My list of financial mistakes

I've made mistakes. I've made sub-optimal choices. But they were always based on the information that I had at the time of the decision. Here I've made a short form list which I'll add to as I keep learning on my journey. Drop in the comments any item you want to hear more about in it's own blog post, so hopefully you can make more informed decisions on your own journey.

Maybe this is really "how I have still succeeded with dumb luck"

It's worth pausing and acknowledging that:

• I'm still succeeding at my FIRE target in spite of the list.
• I've included things that accidentally turned out ok but normally would be a disaster, because I had some dumb luck or a convenient economic environment
• Being born with white skins means I have one less contributing factor to my set-backs and one more contributing factor to my successes. 

Ok here is the list

• Earning loads of cash doing odd jobs as a teenager and spending all of it to impress my friends.
• Not taking more Advanced Placement (AP) courses in high school to earn college credit for free.
• Not taking my basic courses at a Community College and then transferring to a 4-Year University.
• Not putting in effort to apply for more university scholarships.
• Using credit cards to get through university. I graduated after 5.5 years with $15,000 of credit card debt and $25,000 of student loans because I had maxed out the federal subsidized loans and private bank loans were going for 14% interest rates. I don't regret using 5% credit card debt to get through university but damn I got lucky and never recommend this to anyone. This could have been a disaster.
• I bought a Whole Life Insurance (really, I was sold a Whole Life Insurance policy by a Northwestern Mutual representative as part of my free financial plan). These are also called Permament Life Insurance policies. I was paying like $600 a month for that thing. 
  • Ultimately I did sell it at a loss after 6 or 7 years, but I don't regret the circumstances that got me into it because that NM representative set me on my first path of planning for my future. And with dumb luck, I sold that policy at a loss in February 2020 and dumped the cash into VOO at Charles Schwab in March 2020 at the lowest point in the COVID crisis market crash. I made back my losses in just a few months.
• ​Buying too big of a house. 
• Buying a house to put a roof over my head because I believed that housing is the most important investment we can make in our lives.
• Buying some useless bond-heavy mutual funds because my NM representative advised me to, without understanding what the portfolios consisted of and why someone would buy them. I sold them in 2021 after owning them for 6 years and literal 0% growth. I dumped the proceeds into VOO (now I use VTI).
• Maxing out my 401(K) contributions.
• Maxing out my Roth IRA contributions.

Which one should I deep dive into? Drop in the comments any item you want to hear more about in it's own blog post.

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