The ways I have lost money in past years

Besides break downs here are a few of mine.

Forgot to bill the customer. Found out years later
customer didn't pay
Wife tossed the check in the wood stove. Customer said too bad
Mowed the wrong piece. Owner said thanks.
Found a check in my truck that was years old
Not having a guard on my mower, and breaking a $1,500 window coat me 500, ins paid the rest
May be more. Anybody care to add yours Stan

Farming.

My finger would fall off by the time I wrote em all

Oh man, too many to count. First one to come to mind is bad grain marketing over the past 45 years. It has cost me several hundred thousand dollars at least.

Yeah, getting it in the bin is only half the challenge! Marketing it and trying to get the best price is worse than dealing with the weather and the breakdowns!

Divorce.

Ive learned from experience SEVERAL times and education costs money but if one becomes wiser and does better the next time consider it was a learning experience. Dave Ramsey calls it STUPID TAX and I've paid my share lol.

MANY MANY Years ago when I was a used tractor truck and RV dealer I bought an old Autocar for $8,000 and was offered 10,000 but I didn't sell it. My plan was to dress and doll it up with chrome and bells and whistles hoping for maybe a 3K or more profit. So I spent 2K (now had 10K in it) tricking it out COULDNT SELL IT THE 90 DAY NOTE WAS COMING DUE (I didnt have much money way back then) took it to a Taylor and Martin Truck auction and got $8000. Turned down 2K profit, lost 2 K instead STUPID TAX

Many years ago when I was farming I forward priced some corn and thought I did great getting a good fall delivery price at Queen City Grain in Cinn Ohio like 60 miles from my farm in Versailles IN. I had a 1948 Ford F5 my wife drove, (see picture) flat head VH 4 speed NON sync tranny and vacuum 2 speed, and a 60 something Chevy with 427 (I think??) I drove to haul grain daily 60 miles to Cincinatti... Harvest time comes around AND THE PRICE AT AN ELEVATOR 2 MILES FROM MY FARM had the same or better price grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Theres more lol but thats enough for now. Hey I got smarter after that and cut a fat hog on other trucks tractors and farms

John T

JT .... Great pic ..... Mike Malone .... Cannonball Mike Malone !!!

Lol, how to count them all. This spring I planted the first corn field way too deep and got half a stand so far. Haven't decided yet if I will replant it.

Buying old tractors and projects that have potential and that I want to work on and find a use for; having too many tractors and projects that need worked on instead of me using them to work...

Been enough I can't recall them all, and so it seems the trend never really stops for good, it'll happen to you any time.
I think however the older you get, the frequency is less.

Just the same, my last one was bumping mirrors while passing a slow moving, seemingly drunk driver, throwing trash out his window. That got me an unsafe passing ticket, (which cost me an atty to get reduced to parking on the pavement) and well the dealer cost on a new mirror for my truck. Got a break on that and it was nothing fancy like many of the newer trucks will have. Misjudged the distance between vehicles, got over too quick, was a 2 lane road, "stupid is as stupid does" LOL ! I shoulda just stayed behind the jerk and kept my distance back.

Buying old tractors to resell. Either took to much to make saleable or bottom falls out of market. Learned property doesn't make money.

Oh let me count the ways.

This might interest you, I lost 5K to Jesus.

I had that truck many years used it to haul grain and used farm machinery. 100 HP Flathead V8 4 speed non sync tranny and that darn vacuum 2 speed wouldn't shift when it was cold lol

Heres my 46 Ford it was better looking and my 48 White Super Power

Take care Cannonball Mike

John T

Divorces are a popular choice!

Loaning money, doing work on a sob story...

There are actually some people out there I intentionally did work for knowing they would not pay just so they would avoid me!

Boats, enough said.
Horses and Divorces

The first of the year I built a porch for someone I will probably be paying for that the rest of the year. As soon as I started the job it started raining preventing me from working. Several days I drove 50 miles to the jobsite only to have to turn around and go home because of weather. Then The weather was damaging what I was building so a lot of things I had to do twice. I started buying materials on the credit card while I was paying my expenses from payments from the customer. I ended up in the red about six grand.

I never lost a check in any way. I had one job I had to take the people to court and then it ended up being 14 years and involved a lawyer before I could collect most of it.

Yup, sometimes the best thing to do is see to it certain "customers" owe you money so they never show up again.

First year with the Case 434 I planted about 5 acres 4" deep till I checked depth. Took awhile but it did finally come up.

Remember Nebraska Cowman, who was on here several years ago? He said "If you loan a guy 20 bucks and you never see him again, it was worth it". Funny thing is, I ran into a guy who I didn't particularly like at a consignment auction, and he hit me up for $20 because his kids had raided his wallet. That was probably 15 years ago, and I haven't seen him since. And yes, it was worth it.

We've sent collections agents after 2 customers in my 14 years in business. One paid up, still haven't heard from the other. It's been 5 years on that one. Worst part was it was an awful flat roof job. Took the old roof up with scoop shovels and trash bags.

On the positive side, we've recently had a few customers that don't have the money, and can't qualify for financing, but they make us cash payments each month and never miss.

has to be farming, im loosing money every year. if I won the lottery I still would farm till its all gone! getting stuck with combine trying to combine few weeks ago. low spots left with water sitting in them had 1 1/4 inch of rain last weekend. now working up what I can and seed what I can. I sure never pizzed off god, don't know why he is being so mean last year and now this year.

