40 Questionable Financial Decisions People Have Made and Shared Online for Us to Learn From

My favorite SNL sketch of all time is that one where Steve Martin and Amy Poehler play a couple in an ad for a financial advice book, and the only piece of advice in the book is “Don’t buy things you can’t afford.” I show that to people all the time, and it’s only partly because those two are always funny.

It’s also partly because some people are genuinely bad at understanding and acting on this idea. Credit and layaway plans have given a lot of people a skewed idea that if you want something but you can’t afford it, there are ways around that. It’s important that we all learn that if you can’t afford something, then maybe… you can’t afford it.