Wasting money on a taxi

Last week, on fireworks night, we arranged to go to the fireworks display in our village with my sister and brother-in-law. As I was due to be in London that day, and had a fairly late meeting, we arranged that I would catch up with the others later, if I missed the train home which would get me back in time to see the fireworks. My meeting did, as expected, end late, but instead of accepting this, and settling for catching a later train, I asked a taxi driver how long it would take him, and how much it would cost, to get me to the station from which my train left. (I usually take the tube.) His answer suggested that we could make it, so I decided to make the attempt. In fact, the traffic was so bad that I ended up missing the train I was aiming for, and catching exactly the same train I would have caught if I had taken the tube as usual. And the cost was several pounds more than the driver's estimate.

I thought later about what I could learn from this, and decided that my mistake had been my unrealistic expectations of the time and cost involved in getting to where I needed to be. I should, had I been sensible, have accepted that I could not make it home in time, and carried on on that basis, but I had attempted to solve my problem with money, and had ended up just wasting it.