This was about 3 1/2" deep. On a normal year it wouldn't be so bad. But this year with as cold as it's been it was worse. Mostly up now tho so that's good

They are expensive because they are worth it.

I can honestly say that so far I have never made any big mistakes, but I have probably made up for a couple of big ones by making a series of smaller mistakes.. I consider mistakes to be an education, and an education always comes at a price !

Invested most of it on booze and women,,,,,the rest I just wasted.

Nice stuff .....

Bad judgement gives you experience. Experience helps you avoid more bad judgement.

Farming if I could go back 40 years I would have never bought my first farm.Work away from the farm up until several years ago,everybody that has never been on a farm says you got it made,they all wish they could leave the public job and have a farm.

Mr. Alcohol....

When I was working for PCA, I was the guy who worked with our newly-found commercial fishing customers. One of them told me he had a friend who wanted $7,500 each for 2 Bristol Bay gillnet permits. He swore they would be worth big money in a year or two. I passed, and sure enough, in 2 years those permits were selling for $250,000 each. And to compound the mistake, I invested the 15 grand into the down payment on a farm, and of course, never made a nickel part-time farming until I quit 10 years later.

But I did make some good deals over the years, and now we're in decent financial shape in retirement, so I really have nothing to gripe about.

Mine went 14 years because I had difficulty finding someone to do the collection work. Then when I finally found someone I found out the judgement expired in 2016. They allowed me to re-new the judgement but failed to tell me I had to file papers on him pretty soon after re-newing it. Must be pretty obscure, his lawyer didn't catch it but I settled for the amount of the invoice without the interest. I figured if I put up much of a fight they would eventually find out.

I've been in business for 34 years and this guy was the only larger job that didn't pay. I had a few that beat me out of less than 100 bucks when I was repairing furniture. There for a while I stopped taking checks. They would pick up their furniture and seem to be very pleased with it and then stop payment on the check.

Not selling all the corn in February before mayhem occurred.

I had one that bad this last year job took ten times more work than it should have then setback after setback drive 30 miles one way to figure out something wouldn’t work did that about 5 times lost my butt big time was a small job but it still hurt if I’ve learned one thing never give a bid on a job before it’s done . Which brings up a question how do you change a bid after you quote the job? I couldn’t get the people to budge or help one bit on the deal lesson learned I guess.

You can't change the amount after the bid. All you can do is make the people happy and if they order more work try to make some of it back. In my case the people I built the porch for want me to replace the siding on their garage. Sometimes repeat customers you have to add a little on each job until you can break even.

Picked up a free horse.

Sometimes the best money spent.

Ok . I’ve only really had trouble this one time bid it before I even looked which usually isn’t an issue but I was also under the impression it was a lot closer than I thought to so I really took it in the rear

(reply to post at 13:51:07 05/29/20)

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I decided last fall that I was Going to actually make a little money from my hobby tractors, a 1953 NAA and a 1970 Ford 4000 by actually charging rates for tractor work instead of doing it all for free. I plowed snow from driveways in winter, but could not get most of the beneficiaries to even help with the fuel bills. I tilled garden plots for 9 neighbors who live within a mile either direction from the house with a rotary tiller, and would run a spring tooth over the plot if it showed a lot of rocks. And did brush hog work in the summer, Then back to tilling for fall cover crops. Pretty much kept busy all year long but maintaining 2 tractors was getting expensive. I listened to what people were paying for what I was doing for free. I talked to the neighbors and told them I was on a fixed retirement income and was losing money keeping 2 tractor running. One got hostile but the rest agreed that the rates I wanted to charge were very much at the low end of the market for the work performed. Things were looking up a little, only lost one job, but I really did not want him as he had never forked up a dime to cover actual costs for fuel. Good riddance to a bad apple. Then it hit the fan. Absolutely no snow this winter, highly unusual for this area. We had one 3 inch snow that literally melted of by noon the next day. Profit from snow removal exactly $0. Expenses on both tractors $100. Things not looking so good now. It rained constantly, 3-4 days per week for 4 solid months. In addition, 5 of the older neighbors said they were not going to raise a garden this year for health reasons. With the one dropout, that was 6 out of 9 garden jobs out the window I was planning on a revenue of $75, or a net of $50. Things were not looking good. I did manage to till the 3 remaining on 1 day in FEb when we had 4 days of no rain. Garden profit a hefty $150, or a net of $0 when tractor expenses were added. Now the big One. I was hauling dirt with my 1/3 yard rear mount scoop to fill a flower bed. I had finished the job and collected my fee of $75. I parked the NAA and when I stepped of the left running board my left knee buckled under me and my right foot caught under the clutch pedal and whipped me to the ground. I landed hard on my Galaxy note 4 phone in my back pocket which pretty much destroyed the phone. Replaced it with a good used phone off ebay for $115. Back in the hole $40 now. Did I mention that I also broke the femur in the right hip joint. Required a rod in the broken bone and 3 pins to hold in place. In Total , 2 surgeries and 2 stints in rehab for repairs. Spent over 1 month in hospitals with no family contact for over a month due to virus. Finally came home after 5 weeks with 2 bacterial infections and a staff infection in the leg. Talked the docs into 2 ea 10 day antibiotics from home instead of IV's in hospital. Will be laid up approximately 4 months before walking again, 10weeks of home health wound care, nursing and physical therapy. Total costs to date are $275000 and climbing. I think my idea of making some extra money with the hobby tractors is officially BANKRUPT. A Walmart greeter position is looking better all the time

Cost me big time to get ride of my ex-wife......but then again, it was worth it....

Bob...