George Kamel - 13 Minutes of Reddit's Worst Financial Horror Stories

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Today, we’ll look at some of the best financial failures people shared on Reddit to see what we can learn from these terrifying tales of money mishaps.  Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video Reacting to Financial Horror Stories. • 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan. • 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! Connect With Our Sponsors: • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • Get up to 40% off Cozy Earth with code GEORGE. • Go to FAIRWINDS Credit Union for an exclusive account bundle!   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Occupato! Whatever you're selling, Bud? Not interested, okay? You see the no soliciting sign out front? That means business. I will report you to the HOA. Oh, the Facebook group's gonna have a heyday with this one. Trust me. Little pigs. Little pigs. Let me come in. Who are you calling a little pig? You think you're at your mom's house? Then I'll huff.

And I'll puff. And I'll blow your house in. Okay, looks like we're going to home. Looks like we're going to Home Depot after this, okay? That's not MDF, that's solid wood. It's going to cost you a pretty penny. Here's Johnny. Wait, Johnny the DoorDash guy?

Dude, you're 20 minutes late. Come on in, doors unlocked. Nope. Not a fan of horror movies or haunted houses or even scary campfire stories or just any photo of Rudy Giuliani. Gives me the Willys, the Nillies, the hip-hop, the hebes, the jibis, the hooties,

and the blowfish. But I do love a good financial horror story, because there's always something you can learn from someone else's stupid money mistakes. So today, we'll take a look at some of the best financial failures people shared on Reddit to see what we can learn from these terrifying tales of money mishaps. Okay, so these are all coming from the subreddit, Money Diaries Active, which makes you think, why did the other one go inactive? Spooky.

A redditor in that community said, In honor of spooky season, share your money horror stories. Let's see what people willingly shared on the internet. MD trash heap. Strong start. Moved into newly purchased house. Note, this house was built in the 70s, but had few things noted on inspection.

We're told about and notice that water is slow to drain. About a weekend, we run two loads of laundry back to back, as you do when there's two parents and an active preschooler in the house. Suddenly, things start gurgling, and all the drains, the toilet is bubbling. WTF is going on. We call an emergency plumber to come snake our line

on 11 p.m. He believes it's a clog. but his equipment breaks while trying to clear it. The plot thickens. Long story short, some idiot many years ago planted a tree in the front yard right over where the house sewer runs out to the city line. The tree was now 60 feet tall

and the roots had braided around the PVC sewer pipe and pinched it off. Fixing it involves several days of multiple plumbers, a backhoe, digging up our front yard, tree removal, no sewer access in the house and rejected claims from home warranty. Total, $10,000. It was horrifying.

for more than financial reasons. Next purchase, I'm getting a dedicated plumbing inspection, especially if there's big trees in the yard. Also a pool inspection, but that's been a separate issue. First of all, riddled with grammar problems. Me fail possible. I'm so sorry they went through this. This is one of those things.

You get into a home and you go, wow, it's so much better than renting. I just got to get into a home, get into a home. We'll figure it out. It's a fixer-upper. Who cares? We think it's in good condition. And then stuff like this happens, and you go, wow, being a homeowner is not all it's great.

cracked up to be. And there's a perfect example of what can happen. The chaos that can ensue as a homeowner, so don't let anyone tell you that renting is a waste of money. That was a waste of money, but it needed to be done. And just goes to show you, planting trees not always a good thing for society. Shout out to Fern Gali, cutting them trees down. This spooky tale comes from Side of Veggies 18. Went to a friend's birthday dinner that had four courses not knowing the price. It was a nice Italian spot, but nothing crazy. People ordering drinks left and right, like it was open bar. There was no way to split up who got what drink-wise. It ended up being $291 per person without tax and tip, which basically was horrifying to me since that is what my fiance and I spent on groceries

for like three weeks. That's a yikes, my guy. For a guy who normally orders a side of veggies, I can see why this was a big expenditure. I always want to know ahead of time, who's going, what are we doing with the bill? I'm not going to just act surprised at the end going, oh, I guess we'll all split it. It's just easier. No, I'm going, hey, here was my tab. This is what I'm paying. You all can figure it out.

So I don't know where this went wrong. Because I said there was no way to split up who got what drink. Yeah, there is. That person who ordered the drink pays for that drink. I don't know what caused this scenario to go so out of hand that drinks are just flying in and out. They're like, I don't even know who got what, man. We were just throwing shots around.

Get better friends. Sorry that happened to you, though. That is a lesson learned. Get clear up front on how the financials are going to play out. Our next spooky financial story comes from Skydot 94. I spent $500 on a laser hair removal package and completely forgot about it. Now that place is out of business because the esthetician retired crying emoji. Okay, was this like a Groupon?

I mean, what happened here? So you spent $500 on a package but then never like booked the package. Did you get like a gift? gift card. I'm just confused and like they don't call you. Is the esthetician, like, is the business still alive? Did they sell the business? Did they rename it? I would try to get your money back somehow because that aesthetician made some bank off of you without doing any of, I mean, you still have all the hair. And I don't know where that hair is, but I don't, I hope it's gone now. Nobody wants to see that. I'm still confused as to how you spent $500 up front and never

get a service. So that part, that's on you. You done messed up, hey, A, Ron. And you got to know, if this is like a small business, a solopreneur, you got to go ahead and use that. This is not like a corporate chain that's going to just let you use this in perpetuity. So that's a hard lesson to learn. And that's a lot of money to pay. I mean, how much hair are they removing?

