Money & Wealth Replay: Identifying Scams

you can't is a big words. Right, My middle name is Hope. I'm not saying you can't. The likelihood of you being able to do this legally to make ten thousand dollars in two weeks, and I assume and this question you're working class, middle class or you're not. I mean, I can make ten thousan dollars in two weeks, but I don't need it. If you need it, right, the very nature of you needing it is you know is

relevant to you. Then the likelihood of you being able to legitimately honestly make ten thousands in two weeks is very low, which means you're gonna have to do something sketchy in which means you're gonna put your life at risk. Yer Chris Rock said, dude's next door neighbor robbed him and he knew he robbed him. He's like, hey, man, what's going on. I heard you got robbed. He said, you didn't hear stuff because you were doing stuff. You robbed me. So yeah, don't don't rob anybody. It's uh.

And don't do anything illegal. And you know, karma is real and whatever goes around comes around, and it looks too good to be true, it normally is. So yeah, that's the short answer to the question is you really can't legitimately make ten thousands in two weeks. Now, that's the bad news. Everything else I would tell you is the good news. By the way, love is work, Love is laziness, anti love is evil. Evil exists, but it's very,

very rare. Most people are just lazy, intellectually lazy, financially lazy, physically lazy, spiritually lazy. They don't want to do the work. They want somebody else to do it for them. Only in the dictionary does the word success come before the word work, because it's alphabetical. Right. So here's the good news. You know, you got to do the work. Everybody has to do the work. And now you know if you do the work from the neck up, from the shoulders down,

you work smart and not hard. You can get to a point I e. My story, my story where you can make ten thousan dollars in two weeks. But at that point you're compounding mostly like in other words, uh, you make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. So I will get a check for something and I'm like, what's this for? That's what you want to get, but it took it's taken me twenty thirty years to get there. What's this for? Means? It's interest

on you know, a dividend. It's dividend, a dividend payment, you know, or interest on stocks and bonds, or interest on some real estate investment or rent or something like that. It's some payment all of an asset and assets not on your ass right. This is a real asset, right, and you're benefiting from it. By the way, it's an old saying, but it's true. And this is that further up the ladder you get sort of story. It's harder to make a thousand on ten thousand than it is

to make ten thousand on one hundred thousand. But it's harder to make ten thousand one hundred thousand than it is to make one hundred thousand on ten million. If you have ten million, it's actually pretty easy to make one hundred thousand dollars a year. It's actually if you have excuse me, four million, three million dollars a year, sorry, an assets, you can make six figures without lifting a finger.

It just passive income. You never touched the principle. If you just make sound conservative investments in the stock market, or there's a range of other things you can do. It stands the reason. If you have a billion dollars of assets, then it's actually easier. You know, well, there's a line of sight to you know, one hundred million

dollars a year. If you have a billion dollars in assets, that's ten percent by the way of return on the billion dollars, where your principle doesn't go away, and you've made ten percent of that, which is one hundred million dollars. So compounding, the more you make, the easier it is to make more on what you made now, unless you're just hustling, unless you're just trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. You're just trying to You're always

trying to make some moodless money, some cash. You know, again, you get into that whole scamming messing around world where you know somebody's literally trying to get rich quick, so multi level marketing. You know, there's a lot of people running around. I do you know I'm gonna do a whole separate situation on scam So I'm not getting into that now. But the short answer to this question is yes,

it is possible. You know, anything's possible, right, So I don't want to diminish your I don't want to just gurage you or diminish your overall enthusiasm for whatever dream you have. Right, anybody can get lucky, but the rational reasonable you know, I'm not gonna get shot or killed or arrested. Answer to can somebody who makes fifty thousand dollars a year make ten two weeks if their life depended on it? The answer that is probably not, unless

your life does depend on it. Boy, here's a truth that is as old as Jesus and the world itself, the modern world itself. Somebody is always trying to separate you from your money, You from your wallet. John O'Brien is his money and wealth. So yeah, how to identify scams is you know, it's three triggers. Really, it's more than three triggers, but here's some easy ones. There's an emotional trigger. These are the triggers that people were trying to pull on you to get you to separate you

from your wallet. There's an emotional trigger. There's a formal trigger, in other words, trying to look like they're part of the system. Emotion was like inspiring you, convincing you, and you know, trying to make you feel like you're part of a movement or doing good or whatever. And then there's greed. Okay, and the biggest of these three, without question is greed. So let me get into this in no particular order. There's a couple lot of well, get

in no particular order. They pick on, made off, made off, made off with I think it was fifty billion dollars with a B billion and he says, you know, Bernie Madoff says, how are you to get away with this? He was, you know, embraced by the establishment. Part of the formal economy dealt with sophisticated investors. I'm gonna deal with crimes really for forking class folks, middle class folks, and poor folks here and really primarily. But he was

dealing with high net worth investors. How do he get away with it, he says himself, because people were greedy. They wanted to believe that he could give them some crazy returns on their money. So they turn their their their heads to common sense. Common sense is not so common. If you look for the truth, you'll find it, right. But to rationalize is to tell rational lies, right, and you know, you tend to believe what you want to believe.

