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Money you've lost/wasted for the dumbest reason

I bought Carnage Heart EXA on PSN without realizing that it's one of those PSP games that are NOT compatible with the Vita. I don't own a PSP...
 
Risible said:
I gotta hear this story.
Click to expand...

I'm going to look like an idiot, but here goes nothing!

I live in a college town (Manhattan, Kansas) and there's not really much happening here.
So, last year, I decided to put on a "Comedy Festival". It was a really small operation, 20 comedians, 4 shows, and a budget of around $3,000 for entertainment, staff, and equipment. Booked mostly local comics from around the region that I'd worked with, and a B-lister from LA.

It was very successful, gross earnings were around $6,000. However, I didn't have any capital invested in it. I did all of the planning, hosting, designing, and set up, but the owners of the venue fronted the capital, so I just walked away with $250. It was a blast and I loved it, but I was underpaid.

Fast forward to May, and I decide to do another one, same venue, new owner. I want to do it for Big Brothers Big Sisters as a charity fund raiser, since it's a program I volunteer for.
He allows me to rent it for $3,000 ($600 discount even) for two nights (it's an old opera house, seats about 350 people). I plan out 6 shows, all of crazy variety, not just traditional stand-up. We did a roast battle tournament, a Blue Comedy show, an Improv show, a Jazz & Jokes Show (yes it's exactly what it sounds like and it was a blast), traditional stand up with Billy Wayne Davis, and closed it out with a wacky variety show of sketch, improv, and stand-up (with some witty musical numbers to boot).

So, I start shopping for sponsors, since it's for charity and I want to make sure some expenses are covered. I get a few bites, get some businesses to pledge some money, offer some in-kind trades, etc. So, I sign the contract for the venue, and whip up the contract for the sponsors (WHY AM I SO STUPID). Upon delivering the contracts, both of my paying sponsors back out and say no thanks. I'm on the hook now for the venue, made the downpayment and signed the contract. I also booked the headliner (the hilarious Billy Wayne Davis, google him), and he booked his flight already. We're "friends", so he took it on face value that the show was good, didn't do a contract and we worked outside of his agent, so now I'm REALLY on the hook.

I bust my ass, do ground work barking, and I'm hitting up businesses here every day. No one wants to support comedy. Let me rephrase: No one wants to take the risk of a comedian saying something they don't like or getting political, even if it is for a good cause that benefits the community. I get turned down hand over fist.

My estimated budget at this point is roughly $6,500 with venue, equipment rental, and entertainment costs.

I get just TWO sponsors. One is Boulevard Brewing Company (SCORE). They give me T-Shirts, Koozies, and an ass ton of printing services. We did banners, flyers, posters, hand bills, the whole nine. Sales remained stagnant all the way until we hit 3 weeks out. At 3 weeks out we'd sold four tickets. SHITTING MY PANTS DAILY. I have a full time job, a 20hr a week freelance job, and then this festival on top of it.

Two weeks out, I secure one more sponsor for a paltry $300. Everyone is still telling me no, not interested. One guy even says he loves the idea and asks to see a vide of the headliner. I show him Billy Wayne Davis' set from Conan (yay TV credits) and he's laughing for about 3 minutes. Then BWD says something about healthcare, and his smile quickly fades, and he tells me he won't give a dime and politely asks me to leave.

Finally the week of, I drop about $100 more into social media advertising, do facebook live updates, and really start hitting the channels as hard as I can. There's a small spike in ticket sales and donations, and finally on the very last day...we clear just enough to pay for all the equipment and entertainment, with $500 left over...but we've only secured about $1,100 for the venue through donations, sponsors, and my downpayment...so still $1,900 on the hook.

The following Monday, I go into the owners office, tell him where we're at (and that we have nothing to give to charity, because I'm still in the hole $1,900). He discounts me $300, we talk some more, set up payments, and I offer to work off some of the debt, both manual labor and graphic design work.

Here's the TLDR: I bit off more than I could chew, made commitments prematurely, and overall just couldn't get the local community (which is 50% college kids) interested in seeing a variety of shows because YouTube, Netflix, and bars all exist. Huge failure, tail between my legs, and I've since quit doing stand-up in this town until I move to a bigger city.

This was last weekend, btw. Oct 6th-7th. Really recent.

*single tear
 
I was at CVS (a pharmacy in the united states) grabbed a drink and went through the self check out. I rang it up then wanted 40 bucks back. Well I get about halfway back to work and realize I don't have the $40.00.I go back there and tell and employee what happened. The person who worked there was nice enough to look through the trash but no luck. Maybe I threw it in a smaller barrel and someone grabbed it.

Bought an xbox one and maybe used it 4 times.
 
8byte said:
I'm going to look like an idiot, but here goes nothing!

