I asked ST colleagues about their biggest financial regrets. Here are some (very) honest answers

SINGAPORE – I regret not heeding my grandmother’s classic advice of converting spare cash into some gold. This time in 2024, gold prices were still hovering around $3,500 per ounce. Today, it’s about $5,500 per ounce.

I regret putting money consistently in a robo-adviser during the Covid-19 pandemic (it felt like it was trending then) without doing any research on whether it would work for me.

In the spirit of some end-of-year reflections, I asked more than 20 people in The Straits Times newsroom to dig deep and think about the things they wished they had done differently with their hard-earned money.

Apart from a couple of tongue-in-cheek and spontaneous responses like “getting married” or “having children” as a significant financial regret, several key themes of regrets emerged. Responses range from over-pampering their children and buying and selling stocks “too early” or “too late” to impulsive or emotional spending on everyday expenses.

Unsurprisingly, no one said they regretted over-budgeting for more overseas holidays in a year or impulsively booking overpriced flight tickets.

Stocks

“A regret would be adding Trump Media and Technology Group to my stock portfolio after I had impulsively bought the shares for US$26 a piece. I held on to them even when prices surged to US$40, after Mr Donald Trump secured his second presidential term. The shares are now worth half of what I paid for them. Thankfully, I have only 20 of these shares, not 200 or 2,000.”

Annabelle Liang, business correspondent

“I bought 2,000 DBS shares at $19.65 each, paying $39,432.84 (including brokerage fees) on Sept 22, 2020, when Singapore was still combating the Covid-19 virus. Nine days later, the share price rose to $20.38, and I unloaded all the shares for $40,622.25, netting a gain of about $1,190. I was quite pleased with myself.

“But if I had thought long term, the shares would have risen to some $110,000 in value today (based on a share price of $55). The return on investment would have been about 179 per cent, or an annualised return of almost 22 per cent. The transaction is still recorded in my trading app as a stark reminder to think long term for equity investments.”

Toh Yong Chuan, assistant business editor 

“I bought Nvidia shares in 2022 and sold them in early 2025, just before they really skyrocketed. I thought I had made good money already, but I could have made more. So I regret the timing, but I guess you can never really time the market.”

Timothy Goh, business journalist

Bubble tea, dates and more 

“In a moment of financial weakness, I opened my Grab app, craved bubble tea and discovered one cup costs $15 after what they call a ‘small order fee’ on top of delivery services. I briefly considered buying a second cup to “make it worth it”. The whole price was $1 more. I cancelled any logic, kept the shame, gave in to my craving and drank one $15 bubble tea.”

Isabelle Kumar, video journalist 

“Bubble tea combines the regret of my wallet and my health. Drinking an average of three cups of bubble tea a week has been my biggest regret. Besides the high sugar content and the weight gain, every cup that costs about $6.50 adds up to about $20 a week, which translates into over $1,000 a year. That $1,000 could have gone towards another flight ticket to London, where I can buy tea (sans bubbles and sugar) and have had a week-long fun holiday to meet my friends and watch musicals.”

Sue-Ann Tan, business correspondent

“I regret buying so many Bumble dates drinks at fancy cocktail bars only to be ghosted after.

“Once, I calculated that renting a GetGo car for a round trip to run errands on a rainy morning would be far cheaper than getting a Grab with the surge pricing. And thinking it was just going to take a maximum of 30 minutes, I chose to scrimp on a few dollars instead of selecting the collision damage waiver option. How foolish! I ended up in a chain-collision traffic accident just 10 minutes from my house and $7,000 poorer due to the damage to the car and a bus behind. Don’t be an idiot like I was.”

Benjamin Lim, business correspondent

“I regret buying my first ‘big girl bag’. Armed with savings from my first few pay cheques at my first ‘big girl job’, I stood outside the glitzy designer boutique, filled with anticipation. Spending thousands on a bag felt unfathomable to me, the girl who would compare 10 Taobao listings and scour through hundreds of reviews just to make sure I was getting an adequate deal for the amount I was spending. And yet there I was. Trying on a few bags that previously amounted to my monthly income. Am I deserving of this bag? I wondered. It wasn’t an impulse purchase. I sat on it for a few days before going back and handing over my credit card. Three years on, I am beginning to wonder if it was wise to spend that much on a bag.

“I’m still in two minds if I should sell the bag, especially after hearing the multiple horror stories about the resale market. Perhaps it can form part of my daughter’s bag collection when she’s old enough. For now, it will remain a regret – but also a memory of a milestone. Perhaps I spent a couple of thousand dollars to learn a valuable lesson – that for me, personally, milestones are best marked with a meal, and not a bag I need to take very much care of.”

