15 Most Expensive Mistakes You Can Make in Life

Not all mistakes are created equal, and you've got a couple ahead of you that could make or break your future. By the end of this video, you'll have a clear understanding of what you should pay attention to. Here are 15 expensive mistakes that you can make in life. Welcome to Alux.

Number one: Thinking life is predefined or destined. The moment you think your life is already being pre-written, you lose the drive to alter it. What happens then is you default to whatever the world randomly puts in front of you. The biggest difference between the self-made rich and poor people is the confidence that the acquisition of wealth is not only fully under your control but also a moral responsibility toward your family. Never assume that life will turn out one way or the other; bend it to your will instead. Statistically, optimists outperform pessimists in life. While an optimist goes for it, the pessimist assumes the answer will inevitably be no, so there's no point in trying. But once you do try, sure you'll get a lot of no's, but every once in a while, you'll get a yes when you weren't expecting it. You only need one or two yeses for your life to change. If we told you that you were 20 no's away from changing your life, how fast would you go through those first 20? This applies in business, love, and life. Not asking becomes incredibly expensive in the long run.

Number two: Divorce or marrying the wrong person. Very few financial events can wipe out over half of your net worth, and even fewer can wipe out the happiness of being alive. Who you marry is the second most important decision you will make in your life. The most painful prison is a home without love. Why? Because the alternative is having someone who's there for you in the darkest moments and in the toughest times. Your success, your happiness grows exponentially in value when you share it with people you love and who love you back. Divorce breaks all of that. The only people better off after a divorce are the person who walked away and the lawyers who, by the way, end up charging you between 15% to 30%. But more on that in a moment. Marrying the wrong person is like having two of the wheels on a car missing. Sure, you could still push the car forward, but progress isn't supposed to require that much effort. A real partner is an asset, not a liability; someone that contributes actively to the well-being of the family. Marrying the wrong person will not only not give you that but will end up working against it. So pick carefully and pick for the long run.

Number three: Having children too early or out of wedlock. Most people have no idea how expensive kids really are. They see the lower-income folks doing it and assume that since they're doing better than these people, then they should be fine. As of 2022, the average cost of raising a child in the U.S. to 18 years old is around $288,094 total or $16,500 per year. Other sources estimate that number to be even higher. In Western Europe, the cost is pretty similar to the U.S. In Italy, for example, the average spend of raising a child from 0 to 18 is about €175,642. Even in countries like the Philippines, you can expect to pay around $3,000 a year, totaling to $50,000 to get a child to the age of 18. The truth is, it's going to be a financial constraint, even if you're decently positioned in life. Most people don't realize that having children young, when you have yet to mature yourself as an individual, is a massive disadvantage in life, especially since we all want to give our kids a proper shot at life. By having children too early or out of wedlock, you're not just sabotaging yourself, but in a way, you're sabotaging the child too, since they'll grow up without the proper guidance and tools needed to develop into fully functioning adults. They may have different struggles as they grow up.

Number four: Student debt for a useless degree. The real economic value of a degree holder is going down year by year while the prices for obtaining said degree keep going up. This inverse correlation has gotten to a point where a bachelor's degree in advertising, for example, will cost you roughly $100,000. The catch is high-level work in advertising does not require a degree. The only way for you to economically put that degree to work is if you keep going through the pyramid scheme that is modern-day education and get a master's rather than a PhD and eventually start to teach. Do you realize the mental impact of being 25 years old with $200,000 worth of student debt starting out in life? Debt is like modern-day slavery; someone else will reap the financial benefits of your economic efforts until you buy your freedom back. Mix that with how fast technology is changing, how economically unstable the entire system is, constant pressure, stress, hustle culture mixed in with wokeness, and the need to be a multi-hyphenated individual, and you end up with a recipe for disaster. Our bet is that apprenticeships and trade schools are going to become the go-to option for real-life skills. As for traditional education, it'll completely open up and become web-based. As long as you pass your exams, you should be able to study and graduate from any university anywhere in the world. Degrees will be democratized and internationally accepted.