I live in a college town (Manhattan, Kansas) and there's not really much happening here.
So, last year, I decided to put on a "Comedy Festival". It was a really small operation, 20 comedians, 4 shows, and a budget of around $3,000 for entertainment, staff, and equipment. Booked mostly local comics from around the region that I'd worked with, and a B-lister from LA.

It was very successful, gross earnings were around $6,000. However, I didn't have any capital invested in it. I did all of the planning, hosting, designing, and set up, but the owners of the venue fronted the capital, so I just walked away with $250. It was a blast and I loved it, but I was underpaid.

Fast forward to May, and I decide to do another one, same venue, new owner. I want to do it for Big Brothers Big Sisters as a charity fund raiser, since it's a program I volunteer for.
He allows me to rent it for $3,000 ($600 discount even) for two nights (it's an old opera house, seats about 350 people). I plan out 6 shows, all of crazy variety, not just traditional stand-up. We did a roast battle tournament, a Blue Comedy show, an Improv show, a Jazz & Jokes Show (yes it's exactly what it sounds like and it was a blast), traditional stand up with Billy Wayne Davis, and closed it out with a wacky variety show of sketch, improv, and stand-up (with some witty musical numbers to boot).

So, I start shopping for sponsors, since it's for charity and I want to make sure some expenses are covered. I get a few bites, get some businesses to pledge some money, offer some in-kind trades, etc. So, I sign the contract for the venue, and whip up the contract for the sponsors (WHY AM I SO STUPID). Upon delivering the contracts, both of my paying sponsors back out and say no thanks. I'm on the hook now for the venue, made the downpayment and signed the contract. I also booked the headliner (the hilarious Billy Wayne Davis, google him), and he booked his flight already. We're "friends", so he took it on face value that the show was good, didn't do a contract and we worked outside of his agent, so now I'm REALLY on the hook.

I bust my ass, do ground work barking, and I'm hitting up businesses here every day. No one wants to support comedy. Let me rephrase: No one wants to take the risk of a comedian saying something they don't like or getting political, even if it is for a good cause that benefits the community. I get turned down hand over fist.

My estimated budget at this point is roughly $6,500 with venue, equipment rental, and entertainment costs.

I get just TWO sponsors. One is Boulevard Brewing Company (SCORE). They give me T-Shirts, Koozies, and an ass ton of printing services. We did banners, flyers, posters, hand bills, the whole nine. Sales remained stagnant all the way until we hit 3 weeks out. At 3 weeks out we'd sold four tickets. SHITTING MY PANTS DAILY. I have a full time job, a 20hr a week freelance job, and then this festival on top of it.

Two weeks out, I secure one more sponsor for a paltry $300. Everyone is still telling me no, not interested. One guy even says he loves the idea and asks to see a vide of the headliner. I show him Billy Wayne Davis' set from Conan (yay TV credits) and he's laughing for about 3 minutes. Then BWD says something about healthcare, and his smile quickly fades, and he tells me he won't give a dime and politely asks me to leave.

Finally the week of, I drop about $100 more into social media advertising, do facebook live updates, and really start hitting the channels as hard as I can. There's a small spike in ticket sales and donations, and finally on the very last day...we clear just enough to pay for all the equipment and entertainment, with $500 left over...but we've only secured about $1,100 for the venue through donations, sponsors, and my downpayment...so still $1,900 on the hook.

The following Monday, I go into the owners office, tell him where we're at (and that we have nothing to give to charity, because I'm still in the hole $1,900). He discounts me $300, we talk some more, set up payments, and I offer to work off some of the debt, both manual labor and graphic design work.

Here's the TLDR: I bit off more than I could chew, made commitments prematurely, and overall just couldn't get the local community (which is 50% college kids) interested in seeing a variety of shows because YouTube, Netflix, and bars all exist. Huge failure, tail between my legs, and I've since quit doing stand-up in this town until I move to a bigger city.

This was last weekend, btw. Oct 6th-7th. Really recent.

*single tear
Click to expand...

Sounds like it was less your fault than businesses not really supporting anything cool there. At least you tried.
 
300 on rosetta stone to learn englishh....
Videogames were more effective and cheaper actually

Another 300 or so...TWICE on hot air balloon rides. The first time my gf and I just got wasted friday evening and did not wake up.

SECOND TIME my now wife could simply not have the day off for our hot air balloon ride, even though I made the reservation months in advance.

But I dont feel so bad after reading some replies in here
 
When I was younger I mistakenly filled my dad’s diesel car with unleaded petrol. I had to pay out a fair few quid to get it towed to a garage, then another few hundred to get it fixed. I also wasted the cost of a tank of petrol. Not my finest hour.
 
Not really the biggest waste in terms of biggest amount of money I have probably done but it made feel so stupid when I a few time have bought an book, gotten home and found the exact same book in the bookshelf. Done it three times at least I think.
 
