Spending Scaries: The Financial Regrets Haunting Americans

With the spooky season upon us, the spending scaries may be in full swing as we enter those pricey last few months of the year. However, some people are haunted year-round: Nearly a quarter of Americans (23%) say they think about their financial regrets at least weekly, according to a new BW survey.

The survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll, asked more than 2,000 Americans about the big purchases they regret and how they feel about major financial decisions they’ve made. We also asked which aspects of their financial lives regularly stress them out.

“While regretting a purchase can feel bad, the experience can also be useful,” says Kimberly Palmer, personal finance expert at BW. “It’s worth exploring financial regrets to understand what we wish we did instead, and then make a different choice next time.”

Buyer’s remorse — or making a purchase and then regretting it — is a common experience among American consumers. According to the survey, 3 in 5 Americans (60%) say they’ve spent money on something expensive that they later regretted. The top spending woes? One in 5 Americans (20%) regret buying a luxury item, 19% regret spending on gambling and 18% regret vehicle spending. Expensive items or experiences, especially those purchased with debt, can cause one-time buys to haunt you for years.

A majority of Americans who had any expensive purchase regrets (60%) answered with more than one of the above options. This suggests that feeling regret over spending once doesn’t necessarily prevent regrettable purchases in the future.

We also asked Americans about five specific financial decisions: buying their current home, buying their current car, taking on student loan debt, starting a family and starting a business. The decision to embark on those paths generally leads to positive feelings from a financial perspective, particularly among Americans who have bought their current home, 74% of whom are glad they did it, and those who have started a family, 76% of whom say the same.

The most common regret of these five financial decisions among those who have done them is related to going into debt for education: Around 1 in 5 Americans who have taken on student loan debt regret it (21%) and another 28% have mixed feelings.

Some people feel remorse for what they haven’t done, or what they waited “too long” to do. According to the survey, 41% of Americans say they wish they had started investing earlier and nearly a third (31%) feel like they should be better with their money by now. And it’s not just their own mistakes they’re dwelling on: About 1 in 6 Americans (16%) still think about poor financial decisions their parents made.