No Buy! 3 Easy Items To Start Your No-Buy List

Ever wonder what happens when a $4,500 necklace, a $10,000 cosmetic procedure, and a $7,500 “investment” go terribly wrong? In this post, I’m exposing my most regretful purchases, the sneaky traps that got me, and the jaw-dropping lessons I learned along the way. Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. These stories will save you thousands!

#1 Jewelry

The first time I got out of debt, I was so happy and grateful. I wanted something that would remind me to keep trusting God the way I trusted Him and took the steps to get out of debt. Well, apparently, what trust looked like to me was going straight to Tiffany’s and picking a diamond cross necklace that would be a “timeless” piece and purchasing it for $4,500. Inspired by the shows and movies where people pass on jewelry to the next generation. UGH, I don’t even have kids! So yeah, now I have a fine jewelry necklace that I barely use, and according to eBay, I could get maybe $400 for it. What a total FAIL, that is over 90% in depreciation!

That is why jewelry is a must have on a no buy list. I am now more mature, and I understand that the biggest reminder of my trust in God is prayer and the actions I take. I also realized that I don’t really like wearing it. I grew up in Colombia and wearing things like this can attract the wrong kind of attention, I realized it make me feel unsafe and uncomfortable. I feel much when I wear no jewelry. When I dream about getting married, I think I would do a modest ring type tattoo and call it a day (I have no tattoos, so here is to hope that we find a good artist and can make it through the process).

#2 Cosmetic Procedures

Next, and this one is truly great! Ideal Image. Once, I talked myself into signing up for laser hair removal and not in one area but in three, my legs, underarms, and you can guess the third for $10k. Oh, the consultant told me the laser was like a rubber band snap on the skin and that they would give me numbing cream and then no more shaving! What a dream! I felt so excited! This would save me time and money over my lifetime, a total no-brainer.

Well, here is what actually happened; at first, they started me on the smaller laser, but it was not a good fit because, hello, I have dark, brown, thick hair. Note the darker and thicker your hair is, the harder it is to do the laser hair removal. So, I got upgraded to the bigger laser. The small laser was really like a rubber band snap, but the bigger laser was pain on a whole different level. It hurt, even with the numbing cream. It feels like it is burning your skin. But I wanted perfect smooth, flawless skin and no shaving! So I kept going, and guess what? I discovered that they increase the intensity of the laser with every session in order to accomplish the removal, and the cherry on top, eventually, you have to keep going and do maintenance sessions - also not mentioned during my initial consultation (shocking!).

Guess what? I only made it through half of the sessions before I started complaining that I could not go through with this; it was just so painful. Call me a wuss, because I went right back to the consultant and told her I couldn’t complete the treatment, and we needed to figure something out. She suggested that we transfer the value to cool sculpting, and I did. The cool sculpting was in my abdomen; I saw a small difference, but after a few months of eating the way I have always done, my pants went back to fit in the same way they always had, and I was out $10k.

So that is why cosmetic procedures of any kind are a must have on a no buy list. That means no cool sculpting, no Botox, no filler, and no anything enhancing. I, for one, am not spending thousands on some slight physical improvement to the way I look. This is what I look like, and is going to be like this for a very long time, if not always.

#3 Short-Term Investing

Once, I was a fan of the popular show Shark Tank, and during the holidays, I came across a Facebook ad for a one-hour money class that was endorsed by Kevin O'Leary. The class was mostly focused on living below your means and investing, a concept that we all know and that I understood, so it wasn’t a red flag. But there was no Kevin; there were just a couple of guys who referred to Kevin as a sponsor of their business. They promoted a weekend workshop on investing for a few hundred dollars, and of course, this business is endorsed by the investment Shark, so I was in. The big investment concept that they taught over the weekend, was Options trading, which I had never heard of before. Essentially, options are derivates of the stock. In the workshop, they talked about people who were consistently getting amazing returns and how they had been able to help their families and community with the extra money like paying for medical bills, funding a food pantry, and things like that. They said you could get started with just a few thousand dollars. The workshop was actually a big pitch for their one year program.

In the program, you would get:

The cost of the program was $15k. I went home and did a general Google search on options trading and learned that options are a legit way of trading. But I didn’t have $15k and I was already out of debt and knew how hard paying down credit was, so I was hesitant. I made one friend at the weekend workshop, and they told us that we could sign up together and each of us would be responsible for half or $7,500 bucks. I, of course, said Yes! I was getting so much for $7500 dollars online lessons, a trading simulator, coaching, and an in-person workshop! What could go wrong?

Well, two things, first I was working full time and going to grad school so I didn’t have the capacity to keep up with the program and quickly fell behind (Thank God! because I learned of the risks from people who were ahead of me and didn’t seem to make these amazing above market returns). I also learned in the process that options trading is very risky. That is why you can make a lot doing it because it is high risk, and just like you can make a lot of money doing it, you can also lose a lot of money in it. Volatility is one of the main variables that goes into how options are priced; the more volatility, the more expensive options become.

My membership expired after a year. I went to Utah, but I never traded options and lost $7,500. I learned a big lesson: do not buy or trust something just because it is endorsed by a celebrity. I am grateful that it only cost me $7500, on Reddit there are people who are talking about big losses with options trading. So this is a must have one no-buy item; I no longer buy anything that is related to day trading or short-term investing. I am a dollar cost-averaging investor who is focused on investing consistently over a long period of time.

No buys are challenging!

I hope adding these will make your journey easier!