So whether it's Bernie made Off who made off with fifty billion, or whether it's this dude who out of Malaysia the one I don't want to give this wrong because I've got a one MBB initiative and I never like confusing anybody confusing it too. One mbb and this is one bb or something like that. Anyway, it was a dude out of Malaysia who scammed the country out of billions billions, I mean just out of the Sovereign Fund of Malaysia. By the way. See, you want to

pull the guy's name. We're talking and you know, again prime minister was involved and all these people. How could you get the prime minister involved with a scam in Malaysia? Easy greed because it appears the prime minister was also in on the scam, right, And this guy went and hid in China and he's still in China. I read this book that I don't often read seven hundred page books, but this book I did read and it's it's fascinating. And I'll come back to that because I'm trying to

look up. I want to make sure that I pull up this guy's name and you can do some research on him yourself. This is like, you know, and he's a young guy. He was in his twenties. But once again and he and he did you know, he financed Hollywood movies and he you know, he had all kind of legitimate One m dB is the name of the scam, by the way, and Joe Lowe is a guy's name, right, four billion dollars stolen from that one m dB. Be fun. Joe lows this guy's name. The Department of Justice tried

to prosecute him. That a prosecutum abstinsia because he's on the run. They were able to trace down one hundred million dollars. But I mean he just got scammed, just everybody. It's fascinating documentaries out on it. Check it out. The Prime Minister again, big names, Wall Street investment firms and you know got taken for a ride in this thing. A lot of people got hurt. Right then you step down a few levels and it's this a couple in Texas,

black couple. I don't want to mention the name. They're still being you know, going through through the criminal justice system, and while there has been a verdict raised, it's not over. And I want to ruin their reputation by minching the name, making a bad situation worse. But you know, you'll probably know what I'm talking about. They use spirituality in the church to try to get folks to time into there.

I'll say blessed, That's all I'm gonna say. And again, and they promised to you something that you shouldn't have believed. They were talking about doubling or tripling your money or some crazy thing. I forget the numbers, but it was like crazy, or it was even worse than that, I mean bigger than that. There's no way you can give these kinds of returns again greed, right, They use emotionalism and they use I guess the formality of the church, and they use greed. They use all the tricks of

the trade. Do I think there were bad people? Do I think they woke up in the morning and said, ooh, let me scam out my own people. No, I don't think that's the case. I don't know them, but I don't think that's the case. I just think that again, the rational lies is to tell rational lies. You convince yourself that what you're doing is the right thing when

it is the wrong thing. And as a dude, I know guy, I know uh pastor out of Houston, really nice guy, ran a mega church in Houston, Reverend Curby John Calwell. He's serving time right now. Do I think he did something malicious? No, I don't. But he convinced himself. And I wish he would have called me out and told him to stay away from it with a foot pole.

But he convinced himself that when somebody came to him with Chinese bearer bonds or some kind of crazy thing, that he convinced himself that it was legit, and he had all stack of documents against formality, a stack of documents that supposedly proved that this was legit. I would have told him it wasn't. And he, you know, used his influence or the other people used his influence as a prominent pastor to raise money from unsuspecting investors, and it all blew up and he's in jail right now.

And it's you know, I mean, this guy's counseled presidents again, A nice guy. I like him to this day. I like him, And do I again, Do I think he was malicious? No? I do not. He's even paid restitution. He actually paid back. I believe the principal sum of the money that was invested through these bonds out of his own funds. But you know, I don't know what else. I don't know the details, and whether it's other people

lost additional money. But if you just looked at this, anybody who unders stands finance and understand how the world works looked at this and said, how did this get down? Again, no disrespect to the pastor. It was a pastor of a very prominent, big church, But how did this sophisticated financial instrument with so called governments in the big finance world, get down to the local level of a pastor of a local church, and how did he end up with this in his hands to be able to take advantage