Lost out on a couple hundred on eBay. Bought a rare Japanese game but months after realized that it was a reproduction with an off-colored label (hard to find comparison picks or find an average going price). No way to return it at this point sadly.

Recently ended up buying another copy for just over half of what I bought the repro for. Never go for Buy-It-Now.
 
I bought tickets to the Gipsy Kings recently (150$) and then forgot to request a day off from work. Not the worst one but I still hate myself for doing it.
 
8byte said:
I'm going to look like an idiot, but here goes nothing!

I live in a college town (Manhattan, Kansas) and there's not really much happening here.
So, last year, I decided to put on a "Comedy Festival". It was a really small operation, 20 comedians, 4 shows, and a budget of around $3,000 for entertainment, staff, and equipment. Booked mostly local comics from around the region that I'd worked with, and a B-lister from LA.

It was very successful, gross earnings were around $6,000. However, I didn't have any capital invested in it. I did all of the planning, hosting, designing, and set up, but the owners of the venue fronted the capital, so I just walked away with $250. It was a blast and I loved it, but I was underpaid.

Fast forward to May, and I decide to do another one, same venue, new owner. I want to do it for Big Brothers Big Sisters as a charity fund raiser, since it's a program I volunteer for.
He allows me to rent it for $3,000 ($600 discount even) for two nights (it's an old opera house, seats about 350 people). I plan out 6 shows, all of crazy variety, not just traditional stand-up. We did a roast battle tournament, a Blue Comedy show, an Improv show, a Jazz & Jokes Show (yes it's exactly what it sounds like and it was a blast), traditional stand up with Billy Wayne Davis, and closed it out with a wacky variety show of sketch, improv, and stand-up (with some witty musical numbers to boot).

So, I start shopping for sponsors, since it's for charity and I want to make sure some expenses are covered. I get a few bites, get some businesses to pledge some money, offer some in-kind trades, etc. So, I sign the contract for the venue, and whip up the contract for the sponsors (WHY AM I SO STUPID). Upon delivering the contracts, both of my paying sponsors back out and say no thanks. I'm on the hook now for the venue, made the downpayment and signed the contract. I also booked the headliner (the hilarious Billy Wayne Davis, google him), and he booked his flight already. We're "friends", so he took it on face value that the show was good, didn't do a contract and we worked outside of his agent, so now I'm REALLY on the hook.

I bust my ass, do ground work barking, and I'm hitting up businesses here every day. No one wants to support comedy. Let me rephrase: No one wants to take the risk of a comedian saying something they don't like or getting political, even if it is for a good cause that benefits the community. I get turned down hand over fist.

My estimated budget at this point is roughly $6,500 with venue, equipment rental, and entertainment costs.

I get just TWO sponsors. One is Boulevard Brewing Company (SCORE). They give me T-Shirts, Koozies, and an ass ton of printing services. We did banners, flyers, posters, hand bills, the whole nine. Sales remained stagnant all the way until we hit 3 weeks out. At 3 weeks out we'd sold four tickets. SHITTING MY PANTS DAILY. I have a full time job, a 20hr a week freelance job, and then this festival on top of it.

Two weeks out, I secure one more sponsor for a paltry $300. Everyone is still telling me no, not interested. One guy even says he loves the idea and asks to see a vide of the headliner. I show him Billy Wayne Davis' set from Conan (yay TV credits) and he's laughing for about 3 minutes. Then BWD says something about healthcare, and his smile quickly fades, and he tells me he won't give a dime and politely asks me to leave.

Finally the week of, I drop about $100 more into social media advertising, do facebook live updates, and really start hitting the channels as hard as I can. There's a small spike in ticket sales and donations, and finally on the very last day...we clear just enough to pay for all the equipment and entertainment, with $500 left over...but we've only secured about $1,100 for the venue through donations, sponsors, and my downpayment...so still $1,900 on the hook.

The following Monday, I go into the owners office, tell him where we're at (and that we have nothing to give to charity, because I'm still in the hole $1,900). He discounts me $300, we talk some more, set up payments, and I offer to work off some of the debt, both manual labor and graphic design work.

Here's the TLDR: I bit off more than I could chew, made commitments prematurely, and overall just couldn't get the local community (which is 50% college kids) interested in seeing a variety of shows because YouTube, Netflix, and bars all exist. Huge failure, tail between my legs, and I've since quit doing stand-up in this town until I move to a bigger city.

This was last weekend, btw. Oct 6th-7th. Really recent.

*single tear
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for sharing, that was really interesting. Sorry for dredging up bad memories :(.
 
I bought the Fire Emblem: Fates SE + DLC.
I'm only made it through Conquest and it was just awful. Not to mention, I got tired of Corrin being in a thong. This level of "fanservice" is just ridiculous. Just give her some pants!
 
