, I could never bring myself to look up its worth. I have just done so. It is on Abe Books at £5,000. Something of a relief. I’d assumed it would be £250,000.
‘I was a millionaire... and blew the lot’
By Julie Burchill
On paper, I’ve been awful with money. I’ve made ludicrous financial mistakes for the past 40 years – generally by overspending.
There was the Christmas in 2003 I became a millionaire and, to celebrate, went to my local Space NK and bought a Diptyque candle in every fragrance.
When I was struck by the reality of literally setting fire to thousands of pounds I said to the server, ‘What’s your favourite charity?’
‘It’s called Whizz Kidz,’ he answered. ‘My little brother can’t walk and they’ve helped him so much.’ Writing an equivalent cheque completely cancelled out any subsequent self-loathing that might have marred the festive season, but doubled my outgoings in the course of five minutes.
The billionaire industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie said that ‘the man who thus dies rich dies disgraced’. So Julie Burchill claims she doesn't regret a thing
By 2018 I crashed – but, somehow, I didn’t burn. When my bank manager came to my house to cut up my credit cards, I cried and he gave them back to me.
That was handy, as I needed them for the endless rounds of drinks, five-star holidays and 30-person sit-down birthday lunches that I treated my mates to over the decades.
Just when I really was about to be down and out, Banksy made me a lovely big painting – and I sold it for a fortune (around £500,000) and bought a flat in Hove. Now I am 66, I have discovered two of the loveliest words in the English language: ‘equity release’.
The billionaire industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie said that ‘the man who thus dies rich dies disgraced’. That certainly won’t be my problem. So, looking back, I can’t say I regret a thing.
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR MONEY, BY MISS LOLLY
Lisa Conway-Hughes, AKA Miss Lolly (misslolly.com), is a chartered financial advisor and wealth manager who has worked in the finance industry for 20 years.
The 44-year-old is also a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society and her book, Money Lessons, is packed with savvy spending advice.
So, if you’ve spent £10,000 on an ostrich pyramid scheme, or frittered nearly a hundred thousand on football, read on. These are her biggest financial dos and don’ts.
Lisa Conway-Hughes, also known as Miss Lolly, is a chartered financial adviser and wealth manager who has worked in the finance industry for 20 years
Don’t stash your cash
‘It sounds stupid,’ says Miss Lolly, ‘but the most common mistake I see is people having too much cash.’ Seriously.
If you keep the bulk of your pennies in a current or savings account, ‘inflation is just eating away at that money’.
Miss Lolly says most people only need six-months’ worth of outgoings in cash: the rest ought to be put in investments – such as a stocks and shares ISA – or your pension.
Stay on top of your mortgage
‘When your mortgage deal ends, the bank will put you on their standard variable rate,’ says Miss Lolly. That’s not good.
‘Currently, that can be as high as seven per cent. And lots of people sit on [their mortgages], not realising the rate has changed.’
Miss Lolly’s advice is to mark in your diary at least six months before your mortgage deal ends – that way, you can stay organised.
Don’t be afraid to overpay
If you can afford to, ‘don’t underestimate the power of overpaying your mortgage’, says Miss Lolly.
She recently had two clients who wanted to retire at 60 without any mortgage payments.
‘I had them overpay their mortgage by £1,300 a month. It’s a lot, but paying it off 11 years early saved them £296,849 of interest.’
If you could do similar, Miss Lolly says to check out the mortgage- overpayment calculator on moneysavingexpert.com.
Check your pension Ts and Cs
A warning from Miss Lolly: ‘Don’t assume your work pension will do the hard work for you!’
Today, the minimum an employee can put into their pension is five per cent, but an employer’s minimum is three per cent.
Annoyingly, many companies have that arrangement as default – requiring employees to ‘opt in’ to have their contributions matched. Miss Lolly advises you check your pension terms – sharpish.
Don’t believe all you read
Today, there are endless ‘money influencers’ on social media, wanging on about why to put all your money in the US stock market. Ignore them. Or at least check they are regulated and independent.
‘Financial advisers are in a very heavily regulated industry for a reason,’ says Miss Lolly. ‘Take advice from the right people.’ And not, therefore, from your friend who says ostrich meat is the new chicken.