Part of growing up is making decisions, good and bad. Dealing with one’s own bad choices is hard enough. But when it’s friends and family who are tempting fate, it’s a special type of vicarious pain that tingles down one’s spine. What can be done, except to watch through half-covered eyes as loved ones make questionable choices in finance, love, and life? But don’t lie: when it comes to other people’s family making scandalous mistakes, we can’t seem to get enough. Perhaps it’s easier with distance. Hence, when Reddit asked people about the worst decision their friend of family made, there was no shortage of participants and witnesses to humanity’s greatest foibles. Indulge in 42 shocking stories about the greatest mistakes committed by friends and family.
42. A Too Good to Be True “A”
Getting a $50k loan to get her "Masters" at a non-accredited for-profit college.
41. Reply All Is a Deadly Button
This wasn't a decision so much as just a mistake my poor uncle made. He was working on a healthcare project and his secretary accidentally sent out an email or something that had a bunch of people's medical records in it.
It was a serious blow to him. Really sucked because he's a super stand-up guy, really honest, really kind... and one minor accident (that he didn't even make himself) screwed up his career for a while.
40. Easy Come, Easy Come Again
My friend gets released on bail for distribution charges only to reoffend a few hours later and go back to jail. Then get out on bail again, reoffend AGAIN as well as be in possession of a loaded firearm. As a felon. No more bail.
39. This Oil Story Will Make You Boil
Guy I knew was a very successful contractor while the oil fields were busy. Oil started to plummet, so he was forced to shut 'er down while he waited for the economy to bounce back. Sold all his equipment, had a couple hundred thousand in savings, and decided to do nothing for the next two years except go on vacations, party and feed his drug habit. He more or less burned all that money.
38. You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide
A friend got drunk and got into a wreck driving home. He fled the scene on foot and ran all the way home. Cops picked him up at his house soon after. Things haven’t been great for him since.
37. Congrats, You’re Not a Winner
My mother, who is in her 70s and lives on Social Security, called me up and said she won $500,000 from Publishers Clearing House (which she enters all the time). I told her she did NOT win. Then she said, all she has to do is send them $6,000 for processing fees—I told her its a common SCAM. The next day she said she charged $6,000 to her credit card, poof! Goodbye money. That was many years ago, she still hasn't paid off the card.
36. A Princess Is Never Late
My brother sent $1,400 to a "girl" in Nigeria for a plane ticket to the States so he could start dating her. Yes, I called him dumb.
35. A Costly Move
My friend decided she was leaving a job earlier than her contract allowed her to. They paid for her relocation fee, so she owed them about $10,000 at the end of her time there. She was convinced that since she was moving somewhere cheaper with a different job, she would be more than capable of paying back them back within a year. She somehow didn't take into account all of the other costs of life and of moving, and has been paying them back for five years, complaining about money the whole time.
If she had stayed for six more months, she wouldn't have owed them anything.
34. Drop and Dash
My aunt one drained my grandma's bank account and left her kids with her, never coming home. Now (17 years later) my Nan is in poor health and my aunt won't visit because she's afraid she'll be arrested.
33. One Vice Is Not Enough
Was already a violent alcoholic. Decided alcohol alone was boring. Dude brings in $100k+ yearly.
Started using meth. Put his now ex-wife through a door in an argument. She is also on meth.
That's been three years ago. He has not improved. His electricity and water get shut off for nonpayment a few times a year and he's about to lose his truck.
32. Can’t Say She Didn’t Try?
My 72-year-old grandma called me over one day to tell me she was hopping on a plane and wasn't buying a ticket home. She left my grandpa after 50 years of marriage for a man she met online. Things have never been the same between us.
31. Game Over
My sister and I were really close with our cousins. My family went to Disneyland Paris one day and we went with a camper which we hired from my uncle’s camper rental company.
After the four-day trip we went back home, and we turned in the camper again. A day later, my sister and I realized we both forgot our Nintendo DS’s in the camper, so my dad called my uncle to ask him if they were still in the camper.
My uncle said that they weren’t in the camper and that he had no idea where they were.
Months later my dad called my uncle again to ask if he had found the Nintendo DS's, to which my uncle replied that he had indeed just found them in the camper.
When we got our Nintendo back we immediately wanted to play with them, and immediately saw our cousins’ names on all the save files in nearly every game, which obviously proved that my uncle was lying, considering some of the save file dates coincided with the date we turned in the camper.
My uncle and my dad got into a big fight because of that, resulting in my sister and I completely losing contact with our cousins. It’s about ten years later and we still have no contact with them. To this day it makes me mad that such a stupid lie has ruined my relationship with my cousins.
