I have to say that I felt some FOMO. I started looking at vacation homes. Prices were right but I wasn’t seeing the right one for me. Then prices started taking off and choices got fewer. I started to lower my requirements and raised my price limits. Still houses were moving faster than I could react. I almost pulled the trigger due to FOMO but at the last moment l pulled out of the market completely. Not a month after I gave up stocks dropped and now interest rates are increasing. I am not claiming genius on the timing, I am claiming luck that things spun out of control before FOMO got me.
You and me both.
It's a slippery slope sliding down the seductive path of FOMO. It's a slowly progressive disease. It comes on gradually, builds over time, and before you know it, you've got full-blown FOMO. It's just human nature.
I came perilously close to royally FOMO-ing myself, and had a serious case of it. It's hard not to when you love boats and want one. For the past 2 1/2 years every day I'd watch boats plying the waters of Narragansett Bay out our windows, and I wanted to be out there myself. Every day the want got a little bit stronger. Combined with a market that every day got a little crazier and progressively more of a seller's market, is a deadly combination (at least dangerous to one's wallet).
FOMO starts slowly, with little things. Cutting a corner or two, making compromises and doing things just a little bit differently than you did before. Taking a a little more risk. Telling yourself you have to 'move faster', 'make a few little compromises', 'accept the realities of the market.' Which incrementally builds and becomes taking bigger and bigger risks. It starts a chain of bad decisions, and eventually crosses over from risk taking to simple financial stupidity.
It came to a fever pitch for me a few months ago, in the peak of my own FOMO frenzy, doing blatantly dumb and likely self-destructive (at least to my bank account) things to try and get a boat. The last experience was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and finally threw a bucket of ice-cold water in my face (my wife helped with that).
I realized that to buy a used boat in the absolutely b@tsh!t-crazy seller's market (up until recently) was going to take a willingness to 1) buy sight unseen, 2) be the highest bidder in an auction situation, 3) be willing to increase my bid with no upper limit if higher offers came in, 4) pay cash, 5) pay much more than a boat would have sold for a year or two ago, 6) with no contingencies, 7) close within two weeks, and, for me the worst of all and what finally broke my delirium, was
8) realizing I had to be subservient and submissive in the face of rude, arrogant, and disdainful treatment. Basically, bend over, grab my ankles, and say, 'thank you sir may I have another? and also take out my wallet and say 'help yourself.'
It finally hit me how absolutely insane that all was (at least for me). Others have opined that this is what it took to buy a boat in this market. But I realized I had gone too far down the dark, ensnaring path of FOMO. I got out before doing something painful to our bank account, and ordered a new build instead (which has been a complete pleasure and delight).
To each their own. Some are willing to pay the prices and are happy with the outcome. There's no absolute 'right' or 'wrong' in the process, only what's right or wrong for each person (it also depends heavily on the size of one's bank account; if there was another zero on the end of ours, I probably wouldn't have cared as much)(though #8 above was still too much to swallow).
It also helped to have a spouse willing to throw cold water in my face and say, 'what the he!! are you doing and why are you doing it?!'
