My story of hitting rock bottom and (almost) bouncing from it
Hi. Wanted to share my story with you all. I don't usually share my stories on the Internet but I just felt like I wanna share and vent a little bit and maybe someone could learn from my mistakes.
Few years ago, when I was about 23y/o (currently 27) I was working in a European country (in a good paying field). Lived with a roommate, no kids or wife/girlfriend and not much of luxurious life. I was making around 3.5k EUR net, and spent about 1k EUR on living expenses and lifestyle. So I was doing just fine. Helped my parents back home with bills, had money on the side, had a new car from the company I worked for which they were paying for it, so life was comfortable.
I was saving money and tracking it month per month, at one point I saved up about 12k EUR (no debts), and needed 2 more months to complete about 15k EUR saved milestone.
Here is where I fucked up and everything went to shit.
At that point the new iPhone came out, previously I lived frugal in terms of clothes and technologies. The old android phone I used had all the time storage issues so I had to remove stuff to make space for other stuff.
So somehow I went into the whole iPhone rabbithole and got really into it. 2 weeks of nonstop checking reviews and videos. Finally, made the decission. Went to Apple Store and bought the 1TB one for about 2k EUR total. After that purchase I went into a spending spree, 2k EUR more on clothes, laptop and some other shit. So that put me down to about 8k EUR.
I decided to spend a lot of money on some courses for a topic i really wanted to learn and know. Took a 5k EUR loan to cover it and repaid it after a year. About 10k EUR total I spent on this education (which I most likely wont need because I work at a different field). At that point I had about 8k EUR left in savings. The salary was covering most of the stuff so I was just sitting in one place.
Then I learned about day trading, and oh boy was I stupid. Lost good part of my money, and went down to 2k EUR, and then 1k EUR saved.
And then the cherry on the top? Lost my job. Had to take 2k EUR from a friend, which I repaid just few months ago. Found a new job, lower paying (half of what I was making). And still have a 2K EUR credit card loan.
Currently sitting at 250 EUR in my checking account, 0 EUR saved and 2k EUR on a credit card loan.
I found a side job that should pay me 2k EUR which I plan to put it on the credit card and cover it fully. Otherwise bills are payed and I own my apartment (no mortage) because I moved back home.
I am expecting to bounce to 0 EUR debt and few bucks saved in a month, and then start building myself from scratch.
I don't have a car, driving my dad's old car which breaks most of the time but trying to stay positive.
It was a huge mistake and downfall, I learned something from it but I would say it wasn't necessary to get into this big financial trouble just to learn something I could just think about for a second when I was doing just fine.
Nowadays I am getting little bit angry because I cannot buy a car, not even a cheap one and I still have to save for MONTHS to afford a normal vehicle, maybe I could take a loan - but loan for a car? ugh.
Thinking back, if I just stayed frugal and not fall into buying temptations and get rich quick schemes, today I would have saved at least 25-35k EUR.
Don't be stupid like I was. That's pretty much it, AMA if you want.