30. Some People Love to Be Alone
We moved country to take care of my elderly mother-in-law who was estranged from pretty much everyone. We moved in "next door" (it was one house split into two which my SO owned half of). She had a tantrum over a sack of compost and invoked her right to force the sale of the house. Obviously, we lost our home and she slandered us all over town and said she never wanted to see any of us again.
So, we moved back to original country and obeyed her to the letter. She hasn't seen any of us in more than two years and is completely alone. She has to pay for everything she needs and could well be being ripped off by all sorts of people who are smart enough to flatter.
She's the very definition of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
29. The Never-ending Rough Patch
Friend of my wife's was getting married. I have no idea why, because every time I met her (the friend) all she did was whine about her fiancé.
Well one day she's complaining that her fiancé went out and bought a new car without consulting her and the monthly payment was too much for them to afford. So, to get back at him she bought her own new car.
?!?
The marriage lasted less than two years and both cars got repo'd.
28. Speed Through Those Milestones
Went swing dancing to celebrate her official end to a six-month marriage (they broke off their engagement once). Meets a guy that night and marries him a month later. Becomes 21-year-old divorcee and stepmom to four boys she met once before the engagement.
27. Faith Vs Presents
My half-sister decided to convert the whole family from Catholic to Jehovah’s Witness. Our side of the family isn't religious, so we didn't overly care, but try telling two children "No more Christmas/Birthdays." Her husband's deeply catholic family is also very upset by this.... not the best idea...
26. Downsized
Gamble away $250k+, it was painful watching him sell their beautiful huge home and rent an apartment.
25. Is This a Home or a Hassle?
Everyone has one crazy uncle. My crazy uncle was building a house using settlement money from an on-the-job accident.
Purchased land that was lower than anything around it, so it always floods
During construction, saw the contractor was digging a basement. Directed contractor to stop. Contractor pointed out that it was clearly in the contract and the house design made no sense without a basement. Took contractor to court, contractor agreed no basement. Now has door off of the kitchen that leads nowhere.
Contractor arrived to pave the driveway. Uncle "didn't trust" him, and just had him dump the asphalt where the driveway should be. Didn't get around to spreading it before it cooled/cured, and now he has a giant lump of asphalt blocking his garage.
Decided that he really did want a basement, so started digging it out himself, starting with aforementioned door off the kitchen.
Given that the contractor changed the foundation design to accommodate no basement, this will eventually end up with the foundation slab cracking and perhaps failing... especially since the property floods all the time.
24. Missing in Action
The decision to do nothing. My brother is 38 next month. He’s never moved out of my parent’s house. Never had a girlfriend. When my dad died three years ago he quit his job and has been mooching off my mom ever since.
23. A Drink Can Change Your Life
A close friend from high school who had a full ride scholarship to a Top 10 university decided that he wanted to drive home after a graduation party out in the middle of nowhere after spending the past four hours drinking. Countless people tried to stop him, to grab his keys but he got confrontational and left. He made it less than a mile down the road before wrapping his car around a tree.
Instead of heading off to college at the end of the summer, he went to a long-term care facility. He died four years later. A life wasted because he thought he was okay to drive after drinking.
22. One Pill Makes You Weaker
Auntie owned a successful Pharmacy and got drunk one night and sold some prescription medication on the side for some money.... police found out and was stripped of her license.
It got worse when questioned by police she said it was for herself because she was suffering cancer, which she was not. With all of these accusations published in a prominent newspaper.
Life ruined, credibility ruined.
21. The Ultimate Staycation
Sister:
Took a year off work to go on vacation.
By vacation I mean sit in her backyard and drink from 10am on. Blew through her savings and now, even with a good job, is having a hard time making ends meet.
Rockingham Forest Housing Association
20. Checking out Early
My mom won my dad's house in their divorce 13 years ago. The house was two years from being paid off. Instead of my mom working two more years, she sold it and retired at 47. She's now in low income apartments and barely makes it by. My dad always tells us how he wishes we still had the house so me and my sister could have lived there when he moved to retire.
19. Brother, Where Art Thou?
My family took in a guy we'd known for years. He was the same age as my younger brother and had grown up near us. He fell on some hard times that resulted in his being stabbed by a friend of his. After the stabbing we let him come stay with us. He got clean off the drugs, started exercising, got a new job and we all spent a lot of time together. He was like a brother to me for a while.
He and my brother moved out into an apartment with some other guys from the place they worked. Their apartment was sparse, almost no food in the fridge and the pride of their place was the collection of empty alcohol bottles they'd saved. It was a bit trashy, but not unexpected for an apartment full of 19 to 22-year-old single guys.
