From student debt to costly weddings: my biggest spending regrets

Our writer considers which spending decisions she most regrets and why. Please do share yours in the comments section at the end of the article.

When I tell people I am a money journalist there is usually an expectation that I must be incredibly financial savvy.

But the truth is that, despite writing about personal finances day in and day out, I’ve still made plenty of money mistakes – both as a young person and as an established financial journalist who scrutinises money matters for a living.

So I decided to list off my biggest money regrets to see what, if anything, I’ve learned from them.

Before you rush to the comments to tell me I’ve been an idiot, please remember that a) I know that and b) what I really want to hear about are your biggest money spending regrets. After all, we’ve all got them.

Without any more ado, here are my money spending regrets.

I regret…my student overdraft

Okay, starting at the beginning of my independent adult life, my biggest regret is that I let myself fall into a student overdraft when I didn’t really need to.

I had a part-time job, I had a supportive family. But it just seemed expected that I would run up an overdraft; students joked about it and high street banking chains advertised how much it would lend via an overdraft on a student account.

So without really giving it any thought, I let myself include my overdraft in my termly budgeting. And every time I brushed up against the limit I asked my bank to extend it and they did.

Of course, some students with less support from home rely on their overdraft and that is understandable. But I didn’t need to and did it anyway.

That meant that, on graduation, when I needed every penny I could get, I was already in debt. But of course, when I had maxed out my overdraft I had to budget to get by anyway and it turned out that I could.

If only I had not used my overdraft I’d have learned to budget sooner and not graduated with extra debt.

I regret… my expensive wedding

The first thing to say is that my wedding was not THAT expensive. I didn’t want to blow every penny we had saved, plus my mother’s savings on a princess-style fairytale wedding. I thought that meant I was being sensible.

We limited guest numbers and only had an evening celebration to save money. On top of that, we picked the least expensive options for most things and refused to fork out a fortune on flowers. I thought we had been really sensible.

But since then I have been to so many lovely, lovely wedding celebrations that were just in the function room of a pub. I have seen glowing friends marry in beautiful celebrations that cost no more than a few hundred pounds.

I have seen good friends cram everyone they know into their tiny garden, festooned with card decorations that they made themselves.

Some couples I know even married in absolute secrecy and then simply arranged to meet everyone in a restaurant when they got back from their honeymoon.

I’ve seen that a lovely, lovely wedding can be had for under £2,000 and that a perfectly good wedding can cost a few hundred. If I knew then what I know now, I’d never have spent what I did, let alone considered it good value!

I regret… buying so much for my first baby

When my first baby was born I went into some sort of compulsive shopper state. My child had to have everything new and everything of the best.

I bought designer Babygros, educational music CDs, piles of toys even before he could support his own head. I used to read Dickens to him while he fed – I was, in short, a bit of a nightmare.

Fast forward to today and I have three children. The latter two hardly have a new stitch to their name; they live in hand-me-downs from their eldest brother and cousins, and I also buy quite a few second-hand toys and clothes online.

Because it turns out that other parents will buy brand new clothing, often designer, often top quality and then sell it online for about a tenth of what it cost new.

My younger two are certainly no worse for wear because they live in second-hand stuff and hand-me-downs.

I wish I’d had that kind of sense when my eldest was born. I think I could easily have saved £1,000 in his first year alone – it could have done more in his JISA (or my pocket!) than in the coffers of the baby boutiques I shopped in.

I regret… not spending more before I had kids

Okay, so most of my regrets are about spending money I didn’t need to on things I didn’t need. If I could live my life again, I’d certainly do a lot of things differently and I know I wouldn’t be any less happy as a result.

However, one of my regrets is about not spending more. I wish that I had spent more on travel and adventure before I had children. I wish I had known that once they came along every spare penny would go on childcare and holidays at theme parks.

I wish I had taken a gap year – even if it had cost me as much as my regretted student overdraft. I wish I had travelled through Europe as a teen. I wish I had done more sightseeing as a young professional and I wish I had banked more experiences.

Because it’s not just about saving every penny and making the right financial decisions every single time. It’s also about recognising when you’re free to spend more on yourself and having fun.

What are your biggest spending regrets? Did you waste money or perhaps not spend enough? Share your thoughts using the comments section below.