Number five: Not buying the book, the course, or the app. The irony is incredible how people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a college degree but will not buy a course or even a self-development book on the grounds that it's too expensive. Modern society has evolved to a point where for things to be seen as valuable, they either have to be free (see podcasts and our YouTube channel where you're getting real insights without paying anything) or really, really expensive (see MBAs and high-level education). Everything in between has been cast aside as not worth the trouble, and we believe that's exactly where the highest-value arbitrage is today. You can take a class on how to refurbish old furniture for a couple of hundred bucks in person or tens of dollars online. Someone will literally show you what tools you need, how to use them, and how to create value for someone else in just a couple of months. So you can get really, really good at this. Now you've got real-life skills that are valuable—refurbishing furniture, lawn work, interior design and implementation—all of these can pay more on a yearly basis than you would get as a salary working for a bank. These are all $100,000 per year opportunities that don't require massive investments to start; they just require you to work. The problem with society is they think that once you've earned the degree, you're entitled to a certain pay without having to create the economic equivalent in value. They see the high salaries as a reward for their ability to get that degree, which is no longer true. Your ability to generate income is directly correlated to one, your ability to execute skill level; two, the need for your skills (demand); and three, the number of people you are competing with for the job opportunity. This right here is your MBA, and it didn't cost you $100,000. You'll find more real value in five $20 books than you'll find in your degree. Education, as we know it, is no longer delivering on its promise, and we at Alux are on a mission to change the way people grow and evolve no matter where they are in the world. We created a three-tier content system that is unique: free high-value content available right here on YouTube and through our podcasts and articles—absolutely no barrier to access it, and it's incredibly valuable, which is why 4.3 million people subscribe to our channel. The Alux app: we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to industry experts, teachers, mentors to share the same knowledge and practical advice that they would share in their own private practice with the people in our community. You can get access to everything these people have learned in their entire professional lives for one year for only $99. Honestly, go to alux.com/app right now, and you'll see that you're getting a 1,000X return on every dollar you spend. And lastly, alux.org: it's our courses platform where for $249, you can acquire a real skill that will stick with you for the rest of your life. The cost of education will keep going down, but it will always be worth paying for things of value.

Number six: Going for the cheapest option. Almost always in life, going for the second cheapest option is a better financial move than going for the cheapest. Think of tattoo artists, plastic surgeons, even lawyers and accountants. Definitely going with the cheapest one will cost you way more in the long run than you're saving. There's an old saying, and it's very true: if you buy cheap, you buy twice. And that's because cheap products break more easily. But the more accurate position would be: if you buy cheap, you'll pay 10X the amount to fix it. The distinction to be made here is it boils down to economic value. Wouldn't you pay $1,000 more for a good accountant that could save you an additional $10,000 every year? These kinds of deals are always available in the market. Going for the cheaper option is usually a lot more expensive in the long run. And since we mentioned lawyers...

Number seven: Hiring a lawyer instead of mediation. Settling outside of court is always the more economic situation. Talk to people, apologize if you must. It's in your best interest to figure it out and move on. There's no reason to sue your neighbor or family members over petty stupid stuff. The only person winning in these situations are the lawyers. Okay, just so you know, divorce lawyers charge $3,000 to $5,000 just to get started on your case, and an additional $300 to $500 per hour on top of that—not including court fees and other costs associated with divorce. Since you were unable to mediate the situation, now you're going to court. These things will take years to come to a conclusion, and lawyers are economically incentivized to drag things out even longer.

Number eight: Investing into your friend's business. This is one of those situations where you'll lose either way. If you say no, well, you might lose a friend. If you say yes, and they waste the money, you generally lose the friend and the money. Also, your friends aren't as business savvy as they present themselves to be, because if they were, they wouldn't be coming to you to ask for money. These are usually the people that this week they're doing some Amazon flipping, next week they plan to grow fruit, and the next day they're launching an AI startup. You know them well; they're the perpetual entrepreneurs with no entrepreneurial reward to show. It gets even messier when it comes to helping out family. As a rule of thumb—and please remember this for the rest of your life—okay, all the money that you give to your family think of it as a donation, not as a loan. If from the start you're okay with never getting that money back and position it like that to them, the relationship might survive. The best of family members will go above and beyond to repay you, even if the expectation of payback isn't there.

Number nine: Preventable medical expenses. Teeth are a great example of this; it's cheaper to fix a cavity than get an implant. This philosophy expands to everything in life. The more you ignore the problem, the larger that dragon gets. Not taking diabetes seriously could cost you your vision, and don't even get us started with not having health insurance in a country like the United States. You might not realize this, but most of the largest medical expenses you will encounter in your life are actually preventable through a healthier lifestyle. For example, heart disease and stroke, which have the highest death rate, are also the most expensive to treat and responsible for six of the most expensive medical procedures. On the screen, you'll see the average cost for these. Raising your fitness level just a little bit could save you a fortune in the long run and allow you to enjoy your life more.

Number ten: Not figuring out the timing. If you're looking for the one skill that has a massively disproportional outcome to effort ratio, it's timing, my friend. Understanding when it's a good time to do something and when it isn't would make all the difference needed. From confessing your love to your crush to quitting your job or making an investment, timing will alter the outcome. Think of the people who bought a brand new home in August 2007. Think of the people who bought Bitcoin at $68,000. Both of these might not have been bad investments over the next 50 years, but 12 months later, you could have bought three times the home value or three times the Bitcoin, which at the end of your investment period could result in a dramatically different outcome. If you started investing in the stock market in January 2000, it would take you 13 years to get back to zero. Think about that: 13 years of no profits caused by bad timing. On the contrary, if you were to start investing in 2009, well, in that same 13 years, you would have 5X'd your investment. And that is the power of timing. These kinds of lessons and insights are hard for the average person to comprehend because most lack the understanding of how to actually take advantage of moments in time. The timing has never been better for you to go to alux.com/app, download it, and make sure you're educated enough to understand how to maximize the potential of the recession that we find ourselves in right now. 46% of our app users have already achieved their primary goal in life, and another 45% are really, really close.