of it. It's just the world doesn't work that way, right. Greed in and of itself would have caught that opportunity way before it got to him. In other words, if people on Wall Street knew that there were a legitimate way to double your money using government bonds, that deal wouldn't have made it out of the first office it showed up to on Wall Street. You wouldn't never have got down to the big office of the local office, to the to the to the smaller office, to the

to the regional office, to the to the church in Houston. Right, So I see this stuff coming. People come in me all the time. Man. I'll had a photographer come at me adding a formal event a couple of weeks ago. Hey, man, I got these from some country and I want to talk. Nope, I'm just telling you right now, if this is the end of the story, can we please start there. I'm telling you it's no good that I'll tell you that dog don't hunt and the guy wanted to believe just

say look, just have a meeting. I don't need that. We're having a meeting right now. It always fascinates me when somebody says, Hey, John, I just want to meet with you. Well, you're talking to me right now. We're having a meeting, right. What are we gonna talk to behind closed doors? Un four walls? Right? Buying a desk and a chair that you can't tell me right now? Right? Anyway? Uh, that's just a funny aside. This stuff is just too If it looks too good to be true, it normally is.

So there's your first tell. If it looks too good to be true, it normally is. I've told you a couple about a couple scams. Let me tell you what Experience says about some of the latest scams that you should you know, they're AI artificial intelligence powered scams. You can go to the website for you know, details in

each one of these. There's loan forgiveness scams where folks are masquerading like they're the federal government like uh, you know, yeah, like they're gonna give you loan forgiveness, and what they really want is your information and they're gonna they're just trying to reel you in. They get you to pay some application fee. A lot of these folks do that. Oh, we're and give you a million dollars. Just pay this

ten thousand dollars application fee. Anybody who comes as you at that with any of any of that stuff wrong and scam. Right of application fee scam one of the easiest scams on the planet. They feed on your greed and your emotionalism and your lack of financial literacy. They offer you some big number and just tell you all it takes is for you to give us this small number in relation to the big number, and we're gonna pay you for the rest of your life. Does that

really sound like it's rational? Okay, it doesn't sound like a pipe dream. Hello, it is. And they will often say, like student loangovernment dot com? Did you see that? I'm just making this up, like student loan governmentforgiveness. I'm making this up dot com. There is no dot com this government. It's gonna dot gov, g o V or dot at or worse than me dot org. But I wouldn't even believe that. Right if somebody's masquerading as the government is going to be dot gov or have somebody to do

with the government. I can't tell you how many times I've received letters in the mail and I have to look at it five times because it really looks like it's from the government. I've had people tell me like I've in default on my property taxes and I had to like look at it five times because it looked like it was from a taxing authority when you look at it really closely. No, it's just some business, some

some something. I can't call them entrepreneur because it's not legit, some some business charlatan masquerading as if they're the government right. And phone scams, people calling you, impersonating, trying to, you know, get you all wrapped up in some story and they call you a whole bunch of times over a period of time and get you and get comfortable with you, asking about your family. They don't care about your family to care about separating even your wallet. Text scams, I've

had those people send me a text. Here's a funny one. They sent me a text as if it was me sending a text to me. They had messed up. John Brian, you know this is John Brian. I want you to wire me. You know I need I'm in I'm in I'm in it, stuck in the airport in Russia and uh, and they've taken my credit cards and you know who I am. I'm legit. Just send me, you know, real quickly, one thousand dollars or twelve hundred bucks or something. I'll

get it right back to you. Scam right. And I've had people in my company who got text messages saying they were from me. It clearly wasn't my phone number, wasn't my email addressing it with somebody they send emails to. If you just look closely, it wasn't me. It wasn't our email address, it wasn't our domain name, it wasn't my phone number, wasn't anything. But they just, oh, John O'Brien, this is texting me and he needs me to wire

ten thousand dollars. One of my former employees actually did this. It wasn't ten thousand dollars, but it was, you know, over a thousand. We reimburst her for that, and I actually tried to get her to do a video to like to share her story. She was so embarrassed she didn't want to share a story, which upset me because I'm like, well, we paid you back for a scam. We didn't have to get nothing to do with us. At least you could do it. She educate other people anyway,

she's not with us anymore. But you know, this stuff happens like all the time, zeale scams, cryptocurrency scams, romance scams, this is a big one. Online purchase scams, employment scams, check fraud scams. I got one of those. How to avoid Okay, So here's a check fraud scam, right, this is mine. So I'm in Nigeria and this is emotionalism. They got me on emotionalism. I'm in Nigeria with Ambassador Andrew Young. Twenty years ago. I remember Dick greg Ray,

the famous comedian, said I loved going to Africa. This is twenty years ago. I loved going to Africa because they're even my old cancel credit cards still work. Not the case anymore now everybody is digital and you know, connected to the internet whatever. But so I went. I was in Nigeria. We were guests of the President of the Unit of the President of Nigeria, then the President. There were then Bassaror Andrew Young and the African American Summit,

