The 5 Dumbest Purchases I’ve Made In My 20’s

What's up, guys? I'm Graham, so the year is almost over and in five more months I won't be in my twenties anymore because I'm turning 30 and that means I'm entering a new era. world of adult responsibilities and mild lower back pain and remembering the days when Bitcoin hit 20,000 and YouTube was still monetizing prank channels and thinking about all the not-so-smart

purchases

I

made

in my 20s that will always haunt me, well, I mean I'm technically still in my 20s for a few more months, so I potentially still have time to make some really dumb financial decisions, but assuming I can keep calm until then, this list should sum it up because even for me I've been very careful about where I spend my money and calculate every purchase I make, but sometimes I just don't think about things as much as I should and that's why I have a hard time, so let's go over the five

dumbest

financial

purchases

I've ever

made

.

Until now when I was 20 what exactly happened and how can you avoid making a similar mistake because really all we can do is learn from these mistakes pretend they never happened make a video about them for YouTube and warn other people that Don't do the same with That said, here are those mistakes and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you. First, let's start with the one that still hurts me to this day and makes me cringe every time I think about it and that's when I did it. Don't mash the like button for the YouTube algorithm really, no, it helps a lot, so if you don't mind, I would really appreciate it, but seriously, I look back at this one and shudder remembering it, it happened around six o'clock. years ago and that's when I paid a marketing agency five thousand dollars to create a custom website, logo designs, business cards and letterhead to help expand my career as a real estate agent.

Now, on the surface, it seems like it should be a really good use. of money after all it is a tax write-off. I'm investing back into my business and at least in theory I should at least get my money back from it, well not bad, this is actually what ended up happening now, just do a little. context on this, but really up to this point I've taken a slightly unorthodox approach to my career as a real estate agent. I have never had a personal website advertising myself. I have never used social media and have relied mainly on the border mouth. and references to increase my clientele.

My thought on this was: who goes to a realtor's personal website to look up information like Graham Stefan dot-com that is so outdated? Who would go there? The only thing people really care about is having someone available at any given time. Noticing who does really good work and a website shouldn't make much of a difference, that was of course until I ran into an old friend, that old friend owned a marketing agency who was opposed to being really very well and we get to Talking, he explains that I needed a website so that people would take me more seriously and that I needed better business cards to stand out.

At the time I didn't really see the need to change anything, but in the back of my mind. I was a little worried about leaving money on the table by not reinvesting more in my business and he really pushed me to start doing this right away using terms like if you don't do this now, when will you earn it? Do this yourself, if you could sell an additional home of this, it will pay for itself 10 times over. You need to commit to this right now because I don't want to waste my time on anyone who isn't ready to move on.

Anyway, I caved and spent $5,000 for him to create a completely custom website with MLS integration information about my listings and my sold properties, letterhead and business cards, and all I got in return was not that and not even I know where. I started the website, it was a very slow process and it took months to get to the point where it even looked like a legit real estate agent website, there were just multiple issues and pages wouldn't load and pages wouldn't link to the right places. . and it was a constant struggle to get any updates in the meantime I went and asked several of my other friends about the so called custom website and they all looked at the back and explained that this was just a website template that could have been made for a few hundred dollars in a few days and at that point I became suspicious the more I pressed on the website, however the more pushback I got because of how impatient I was and how I had to wait if I wanted to do it the right way.

And that's when other problems started to arise, like I said for $5,000 this was for a complete marketing package and that includes business cards. Well, he didn't tell me that the cost I paid to get the business cards was just for the design of the business. cards and not the cards themselves, and that would be significantly additional, then came the letterheads and again, for the price I was paying, I expected that I would receive actual pieces of paper with my letterhead stamped on top, but no, that's not what I got. I spent over $200 on a letterhead design that just said Graham Steffen with my information at the top left inside two lines running down either side at the top and left and that was it.

This went on for months until all was said and done. I was left with a half-finished website template that was never fully functional and business cards that I never really used because I wasn't entirely happy with letterheads that never made it to print and a $5,000 lesson that I should never be pressured into. buying something I didn't quite need and the most important lesson I've learned from all of this is that you should never commit or buy something just because you feel pressured to do so. I don't think I've ever seen a happy person. it ends when someone is pressured to buy something and then it works out in the end.

