The Biggest Financial Mistakes I made in my 20s

Today I thought I'd talk about my biggest

and dumbest financial mistakes that I made

in my 20s and my 30s. When I think of the

biggest waste of money I've ever made in

my life, it has to be the love doll that I

got back in 2019. So if you remember when

I was in Japan and when I was married, I

decided that it would be a great idea to

buy this massive full-size full-body love

doll and also rent out an Airbnb to keep

it stored there. So back in 2019, I guess

you could say it was my peak popularity.

I was getting loads of exposure because

because Elvis the Alien made a load of

videos about me which were getting

millions of views, driving a lot of

traffic and new people towards my channel.

And people were very interested in my life

in Japan, being married, and all of the

weird stuff I would get up to. So I

thought to myself, wow, there's so many

new people who are watching my channel

now. What is the craziest thing that I

could possibly do? And my mind went

straight towards buying this full-size

love doll and trying to think of something

crazy to do with it. In Elvis the Alien's

videos, he kind of portrayed me in this

way that made it seem like I was that I

was so wacky and weird and my life was so

insane and full of nonstop weird stuff

happening. And I kind of liked that

because it kind of made me look

interesting when in reality my life was

kind of boring and mundane for 80% of the

time. So I felt this huge amount of

pressure to be as weird as I possibly

could and do really weird things for

videos so I could keep all these people

interested in coming back to the channel

because there was this expectation from

them that I was this weird crazy guy and

they came for a freak show. So I had to

deliver deliver what they were expecting.

So I thought to myself, wouldn't it be

really funny if a married man bought this

massive love doll and then took it

somewhere with him? And I asked my wife at

the time if I could store it at the

apartment we lived in together, and she

was really against, against the idea. She

was really angry. She said, if you want to

get a love doll, then go and get somewhere

to store it at. So I thought, okay, well,

I'll just rent an Airbnb and keep it

there. For some reason, it seemed like she

was actually personally insulted and felt

hurt that I would even want a love doll.

It was like she thought What's wrong with

my body? Why don't you want my body? Why

do you want some kind of fake imitation

rubber body instead? Aren't I good enough?

It was like she got really personally

attacked by my idea of wanting to get a

Love Doll, when really I was just thinking

of trying to make a viral video. So the

plan was I would get the Love Doll and

then I would take it to the Airbnb, and

then I'd make a bunch of videos, maybe 4

or 5 videos in a series, talking about how

great the Love Doll is, how much better it

is than my wife, why I prefer the Love

Doll, and then I'll talk about my

experiences using it. And hopefully maybe

one of these videos could go viral and get

a couple hundred thousand views or maybe

even a million views. I started to build a

bit of hype around this new series that I

had planned by starting off with being

kicked out and then renting a new Airbnb,

which I would now live at. And then next

part in that would be getting my new love

doll, and then I would live with the love

doll, and then it would kind of replace my

wife, and it would be like a whole funny

series like that. As some of you may know,

these full-size body love dolls are not

cheap. Cost me about $1,600, plus I had

to pay for delivery because it was being

shipped over from China, and I also had to

pay about $900 for the entire month of the

Airbnb. So in total, it cost me about

$2,500 to get the Love Doll and the

Airbnb. And to be able to make $2,500 on

YouTube, I would probably need about a

million views, at least a million views,

to be able to break even. And it was such

a pain getting the Love Doll to the

Airbnb. I had to wake up very early in the

morning to go over to the Airbnb and then

accept the delivery, and I actually missed

the first delivery attempt and I had to

get it rescheduled. It was really

difficult because I had to wait until my

wife left the apartment to go to work,

and then as soon as she left, I quickly

got ready, got dressed, and I got onto the

train as quickly as I could, making sure

not to get onto the same train that she

was on to go into work. I'd try and get

the next train that was 10 minutes later,

and then I quickly rushed over to the

Airbnb, and luckily I managed to get there

before the delivery guy got there, and I

had to wait about an hour until he

arrived. And then the Love Doll arrived in

this, in this really big box And it was

really heavy. I could barely lift it.

Actually, I don't think I could even lift

it. Anyway, I was really excited to

finally get it because I was actually

really looking forward to finally having

one. I was quite interested in the idea of

trying out one of these love dolls to see

how realistic they are. And I unboxed it,

I set up my tripod, and I filmed a video

of me unboxing it and taking it out. And I

was very careful because I knew YouTube

probably won't like this, and I was very

careful with not showing the actual thing

because it was quite explicit in nature.

And I made sure to put pixelation over it

in case I did show parts of it. And I

pixelated it all. I was very careful to

make sure it would actually get approved

for monetization. And guess what happens?