Reverend Leon Sullivan. All that was legit. We're at a African art bazaar outside the hotel again, government officials around, security around, and I'm trying. I'm all caught up in the emotion of the moment. You know, we're all African, We're all from Africa. Everybody's from Africa. I'm trying to show my support, right, my brothers and my sisters in Africa. And I'm not mad. I'm about to give you to tell you this story, but I'm not mad at this person.

They actually this was so smooth and so smart. I wanted them to have the money, right, this was my I get to tell the story with the rest of my life. So it was worth the money I lost. So I go to buy a piece of art and I wrote a check. He let me write a check, and I don't remember the exact amount, but let's just say I wrote the check for one thousand dollars, right, So I wrote him a check for one thousand dollars for the art. He allowed me. Now this is smooth.

Now he allowed me to take the art with me. So I give him a thousand dollars check. I take the art with me, I get on the plane, I go home. The art's in my office. Two weeks have passed. This is so smooth. These are Nigerians. If these scamsters not everybody in Nigeria, but Nigerian scamsters, I mean Nigerian are probably the smartest Africans on the planet. Sorry, I'm not offending anybody else, but as far as entrepreneurship in business, I'm of the smartest on the planet. They ever get legal,

they'll run the planet, they run the world. My god, this guy is so smooth. This guy was so smooth. Waited two weeks a confidence scam waited two weeks build up my confidence in him. Emailed me, Now, what would happen if if he got in the wrong email address or something for me? Right? Emails me? What if I didn't respond to the email but he knew how I respond emotionalism. Hey, mister Bryant told me. I'm mister Bryant. I'm so sorry to bother you. You gave me a check.

I went to the to the bank. The bank wouldn't cash the check because I don't have the proper idea, the proper credentials. And I hope you enjoyed the art. Was so honored to meet you. Blah bla blah blah. Speaking to my ego, I'm so, you know, so proud of the work you're doing. Yeah, right, about to work me over. And well, I'm like, well, what can I do to help you? Of course I got the Superman complex, right, what can I do to help you? This is this is unfair. What do you mean The bank's not giving

you the money? And I can it's my check. Tell them to cash my check in your name. I'm sorry, mister Brian, they won't cash the check. What do I do? I need the money for my rent and my payments. Oh, Superman to the rescue. Not to worry. I'll tell you what. I'm going to wire the money to you. It was Western Union. I'm sending you the thousand dollars by Western Union. I checked the bank. By the way, check had not cleared. I know somebody sitting there saying, John, don't do it.

Check the bank. I checked the bank. The check had not cleared. Okay, we're on the same page. I am the financial literacy guy, right, So I'm like, Okay, I checked the bank, and I'm smart. I wire him a thousand dollars to Western Union. Hold on, now, he texts back, not textor R I emailed back back in those days twenty years ago. I'm sorry, mister Briant, the Western Union won't allow me to pick up the money. They say I have an ID problem. The other one, the first

one was a credentials problem. This one was an ID problem. What do you mean they won't give you the money. Yes, mister Brian, I'm so sorry. They won't accept my ID. They're going to send your money back. I don't know whether I told him not to do that. I think I did, and I think the money did come back to me, and then he told me it will send it to his sister. I believe. So I resent the money this time. Now he's got me off my game.

Right now, I'm completely committed. I'm completely distracted. I wire another thousand dollars now to his sister, so called sister right and I'm waiting for confirmation. I don't hear anything. Finally, I get my people to check Western Union. Yes, the money's been received. Fantastic secretary comes to my office. John, you might want to check the bank. Call the bank, checks beIN cash Boom, drop the mic. You caught me

coming and going. All I could do is raise my hand to the dude like, Okay, that was really really smooth. Now you won't first it happens to me. You know, it happens to me once. Shame on you happened to me twice, shame on me, right, but it's not happened to me twice. But but that one time when that happened to me, I had to tip my hat and say job, well done, criminal. But you'll never get that

money from me again. Nah, of mys if I go to someplace I put on my marriage press card, you don't take your marriage breas you're not getting any money from me, or I'll pay cash no checks, know nothing where I can't you know, you know it has to

