Speaking of sorting your true supporters in life, I was just reading the front page of the Vancouver Sun newspaper today and there was this story about a court case involving a lottery winner and how he was defrauded out of millions of dollars from a couple that became very close friends with him after he won the jackpot.

In a nutshell, from what I read the person was a carpet cleaner who occasionally preformed services on the couple’s house. The carpet cleaner bumped into the husband one day and since the carpet cleaner looked up to the couple in some ways they began chatting with each other more frequently. As evident, he then won about $24,000,000 in a lottery and as a result he was congratulated by them and they became very close friends afterwards.

I guess we all know what happens next when people suddenly become like your best friend once they know you have money huh? I thought this incident was so conniving from a business and personal stance. The carpet cleaner was defrauded by the husband into investing millions of dollars into a company with a promise of some sort that he could sell it for like $20,000,000 afterwards and would give him a fifty percent share in it.

Not only was the value of the company well below what was claimed, but he did not share financial records of the company that was being purchased despite requests. Even though the lottery winner was weary over this, the person convinced him to trust him based on their apparent very close friendship and as a result millions of dollars were transferred over to him.

Shortly after, it was discovered that the money was mostly used for things such as paying off a mortgage for a house as well as buying a new car. To add to the sophistication about $100,000 was spent on lawyers to try and “cover up” the situation I guess you can say. Although, the person did learn the truth afterwards and took the couple to court. It was also mentioned that they would get jail time as well as a result of some of their conduct to continually mislead about the situation in various ways.

While I guess for one thing there is a business lesson in this on how you should rightfully be weary if someone uses friendship as a reason to simply trust their word for a business transaction, I was just thinking how it is so crazy on the lengths that some people will go to in an effort to try and defraud people that they have some kind of close relationship with for some kind of financial gain.

It’s stories like these that make certain precautions that people take, such as in my previous post, sound like the sensible thing to do. Even as a kid I’ve always heard the examples on how you should sit down and think where if you took away all of your items or belongings that make you popular how many “friends” would you truly have afterwards still?

As we get older we expect people to naturally value other people better as oppose to being like a child that always just wants more things without thinking about the welfare of others. Make no mistake about it, a lot of people are simply just out there to leach from you until there is nothing left to take and are willing to put on any type of mask to do so. To them, they haven’t realized yet that money isn’t everything in life.

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I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently on how the price of gold has reached to about $1,000 an ounce which is a new record. The funny thing about this is that I often hear people suggest that investing in gold is a good idea yet people like myself don’t really put much thought into it for some reason.

I know as I grew older it seemed like whenever someone mentioned the word “investing” it would always revolve around stocks or real estate. When it comes to gold, the only time where I really identified it as a good way to maintain a sort of wealth portfolio is from watching all those children cartoon shows as a kid. You know, like how all the characters always fight over gold or how it seems like it is the only item used to measure wealth. So, maybe that convinced me to sway away from that thought.

When you read about it in situations like this though, it sure does sound like a wise form of investment.

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I saw a clip from the Larry King show that had a panel of money gurus on it and were addressing the fears of a recession in the US. Now apparently there is some kind of plan down there to give families say an extra $600 a year that is going to take place in hopes that people will spend it to reinvigorate the economy.

For the most part, they were cynical on how it is only $600 which won’t do much and that in terms of a recession they viewed this time as a great event if you’re an investor as it should be time to buy with prices being low. They then dived into how people have to change their way of thinking when it comes to money as generally if you are stuck with that workers mentality when it comes to money then not surprisingly times like these will be bad for you.

The general message is very true I thought as it does have a lot to do about mindset when it comes to money. The only thing I was a little bit iffy about was the notion that $600 can’t do much. Maybe I am just one of those Internet age people, but you can definitely do a lot with $600 if you really want to. Heck, with the Internet there are so many things you can do even with no money to try and generate an income.

Even thinking of it from a more traditional view, I even see things such as people say holding their own simple speed dating events which costs them very little to do while being able to generate a profit fairly quickly. Good old fashion entrepreneurial spirit mixed with passion and ambition I guess you can say.

I guess like with the $600, even with that it comes down to mindset as you shouldn’t limit yourself to only one type of thing that you can do. Example, if I was only thinking more traditional investments such as stocks and real estate then of course that figure sounds like nothing. Expand your way of thinking. This might sound strange, but another example would be to take that $600 and invest it in yourself to become more knowledgeable as a person. Your newly acquired knowledge can end up generating great returns for you.

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I had an interesting conversation recently where the topic revolved around a person expressing how the age range of 20 to 30 is your time to try as many things as you can to earn an income and that by 30 you are kind of too old to not just settle down by then on one thing only.

I was having a debate with him about this as I don’t see what age had to do with it as I believe it had more to do with your circumstances and what you really want. Does anyone ever truly quit exploring ways to generate money? Even if you are doing very well you should still find ways to do more in my opinion.

The number one reason that I was told on why by 30 you should just settle down is due to marriage/family reasons as you need the financial stability to sustain one and that people’s “biological clocks” are ticking which means you shouldn’t be in that risk taking mentality anymore. I would think just by looking at all those family owned businesses would say otherwise.

If age does limit anything when it comes to financial exploration, in my opinion it’s that it restricts you in terms of the type of approaches you can use to achieve a goal. That doesn’t stop you from exploring still and being able to reach the same finish line though.

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What a gloomy view this was on the front page of the newspaper today about the crash on Monday as you can see here particularly the Lululemon stock dropping by 22.7%:

Seems like an event that would have caused a lot of people to curl up considering the billions of dollars in losses. I read that there was suppose to be some kind of new announcement of a bigger rate cut from the bank of Canada later today in response to all this.

Way to test people’s will power when it comes to investing huh?

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