Tag: finances

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 ‘True Wealth’?

“I believe the key is being able to maximize wealth in both facets as much as possible without sacrificing one or the other too much.”

There is a standard definition of ‘wealth’ as a concept: An abundance of valuable possessions, money, or other resources to the degree that it causes prosperity. However, what is prosperity to you may not be prosperity to others. I like to think of wealth is not an abundance not just of material possessions or of money or of how much you can acquire but also how much you value what inherently belongs to you. What I mean by that is your time, your health, and your freedom. While building wealth is key to having success in life, there are other facets to wealth that we can neglect if you are not careful.

Wealth will come with sacrifices whether it is your time, your freedom, or your health as there are tradeoffs involved. You’ll find that to become more prosperous, you may have to sacrifice time, freedom, or health to build that wealth up whether in the form of money, resources, or material possessions. I believe the key is being able to maximize wealth in both facets as much as possible without sacrificing one or the other too much.

In order to gain more money, you may have to sacrifice your time in the sense that you exchange your time to earn money or you are not as free to do what you want each day because you have to work a job, grow your business, or learn new skills in order to earn the money to become wealthy. The same could be said of your health whereas you may have to sacrifice the time you could use to invest in your own health to build material or resource wealth with the time you put in to earn money or other assets. That time that could be used to be spent at the gym, on a run, going on a hike, or practicing a sport could go to your job or your business or investing into a new asset.

If you can find out what you truly value and what you want to maximize in terms of your wealth, make sure you prioritize it to have true wealth for you. For example, if fancy cars, big houses, and a lot of material possessions appeal to you, maybe you don’t mind putting a lot more time into working for that, putting your health on the backburner, and sacrificing certain freedoms to do what you must instead of what you want to. On the contrary, if you care less about possessions, material wealth, but still want to be comfortable in terms of money or investments, then maybe you can work less, focus on your health and free time more, and exercising more freedoms to do what you want with the extra time you have as a result.

You should decide what kind of wealth is best for you. What truly will make you happy, what you are passionate about in life, and what you want to get most out of life, you’ll be able to build that true wealth. I think the key for anyone is to maximize the 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week as much as possible. If you can build your wealth passively to get some of your time back, that is a key advantage in my view to having true wealth too. When you can be financially successful by having multiple sources of income, multiple options to build wealth, and with some or a lot of autonomy in your work or business pursuits, that really can be an advantage in not only being successful but happy too.

Wealth is not just about being financially well off but also about being well off in other areas including health, time, and exercising freedom in what you do and how you do it. There is a distinct difference between someone who must rely on others for their wealth building and someone who is able to create their own opportunities or build their own means of wealth in a business, in real estate, or in investments that can create more freedoms rather than slowly eliminate them.

You can have as many possessions as possible, houses, cars, and money in the world but if you have no free time, no health, or no autonomy in what you do or how you earn that wealth, then you may need to reassess if that is the true wealth that you want out of life. I hope that you’ll rethink what wealth means to you because only you can decide what you would like to prioritize as you build it. You must consider that sacrifices will have to be made, that time, money, and health are all commodities that can be saved or lost depending on what you prioritize these days.

I only ask that you realize that having the freedom to do what you want and when you want is underrated. It is a form of wealth within itself along with keeping your health in good shape as long as possible even if you must sacrifice some time or freedom as a result. Consider that you can be very wealthy in the material sense but if you are unhealthy, working all the time, and have to answer to others in order to keep building that wealth, are you truly wealthy or is it only one kind of wealth that you have?

Think about what you are willing to sacrifice, what you are willing to earn, and how to passively build on the wealth you want to earn to save more time and freedoms that can be used for health, time spent with family and/or friends, or enjoying what the world has to offer outside of your own wealth building. Wealth takes many forms as I mentioned so remember that while we often think of money, cars, houses, and other assets, we should remember that wealth can be time spent away from an office to enjoy a vacation, wealth can be an extra hour in the day to use the gym or go for a hike, wealth can be starting businesses that matter to you with hours of work that you set for yourself and only you can hold yourself accountable for. Think about the wealth that you want to build throughout your life and how you want to make it work for you.