I've noticed that it almost always ends in regret and that's never how you get lasting results and unfortunately that's a lesson that cost me $5,000 to learn now my The second

dumbest

financial purchase in my 20s is what I'm wearing now: a suit made $1200 custom fit that I had never worn before. This happened when I was 20 years old and felt like I finally needed to buy an adult suit for formal events and gatherings. and occasions and I thought that if I was going to do this, I might as well go and buy something really good that would last me for decades, but unfortunately I had no idea what I was doing.

I simply went to the first high-end soup. place I could find and I trusted the salesperson to find me the best suit at the best price, so the salesperson simply picked a decent looking navy blue suit off the rack, put it on, and then tried to tailor it around me. I hoped that this would be a really good suit and when it was made it would fit me like a glove, but instead I bought a suit that looked a little like Grandpa's. Now it was partly my fault because the store I went to seemed to offer catering. exclusively for the 65 and over community, but also the suit itself looks horrible on me, even with tailoring, you would understand if I was standing up, but this suit is really boxy, it's a little boxy, it looks like I have stumps instead of legs because of how loose the pants are and the pants are also pleated, which by the way hasn't been in style for decades unless you're 80 and in which case it's still cool anyway.

I was really unhappy with the purchase and because it was custom made. I couldn't return it anymore, so I went and took this suit to another tailor to try to fix it, but since the suit was so out of proportion, they recommended that I not even spend any more money on it and instead go find something else that would suit me. It would be good. Better to take it off the shelf and try to spend more money on this, so I've kept it in my closet for almost a decade unused as a reminder that I shouldn't blindly trust suit store salespeople without doing anything myself. do your research first not to mention when it comes to looking good how much money you spend doesn't matter at all a $50 H&M jacket will look significantly better than a $1,200 designer jacket that is a size too big that doesn't fit well and is out of stock. fashion for For me in fashion the only thing that matters is that it fits really well and that it's not going to fall apart in a few months, more than how much it costs and I wish I had known before spending $1200 on something I was never going to wear, so now I'm going to put it back in the closet now that I officially used it for a YouTube video and get back to my hm, my third mistake is something that should never have happened in the first place, I should have known. better than this but I wasted $7,500 on a really bad landscaper who did such a horrible job and the worst part was it was my fault and this is what happened in 2016.

I bought a property in West Los Angeles that needed a whole new renovation . landscaping, I'm talking, the entire front and back yard needed to be torn out, the irrigation system, new lighting, new plants, new grass, everything, so I started calling and interviewing landscapers to see who would be the best fit and you would do the job. and how much it would be to do it right after doing it, it seems like most people quoted between $10-$12,000 with labor and materials included and were expecting a two to three week turnaround time, but at the last minute I got a referral from another person who Agreed to do the exact same job for $7,500 because he was going through tough times and really needed the business and said he would start working immediately if I paid him half up front, but he should have known better and hired the cheapest person just because and it was horrible the next day when the work started the landscaper showed up with his son and four of his son's friends and started working and cleaning up all the old landscaping but the work ended very early as they started to work at 8 and I stopped working at 12 and I thought, well, it's weird that they left it half finished like that, but hey, they'll come back the next day and finish it, don't worry, now the landscaper said.

He was going to come back the next day and he did, but it was just him and the same thing happened. You started work at 8 a.m. m. and he left around 12:00 and didn't really do much and went on for three weeks straight. Now, in their defense, the work was being done, albeit rather slowly, and I thought, "Well, I'm saving so much money by doing this that even though it takes me a little longer, it's not really the end of the world, always." and when it just runs out and that's when the first red flag popped up as we were planning the landscaping in the front I noticed that he didn't remove the excess dirt to make room for the gravel that was supposed to go.

