My worst financial decision was to choose to be an academic as my “first” career. The pay wasn’t terrible in my case, but it wasn’t anywhere near my potential.

My worst financial decision was to choose to be an academic as my “first” career. The pay wasn’t terrible in my case, but it wasn’t anywhere near my potential. The other side of that coin, however, is that it was probably one of my best life decisions — I am a much better and happier person because of it. Answering a slightly different question: I can definitely say that I know several people for whom getting married and later divorced was extremely expensive for them on many levels. I imagine that some folks will be reluctant to state that for themselves in a public forum, but it definitely happens. It can be a very tricky topic in terms of what constitutes a reasonable division of assets.