I upload the video and then after about 30

minutes, the entire video gets

demonetized. I get that yellow dollar

sign, which means you're not going to make

any money from this video. And in total,

the video got about 20K views, I think,

after about a day, which is not very good.

So in total, I think I made a couple

hundred dollars from the previous videos

of me pretending to get kicked out by my

wife and then moving to the Airbnb. And I

probably made like $10 off of the unboxing

of the Love Doll before it got

demonetized. So it cost me about $2,500 in

total to make all this happen, and I only

made a couple hundred dollars from the

whole thing. And then I made a couple

extra hundred dollars because I filmed a

video of me doing it with it, and I put it

onto my OnlyFans, which made a couple

hundred dollars because people paid money

to buy the video, which was nice. So I

guess I would make about— I think I made

about $500 in total from the whole thing,

which means I lost $2,000 from the whole

gamble. It was just basically a big gamble

by spending all this money hoping to get a

viral hit and hoping that I would get paid

back from the views of the video and it

would make money and make my channel more

interesting and drive more people to the

channel. Instead, it completely Failed.

The video got demonetized, which means

it's never going to go viral. And then the

manager of the Airbnb found out that I had

the love doll. I'm guessing some trolls

found out which Airbnb I was staying out

at and then contacted the manager.

Because one day I walked to the Airbnb and

I was walking inside of the building and I

walked past the manager just by

coincidence. He saw me. He was like, "Hey

Daniel, I saw this video about your love

doll. It's fine. Everyone has their own

preferences." He kept using the word

preference as if I preferred. The love

doll over real women, but he was

completely okay with it. And I was a bit

worried because I think I joked about just

leaving the love doll under the bed

because it was such a hassle to get rid

of, but he didn't say anything about that.

And getting rid of the love doll was such

a pain in the backside. I had to get the

Hong Kong guy to come and help me because

I couldn't lift the damn thing by myself.

I bought this little trolley thing to lift

it onto, but I couldn't even lift it onto

the trolley. So I had to get the Hong Kong

guy to bring his muscles, and then we

boxed it all up, taped it all up, and we

took it onto the trolley and we wheeled it

out towards the rubbish disposal area and

we filmed ourselves taking it there,

which was kind of dumb because you're not

actually allowed to just dump really large

items into other people's rubbish disposal

areas. So me and the Hong Kong guy just

dumped it there and then we went for

dinner and we said goodbye. And it wasn't

until the next day, until after I told my

wife about it, she said to me, you, you

could actually get fined if the police

find out that you dumped it there. And we

just filmed ourselves dumping it there

right in front of this CCTV camera So I

panicked and I contacted the Hong Kong guy

again, but he was busy that day. So me and

my wife had to go back to where we dumped

it. When we got back to the rubbish

disposal area, the love doll was still

there in its box, but someone opened it

and someone stole the trolley thing

because we left that there as well. So me

and Chihiro had to carry this massive

heavy box with a love doll in it all the

way back to the Airbnb, which took about

15 minutes to walk there, but we had to

carry this massive heavy thing and the

Hong Kong guy wasn't there to help. So We

had to take a few breaks along the way

because my fingers felt like they were

gonna snap off. We finally got it back to

the Airbnb, and then we had to spend the

next 2 or 3 hours chopping it into tiny

pieces using a kitchen knife and a pair of

scissors. And we chopped it all up into

tiny bits and put it into different

plastic bags, into bin bags. And it took

about 7 or 8 bin bags to cut all of this

doll up into little pieces and get it all

into bin bags. And we had to like fold up

the metal skeleton frame that was inside

of it. We had to carry out all these bin

bags full of heavy rubber one by one out

into the garbage bit. And it was such a

lot of hard work and it was really tiring.

It definitely was not worth it. It wasn't

worth spending all that money. I wasted

$2,500 to do all that and none of the

videos went viral. I think the getting

kicked out of my wife's house and moving

into the Airbnb video got about 50K views

or 60K views, which made me a couple

hundred dollars, which was nice, but it

wasn't exactly the 500K views or media

views that I was hoping for, and the

actual video with the love doll in it got

demonetized. So I ended up deleting it and

taking it down because it just felt kind

of embarrassing going through all of that

effort and then having a video

demonetized. I just hated seeing my videos

have that yellow circle dollar around it

when I was trying so hard to, to avoid

that. Yeah, definitely one of my worst

ideas to try and make money. Moving on to

an even worse idea I had to try and make

money where I lost even more money was,

as you mostly know my experiences dabbling

in the stock market where I've now lost,

I think, about £15,000

of my own money and then about £11,000 of

profits and gains. So in total, I think I

lost over £25,000, which is like $30,000,

nearly $30,000 maybe if you include

initial investments plus the gains I had.