He said that wasn't included in the job and that removing the dirt would be fine. I was stupid and didn't want to deal with it. I just paid him a few hundred extra dollars to remove the excess dirt and actually do what he wanted. He was supposed to be doing it anyway in the first place, well a few more weeks went by and as the job was nearing completion I started to notice a lot of other problems first he wouldn't show up like he said he would and leave. days without returning any texts or calls after he was trying to figure out what happened or when he would show up, just nothing at the time I requested they add gravel around the perimeter of the backyard where he was going to plant some ficus. trees, so it does that, but it doesn't install a divider to separate the gravel from the grass and it also doesn't install a weed barrier to prevent the grass from growing out of the gravel, which became very evident when the grass started growing.

From all sides the lining was also absolutely horrible. I have no idea what he was thinking, but here's a picture to show you how uneven it was, plus he never completely got rid of the grass that was under the grass he installed. I started to notice that when the grass started to look very bubbly he came over, looked closer, peeled it off and then noticed all the old grass growing underneath so I explained my perspective and as a landscaper he should know that all these things need to be done and since I'm not there to constantly supervise to make sure all this is being done correctly, it needs to be redone the right way, so he agreed and said he would fix everything and for me not to worry and came.

A week later when he said he had installed the weed barrier, except I looked and couldn't find the weed barrier. I started going through the gravel and digging down to six inches of dirt and going even further I couldn't find any. weed barrier, whatever, he kept insisting it was there and he just wasn't digging deep enough and for those who don't know, weed barrier is basically a fabric that goes on top of the soil and then is put gravel on top and that wasto blocks light and nutrients from reaching the grass and prevents grass or weeds from growing on top of it, so even if what you were saying was true, it was installed incorrectly and you have to redo it, so now, At this point, you agree to redo the weed barrier. but his son and his son's friends start complaining that the work is too hard and takes too long to do, so the landscaper comes to me and tells me that I don't need to pay more because it's extra work that adds up. to everything else. they're doing it it's taking them a lot longer than I didn't tell them he needed a liner between the grass and the gravel I didn't tell him he had to remove all the existing grass under the lawn I didn't tell him he needed to install a weed barrier and for that I have to pay more, so at this point he started to get angry and frankly he was already sick of this and his work has dragged on for months.

He decided to leave the job half finished and I had to hire someone else to redo everything. landscape correctly for the second time, this was a mistake for which I take full responsibility first. He should have been supervising all the work very closely from the beginning instead of simply trusting him to do all the work correctly himself. Second, I should have been much more specific with my expectations and the work that needed to be done and how long it was supposed to take to complete and third, as soon as I started to notice something was wrong, I really should have cut my losses and hired someone. more for him to do it.

It went well the first time, but hey, you know? At least on the plus side, I got a great lesson in landscape design and what not to do for the low price of about $7,500 a room. I can't mention silly money purchases without talking about the holy grail of them all and that would be cryptocurrency. No, this is what really happens since the beginning of this channel. I have always been against cryptocurrency in Bitcoin. I just felt it was a very risky speculative investment without much intrinsic value and for that reason, I never decided to put my own money into it, but as prices continued to rise in 2017, there was a lot of enthusiasm as well.

Thousands of people came and told me to invest in cryptocurrency or buy a certain coin on a certain day I was supposed to invest in a certain hoop coin that was about to be worth 100x, I mean it was absolutely crazy and honestly I started to feeling like a grandparent who just didn't get it, who felt left out and just thought it was bad. idea, but after a while of seeing this, it started to wear on me and after a certain point I thought, you know, I might as well put a few thousand dollars into Bitcoin just to experience this firsthand, learn about it and see what it's all about. treats.

About the first time I went out with Bitcoin and made a few hundred dollars pretty easily and at that point I definitely understood what the appeal was about, but after a few days of doing it I got bored of Bitcoin and figured if I had to do something . It's risky. I can also put my money in all coins and for those who don't know, it's very similar to the penny versions of cryptocurrencies. I ended up putting all that money into a cryptocurrency called Rai blocks when it was two dollars. and fifty cents and in one week it reached 37 dollars.

I remember looking at my account and seeing that the account balance was ridiculously high from not doing any work and then getting greedy and hoping it would go up even more, it was $37. I had a lot of gains and I thought, well, it's going to go up to $40 and then I'll sell it at that point and it's sure to be about to get listed on all these exchanges and it's about to disappear. Let me wait one more day, but guess what didn't happen right after that point? The correct blocks ended up going through several controversies. Several exchanges were hacked and had so many problems.

