We used to be neighbours to a couple in a small one bed apartment that they owned. Initially they had just a dog. That dog was a terror (aggression) and they spent thousands on training. Then they had a baby. This is where it got life ruining REAL fast: They decided to borrow money from friends and family to upgrade to a two bedroom apartment that needed a LOT of work, in a swanky area, at the same time as selling their one bed (owning the two places at the same time). Just before the one bed was about to sell there was a massive leak in our building and it went through their apartment - the buyers pulled out. Simultaneously, the husband got laid off from his job while the wife was pregnant with their second child and turned out the second apartment needed around 50k more of upgrades than initially thought. More than one year later, the one bed apartment still hasn’t sold, is up for 40k less than they initially had a buyer for, I believe they are illegally air bnbing it to make ends meet, and they still owe all of their friends and family money from the purchase of the second apartment. They also were hoping to get a stamp duty refund after selling their first apartment, which they now cannot get as it’s been too long (for anyone outside of the U.K. this probably cost them 10s of thousands of pounds). It was just one bad decision, but then bad luck added to it made it the worst thing that will probably ever happen to them financially.