Category: investments

Beware of the Grifters and Scammers

“As important as it is today to protect your personal peace, it is just as important to protect your own money. With the widening economic inequalities and uncertainties in society mixed in with the invasive nature of social media and AI technology, it is easier now more than ever to fall victim to ‘grifting’ or ‘scamming.’”

As important as it is today to protect your personal peace, it is just as important to protect your own money. With the widening economic inequalities and uncertainties in society mixed in with the invasive nature of social media and AI technology, it is easier now more than ever to fall victim to ‘grifting’ or ‘scamming.’

With technology and social media, grifters and scammers can do serious damage almost instantaneously and it is becoming much more widespread each day. You should be on your guard and look to avoid these people at all costs even though in positions of power, influence, or leadership as they are often looking to line their own pockets with money from yours.

Unfortunately, many of us are dealing with the effects of societal factors outside of our own control including financial stress, political polarization, and technological vulnerabilities that make us more susceptible to grifters and scammers. The proliferation of “get-rich quick” scenes are not new in society and have been around for centuries but now it is in your face more than ever. You really must be careful of what you are buying into and to do your due diligence before trusting anyone with your money or credit. Rising living costs, inflationary pressures, and job insecurity all can lead to people falling victim to scams and grifts because of desperation but you need to hold strong against any kind of scheme or falsehood to make your financial situation worse off.

In addition, more than ever, social media influencers, online personalities, and leadership figures are using their followings to proliferate courses, products, ‘coins’, and other services without telling you about the trustworthiness of the product or service as well as more about their background or reputation. There are always some risks involved with financial transactions, but you should be careful with regards to who is selling you, what their background is, do they have an ulterior motive, or are they pressuring you to buy without taking your time to verify what you’re buying first. There are numerous fake investment opportunities, Ponzi schemes, and pump-and-dump stock schemes out there but they have been fueled furthermore by cryptocurrency coins, deepfake technology, and false information given by certain AI tools.

Always look to see if the person your business doing with is trustworthy, their business background, look to see what clients say and verify the reviews are real, what the money-back guarantee is, and be skeptical of any ‘easy money’ scheme, whether online or over the phone or face to face. Grifters will use your fear, anxiety, or general need for money against you and will pressure you to make bad decisions. If someone ever pressures you into something especially regarding your money, you should not trust them or do business with them.

Fact-checking takes time and can be arduous, but you must look at influencers, businessmen and women, and these online financial personalities to see if they can be trusted. Be informed also about ways to protect yourself by studying the latest schemes and bait-and-switch tactics that scammers and grifters are using. AI scams and deepfakes and voice manipulation over the phone is going to become more prominent in the future so you need to stay up to date on the latest trends especially with how many crypto scams, Ponzi schemes, and spam messages are out there. Use your best judgment, trust your gut if something feels off, and make sure your finances are protected with strong online security factors and make sure any passwords or authentication used is changed regularly. Never divulge that information as well to anyone and make sure you don’t give it up to any scammer as well.

Scams, grifting, and financial manipulation tactics are not going away anytime soon so you have to continue to be on your guard especially with modern technology improving upon the sophistication of these schemes. Constant awareness and vigilance is necessary and are your best defenses against the grifters. Protect yourself with verification tactics, avoiding emotional manipulation, financial security protection, and improving your digital literacy as often as possible.

Keep yourself informed about the latest scams, grifts, and ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes out there, think critically about who you trust your money with, and protect yourself and your loved ones from those grifters who profit off other people’s ignorance. These are the steps I take in my life, and I hope you will consider doing the same to avoid the scammers and the grifters, which continue to proliferate in our society.

What Is The Real Rate of Return on Investment?

“As you get older, you realize just how valuable time as a commodity is. You tend to start measuring the cost-benefit analysis or the return on investment that you are receiving not just regarding finances and how you spend or invest your money but also on how you spend your time.”

