February 22, 2024 • 46 mins
In this episode, John Hope Bryant is teaching you about scams and sharing his thoughts on investing in timeshares.
To learn more about John's Operation Hope initiative, visit: https://operationhope.org/how-we-help/credit-money-management/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Yo Yo Yo,
John O'Brien Here, this is Money and Wealth with jj B.
So reader ass, listener ass support her ass? How can
(00:25):
I make ten thousand dollars and two weeks if my
life depended on it? I don't want to see who
the listener was. I'm about to blow up the question.
The answer is, you can't unless you rob somebody and
then you put your own life at risk. I mean
you cant is a big words. Right, My middle name
is Hope. I'm not saying you can't. The likelihood of
(00:46):
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
(01:07):
very low, which means you're gonna have to do something
sketchy in which means you're gonna put your life at risk.
Maser 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
(01:28):
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. The question is you really can't
legitimately make ten thousands in two weeks. Now, that's the
(01:52):
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 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
(02:13):
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, not hard. You can get to a point
(02:34):
I e. My story, my story where you can make
ten thousand dollars in two weeks. But at that point
you're compounding mostly like in other words, 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.
(02:55):
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.
(03:17):
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. What'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
(03:38):
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 touch the principle. If you just make sound
conservative investments in the stock market, or there's a range
(03:59):
of other things you can do. It stands the reason
if you have a billion dollars in 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
(04:19):
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
(04:40):
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 goourage
(05:00):
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?
(05:23):
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, this is money and wealth. So, yeah,
how to identify scams is you know, it's three triggers. Really,
(05:45):
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
(06:08):
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, again,
in no particular order. They pick on, made off, made off,
(06:29):
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
(06:51):
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.
(07:14):
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
(07:34):
because I've got a one MBB initiative and I never
like confusing anybody confusing it two 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 when I pull
(07:55):
the guy's name, we're talking and you know again the
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
(08:19):
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
(08:40):
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. Fun
(09:00):
Joe lows this guy's name. The Department of Justice tried
to prosecute him. That prosecute abstincia 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
(09:24):
know got taken for a ride in this thing. A
lot of people got hurt. Right then you step down
a few levels and this is a couple in Texas,
black couple. I want I want to mention their 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
(09:44):
by mentioning. Then they making a bad situation worse. But
you know, you're 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
(10:04):
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
(10:26):
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 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 marn a mega church
(10:46):
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 you would have
called me out or told him to stay away from
it with a foot pole. But he convinced himself that
when somebody came to him with with Chinese bearer bonds
or some kind of crazy thing, that he convinced himself
(11:08):
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
(11:29):
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,
(11:52):
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
(12:14):
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'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
(12:34):
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, to 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,
(12:55):
I'll get had a photographer come at me adding a
formal event a couple of weeks ago. Hey man, I
got these boss from some country and I want to talk. Nope,
I'm just telling you right now, if it is an
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, but we're
having a meeting right now. It always fascinates me when
(13:16):
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? Buy 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
(13:37):
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,
(14:00):
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 and they get you to
pay some application fee. A lot of these folks do this, Oh,
we're and give you a million dollars. Just pay this
ten thousand dollars application fee. Anybody who comes to you
at that with any of any of that stuff wrong
and scam. Right of application fee scam one of the
(14:22):
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 right. And they will
(14:46):
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 be 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 masqueraded as
(15:07):
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
(15:28):
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
(15:49):
some story and they call you a whole bunch of
times over a period of time and get you and
get comfortable with you and ask you about your family.
They don't care about your family to care about separating
you from 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
(16:12):
know this is John Brian. I want you to wire me.
You know I need I'm in, I'm in, I'm stuck
in an airport in Russia 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
(16:34):
messages saying they were from me. It clearly wasn't my
phone number, wasn't my email address. It 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, it 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
(16:56):
actually did this. It wasn't ten thousand dollars, but it
was you know, over a thousand. We reimbursed 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 to educate other people. Anyway,
She's not with us anymore. But you know, this stuff
(17:20):
happens like all the time, zeal 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.
(17:42):
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 went I was
(18:04):
in Nigeria. We were guests of the President of the
Unit of President of Nigeria that then president. There were
then Bassaror Andrew Young and the African African American Summit,
Reverend Leon Sullivan. All that was legit. We're at a
African art Bizaar 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,
(18:26):
We're all from Africa. Everybody's from Africa. I'm trying to
show my support right for my brothers and my sisters
in Africa. And I'm not mad. I'm about to give
you 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
(18:47):
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
(19:08):
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, Nigerians
are probably the smartest Africans on the planet. Sorry, I'm
not offending anybody else, but as far as entrepreneurship in business,
some of the smartest on the planet. They ever get legal,
they'll run the planet, they run the world. My god,
(19:30):
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 a mister Bryan.