be debated later. And don't think so this dude getting it was so smooth because he actually gave me the product, didn't cash the check, banked on the fact that I was, you know, the kind of person that will respond to his email, had to believe he had the right email address and waited to the exact right down to cash that check. Just shows that we really are smart, right, we really We've been doing so much with so little for so long, we'd almost do anything with nothing. What

happens when we become legal, my lord right. And by the way, I'm not picking on black people. I picked on every race during this podcast. But to remember that NASCAR came from moonshine running in the Appalachian Mountains, you know, moonshine runners. They realized they've been running from the police, that it was illegal and you couldn't do that for the rest of your life. You're gonna get you know, prison, probation, parole,

or dead. It was no retired moonshine runners. So they said, well, what can we do, Ah, we can drive, and they start driving on in the mountains and driving on the beach, and driving on in fields and driving around in circles, and hello, here comes NASCAR and five generations later of wealthy, billion dollar families that they can track their history to moonshine running. So rainbows only follow storms. She could not

have a rainbow without a storm first. Everybody has gone through something to get somewhere, and so here's our story as well, Love and Light. John Hope Yo yo yo, John O'Brien here on money and wealth. So there's a fan question from underscore mister Charisma at Instagram Underscore mister Charisma, So thank you for your question. I love questions. No, there are no dumb questions like Quincy Jones. I asked, how'd you get so smart? He said, I'm just nosy

as hell. I want to know everything about everything. That's why God gave you two ears and one mouth, so you listen twice as much as you talk. So I love questions, even questions that make me shake my head. Right, this whole podcast episode should be like what you don't do? Don't do it, don't do it, don't die, don't done. So his question is it's paying your bills more important first or investing and actually in a stabilized world, the answer to me is simple, you pay your bills because

otherwise you destroy on your credit card. If you don't pay your bills, you're just destroying your credit score. And you know your credit score will determine the quality of your life. Like real talk, if your outflow sees your inflow,

your overhead will be your downfall. You know you got now you got too much month, and then your money now the now, the white notices turn into blue notices, turning to yellow notices, turning the pink notices, turning the in the In the eight hundred calls and cut off notices, and then you could. Then then you have then your stuff is just like off, and I've come up. I

remember off. I remember like Friday night, I'm trying to have a date and the lights are off, right because I didn't pay the light bill coming up right, I remember off off, phone bill off, I remember all my stuff getting turned off and I and I remember having tow up credit toe up from the flow up, and it was not fun at all. So half of black folks have a credit score below six twenty. This is not a podcast for black people exclusively, but I'm talking

to my people first and foremost. You know, you can be the nicest person on the planet, go to church every Sunday, be sweet and caring and loving. And still if your credit score is below six twenty, which is half of Black America, not poor people, that's all of us, then you wake up the morning and half of us are locked out of the free enterprise system. Right. You just cannot operate in the free enterprise world. This is a free enterprise democracy, real talk. So you've got to

get your credit straighters. My dad used to credit used to say, growing up in South centrala you credit. You want his credit right, right, That's why his credit was all tore up. He couldn't even say the word credit. He was a good business, but not good at financial literacy. Now I just said all that, but my story would suggest that I'm talking out of the both sides in my mouth because I made a bet on investing in me, and I cannot say this is for everybody, because I

could have been wrong. I could have completely Now I guess I could have made it right by just creating credit agreements. But if you go and listen to my story and you track it. When I was homeless, I hadn't pay the car note, the Montera black Montero jeep leashed to me by Mitsubishi of West Covina or whatever it is, I don't know. They're still there. They are.

Thank you, guys for financing my life by accident, financing my dreams by accident, my businesses, and not coming after me with a tow truck because I needed a car to get around, but I didn't. I couldn't invest in my business and pay the card at the same time. And I didn't have an apartment because I lived in my g and I but I took the five hundred dollars a month I was coming in from residual payments from the acting that I had done before that it

wasn't a very good actor. But anyway, I had five dollars a month a month coming into residual payments, I could have buy it. I could rent an apartment or rent an office, rented the office and started a consulting firm. And I just I just had too much. I had too much month that in my money, I had too many bills and not enough revenue. But I thought if I just kept hustling, kept hustling, kept hustling, then on the back end I would it would pay off, and I would then pay off my debts. I could have

filed bankruptcy. I didn't, And as soon as I start doing well, I called West could be them in Shibishi and whoever the financi your agent was. I called all my creditors and I cut a deal, negotiated my payment. So I invested in me, and that investment paid off. But it could have imploded. And if it had imploded, what would I have done. I would not have found bankruptcy.