For 500 bucks, I better look like a naked mole rat. Moving on to more scary financial stories. Gen XMD throwaway. Here's mine in a haiku. 18-year-old me. signed a private student loan. Terrible nightmare. That's it? Okay. I mean, yeah, that's not good. I mean, if you didn't know, private student loans have much harsher terms, and you're not going to bankrupt these loans. They have a higher interest rate, not subsidized, not owned by the government.

So if you're in one of these, I'm so sorry. The only way through it is through it. Just pay the dang thing off, use the debt snowball method, small, so largest balance, nor the interest rate, and attack it. Bay Basca, how's this one to share? I had just graduated college and was at my first big girl job. My car was in the shop, and I had no way to get home, so I decided to take an Uber during rush hour. This was 2016, so I thought, okay, 4X surge pricing can't be that bad.

$250 later. All right, let's think through this. Yeah, $250 almost a decade ago. Uber. Goodness gracious. My car was in the shop. I mean, if you had no way to... I personally would have asked a co-worker.

Like, hey, you're heading that direction? Can I hop in and get a ride? But Uber during rush hour, I imagine you had a long way home. 4x surge pricing. I mean, 250... You carry the money... That still would have been like a $60-something-dollar ride before a tip. So it was already going to be expensive, but lesson learned.

Get that car repaired, folks. Oh, by the way, if you have a financial... horror story that you would like to share, please drop it in the comments. I'd love to read it for a future episode that is focused on your stories, the people that I love the most. All right, this next one comes to you, courtesy of not you, not me, no one. I was 18 when I got my first credit card. As I understood it, this was vital to a successful adulthood. I needed a credit score to do anything and needed a credit card to get a credit score. I was not and still am not the right person for credit cards. That's good self-awareness. I racked up tons of debt. Eventually,

I consolidated it into a personal loan and then repeated that process twice. Currently paying off about $60,000 in personal loans, locked all cards, and I'm actually budgeting. So far, so good. The first personal loan will be paid off in February of 2024. That's good news. That's gone. Debating if I want to roll the payment onto another loan, put the monthly payment savings or some combination of the two. There's a lot to unpack here.

First of all, why are we telling 18-year-olds that they need credit scores to live their adult life? They truly do not. You can rent an apartment without a credit score, you can rent a car without a credit score. It really is a three-digit number that just tells you how good you are playing the debt game. Number two, we should make it illegal to get a credit card at 18. That's just one man's hot take. Why are we giving kids the ability to have a $10,000 line of credit when they haven't never seen that number in their life? Wild behavior.

And here's what happens. They rack up the debt. They fall for another trap, these consolidation loans that just move the debt around and put it in one big pile, which makes it harder to pay off, and then it doesn't change the behavior, because look what they just submitted. They repeated that process twice. And here they are, still in debt,

many years later, I assume, trying to pick up the pieces and clean it up. I would not roll the payment into another loan. Please don't do that. I hope you have not done that. Don't put the monthly payment and savings. You need to focus on getting rid of the debt ASAP, then get your emergency fund in place,

and that'll light a fire under you to clean this up. You know, aside from these financial horror stories, you know what else can be scary? dealing with a crappy bank that just sees you as a dollar sign. And that's why I love Fairwin's Credit Union, a sponsor of today's video. They're owned by their members, not by Wall Street. And here's how countercultural they are. They're focused on helping you win with money and get out of debt.

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Okay, back to the horror stories. Delightfully sedate, said, opened a Roth IRA account. Realized three years later that I never set it up to actually invest the funds. That's a face palm right there. And honestly, this happens more often than you'd think. A lot of people just go, well, they told me to open a Roth IRA,

so I opened one. Well, you can't say, stop there, you got to actually fund it and then use those funds to purchase investments, right? Purchase the assets inside of that. So the Roth IRA is really just a tax advantage shell. You've got to actually purchase funds inside of there to actually be investing. So if you see that you funded it, but it's sitting in like a money market account, that means it's waiting to be invested. It's on the sidelines. So make sure whatever retirement account or investment account you have that the money is not sitting on the sidelines, it's actually in the market

so that compound growth is working for you. That's an important note. Thank you delightfully sedate for that PSA. Beautiful Goat 9. Shout out to great usernames. Crypto. Lost $10,000 in the FTX collapse. Thankfully made more than that in the end, but it still hurts.

Also, a few years back, a favorite childhood band was reuniting for a tour, and my friend excitedly text if I wanted to go as he was buying tickets. I said yes, didn't think anything of it. A few days before the show, he casually mentions the tickets were $500 each. Surprise, he got box seats, and if we want to Venmo him, while I could afford it, I would not have spent that much on this concert, or any concert, really, and it hurt to send him the money.

Yeah, I don't know how your first question isn't, yeah, how much are tickets? That would have been smart. And it sounds like there's been a pattern of impulsive moves here. I mean, just throwing a bunch of money into crypto is one, and not looking into details, I guess out of excitement for your favorite band? And a childhood band, reuniting.

I mean, was that third-eye blind? I hope it was worth 500 bucks, man. Wish you could step off of that led, my friend. Please don't ever do that again. Now, the question is, what band would you be willing to spend $500 on? It's gonna be me. That's a great question. Comment below.

What band is worth $500 to see in person if they reunite? Now, not dead or alive, but maybe they're still around. They're still alive. They haven't reunited. That counts, too. And tell me why it's O-Town. It's always nice when you can learn from other people's failures rather than your own. So I want to say thanks to these Reddit users for being honest and sharing their money mistakes,

even if they did remain anonymous with throwaway accounts. And if you thought these were scary, check out this video for more financial horror stories from TikTok. Nothing is scarier than TikTok. Give it a click or use the link in the description below. That's it for today. If you enjoyed this video, hit the like and subscribe buttons, and share this video with your friend Kyle, whose entire life is a financial horror story. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.