We all make terrible financial decisions at least once in our lives. For some, that means buying a new watch just to lose it a week later, or buying a used car that was in absolutely terrible condition. Either way, people can recover from these bad choices. But there is a limit to how bad you can be with money and no one notices. Once it gets up to the million and billion mark, you better hope that investment pays out, especially if the people’s tax dollars were what made it all possible. We hope you find these financial decisions as atrocious as we do, here are 20 terrible financial decisions made in history.
1. The Swedish Vasa ship.
The Vasa was made in the 1620s to showcase the latest advancements in warship technology, featuring a second row of guns. It was meant to symbolize Sweden’s power and was covered with intricate statues and wood carvings. The ship took three years to build and cost about 5% of Sweden’s GDP. On its first trip to sea, the ship set sail, encountered its first breeze, and still within sight of Stockholm, capsized and sank. Now that’s just one of those painful financial decisions.
2. $3 million for the first tweet as an NFT.
Sina Estavi was a crypto entrepreneur. He purchased Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet as an NFT for 2.9 million dollars. The sad part is, with the fall of value in the NFT market, the NFT is now worth basically nothing.
3.The Darien scheme.
The Darien Scheme was a failed attempt by Scotland to create a colony in Panama in the late 17th century. About 20% of Scotland’s wealth was thrown at it, and it failed in just 2 years.
4. The CIA’s 15 million dollar spy cat.
In the 1960s, the CIA had a problem. They needed a way to block out background noise when someone was wearing a wire. The easiest way to do this was to place the bug in an animal’s cochlea, so they bugged a spy-cat. Sadly, on the cat’s first recon mission, the agents carefully placed him in a city, and a taxi hit him not 2 minutes later.
5. $36 Billion for the metaverse.
The metaverse is a cool concept and honestly it’s pretty amazing. But judging by the fact that it cost $36 billion to create makes it seem insane. How long do you think it will take before that is a profitable investment?
6. The Mars climate orbiter.
The Mars Climate orbiter was a probe created by NASA to study Mars’ climate and surface. This job ended in disaster when, due to miscalculations, the probe burned up in the Martian atmosphere. The job cost about a billion dollars in 1999, which is a big loss considering the probe didn’t even make it to Mars. By the way the miscalculations occurred because the crew failed to convert English units to metric.
7. The British millennium dome.
This dome in London was built as a part of the UK’s millennium celebration. It cost about 1 billion euros, but the exhibit failed to attract any visitors. This massive flop caused London to repurpose the dome into a venue, but the original project remains a symbol of waste.
8. The $3.7 billion hovercraft fleet.
In the 1980s, the government of the UK invested in a fleet of hovercraft to replace ferries for transport. Although this investment looked good on paper, the hovercrafts ended up being impractical, and failed to compete with traditional ferries. This program cost the British government 1.3 billion, and the hovercrafts were eventually scrapped all together.
9. The Denver international airport.
This airport had massive cost overruns. It was initially projected to cost roughly $1.7 billion for the entire airport. But due to construction delays and mismanagement, the project total came out to around $6 billion.
10. The Concorde supersonic jet.
The Concorde was a project that aimed to revolutionize air travel with supersonic speeds. However, this goal turned into a major financial failure for both the UK, and France. Each country spent billions to create this jet, and it ended up having loads of problems such as having limited market appeal, and consuming insane amounts of fuel. This project was retired in 2003, having never turned a profit.
11. The big dig in Boston.
The big dig was one of the most expensive urban infrastructure projects in our history. The project was initially projected to cost around $2.8 billion, but due to mismanagement and engineering flaws, the price skyrocketed to $14.6 billion. The worst part is, the project has experienced delays, a series of accidents, and a fatal funnel collapse.
12. The $24 billion kingdom tower, Saudi Arabia.
This project in Saudi Arabia is planned to be the tallest building in the world. The original budget was $1.2 billion, but the construction of the building has faced extreme technical issues, raising the price to over $24 billion. People are now arguing that the project may never offer a sufficient return.