I still would have would have wuldn't have got a job somewhere, and I would have cut a deal with my creditors to pay them back little by little and rebuilt. It just would have taken more time to rebuild. So you can again you read my story and my book Up from Nothing, or the memo or all the different places where you can find the story when I was homeless and the decisions I made and how I made them.

So I made a bet on me. I would tell most people, though, who have a regular job, because I had the chance to cash it, to write a check and not just cash it and determine the size of my payoff with the return on the big bets I was making of investments in me. Well, thank god, some of which paid off. But if you just have a you're on a salary and a regular job, you don't have that kind of upside. And you need like my mother did, like my father did, like my family did.

You need to steady and sure right. So you need a good credit score, pay your bills, put a lewiside. You can do fractional investing, which means less than that. If you have ten dollars and the share price on something you want to buy is one hundred dollars you

can buy ten dollars of a share. Fractional investing. I talked about time shares, which is not the same as fractional investing it because fractional investing is investing in an instrument that actually could be worth much more than what you're putting in it, Whereas the time share investment I made clearly was worth less than what I put in it because it was not in tended to be an investment on the front end to begin with. So I

would say invest in yourself. If you're an entrepreneurs small business owner, that says something different than if you are like Nirison to most people and employed individual Most people listening to this podcasts are employed individuals, working class, middle class, whatever. So get your credit score right, keep it tight, pay your bills, Communicate with your creditors on a regular basis. When you can't pay a bill, call them before they call you. Take whatever you have left. Don't go to

Starbucks or I'm hate no star Books. Don't go to some fancy barista place. Go get you a cure machine, a coffee maker at home, and save that, you know, three hundred bucks a month or at least one hundred bucks a month from that and then take one hundred dollars of that and invest it in stocks, bonds, invest you know, whatever it is you'd like to invest in mutual funds for one k whatever, Start small, and then at compound. I started an account at Aerial Capital Management,

black owned mutual fund company when I was in my teens. Then, in fact, I had a chance to invest in the company in my dumber and didn't do it when he first founded it, John Rodgers, But I did it. Open an account and I put a little bit in every month. I looked up one day it was eighty seven thousand dollars back back and back at the time where that was a whole lot of money for me, that was everything. It's probably everything for most people listening to this podcast.

Actually half this country makes sixty five thousand, sixty thousand dollars a year, right, so it was like eighty some thousand dollars. I don't remember what it was, but I used that for something meaningful way back when i'd have been to put it down payment on my first piece of real estate, but I had forgotten about it. I just kept putting a few hundred dollars a month into his account and a compounded capital management and aerial investment.

Got I think it's aerial investment, actually, John Rodgers, you just look it up, John Rodgers and Melody Hops and aerial investment. Black Home by the way, biggest black On mutual fund in the country. And they were doing they did great. Then they're doing great now. And so I put in X and got out X plus Y and then use that to make another investment in the rest of the history as they say. So, I hope that

answered the question, the fan question. Thank you underscore, mister charisma and let it keep them coming, love and light. This is a civil rights movement. You have questions, go to Operation Hope. Talk to one of my financial coaches. I talk to them every quarter. They always find something messed up on my credit score. By the way, my credit report. Yo yo. This is John Hope, Brian and this is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect podcast

network with my brand Charlemagne Good Investment. I have personal experience with this. I'm gonna be very specific. Here are time shares good real estate investments? The answer is no. Now, I'm not hating on time shares, and there's different kinds of time shares. And they're not really time shares are more like real estate shares. The reason they call it a time share is it's actually not really as a

value proposition about the real estate, is about the time. So, if you're a working class person, right, and I want you all to know, watch this documentary The Queen of Versailles, which talks about this billionaire dude, David Siegls's name, who wasn't is in the timeshare business and he explains it in the documentary how his son explains how they separate working class people from their wallets. Don't take my word

for it, but just watch it yourself. But let me just get get into this, you know straight away, that's just entertaining. This is factual time shares. If you're a working class person, you're apposed to worker, you're teacher, you have some kind of a structured job, and you don't think you can avoid vacations which you need to get away, you know, and you want to know you can get away, and you know exactly what time of the year you're going to get away because your vacation is the same

time every year. You could schedule that in advance. And you want to go to some fancy place that may you don't think you can afford. They really again, they catch you on the emotionalism here and the dreaming aspects, and they don't think, and you don't think you can, you know, afford to go and own one of these some fancy places and some fancy location. Then they get you on a free trip, you know, a free stay, but by they know that you'll never make it to