With the new freedom and money coming in from his job (and money from the settlement of the stabbing) he started getting back into drugs. My brother was fine with some of it but started drawing lines when he saw harder drugs in the apartment.
When my brother saw crack for a second time, he started moving out. The other guys in that place followed suit because they were seeing the change as well. My brother told him that he needed to find new roommates to take over the lease. He brought in his drug dealer. Now my brother is still on the lease for a place he's not actually living in because the drug dealer couldn't be approved by the complex. I'm sure they spotted all the red flags.
But the dealer moves in anyway. The two of them start spiraling down and they adopted Pitt bulls with the idea that the dogs would protect them from anyone trying to evict them because they stopped paying rent. This guy had also been borrowing an old used car from the family of another former roommate and now he refused to give it back.
I went with my brother to file a police report about it all. The police were told about the drugs, who was living there, and more. Luckily, with the police report and some of the guys trying to reason with the complex, most were able to avoid having any of this go on their credit history.
I stopped taking to him. I think my brother has seen him maybe once or twice since then and the guy seems to be doing better.
He's married with kids now and I haven't heard about any issues through the grapevine. For me, though, I never wanted to get in touch again because it feels like he could easily spiral down again and when he's like that, he doesn't seem to care who he hurts in the process.
18. Can’t Blame Them for Ghosting
I had a best friend years ago who I made every effort to help. We became incredibly close and eventually a new woman entered his life. Suddenly he didn’t want to be around me or his other friends. They went around to people I knew and said I was a crazy person and a stalker. Years and years later after they got married and divorced he called me and apologized for everything. He said losing me as a friend was one of the biggest regrets in his life. I thanked him for his apology and we parted ways. I won’t ever be his friend again. He seems totally different now, but I don’t want egg on my face. Not again.
17. When Your Dating Pool Is Small…
Well, my ex-wife may be in an intimate relationship with my deadbeat dad. Does that count?
16. The Battle of the Century
Buddy of mine got into a fight with the BF of a girl he thought didn't have a BF. She was a piece of work.
Anyway, I found out about the BF and he was about three times the size of my friend.
"Dude, just walk away and chalk it up to a learning experience," I said. But nope, he felt this need/desire to "Kick his butt." That kind logic failed me.
Anyway, we show up the "designated spot." We just got off work, and my friend was a manager and was still wearing a shirt/tie and nice flat bottom leather shoes.
The other guy, the BF, dressed to fight. T-shirt, jeans and combat boots.
It didn't last long. my friend slipped and slides all over the place while this guy basically held his hand against my friend’s forehead to hold him back. The BF actually seemed like a decent sort of guy. He knew my friend was outmatched and was just being a hot head.
He basically tells my friend, "Look, you aren't going to win and why go home with bloody nose and ruined clothes?"
But my friend was filled with beer rage (we had a few before the fight began) and wanted his comeuppance.
"Fine" says the BF. He sort of half clocks my friend in the jaw and down he went. He tried to get back up, that's when I jumped in, held him down and told him, "Don't".
I thanked the BF for not killing him and dragged my friend away, all the while he was cursing and swearing at the guy.
It was a comedic failure.
15. The War At Home
My brother was sober for eight months when him and his equally toxic girlfriend decided it would be a good time to have a baby. Their girl is the happiest little thing, healthy and hitting all the milestones. However, he started drinking again two months before she was born, and the mother is literally the dumbest and most oblivious person I have ever met in my life. The two of them are beyond toxic to each other and it’s only a matter of time before she starts growing up and understanding how horrible they are to each other.
14. Head First Into Fortune
I watched a friend throw a brick up in the air and over a railing, then proceed to lean over the railing to see the brick fall. To then be cracked in the head by said brick.
13. Ocean’s 11 vs. Grandma
Multiple family members continuously taking various things from my grandma’s house, then acting like she’s crazy when she says anything about her stuff going missing.
She’s 94 and still lives alone. She’s a sharp lady and knows what’s going on. I guess some of them feel guilty about it, because things just mysteriously show back up.
My dad has recently talked to his siblings about it and we think it’s stopped. Also, she knows she isn’t crazy because my parents and I have had multiple talks with her about it. She’s sharp and definitely hasn’t forgotten. She still brings up a decorative garden stepping stone that went missing probably six years ago.
12. Domestic Bliss
My cousin proposed to his girlfriend after barely a year. They're now renting a big house they don't need in an expensive area because it's close to her family, and he's working two jobs while she's a #bossbabe for an MLM.
11. The Least Romantic Relocation
Friend of mine moved ten hours away and transferred colleges for a girlfriend. She broke up with him within two weeks of him living there.
