What I regret buying!

With the idea of being smarter with your money in mind, I am going to share some things I regret purchasing. This may help you not make the same mistakes. So I'm sure there are many things that have ended up being a complete waste of money that I have purchased over the course of my 25 and a half years on this planet but I'm going to share some specific things and some categories of things that come to mind.

1. The first thing is a very recent one actually and that is a cheap bed! You spend 1/3rd of your life in bed so if you're going to spend some money on decent bed I think its worth it however I learnt the hard way... let me tell you. 2 and a bit years ago I was moving and I needed a new bed but being as frugal as I am I opted to buy one that wasn't too much money. It was wooden and it looked nice ... anyway when we were putting up the bed the wood didn't feel very strong and it started splitting a little bit but it was okay. The bed did feel a little unstable and it felt like it may break every time you turned over! So then we moved properties, and this meant dissembling and reassembling the bed. This just make the wood split even more. Then we moved again which meant the wood was awful by this point. We managed to rebuild the bed... just. One night about 2 weeks ago, I was looking for something under the bed and I saw that the two middle legs were literally hanging on by a thread and it was only days away from falling! A super stressful night was ahead as we didn't want to risk the bed collapsing as we were asleep so we dissembled the bed and ordered a new one. Now I have replaced it with a better quality bed that is much more sturdy but actually from a financial standpoint it would have been a better use of money to spend an extra £100 more on a good bed initially that could have lasted years and years and years rather than having to replace a cheaper one.

2. Right the next one is not a single item necessarily but is plants. Now I love plants and I love them in my home - they bring happiness. However, I wouldn't claim to be the best at looking after them. I'm learning and getting better for sure, in fact I have quite a few healthy and thriving ones now but in the past, a number of times, I have bought a big expensive plant that looks great in the shop, brought it home, put it somewhere I thought it looked good, watered it as often as I thought and guess what it dies. It dies because i didn't research how hard it would be to look after it or what the best light conditions and watering schedule would be. So I just threw money away. Looking back, what I should have done, and what I do now is get plants I know I can actually look after and learn what they need.

3. The next is not an item but more a lifestyle choice I made which wasn't too smart financially looking back. I wouldn't say I necessarily really regret this as it only lasted a year but I definitely spent money when I just didn't need to! This one is moving into a much too large rental property. Too large for 2 people anyway. We upgraded our lifestyle from a small flat/apartment to a big detached 3 bedroom property with a drive and garden. As lovely and great as this was, it obviously came with a higher price tag and it just wasn't needed.

4. The forth item that I regret buying is a hoover that is much too big, much too bulky and not very powerful. The first flat I moved into that wasn't student accommodation was a small 2 bed flat and we thought it would be a great idea to get one of those manual hoovers that you don't need to plug in because we wouldn't have much floor space to vacuum. WRONG. You don't realise how handy having a proper vacuum is until you don't have one. Whilst this manual hoover was great and didn't use any electricity, it would only pick up the largest bits off the floor but would miss all those little bits that you need a hoover for. So there we would be on our hands and knees, using a little handheld mini electric hoover from a charity shop vacuuming our flat and let me tell you, it was not easy and it took about an hour. Not great when you should probably be hoovering up a few times a week. Anyway, we then moved to a much much larger 3 bedroom bungalow and instead of buying a good vacuum again, we bought another from a charity shop that was a proper one but it was SO bulky and kept breaking and therefore wasn't working. We then invested in a very swanky cordless hoover and we now vacuuming is the most fun chore ever and its SO much easier. Moral of the story is, don't buy cheap when it comes to things you use every single day because it will be something you regret buying, in this case anyway!

5. Finally, fast fashion items. Not just one piece of clothing comes to mind but I can think of a few shops and a number of items that I have wasted money on. Moving towards more eco friendly, sustainable and ethical clothing brands is important to me now, but obviously this is going to be capped and geared by your budget and finances. However, there has been so many times in the past that I have purchased trendy clothing items just because they are 'trending' that I have not liked nor felt comfortable in and so many of these items have just fallen apart or gone out of shape easily because of how cheaply and poorly they've been made. And thinking about it, I would have saved time, money, and been more kind to our planet if I had spent more money on one of a couple of pieces of good quality items than instead having to constantly replace cheap items time and time again.

Now I'm at the end of my list, I have realised that the majority of these regret buys are as a result of buying cheap. Like I said I'm very frugal so paying a bulk of money for an item makes me uncomfortable but I'm learning when this actually is a smart long term investment that is better financially. When planning my list, I also realised something else and that is that I cannot think of a time that I have regretted spending money on travelling or an experience as opposed to materialistic items.

Thank you for reading,

Hayley