the free state. Before they warm you over with the presentation that nine times out of ten will have you writing a check or signing a very expensive loan agreement, or making some other commitment that allows them to take separate you from your wallet. I know because it happened to me. And the only real estate investment that I've lost money on that I can remember, by the way it might have happened. No, only when I can remember was a timeship, And it's actually happening right now. I'm

selling a time share I bought thirty years ago. Thirty yeah, thirty years ago. I bought it emotionalism because of civil rights leader in south central LA who I was trying to befriend. I was trying to impress, I was trying to make him my friend and he was trying, I'm sure, trying to get a free week's vacation and was told that if he selled his time share to somebody else, some other dupe, dud or bonehead like me, that he could get a free week. And he, you know, nice guy.

I don only mention his name because everybody will know who it is in la But I bought it thirty years later. I am just now rinsing this shirt that I got washed in from this so called investment, and I'm getting out of it when it closes a third less than a third of what I paid for it. But when you factor in all the management fees and

the maintenance fees, it's like thirty five hundred dollars. I bought the thing with thirty five thousand dollars two weeks of time share on the beach across from the beach in Newport be Sounds great, doesn't it. And I own partial real estate of this development in Newport Beach on the beach unbelievably beautiful, you know storyline. And I lived in South Georlaisa. Driving a Newport Beach, I was like, oh my god, I can own a piece of this. Right when I sold that thirty years later and paid

thirty five hundred dollars a year. I think it was thirtyeve hundred doars a year, fifteen hundred dollars eighty no dollars per unit per year and maintenance feed. If you don't pay the maintenance fee, they default you in the agreement. And luckily and I even I had, I financed it with their ridiculous interest rate financing. That the in house financing they did. It was some crazy interest rate eighteen percent of some crazy thing. Only think about it. It

was so high, give me a nosebleed. I ended up paying that off, thank god, a decade ago, on the debt side, the loan side. So I owned the crappy investment free and clear, but I still had to pay

the maintenance fee every year. If I didn't pay the maintenance fee fee, they could default me on my ownership agreement and put a lean against my ownership and take my ownership because if I don't pay the maintenance fee over two or three or four years, they own the dang on thing because it's worth more than I can sell it for according to them, because they control, by the way, the outcome of the real estate, which is one of the really important pieces about why I don't

like time shares with fees. Sample real estate. I control when I buy, when I sell, how to negotiate what I do with it. On time shares, they control it. I've already gotten I already got it wrapped up in my own stories. Let me just finish it now. I'll tell you why I think it might be good for you. This is why it's bad. Right, So I'm selling that thing for I think I'm getting ten thousand, ninety eight hundred dollars or something for one of the two units.

And I don't know i'm getting. You know, by the time I get out of this, I will have lost on the principal investment. So I paid thirty five thirty eight thousand dollars thirty years ago, I will sell it for less, probably ten thousand dollars less, as my guess, than the purchase price. This is real estate on the beach in Newport Beach. And when you factor in the thirty five hundred dollars or thirty eight hundred dollars a

year and maintenance fee, I mean, it's simple math. Over thirty years, I got washed, I got soaked, right, and I ain't want to go. After a few years, I didn't want to go to this place anymore, but I was stuck with it. Then I had to fly there, pay for plane tickets and oh blah blah blah blah blah. So from an investment perspective, it sucked. It was horrible. But you know, I should have knew what I signed up for. They didn't force me, they didn't twist my arm.

I'm not hating on them. There was good marketing, good manipulation, and you know, a good you know, emotionalization because this guy got me to do it because I was trying to impress him. It's like a bad marriage. Easy to get married, hard to get divorced. Right. I've been trying to get this dang on things for a decade and a half, right, And you could transfer this time share to another part of the country, another part of the country, but every place they wanted to transfer me to, I

didn't like it. Like I'm like I if I got a it goes in place and my house is better where I'm going, and I definitely not going, or if I'm used to something that's better than what you're going to put me in, I'm definitely not going anyway, So you can tell I'm sort of bitter about the whole thing, but it was my fault. Right now, Here's where it's

a good idea. If you want to know, hassle, plug and play, vacation once a year, and your income is going to stay pretty stable over the course of your life. So I had huge jumps in income and well, thank god, so I was able to look at the world through different prisms over at different times. So I didn't want to go to the same place that I used to go to twenty thirty years ago. Wasn't interesting to me anymore. I wanted to own the resort, not stay in it.

