You see advertisements like the one to the right all day long. They all talk about these secrets that the insiders don’t want you to know.
They talk about how they hold the key to easy money, and the only way to have the easy life is by buying their program.
The Lure
They will try to lure you in with free “no risk” trials and money back guarantees, but there is one thing that you must remember: if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
We are going to delve a little bit deeper into the claims being made by these advertisements like the $653 claim to the right and a few of the other ones.
Don’t Take The Bait
These advertisements play off of your desire to be free, and to be independent. They make you believe that you can effortlessly attain the dream life that you only see on TV. You have a computer, you have the drive, and you can do anything, so what they say must be true. Don’t take the bait!
They butter you up with compliments and confidence, then they offer you the solution that will take your skills and turn them into money. What they don’t tell you is that you’re purchasing regurgitated information freely found online, packaged into a motivational DVD that will cost you money, offer little to no extra insight, and leave you right where you started.
You Aren’t Buying Success
This is something that many people don’t realize. When you buy into these programs, you are buying nothing more than the seminar, CD, DVD, or materials. Many people think they are buying a business plan, or a proven system, but what you’re really buying is the “educational” material. You can really pinpoint this information on infomercials when people are giving their “testimonials” and it says “results not typical” at the bottom of the screen. These programs don’t guarantee success, they simply want to sell you information.
The Math Doesn’t Work
Many of these get rich quick schemes mention these extremely high incomes that seem amazing, but when you apply basic mathematics, it simply doesn’t work. People don’t give away money for nothing. The closest you can come to money for nothing is money sitting in a bank account. Let’s apply some mathematics to the above claimed amount and see how realistic this looks. How much money would we need in the bank right now to earn $653 per week?
To make the mathematics easier, we’ll figure out what we need in the bank to earn $33,956 per year ($653 * 52 weeks in a year). We will even be generous and over-estimate the interest that you can get at the bank to be 3%!
Do you know who much money you would need at 3% to generate that kind of revenue?
Answer: $1,116,388.01
That’s right, you would need over $1 million dollars at 3% to generate the claimed amount of money in the above advertisement. Now, does it seem to good to be true? Another thing you could ask yourself: why would these guys be giving out this amazingly valuable information if they didn’t intend on making more than the claimed amount of money? If you take the bait, then you’re going to be suckered.
Money Isn’t Easy
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With the above example, can you guess how much money you’d earn in just 6 short years?
Yes, in just 6 years, you’re guaranteed to earn: $1,180,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.00, which means you would be overlord of the Earth because you’ve successfully acquired all of the money floating around on the planet, and indebted every many, woman, child and all future generations until the end of time.
This is more of a common sense section, but money isn’t easy. Money can only be earned two ways: with hard work, or with intelligence. Buying into these get rich quick schemes is the equivalent of trying to purchase a money tree. If they tell you that it’s easy, guaranteed, or a secret, then it’s probably a lie.
Some get rich quick schemes know that people know this so throughout their presentation they sprinkle statements like “with a little hard work” to help legitimize it. But they always toss glowing people on the TV giving testimonies about how this proven plan changed their lives.
Secrets Are Dead
We live in a day and age where even the US Government is having trouble keeping their secrets because of websites like Wikileaks. The day and age of get rich secrets is over. There were secrets to making real money in the stock market, and they were secrets you could only learn by getting a formal education about the stock market.
They were these mysterious things called short sales, options, calls, puts and so forth. It was this whole underground lingo and if you didn’t have the education in it, you were out of the loop. The Internet has officially snuffed that problem out. Look at websites like Investopedia. Short selling, calls, and puts; they have all of that information there. Secrecy is so rare nowadays that the Google CEO thinks that teens in the future will be required to change their names once they come of age just to shed their past. Secrets are dead, especially money-making secrets, because people have a financial incentive to divulge those secrets online in exchange for advertising revenue.
The Real Truth About Wealth
Do you want to really get wealthy? Be intelligent, save your money, avoid scams, track & cut costs, invest wisely, and never look back. Stop trying to impress your neighbors, don’t watch late night infomercials, and keep working hard.