And speaking of time...

Number eleven: Not showing up on time. A lack of punctuality is one of the main curses of the modern-day generation. You don't realize just how important it is until it hits you right in the face. Be late for an audition, and the role goes to a person who wasn't. Be late to an investor meeting, and they walk away from the deal. Be late to catch the train, and you might miss sitting next to your future wife or husband. Every time you are late, you're throwing more chaos into your life. You will rush, you will forget things, you will make mistakes. Life is not like school where you can just duct tape something together the night before and still pass. An extra day of work and thought going into a project could substantially change the end product. It could be the difference between you getting a promotion and you being passed over for one. It could be the difference between signing your dream client and losing them. If you can't organize your time to physically be at the place that you and the other party mutually agreed to be, well, there's no way for you to actually build a life you're proud of because the first one is incredibly easy, and the latter is incredibly hard. Take care of the easy before you take care of the hard.

Number twelve: Not reading the contract. How many of you signed the documents straight when they put it in front of you? Reading contracts isn't something you learn to do early on because the contracts that are put in front of you early have little at stake. The moment you start progressing in life, that's when the stakes of each contract build up. Getting good at reading contracts is free. Getting a lawyer to look at them on your behalf is fairly cheap. Do not skip this step; it could mean the difference between a life fortune and just a small bonus—or even worse, years of legal battles. Just take a look at what happened to the artist formerly known as Prince.

Number thirteen: Buying a perpetual liability. Some people are in the habit of buying bottomless money pits. You keep on throwing money at it, and nothing is happening. There's another saying that you'll hear among the rich: plain and boats—the best two days are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. If you think buying a private jet or a yacht is the hard part, well, you are mistaken, my friend. Once you own that liability, the bills start coming in, and they don't stop. Hangar space is incredibly expensive, and so is docking space. As a rule of thumb, you can expect to pay around $500,000 to $1 million annually in operating costs to own a private jet. When it comes to yachts, you can expect to pay around 10% of their value in operating costs. So about $100,000 for a $1 to $1.5 million yacht, if it's one of the smaller ones. The bigger you go, the crazier the numbers get. It's the same with passion projects, like the folks who try to restore an old car and an old home and end up putting a lot more money into them both than either is worth.

Number fourteen: Jumping before you arrange a safe landing. Why would you move to another country or another city without securing a job first? Sure, it might sound like an adventure, and you think to yourself, "Hey, three months should be enough to figure it out," but what if it isn't? You're in a new place, eating, renting, commuting—all out of pocket, hoping that something will eventually show up. But the only thing up is your stress level. It's the same with people who quit their jobs on the spot. Be strategic about it, Alex, or give yourself a competitive advantage. Build a parachute before you jump. Being impulsive could cost you 6 to 12 months of hard work if you're not careful.

Number fifteen: Living someone else's version of your life. What if at the end of your life you look back at it and regret it? How terrible would that be? You had this chance, this opportunity to live life the way you wanted to, and you blew it because you lived the version your parents, your teachers, your neighbors, friends, or society said that you should. You have this great opportunity to make something extraordinary become reality. You might as well live it in such a way that you smile at the end of your journey. A life that you don't live is a life wasted, my friend. So pay attention to everything we mentioned on this list, as it'll add up to a life well lived.

We're really curious to know now: Which of these mistakes are you guilty of, and how did it impact your life? Share with the community and let us know in the comments. We always love hearing what you have to say.

As a thank you for those still watching until the very end, here's your well-deserved bonus location. If you're a true Alux, you already know that where you live is the most important decision you'll ever make in life, as it'll determine your economic prospects, who your friends are, what values you have, and who you marry. Location is a tool that you can leverage to exponentially transform your life. You might currently have the skills to build the future that you want, but your current location might prohibit it. If this was like one of those notification pop-ups, "The life of your dreams isn't available in your location."

We'll take this opportunity right now to ask yourself, if you could move to any place in the world where your progress could be accelerated, where would you move? Think about it deeply, and soon you'll realize that your happiness levels will increase as you think about what kind of life you would live if you were to move. What you're feeling is a sample of the reality change that you are capable of.

We know how many of you are interested in completely leveling up your life through reinvention, either by changing location, changing what you do professionally, or simply a new identity on how others see you. As a secret little insight, we've been working on a project behind closed doors called "Restart Mastery," which will eventually be available at alux.com/restart. We're trying to put together a unique framework where every one of you who desires it can follow a step-by-step process to reinvent yourselves closer to the life that you really want. If you go to alux.com/restart, there's a private waiting list. If you're on the list when the experience drops, we'll be sure to send you a massive discount code as a way of saying thank you for watching these Sundays until the very end. Let's make that life available to you.

Alright, if you're ready for it, write the word "available" in the comments. Let's see how many of you are ready to level up. Thanks for spending some time with us today, Alux. We're so glad you did. If you found value in today's video, please give us a like, hit that bell icon to never miss an upload, and hey, don't forget to subscribe.