But if you're my mother or my father or my cousin, and your income is the same year of year, decade after decade, and you just want to a vacation, then at time share right where they And the other problem was as an entrepreneur, I never knew when I was going to have a week or two to myself, and it would change every year because I'm hustling and running and gunning. But they need but those I couldn't change. It's also offended me. I couldn't change the date. What

do you mean I own the place? What do you mean I can't change the date when I stay there because you own it with other owners, right, and those other owners have a say, they've put in weeks that they want to reserve. And the managing partner that which is in this case was a hotel situation, they control the narrative, so I could say whatever I want. You know, I'm a limited partner to the general partner. I learned so much from owning that property, so it was actually

gave me a PhD. And what not to do. And you're hearing the backstory and that I'm saving you a whole bunch of money now. But if you you know there, so there are benefits to it. But one of them is not real estate investment or investment. It is what

it sounds like, time share. You're sharing the time in a piece of real estate that is in a location hopefully you're in love for the rest of your life, or part of a network that you're gonna love, and it can switch out for the rest of your life, and you don't mind the monthly payments or the mounth that you paid for it in advance, and you don't mind the maintenance fees, because that's you know that you're part of us experience that would cost you, in your opinion,

ten times more. Okay, I mean, and by the way, the place I stayed in once or twice a year, if I wanted to buy that place, they think about it now today cross street from the beach condo sort of a I mean, it would be a it would be a couple million and a half dollar condo. You say a million a half dollar condo, maybe two million. Now,

when I bought it three hundred thousand. So when I bought it three hundred thousand and three fifty thousand, three hundred ty thousand, I bought it a thirty five thirty eight thousand dollars. So yeah, I'm like, oh, this is a great deal. I'm getting a rich man's experience for poor man's money. But that's not where I am today, right,

So it just depends on the person. Now, by the way, there are wealthy examples of this where it's not time share, it's real estate share, where you're buying part of a mansion, part of a ten thousand square foot home in Mexico or by the way, these timeshare things are Las Vegas Miami, Jamaica, Bahamas. They're all over the place. You can find them everywhere, right, So just be careful and never make an emotional decision, because whenever you make an emotional decision, it's going to

be wrong, just like the one I made. But once you become more affluent, there are networks of There are these companies that you can basically buy a percentage of a yacht, percentage of a RV, percentage of a race car, percentage of a vacation home in different parts of the world or whatever, and you really own, you know, fourth of it or whatever it is, and you meet the people and then you like the people cool, and you're

dealing with sophisticated investors and sophisticated management companies, and when you want out, you know it's a you know, a decent deal when you exit, and they facilitated it for you, and you sort of you could anyway. The wealthier you get, the more knowledgeable you are, the more sophisticated you are, the more financially literate you are, the better your chances that a shared equity situation will turn out given you value. But if your low income, low wealth, low financial literacy,

desperate with the surviving mindset. You got too much month at end of your money, you're stressed out, you don't know the numbers. You're not paying attention. You finance the thing with the sponsoring companies finance wrong. You didn't pay attention, you're going to get nailed a likelihod. You're gonna get nailed with something that's going and by the way in this thing, and if you don't pay, they'll ruin your credit like they'll and they'll threaten you like they'll call

you every month like where's the money? Because and then the debt collection piece becomes another business that they have. They have some of these companies, the lower end, not as ethical, have debt collection departments because they financed it for you. And then they are charge you debt collection fees, late fees. You know they're paying you. They're charging you

money on their own money. They're charging you fees on the money, the expensive money that in many cases the predatory financing that they put in front of you and put you in. They've made their money three times on that thing if you paid it over time. So if you default it an a halfway through, they've already made their profit. Then they hit you with load with all kinds of fees and late fees and default fees, and they chase you and then you you know, you just

want to be done with it. So you've sent them a going away president a check and you sign off on it, and they take that and they remarket it. They remark the same property to some other person who's going to be their next victim. So just don't do it. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. It looks too good to be true. That should be the

whole title of this whole week. If it looks good to be true, it normally all right, love you much, and then you have any questions, go to operation and I hope talk to one of my Hope and Angel coach. Just tell them John Brown, I attend you and I gave you a whole lecturebout I lost money on time share, and I don't want you to lose any money. There are good time share companies out there, there are good experiences,

so don't I'm not dumping on time share companies. I'm just saying is not designed at the lower end for low income people, is not designed to benefit you financially. That's why They call it a time share and not a revenue share or a real estate equity investment share, and they don't emphasize we need to turn on an investment. It's return on fun right, Peace, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.

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