Diane Leow, editor of newsroom strategy (insights)

“My impulse buys with clothes that I have never even worn once cost me more in hindsight than they ever did at the counter. Thankfully, I managed to cut my losses by selling them on Carousell.”

Lee Pei Jie, executive digital graphics designer 

“My biggest regret was listening to my financial advisers and not doing my own due diligence. Both were from big banks who sold themselves as trusted advisers but in reality were sales reps with targets to meet.”

Angela Tan, senior business correspondent 

Family, property and car

“I learnt the hard way that buying big appliances during seasonal sales ‘just in case’ is a terrible idea. Turns out washing machines last longer than expected... Now I’ve got two.”

Billy Ker, executive artist

“My biggest financial mistake was to ‘upgrade’ from a Japanese hatchback to a European sedan for a more prestigious badge in 2021. The hatchback would later achieve cult status and its current value – an annual depreciation of $13,000, partly fuelled by the soaring COE premium, is easily double the annual depreciation of $6,000, when I sold it four years ago. I then sold the sedan a year later due to the mounting repairs. I’d probably be at least $50,000 richer if I had not made the switch. Money aside, I still preferred the manual transmission in my Japanese hatchback – a Suzuki Swift Sport. The hatchback was my first car and first love, and will always be the best love.”

Chong Jun Liang, executive photojournalist

“I regret pampering my daughter and buying her something (toy or stationery) every weekend when we go out. I feel I am doing her a disservice because she does not appreciate the value of money. She can get everything she wants easily so she cannot appreciate the value of money. Furthermore, the house is becoming super messy with all her stuff. I have a great mind to throw everything away when we move house.”

Chor Khieng Yuit, senior business correspondent  

“I regret sending my two older kids to a very pricey, posh pre-school! I wised up later and sent my youngest to a church kindergarten. How much gold could I have bought instead and passed it to them!

“I also regret not buying Bitcoin back in 2017, when I first started covering stories on it. It was less than $2,000 then.”

Ann Williams, assistant business editor 

“I made the mistake of thinking I could save money by getting some furniture from Taobao, including my vanity table, coffee table and a shelf to display my K-pop collection. But a lot of the furniture came broken, with missing components and cracked marble. The only one that really went well was the vanity table, but even that came with a cracked surface that the seller very kindly sent us a replacement for. It’s really a gamble when it comes to Taobao furniture, but what I took away from this was that it’s better not to gamble, and just buy furniture from shops you can trust.”

Rosalind Ang, business journalist

Regrets over inaction 

“I regret not buying tickets to catch the Monza GP in Italy this year because it was Lewis Hamilton’s first year with Ferrari and the race day was my birthday. At least I saved the money I would have spent on that, but I lost out on the experience, which is sometimes worth the expense (especially if it’s a birthday present to myself).”

Farzanah Friday, senior audience growth specialist 

“I regret not investing in US tech stocks early this year, thinking the AI-driven boom will soon be over.”

Ovais Subhani, senior business correspondent 

“I regret not being more strategic with my credit card spending. Probably could have flown halfway across the world twice if I had been more diligent in managing those miles.”

Kang Wan Chern, deputy business editor

“My biggest regret is not buying Bitcoin at US$12 when I first found out about it.”

Tay Hong Yi, business correspondent 

“I regret not investing more in high-yielding assets when interest rates were high.”

Sheila Chiang, business correspondent

“I regret not studying harder in school when I look at my payslip every month.”

Krist Boo, senior business correspondent 

“I have only one regret. I wish I had known about the benefits of CPF accounts when I was younger. I didn’t know then about the tax relief benefits of voluntary cash contribution of $8,000 a year to the CPF Special Account plus the effect of 4 per cent compound interest.”

Tan Ooi Boon, Invest editor

Turns out there are two types of regrets: the ones where we did something and actions we failed to do. According to research by the American Psychological Association, more people regret what they did not do than what they did. It also found that “actions cause more pain in the short term, but inactions are regretted more in the long run”. 

So, how can we avoid committing financial regrets that may not sit well with us eventually?

Invest editor Tan Ooi Boon notes that while it’s easy to say “I wish I had invested in some popular stocks”, only a handful of people have the courage to hold steady when the market turns.

“Diversification is key so that you can expect a good return from something solid like CPF, even if all else fails,” he says.

Financial planning is not just about investing, he adds, but also reducing costs or loans. A good practice is revising down one’s home mortgage, such as reducing the loan tenure from 30 to 20 to 10 years.

“Each time you refinance, this forces you to manage your monthly expenses more prudently since you will start to pay for more home mortgage. By cutting your loan tenure, you will save a lot of interest from the home loan,” he says.

To close the year in good spirits, I will leave you with one of my favourite quotes from author J.K. Rowling, who said it best when she addressed a group of Harvard graduates in 2022.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”