So I decided to get into the stock market

around 2020 October, and in the

first few months I had a lot of success

and I made loads of money. At one point,

I think I had gains of over £10,000.

So when I first started investing, I was

quite responsible and I was doing the

proper thing of diversifying and not

having too much money into just a few

stocks. And I wasn't taking on too much

risk. But then I kind of got too

overconfident after making a lot of money

in just a few months, and I got really

overconfident and I thought, why don't I

just put all of my money into just one or

two stocks that are extremely extremely

high risk, and then I'll make like

£100,000 or £200K and I'll be rich.

And in the beginning, things were going

pretty well. They were up maybe 20 or 30%,

and I was getting really excited. I was

thinking, wow, this is it. This is how I'm

going to make loads of money. I won't ever

have to worry about money again. And I

thought, well, everyone's saying that

these stocks— the 2 stocks I had were BNGO

and MVIS, Microvision. And I was following

these subreddit communities that were

really into these stocks, and they were

all saying stuff like, Yeah, BNGO is going

to be $100 by the end of the year, and I

bought it for about $12, and I put about

£12,000 into BNGO expecting it to 10x

at the end of the year. And unfortunately,

after 2020 and the beginning of 2021, the

markets didn't really do very well and

everything just started to crash. And MVIZ

and BNGO dropped for about— I think they

dropped by about 60%, which is when I

decided to sell, which was a really good

idea to sell even though I had massive

losses. If I carried on holding it, I

would have lost like 80 or 90% of what I

had inside of BNGO. So thankfully I

decided to sell when it dropped, and it

carried on dropping even more after I

sold, which was great, I guess. The

frustrating thing about it is it didn't

just drop that much all at once in just a

few days. It wasn't like I woke up the

next day and then it was down 80%. This

drop happened over the course of a few

months, I think. And every week I would

log in. Well, every day I was checking it.

Every day I would check it and it was

going down a few percentage points. But I

kept thinking, if I just keep holding,

it's eventually going to go back up

because everyone always says you never

sell, you just keep holding it. Diamond

hands and everything. That's how investing

works. You just buy more the more it goes

down. But sometimes if you've just bought

the stock at such a really high price,

there's no way it's going to get back to

that really high price after dropping so

much. It could take a decade. It could

take years, or it might not even get back

up to that point ever again. The truth is,

I got addicted to gambling when I was into

the stock market. It's just the excitement

and how great it felt to be making such

easy money so quickly, seeing your stock

just go to the moon and you're making 20%,

40%. It just felt so amazing, and I was

hooked, and I didn't want to let go of

that feeling. So even though I was taking

such massive losses, I didn't want to

accept it. And I just kept holding and

holding to the point where I ended up

losing nearly 60% on some stocks. And I

thought I was gonna make all this money so

quickly, but in the end, I instead just

lost loads of money after putting in all

this time and effort trying to learn about

the stock markets and trying to find out

how stocks work and how companies function

on the stock market. And in the end, I

just ended up losing an insane amount of

money and not really learning much from

it, not really gaining any important

skills that I could use moving forwards.