The only thing that come a to mind right away was the time I took out $100 from an ATM and walked away after my transaction without taking the money. Realised this 20 seconds later as I was walking through the casino.
Much too late by that time. I still walked back in hopes someone would see me staring at the line of ATM's with confusion and regret.
 
When I turned 18, I was really excited to have a debit card I could use for whatever I wanted and no one would know.

I decided to pay for a month's subscription to an adult website just to see what it was like. It was something like $35 a month, which was a lot, but I could afford a one-time buy. I signed up and paid for my first month, which came with a 12-month auto-renewal, so I immediately canceled the subscription. This gave me a free month and, I thought, would prevent any other charges being made to my account.

What I didn't realize is that I'd also been signed up for three other "free trials", which I thought were just included in the cost of the first's membership. You could opt out, but I didn't, and I thought it was all part of the same subscription.

After about a year, I was looking at my bank statement and noticed three charges in a row for $35. I scrolled down and realized there was one last month too, and the month before that, and every month for almost a year. I recognized the name of the charge as the billing company for that original website. I had to do an account recovery and check my original confirmation emails and realized that each subscription was managed under a different subscription number and that I'd been paying over $100 a month for some websites I didn't even know I subscribed to.

I canceled them all one-by-one and called the billing company very upset. I said I had no idea I'd been paying for these and I'd canceled this membership 10 months ago. I said I wanted a refund and I was able to plead my way back to a six-month reimbursement. I said fine, because it was better than nothing, and I knew it was my own mistake. What they'd done was unethical, but I was careless and wasn't being attentive to my own bank statement. She told me I would see three instances of reimbursement, one for each subscription.

In the next few days, I got refunds back for two of the three subscriptions that totaled six months of the member cost. But the third one didn't come. I called again after a couple of weeks and they told me they'd already paid me. I said I hadn't, and I offered to show them my bank statement, but they insisted their system reflected all three refunds. We went back and forth and I gave up. Whether it was a system glitch (yeah right) or they were lying, I couldn't argue about it anymore.

Anyway, that's the story about how I lost $1000 because I wanted to try a premium pornography website. This is one of my more embarrassing stories. But I'm fine with what happened because I learned a lot from it and I'm not averse to paying (sometimes literally) for my own mistakes.
 
Money on food that I let go bad. Like seriously, I buy fruit only to see is slowly rot away in my kitchen.
Money on things that I never attend. I signed up for a creative writing class and I stopped going after the first week. I'm just an idiot for even signing up and wasting the money.
Money on clothing that I barely wear or never wear.
Money wasted on prostitutes. That shit is addicting.
Money wasted on various alcohol and weed. It's all a waste.
 
FairyD said:
Money on food that I let go bad. Like seriously, I buy fruit only to see is slowly rot away in my kitchen.
Money on clothing that I barely wear or never wear.
Money wasted on various alcohol and weed. It's all a waste.
Click to expand...

This stuff is mostly just cost of living stuff. Happens to everyone.

Money on things that I never attend. I signed up for a creative writing class and I stopped going after the first week. I'm just an idiot for even signing up and wasting the money.
Click to expand...

Yeah, ok that's kinda wasteful.

Money wasted on prostitutes. That shit is addicting.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Uh... yeah.
 
rainz said:
Left my $100 ATM withdrawal in the ATM years ago.. Ran back when i realised but had made someones day by then lol.. Never withdrew money that stoned again.
Click to expand...

The ATM usually just reclaims the money if you don't take it out in like 10 seconds.
 
Buying the extended warranty on my preowned car.

Wasted Thousands. THOUSANDS!!!!

Oh well, you live and learn.
 
Girls and alcohol. Or rather spending that happens when intoxicated and chasing girls.

1: Paid for a girl's very expensive taxi (I also went with her) for us to go to a house party that she wasn't telling the truth about in the hopes of getting laid. There was no party. I didn't get laid.

2: Spent like £100 on drinks for a girl and her friends in the hope of getting with her. I didn't get with her. On the flip side did meet a nice girl on the same night who was interested.

So yeah, it's when I'm drunk and chasing women. Trying to learn from it and do better in the future.
 
Finale Fireworker said:
Anyway, that's the story about how I lost $1000 because I wanted to try a premium pornography website. This is one of my more embarrassing stories. But I'm fine with what happened because I learned a lot from it and I'm not averse to paying (sometimes literally) for my own mistakes.
Click to expand...


Speaking of embarrassing stories, back it the days, my Babewatch VHS tape got stuck in the video machine so I had to bring it to an electronics store to get it removed. When I was just about to leave the store with the VHS and the tape, the guy at the counter said outloud that I was welcomed anytime if I had further issues...

Lost some of my dignity that day... but me and my friends still laugh about it about 20 years later! to this day, I wish I could've see the look on his face when he saw what was on the tape!
 
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