We are only human and subject to making mistakes. Over the past month, I almost made some silly mistakes that had the potential to cost me dearly. In fact, I had several Whoops moments, both good and bad. The purpose of this post is to articulate the nature of those mistakes in hopes that you will not make the same mistakes, if faced with a similar situation.

Missed Payment

On several different occasions, I’ve discussed the fact that I’m in a transition period at work. I had to move from my instate location to overseas. With such a move, mistakes are bound to happen.

I treasure my Credit score. In fact, I was concerned that my credit score went down because of my recent inability to pay off my credit card balance. I’ve actually maxed out one of my credit cards and that’s not good. I still hold a $3000 credit card balance. However, once I’m able to pay down the credit card, I estimate that my credit score will rise.

However, because of a number of reasons, I experienced a lot of setbacks in the past few months. On a regular basis, money was tight. I do track my spending, but I’m just lousy at sticking to a budget. Well, during a routine allocation of my income towards expenses, I made a payment to the company that supplies my internet. Actually, this was supposed to be my last payment. But, once I made the payment, I forgot about the expense.

It turns out that I did not have sufficient money in my account to make the payment. And I did not realize that. Whoops! Once I put the transaction through, I went about living my life, like I normally do. Well, one day, I was going through my spreadsheet of income and expenses. For some reason, maybe providence, I decided to check my account balance with my internet service provider. I was astonished. I had a balance of $69 (which included a $10 late fee).

What’s really significant about this is that had I not realized the mistake, my ISP was set to notify the credit card bureaus in just a few days. All my hard efforts to maintain a consistently high credit card score would have went down the drain had the ISP reported me being 30 days (or more) late.

This kind of honest error can happen to anyone. It’s so much easier to tear things down, but it’s always harder to build things up. Thankfully I realized the error before it was too late.

Miscalculation of Investment Amount

Hopefully soon, I should be receiving a 20k bonus from work. Based on my initial calculations, I should have been able to invest about half that amount. Well, I didn’t take into account all the facts and circumstances surrounding my bonus. Whoops!

Well, it turns out, for reasons I don’t care to explain, that I should now be able to invest about 15k instead of 10k. So, out of the 20k, the new plan is to pay off the above credit card, with the balance of $3000, replenish my emergency funds and pay for other miscellaneous expenses, totaling about $2000. This would leave me with about $15k to fully invest in my dividend portfolio.

So although I miscalculated, it worked out in my favor.

Conclusion

Even with the best of plans, it’s still possible to experience a whoops moment. Sometimes, they work in your favor and other times they do not. What’s important is to pick yourself once they occur and stay the course.

What do you think? Have you experienced a whoops moment? Let me know by commenting below.

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