I think another huge waste of money was

when I moved to Rotterdam and I stayed in

that really expensive apartment just so I

could try and maintain my relationship

with my ex-girlfriend Mila. So I don't

really want to go through the whole story

again, but basically I wanted to live in

Rotterdam nearby to her, so I had to look

for an apartment to rent. It was too

expensive to live in a hotel or to keep

staying in Airbnbs, so my only option was

to go into this apartment rental app which

was basically for Dutch people to use,

you know, just Dutch people living in

Rotterdam or in the Netherlands where they

would just rent an apartment for like a

year. And that would have been fine and

everything if I could also rent an

apartment for a year, the prices would

have been quite reasonable. But because I

was a foreigner without any kind of visa

or any kind of long-term plans to stay in

Rotterdam or to work there, I couldn't

really get anyone to agree to renting out

their apartment to me just for a few

months at the normal rate. They charged

me this huge amount of money, which is

basically the amount of money they would

charge a foreigner who's staying there for

a short amount of time. And it was costing

me about £1,200 a month to stay in this

apartment, which is about $1,400 maybe,

I'm not sure. And they also charged me 2

months of deposit money. So in total, it

cost me about £7,000 or £8,000 to stay at

this apartment just for about 3 or 4

months. I think I stayed there. So I was

spending this huge amount of money every

month just to live in this really horrible

apartment. It was quite nice on the inside

because it was newly renovated, but living

in that apartment was probably one of the

worst experiences I've ever had. Out of

all the places I've lived in, I think that

Rotterdam apartment was just number one

the worst because of the location. It was

actually on a very busy shopping street,

like a main street, so it was very noisy,

all the traffic, and plus people walking

past the apartments was very noisy. I

could hear things very clearly because it

wasn't actually a proper home. It was more

like some kind— it used to be some kind of

shop with a big shop window, and there

were 2 rooms, and the 2 rooms weren't

separated. There was no door, so it was

just like one really big long room. And I

tried to sit as far away from the road

part as I could, but I could still hear it

very, very clearly. And the neighbors I

had were just terrible. There were these

families, very noisy families with young

kids, and I could hear the kids running up

and down up the stairs, and I could hear

them jumping up and down on the ceiling

above me. It was just so, so noisy, and I

had such a headache and such a terrible

time living there. And then things kept

going wrong. For example, when I first

moved in there, there was no hot water for

ages, and I had to get someone to come

over— well, they had to get someone to

come over to fix the boiler, but it took

quite a few days. So for a few days, I had

no hot shower. I had to go over to Mila's

grandmother's place had to stay there for

a few nights just so I could get clean and

have a shower and have hot water. But

there were some nice moments in that

place. It was nice when Mida came around,

we'd go shopping, especially when it was

around Christmas, and we'd go Christmas

shopping and buy food and get stuff to

decorate the place. It felt nice and

homely at, at times, but then for most of

the time I just felt kind of miserable

living there. And it was so expensive and

it didn't really feel like it was worth

the money. But in hindsight, I don't

really see what I could have done

differently because it was the cheapest

apartment that I could find in that area.

People were saying, why don't you move to

a different area where it's cheaper? But I

couldn't because I needed to be near to

Mira so we could see each other regularly

and easily. If I lived somewhere else,

she would have to get the train to come

and see me, or I'd have to go and get the

train to go and see her. So it was a

really difficult situation, and I didn't

really see any other way to be able to get

cheap accommodation as someone who didn't

really have any kind of long-term visa to

stay in the Netherlands. And then Brexit

was happening, so after Brexit I wouldn't

have been able to stay in the Netherlands

long-term without a visa. And when I moved

out, they didn't even give me back my

deposit money, which was about £3,600, 2

months of rent. Because after Mila dumped

me and I went back to the apartment, that

evening there was a bit of a very scary

police raid on my neighbor's house, and

they were knocking the door down and

banging on my door, and it was Bit bit

scary, and I didn't really want to stay

there any longer than I had to. And I just

ended up leaving the next day, which

you're not really supposed to do. You're

supposed to inform your landlord that

you're moving out, and then they do an

inspection together with you to make sure

everything's fine. But I just left the

very next day, and then I messaged them

when I got back to England, and they

weren't very happy with it. And they said

that I damaged the sofa, and I left

burnt things stuck inside of the oven,

and I broke some kind of drawer, which I

think was all a load of rubbish. I didn't

break anything. And I said to them I would

have been happy to pay for any repairs if

I did indeed break anything, which should

have only cost about a couple hundred

pounds, and they should have given me the

rest of the money back. But they just

pocketed the entire £3,600 and then

ghosted me and stopped replying to me

because they knew they could get away with

it, and there's nothing I could have done.

I'm not going to take them to court when I

live in England. I'm not going to go all

the way back to Rotterdam just to try and

get my money back. And in general, the

whole Rotterdam trip was so expensive

because before moving into that apartment,

I was living in Rotterdam for for about 2

months, mostly in hotels and Airbnbs, and

then partly also at her grandmother's

place, then back into a hotel, and then

back into another kind of serviced

apartment hotel. And I probably spent

nearly £20,000 in total for the entire

Germany trip plus Rotterdam trip, which

was all just so I could be with Mila,

which in the end didn't work out and she

dumped me. And I've got nothing to show

for it apart from just losing loads of

money. I guess I have some nice happy

memories from the whole experience, but

apart from that, I've got nothing to show

for it. So those are probably my top 3

biggest, dumbest ways that I've wasted

money. If I could go back in time and not

make those mistakes, I can't imagine how

much money I would have right now. I'd

probably have like £60,000 right now. I

could easily buy a Tesla, Tesla Model X

even. So yeah, pretty annoying. And I

guess this kind of illustrates why people

shouldn't really have large amounts of

money if they don't know what they're

doing with it, because they're just going

to end up losing it no matter what they

do. They could try starting their own

business or putting it into the stock

market or trying to buy things or spend it

to make video content for their YouTube

channel, and it all just fails and flops

because at the end of the day, they're

kind of dumb. They don't know what they're

doing. They've got no knowledge, and they

just end up losing it eventually.