I am looking for an idiomatic expression that expresses the idea of the negative consequences for having wasted your time or your money for instance, and now that you really need them you don't have enough.
An example may be a student who has wasted time and now they don't have enough to study for their examinations.
Consider the colloquial idiom fritter away.
Thus spake dictionary.com:
verb (used with object) 1. to squander or disperse piecemeal; waste little by little (usually followed by away): to fritter away one's money; to fritter away an afternoon. 2. to break or tear into small pieces or shreds. verb (used without object) 3. to dwindle, shrink, degenerate, etc. (often followed by away): to watch one's fortune fritter away.
The lazy student frittered away his time, his parents' money, and his prospects for a prosperous future.
A person who makes bad decisions now and will have to pay for them later can be said to have mortgaged their future. A single word for this would be to squander time or money.
Maybe a little more vulgar than you're looking for, but a common British idiom for this is 'pissed away'.
"I pissed away four years of my life in university and didn't graduate." "The old mayor pissed millions of dollars away on stuff nobody wanted."
The fable The Ant and the Grasshopper comes to mind.
One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.
"What!" cried the Ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?"
"I didn't have time to store up any food," whined the Grasshopper; "I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone."
The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust.
"Making music, were you?" they cried. "Very well; now dance!" And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.
From here.
You could borrow from this parable to say something like
His behaviour has been more grasshopper than ant.
and people who are familiar with the fable (it's a common fable) will know what you mean.
Lost time is never found again
From the Bible:
Sluggards do not plow in season; so at harvest time they look but find nothing. - Proverbs 20:4, NIV
You could consider using time and tide wait for no man which is
said to emphasize that people cannot stop the passing of time, and therefore should not delay doing things.
[Cambridge Dictionaries Online]
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today comes to mind:
- said to emphasize that you should not delay doing something if you can do it immediately.
(Dictionary.com)
My old English teacher used to say "Time is money, and we are poor!"
The well's run dry.
Perhaps you could say : The student thought her money would never run out and bought expensive clothes but the well has run dry.
Quoting http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/well-s-run-dry--the :
A supply or resource has been exhausted, as in There's no more principal left; the well's run dry, or There's not another novel in her; the well's run dry.
I would describe it as having frittered your away your time. Facebook, twitter, etc. all result in frittering away your valuable time.
A possible answer, which hasn't been given yet, is the verb dilapidate.
Online Etymology: 'dilapidate'
1560s, "to bring a building to ruin," from Latin dilapidatus, past participle of dilapidare "to squander, waste," originally "to throw stones, scatter like stones;" see dilapidation. Perhaps the English word is a back-formation from dilapidation.
definition of 'dilapidate'on Online Etymology
Online Etymology: 'dilapidation'
early 15c., from Late Latin dilapidationem (nominative dilapidatio) "a squandering," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin dilapidare "throw away, squander, waste," literally "pelt with stones" (thus "ruin, destroy") or else "scatter like stones," from dis- "asunder" (see dis-) + lapidare "throw stones at," from lapis (genitive lapidis) "stone." "Taken in Eng. in a more literal sense than was usual in Latin" [OED].
definition of 'dilapidation' on Online Etymology
Poring over the different answers, I am surprised not to find the fairly obvious adjective shortsighted, lacking foresight. Cambridge Dictionaries Online give the following definition of 'shortsighted':
showing a lack of thought for what might happen in the future: It’s shortsighted to spend all your money on having a good time.
definition of 'shortsighted' on Cambridge Dictionaries Online