Now it's at 83 cents, which is a far cry from It used to be $37. I was an idiot. I didn't sell anything. I just let it go and here we are today, you know, looking back in retrospect, I had a lot of fun believing the hype that they gave me. It was a lot like going to a casino with some friends and putting money on the craps table and I treated it exactly the same, but I'm sorry I was so carefree and seeing all the money in the account should have set off some triggers. for me to think wow this is actually real money and I would never go and put fifty thousand dollars into a cryptocurrency like this so I should sell but the greed really got the best of me, that got me really excited I'm thinking.

I could make a little more profit from the ironic blurbs and for me, thinking that you knew something that other people didn't, was completely my fault and although I had a great time learning about cryptocurrencies and participating. All in all I should have made a practically guaranteed $40,000 profit at that point instead of just leaving it to see what happens, so I just have to say to anyone watching to know that it's okay to make risky speculative investments with money that one can afford. lose or that you intend to lose, but at least if you made money doing this at a minimum, just sell enough to recoup your initial investment and that way it won't be negative and if something sounds too easy or too good to be true than absolutely Things like that don't last forever, they are unsustainable and it becomes like a game of musical chairs of who can get out first without running out of a chair and finally my fifth mistake has less to do with one thing in general and even more to do with a common occurrence that It happens to me over and over again and it's when I'm too cheap, what matters most when that happens, it just ends up costing me a lot more money than if I had spent a little more directly and not as cheap as for example with camera equipment .

I can't tell you how many cheap microphones I went through that broke or sounded like complete shit before I finally realized I was wasting so much money doing this. You should spend a little more and get something quality that sounds good and lasts for the price of all those cheap microphone combos. I should have spent money on a good one from the beginning and that would have saved me. With my money, the same also applies to my tripod. The first one I bought was the cheapest I could find online because I didn't want to spend the money.

Guess what it broke pretty quickly and then I had to spend more money. something better anyway, the same thing happened to me too when I didn't want to spend too much on a parking meter so I would try to save 25 cents because I didn't need those extra 15 minutes and then I would end up getting a $65 parking ticket, this is a one of those lessons that by the way I can't seem to learn because for some reason I keep making similar mistakes, for example I wanted to save some money by starting another LLC for my real estate program.

Agent Academy, so I thought to myself instead of paying my CPA, uh, dollars to do it for me. I'll do it myself on LegalZoom in 20 minutes and save all the money if it turns out I didn't need the LLC. Because my companion would have worked fine and because I started the LLC in October of the calendar year, I had to pay an $800 filing fee for that year and I didn't even use it. I could have saved all of that by spending a little. a little more money up front, so anyway this is what I mean: it's not worth being cheap up front to try to save a little more money if it means you'll have to spend more money anyway long-term.

To do it correctly, this could apply to almost everything in existence and even I myself still make this mistake from time to time, but I'm getting better, so learn from my mistakes. It is very important to spend more money up front. It means it'll last three times longer than saving 25% on something you'll have to replace in a few months, so there you have it, my dumbest financial purchases when I was 20 so far. I'm definitely not proud of any of this, but at least if you are able to learn from it and not make the same mistake, then it was all worth it because everything I just mentioned could have been avoided with a little initial research and a little more planning and realizing that spending more money upfront can often save more money in the long run and that's something that's taken me too long to realize, so with that being said, thanks so much for watching, I really appreciate it.

Always, if you enjoyed videos like this, make sure you destroy the like button, the subscribe button, the notification bell. Also feel free to add me on Instagram, my poster, almost daily, so if you want to be a part of this, feel free to add me there too. feel free to add me to my second channel which is the Graham Stefan show that I post there every day. I won't be posting here so if you want to see a new video from me every day go ahead and make sure to add yourself to that and lastly if you guys want to get free shares weeble is running a promotion for the month of December they will give you two shares free plus a $5 gift card when you deposit $100 on their platform, so if you're interested, just use the link below.

Below in the description, sign up to receive that deposit, $100 worth of free stock, and a $5 gift card. You can also do it during the month of December. It's pretty good, so anyway, go ahead and enjoy it and with that being said, thanks again. to see and until next time