10. Tragic End Credits
I never really knew my first cousin once removed, but I guess he has always been struggling with depression and that sort of thing. He turned to drugs as a means of self-medication. He had been clean for a while, he seemed to have kicked it. But one night, a sketchy friend of his hung out with him at my Great Aunt’s house, since my cousin still lived with his mother (he was 25).
Apparently, they both shot up, after a while, his sketchy friend left, and I guess my cousin thought he could handle the amount he used to be able to, but he couldn’t. He died that night and wasn’t found until his dad came until his room the morning after, looking for him, because he just bought themselves tickets to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
9. Gamble with Your Own Green
My father. He easily believed every MLM scam and "business" opportunity presented to him by friends from church.
We lost $1M of life savings back in 2004 and even got my identity stolen because of my dad making shady investments with his so-called friends.
8. An Unwise Use of Parting Gifts
When my cousin’s father-in-law died, her sister & mother-in-law went on a cross country trip with the life insurance money and become homeless within like two years.
7. Against Doctor’s Orders
I lost a friend because she wanted to go the "holistic" route into trying to cure her breast cancer. She surrounded herself with those holistic med-type people on the Internet when her cancer was in a treatable stage.
A year later, she was still on it when she found it metastasized. We went to her funeral a few months later. Lost my friend to a bunch of online quacks.
6. Home Sweet Home
One friend gave a substantial loan to another friend as a "gift" in order to save some money on taxes. The loan was to help the guy put a down payment on a rundown condo, in which they would become roommates. Despite the loan, the guy is not on any of the paperwork for the condo.
The runner up would be the guy who bought the run-down condo. He not in the least bit handy. From what I've seen of the place, from his painting the sinks (which immediately began chipping) to the massive build-ups of ice on the windows in the winter make me think he's bitten off way more than he can chew.
5. Trust No One, Not Even Yourself
My former friend tried to get a girl to like him by pretending to be other people when texting her, ultimately culminating in him making violent threats as one of the people he made up.
4. Plot Twist
My best friend (F 20) married my ex (M 23). He was abusive to me our entire relationship. Of course, my friend didn't believe me when I told her. I just hope she is safe.
They are currently trying to get sealed in the LDS Temple.
3. SOS
Grandma had a stroke so her kids all come to help except one who lived out of state. A few months in and that woman decides to move back, take over everything, and before we know it she loads grandma up in her car and drives back to the state she was in before without saying anything to anybody, drains the account so that they can afford a new home, and starts pulling money from the grandkids' inheritance money.
Grandma has dementia, can barely tell right from wrong, and was manipulated into thinking that she was abandoned by her family. Meanwhile, she was telling us that she still lived in the city at her house while they were taking care of grandma. We went to the aunt's house, and her place had a sign out front that said the power was being cut off due to not having paid any bills in weeks. Knocked, rang, asked the neighbors, they told us nobody lived there. Called her phone number and the number was disconnected.
My grandma is still being manipulated but has moments of lucidity. My family has a grudge against her because they think she went willingly, meanwhile she's calling us crying because she has no money and she misses us, then she flips back to thinking we hate her.
We hate the aunt that took her. I'm wondering if this even counts as kidnapping since my grandma is senile and she barely thinks for herself anymore.
2. Jumped the Gun
Friend wanted to join the military. Got all his paperwork in and everything and figured it was a done deal. Quit his well-paying job with good benefits (against everyone's recommendations). Went to the physical and they found out he had psoriasis that he thought wouldn't be an issue and he was barred from service. He is currently unemployed.
1. Bad Boys, Worse Credit
Ah that would be my GFs friend Andrea. Andrea is a nurse at the hospital here. Originally from Canada. Anyway, Andrea meets Rodney in the hospital because he comes in after wrecking his motorcycle. They're instantly dating and engaged within a couple of months. When they start talking marriage the RED FLAGS are flying everywhere for me. I grew up where Rodney did, and I know where he comes from. Every other sentence out of his mouth is "...and if Andrea will cosign a loan..." Ugh...
I pull Andrea aside one day on the patio and try to talk to her about this. I BEGGED her to not cosign any loans. "If no bank in the state will loan them money, why would you, I ask?" Of course, she tells me I don't know what I'm talking about and does it anyway. Loans for him, loans for his mother, loans for his ex-con buddy who's "a really good motorcycle mechanic."
Fast forward a year: Rodney is in jail. Again. Andrea had to declare bankruptcy to get away from the bill collectors. Her credit is ruined, the hospital fires her. She has to beg money from her family to scrape up enough to just go back to Canada.
Hoopla
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