Buying into my ECs house against my better judgement.
I still enjoy my furniture and my paintings. Hard to believe I’m living with same stuff 12-30 yea rs. Still like my oriental rugs. I guess my son does too, cuz he asked for a 2x3 rug for his apartment as my gift to him. Still, I liked redoing my office last year. Much sleeker furniture, a glass desk, but brought in my turquoise. Oriental rug.
A$20,000 dining room table that DW just had to have. It’s ginormous and doesn’t really fit our current set up but I told her it’s staying til we die. And I’m about to spend $300k on an UG degree for my oldest. Hoping that splurge won’t be a regret down the road.
The $43 dinner I just bought at the Slanted Door in San Francisco. Try to get into this restaurant every time I come here, finally got in, and paid a crapload for some fairly boring chicken dish and one glass of wine (not including tip). Could of had an $8 dinner in casual place in the Ferry Building that would have been so much better.
On behalf of my H: That very fancy exercise bike in the bedroom that was used once (literally) and is now festooned with articles of his clothing that he claims are too clean to be tossed in the hamper but not fresh enough to be put back in the drawers/closet. I’m not sure whether he’s trying to air them out or creating an unique art installation.
The $850 we spent this fall to have exterior trim / windows painted. (The clapboard has vinyl siding). I’m actually ok with the amount since we’d procrastinated on the work for several year. I was sorry we had to collect all the scraped paint from the ground - no drop cloth? And I was dismayed to find window are painted shut. DH will probably need to mess with it in the spring despite our splurge.
Incredibly expensive dining room table purchased maybe 20+ years ago and probably came at a cost of half a Brazilian rain forest. No one ever sees it when they are invited over for a dinner party because it hides beneath table pads and a tablecloth. I suppose DH and I are supposed to enjoy staring at it on a regular basis. It is beautiful…
A brand new Ford Escape 4WD Hybrid immediately after it came out. I had waited expectantly for a 4WD Hybrid, thinking I needed 4WD to deal with the Ithaca winters. Spent way too much on it, and it wasn’t all that great. 32 mpg was good for a 4wd SUV, but it was sluggish and just not fun to drive. Worse than my prior 6-cyl Escape, and way worse than the Prius I bought a year later for 2/3 the price, which did fine in the ice and snow 90% of the time, and got (still gets, 10 years later) fantastic mileage and is the best car I’ve ever had.
Also a really great dishwasher, I forget the brand name, which we ended up having to leave when we sold our house about a year later and moved to Hawaii. I loved it but it didn’t add as much to the house price as we’d paid for it. (If I’d known we were going to move I wouldn’t have bought it.)
We usually stay at hotels where breakfast and wifi is included. H decided to splurge on a “nicer” hotel on vacation and both were extra charges.
When the girls were in elementary school we bought them a Lego Mindstorm robot. They already loved legos, and this seemed like a logical next step.
Nope! It cost hundreds of dollars and was really not that fun to program or build, and it was really fussy and buggy. Luckily, The girls stuck with robotics, and I’m typing this at the student center at ga tech where the younger d is competing with her team, but what a waste of money that first robot was. It’s still sitting in the closet because I just can’t bring myself to donate it. .
Cross country ski equipment and clothing for our middle child. He PROMISED he would stay on the team for two years. As luck would have it, the first year we got just about zero snow, so he didn’t ski much. The next year, he had lost interest. We made him do it, but what a waste of money! Probably $700 or so. We learned our lesson.
Once, we almost bought a horse. Just remembered that. Regret Bullet=dodged!
The boat. As they say: The two happiest days in a mans life are the day he buys a boat and then the day he sells the boat.
oh…and the jacuzzi—brought in to our difficult to access back deck with a crane service that cost $800 and taken out two years later with a buzz saw.
Our first computer…We spent a small fortune (much more than one pays for one today), and it was pretty useless within a short time (technology changing so fast).
Boats and horses!!! OMG. We dodged those bullets.
A travel trailer/ RV brand new. Couldn’t tell you the last time we used it.
My custom built house. Let my ex talk me into building in a “large lot” neighborhood. He wanted a library, and it is really more space overall than we ever needed even before the kids went to college. It is on the market now. Looking forward to selling it.
After boats, houses and horses, this will seem like peanuts but I do regret spending $350 for gorgeous european wool yarn to knit a blanket/throw for my daughter, whose cat promptly tore the blanket (I fixed it but it didn’t look quite the same after that) and which my daughter later threw into the washer and dryer. 
Next time, it’s acrylic for her.
nice wool and a cat. Don’t mix!
Or rather, they mix too well.
I bought several yards of lovely lightweight worsted wool in Los Angeles for $150 in 1989 which was to be made into a custom tailored suit. It’s still on the bolt in my closet.