The thing is that some of these things are no mistakes, but situations that were difficult for some people to control because at the start of last year 2023, they planned to have emergency funds, to invest, not to overspend, and to track expenses, but it did not work out for them because of how poor their economy is, they are not earning enough to even spare some for emergencies and also investments and then try not to overspend but due to the ever increasing price of things in the market they keep spending more than their budgets and then they have also stopped tracking their expenses because tracking their expenses makes them depressed seeing that they are spending more money than they are earning and balancing the rest up with debt. The situation of things is really very difficult for some people in some places, and due to that, this year may be a repeat of last year.
The only thing you have %100 control over is tracking expenses, poor or rich, have trouble or not, you can always track your expenses no matter what happens in your life, just start an excel, new tabs for each month, and just check what it goes to. I have done it for 2023, and unfortunately my biggest spending was medical bills, it's both terrible because it's health and family members so it's emotionally devastating, but it's also quite expensive as well :/.
In the end, I didn't end up saving anything, and have no emergency funds, I do have some investments, but not monthly investments, just whenever I happened to have some money. What could I have done?
I mean not like you can just say "let's not get sick", so it was an unfortunate year for me, I hope this year becomes better but I am currently sick with flu, there is a big viral going around in my nation and hospitals are flooded with people who have flu, I am doing better than most thankfully, most people say that they are feeling worse than even covid, they barely get out of bed, I am doing a bit better than them, just a fever and feeling super tired, which I can handle, so 2024 didn't start that great neither unfortunately.