How To Recover From A Financial Mistake

We have all made financial decisions that we regret. It may have been buying a brand new car off the lot because it was love at first sight or agreeing to sign up for a “free cruise” offer over the phone through a cold call. Maybe you financed a Disney trip for your family five years ago and you’re still paying on it or you invested in the “next big thing” and you’re still having money deducted from your bank account each month. Financial regret happens to most people, but it’s how you deal with it that matters. Don’t waste your time putting yourself down and feeling guilty over the mistake (you’ve done enough of that already!). Instead, put together a plan of action. Here are some ideas for how to recover from a financial mistake.

Talk to your Partner

If you are married or have a long-term partner, make sure that you talk this over with them. Making a bad financial decision can be detrimental to the family and have serious repercussions, so you want to make sure that you aren’t hiding anything. Make sure to put everything on the table and be clear that you want to come up with a plan towards a solution. Have a “business meeting” with your partner to decide how you will overcome this, together. If you’re a single person, you can still have a “business meeting” with yourself. Come up with a plan and make things happen.

See If It Is Reversible

Did the bad financial decision happen recently? See if you can reverse it. Not all companies will allow something like this, but some will – you just have to ask. Many will charge a restocking fee or cancellation fee, but compared with the years of payments that you would have had ahead of you, that smaller payment might be completely worth it. Sometimes reversing your decision is the best decision you can make for your family in the long-term – even if it costs a little more in the short-term.

Tackle the Debt

Assuming you have debt now (whether you’ve been able to cancel the payments or not), don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and start tackling it. Pay everything that you can towards this debt to get it paid off faster. This may mean extra hours at work or even picking up an extra job, but you want it out of your hair. The angrier you get at the debt, the faster you will get it paid off. If you have other debt concerns as well, be sure to read about additional money saving tips for paying off debt.

Learn from Your Mistake

The times where we learn the most in life are typically the tough times. If everything was smooth sailing all of the time, we would never become the people we were meant to be. Look at this decision as a lesson. Learn from your experience and get the most you can out of it. Think through what got you here. Did you have a bunch of extra money all of a sudden and had to blow it? Did you feel that you couldn’t say “no” to something that seemed like a great deal? Did you want to be polite to the salesperson and couldn’t find your way out of it? Really think about what it was in this situation that you could have done differently and make sure not to do it again in the future. One of the best things that you can do when dealing with financial regret is learn from it and not repeat the mistake.

Speak Positively

Remember, you are not the first human in history to deal with financial regret. We have all made decisions that we wish we hadn’t and put ourselves in positions that weren’t the most comfortable. Don’t put yourself down or beat yourself up. Try to stay as positive as you can! Positivity is going to help you get the debt paid off faster and be more productive in life in general. The longer you spend beating yourself up, the less likely you are to find a solution. Put on your big person pants, tell yourself that you won’t do it again, and get down to the business of solving the problem.

Figuring out how to recover from a financial mistake can be daunting, but it can be done. Take things one step at a time, asking for forgiveness from yourself as well as forgiveness from your partner (if you feel you need to). Everything is going to work out if you take the solution seriously, so keep putting one step in front of the other.