My brake pads started squeaking and now my rotor is damaged

I made a classic mistake. My brakes started making that high pitched squeaking sound a few months ago, and I kept putting it off because the car was stopping fine. I figured it was just a minor annoyance. Fast forward to last week, and suddenly there was this horrible grinding noise. Took it to a shop and found out I wore the pads down to metal and absolutely destroyed the rotors. A simple pad replacement turned into a much more expensive brake job. I was reading an article about how common this is here with all the stop and go traffic. If you want to understand exactly how these costs add up, you can learn more here  about the real price of delaying small repairs. Anyone else learn this lesson the hard way?

That’s frustrating, brake squeaks are easy to ignore at first, but they’re often the first warning sign. Once the pads wear down too much, they can start grinding into the rotor, which sounds like what happened here. I’d suggest replacing both the pads and the damaged rotor together to avoid uneven wear. Better to sort it now than risk bigger (and more expensive) issues later.