This is a rewrite of a topic from a while ago. I am now a Senior, and I am having some serious health challenges, due to my laziness. Exercise and your health are a key to your retirement, and your life in general.
Many years ago, I went on a pretty serious exercise regimen. I felt that if I had a stationary exercise bike I’d get significant use out of it. I went off to a large box Exercise Store and bought a $1000 exercise bike. It proved to be one of the dumbest purchases of my monetary career.
It was all-singing, all-dancing, and programmable, with magnetic and other things. The only thing it didn’t do was make me sit on it and force me to exercise. This would have been the best option to get.
I used it for a while, stopped, and then when I returned to it, it was broken. It started working again after a time and then died ultimately (naturally out of the warranty period). Here I sat with $1000 worth of useless exercise equipment (that I had to throw out), and a middle-aged paunch.
My frustration with myself is that I got "sold" something that I knew I didn't need. All I needed was a generic bike.
The best part of the story is that 2 years ago I finally decided to get another stationary exercise bike. I found it on Kajiji, bought it for $100 and it does more than the $1000 carbuncle. I had to drive a long way to get the replacement bike, but I got what I needed. See the Epilogue for more.
Conclusion
I realize that most folks are not too proud of their dumb purchases, but can I ask my readers, what is the most expensive dumb thing that you bought? I am curious to know what folks will admit to, and how much money might be spent on one of these (I feel stupid enough blowing $1000), how big was yours?
Epilogue
This was from many years ago. I never really got back in very good shape and am now paying for my lack of exercise. I will be in rehabilitation for rupturing my patellar tendon for many more months. This might not have happened if I had been in any reasonable shape. Your health is the most essential asset for your retirement, keep that in mind.
The replacement bike eventually broke as well.
My story is very similar to yours, but lucky for me the cost was much less. For some strange reason we had The Shopping Channel on one day a while back and I saw the program for The Gazelle. I do not think we used it more than 50 times all together. Needless to say we now use it to hang up laundry in the basement. It does a good job of that though.
I have bought things on sale because I thought I wanted it. I wear it once or twice and never wear it again. Either it does not fit that well or I didn’t really like it. Luckily,the individual price was under $100.
Very good self-control, if all you blew was $100…
I could list a few, but for some reason I buy expensive drinking glasses. A set of two glass coffee mugs for $25 that apparently keep your coffee warmer than normal mugs, and $80 beer glass, eight wine glasses for $100…and guess what…they all broke.
I agree with the last post, stocks. In university I had three friends working as day traders making a killing (late nineties) and they convinced me to put $15,000 US from my STUDENT LOAN into tech stocks…you know how that ended. All gone. Thankfully I paid my loan back quickly since I had a great job out of school, but I’ll never forget that “learning” experience.
Man, I am impressed by the honesty of you folks so far, this is an amazing set of stories (so far)!
My stupidest purchase would have to be a stock, not an exercise bike. I almost entirely avoid individual stocks but I did stupidly buy yellow pages. We all know what happened there. Lost a fair bit more than your $1000. Didn’t break the bank or anything but it wasn’t fun.
I also purchased a recumbent exercise bike recently new from Costco for about $500. It was good value compared to what else was around and I know that if it ever completely fails in a reasonable period of time I can just dump it off at Costco’s door” and they’ll give me a full refund like I’ve done many times before.