As you get older, you realize just how valuable time as a commodity is. You tend to start measuring the cost-benefit analysis or the return on investment that you are receiving not just regarding finances and how you spend or invest your money but also on how you spend your time. Unfortunately, this is a topic that we do not prioritize or learn about very well at a young age. Often, you must figure out what are the best ways to use your time wisely and your money.

There are numerous tools out there to help guide you find the real rate of return on your investment, but you must be the one making the decision on what you prioritize. We know for a fact that our time on this Earth is limited from the day we are born. Having such knowledge shouldn’t be morbid or despairing, but rather help us to prioritize how we spend our lives in search of a good use of our time, our money, and much more.

Now, not everything that we do in life should be correlated with a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ or ‘opportunity cost’ involved. Such behavior should be discouraged if you’re obsessing over how you spend every waking minute each day. You should be leaving some room for spontaneous actions that you enjoy regardless of if it’s geared towards health, wealth, and personal satisfaction. There are times each day where we have to commit to actions that take time when we would rather be doing something else and that is what adulthood entails sometimes.

The true focus is what can we do with our time that is free, which will help us in the long-term. If we have goals of wealth, health, and pursuing our own happiness, your time should be spent in looking in investing each day in building yourself up in each of these areas. For example, when we look at investing in our health, we know there are concrete things that can be done, which will help us with a return on having a healthier body, a healthier mind, and managing our stress and anxiety.

We may have to join a gym, change our diet, sleep more, and make time for exercising, and these are the kinds of investments, if done consistently, that can pay off in the long-term. These investments that I cite will not guarantee a longer life, but it is giving yourself the best possible chance of living a healthier life, especially if you are focusing on multiple investments.

In this case, the real return on investment may not be seen right away but you are likely to see some results if you’re consistent with your investments on a long-term basis. You can measure how your diet is helping you lose weight, how your sleep patterns have changed, and how much time you spend at the gym, the yoga studio, or in playing sports. These investments are measurable but the results on these investments will eventually show up in a real rate of return that will put you on a path that leads to a healthier life in the long-term. Returns are not guaranteed but if you are putting in the work over a long enough period, I believe the chances are good that you will be better off than you were years or even decades ago.

Similarly, how we save and invest financially for our long-term financial future, we can do the same with our health and our happiness. Everyone has different financial goals, and I won’t talk about specific investment advice to give, but you can always estimate to a degree what kind of percentage return you’re likely to get from your investments over a year or a decade or a century in terms of growth. These real returns will come to you but if you’re not consistently investing in building your wealth, those real returns will not be as impactful or as fruitful as you would have hoped. It goes to show that with either health, wealth, and happiness, that the earlier you invest in those facets of life and the more that you invest in them, the better off that you will be.

What makes someone truly happy is complicated and will differ depending on your emotional state, but I do believe spending more time with those who care about you, and you who care about them, enjoying more time spent doing the hobbies and interests that give you joy, and being able to invest time in learning new skills, exploring new places, or investing in your home and community, those kind of investments will have real returns on making you happier in the long-run. There will be times when what you did or do no longer makes you happy and that is alright. The key here is to keep trying out new things, keep meeting people, keep trying to be involved in areas of life that you think will make you happier, that is key in continuing to make those investments in building your happiness into the future to keep producing better and better returns.

Time is fleeting and you must prioritize health, wealth, and happiness in my view, which will give you those real returns in your life to enjoy and take joy in. Most of all, you have to know the difference as you get older between what’s give you actual returns for your hard work and efforts, and what you have to stop doing that is giving you no real returns. It is important to prioritize more of what will pay off in the future throughout your life and increasingly avoid those activities that produce a negative return and will leave you worse off.

It is one thing to be able to invest well in activities that bolster your life satisfaction, but you should also remember to avoid those other ways of spending the time that lower your real returns or negate them entirely. Be sure to know what a waste of your time is, if you can cut that activity out or lower your exposure to it and be able to replace the time spent on that activity with a good alternative. which you can take part in to continue to invest in building a life and a future that will make you healthy, wealthy, and happy.