[wacki]

Yesterday I stopped by what I thought was a hunting/fishing store. When I walked in 90% of the place was empty. There was a 71 year old lady that was supporting herself solely by selling crickets, worms, and other bait supplies. You could tell from looking at the walls and empty glass cases that the place used to be so much more. So I started talking to the lady and it turns out that she was getting ready to retire. She put up 300+ thousand dollars of guns, bows, and outdoor equipment up for auction. The problem was that the auctioneer was shady and sold everything for a mere 14K in a fraction of the time the auction was supposed to last. After a long legal battle and witnesses that wouldn't testify against "one of their own" or due to "conflicts of interest" she gave up and decided to sell crickets. This was 7 years ago.

Not the wisest of women but still a heart wrenching story. And one I spent a reasonable amount of time talking to my father-lawyer about. Apparently in some states you can't stop auctions once they've started. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] It's funny how badly some people can screw you if they know the law a lot better than you do.

But this brings me to the topic of this thread. What are some mistakes people have made that ended up costing them a lifetime of work or major hardship at least? A book full of short stories like this one would be interesting to read.

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. - Eleanor Roosevelt