What’s Your Biggest Money Mistake?

Is it caring too much about money?

I just read this CNBC story about one man’s biggest money mistake:

31-year-old millionaire shares the biggest money mistake he ever made

After landing a digital marketing job out of college, he quickly realized that his $50,000 salary “just wasn’t going to be enough money. I wasn’t going to be able to get ahead making this and saving 5% to 10% of my income,” the now 31-year-old tells CNBC.

That’s reasonable—and smart. If your salary isn’t enough to cover your financial needs and allow you to save, it’s good to recognize that as soon as possible.

So Grant, who runs the “personal finance, investing, and entrepreneurship community” Millennial Money, started figuring out how to earn more. He built websites, he became a consultant, and he created a personal finance, investing, and entrepreneurship community.

He also made his biggest money mistake: caring too much about money.

His success didn’t come without sacrifice. At the time, Grant was working 90 to 100 hours a week and “putting money first,” which he says is the biggest financial mistake he’s ever made.

Again, that’s reasonable. Working 90–100 hours a week is unsustainable in the same way that earning less money than you need can be unsustainable, though plenty of people do both. (Sometimes simultaneously.)

But I have to laugh, just a little bit, at the idea of a millionaire saying that the work he did to become a millionaire was his biggest financial mistake. I know he has legitimate reasons for saying he wished he had spent more time with friends and family, and I get it. But also: he’s a millionaire who runs a financial community. If he hadn’t put money first, or at least in the top three, he wouldn’t have his current success, right? (I’m making a lot of assumptions here.)

So, with that in mind: what is your biggest financial mistake? I’m pretty sure my biggest financial mistake was running a Kickstarter that went so far into the red that I pulled all the cash out of my Roth IRA to cover it and still ended up putting expenses on the credit card.

The Dregs of My Kickstarter Campaign

Yeah. That was not my best financial move.

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