I'm so sorry to bother you. You gave me a check.
(19:52):
I went to the bank. The bank wouldn't cast the
check because I don't have the proper idea, the proper credentials.
And hope you enjoyed the art. Was so honored to
meet you. Blah 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? And this is this is unfair. What do
(20:14):
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
(20:35):
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 bank. I thought I was smart. I wire him
one thousand dollars to Western Union. Hold on, now, he
texts back, not text sorry, emailed back back in those
(20:57):
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 credentialist 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.
(21:19):
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 they 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
(21:43):
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,
check's beIN cash. Boom, drop the mic. You caught me
coming and going. All I could do is raise my
(22:03):
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
(22:26):
I put on my marriage press card, you don't take
the marriage bress, 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
(22:48):
had to believe he had the right email address and
waited to the exact right time 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 almost do anything but 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
(23:11):
moonshine running in the Appalachian Mountains, you know, moonshine runners.
They realized they'd 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
(23:31):
beach and driving in fields and driving around in circles,
and hello, here comes NASCAR and five generations later of
wealthy a billion dollar families that they can track their
history to moonshine running. So rainbows only follow storms. She
cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First. Everybody has
gone through something to get somewhere. And so here's our
(23:51):
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,
(24:15):
so thank you for your question. I love questions. 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
(24:37):
whole podcast episode should be like what you don't do?
Don't do it, don't do it, don't done, 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
(24:59):
otherwise you destroy in 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 than your money. Now
the now, the white notices turn into blue notices, turning
to yellow notices, turning the pink notices, turning the in
(25:21):
the in the eight hundred calls and cut off notices.
And then 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
(25:42):
off and I and I remember having toe 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
(26:04):
score is below six twenty, which is half of Black America,
not poor people as all of us, then you wake
up in 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 you usuld say,
growing up in South Centralia. Credit you want his credit
right right, That's why his credit was all tore up
(26:26):
heuldn't even say the word credit. It 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
(26:47):
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 Montero black Montero jeep leashed to me by Mitsubishi
of West Covina or whatever it is. I don't know
if they're still there. They are. Thank you, guys for
(27:07):
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 that
(27:29):
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,
(27:50):
kept hustling, then on the back end I would it
would pay off, and I would then pay off my debts.
I could have found bankruptcy. I didn't. And as soon
as I start doing well, I called West could be
the Mitchibishi 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
(28:11):
had imploded, what would I have done. I would not
have found bankruptcy. I still would have would have wouldn'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 in 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
(28:32):
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 I 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,
(28:53):
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.
(29:17):
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 tended to be an
investment on the front end to begin with. So I
would say invest in yourself. If you're an entrepreneur small
(29:38):
business owner, that says something different than if you are
like Nierson 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
(29:58):
Starbucks or I'm not hating 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 months 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
(30:19):
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
(30:40):
dollars back, back and back at a 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 thou sixty thousand
dollars a year, right, so it was like eighty some
thousand dollars. I don't remember what it was, but I
use that for something meaningful. Way back when i'd have
been to put a down payment on my first piece
(31:01):
of real estate, but I had forgotten about it. I
just kept putting a few hundred dollars a month into
his account, and it compounded. Capital Management Aerial Investment got
I think it's aerial investment actually, John Rodgers, just look
it up, John Rogers 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.
(31:21):
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
(31:43):
my credit score. By the way, my credit report. Yo yo.
This is John Hobrian and this is Money and Wealth
on the Black Effect podcast network with my brand Charlemagne
(32:05):
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 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
(32:26):
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 Siegels's name, who wasn't is in the time share
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, just watch it yourself.
(32:48):
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 opposed to work
or your teacher, you're 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
(33:08):
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 place and some fancy location.
(33:29):
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
(33:51):
because it happened to me, and the only real estate
investment that I've lost money on that I can remember.
By the way, maybe it might have happened. No, only
what 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
(34:12):
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't mention his
name because everybody will know who it is in la
(34:35):
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 this thing with thirty
five thousand dollars two weeks of time share on the
(34:58):
beach across from the beach in Newport Beach. 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 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,
(35:21):
I think it was thirty hundred dollars a year, fifteen
hundred dollars eighty no dollar 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.
(35:43):
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
(36:05):
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 fee simple real estate, I
control when I buy, when I sell, how to negotiate
what I do with it on time shares, they control it.
(36:25):
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
(36:46):
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
(37:07):
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 plane tickets and oh blah blah blah blah blah.
So from an investment perspective, it sucked. It was horrible, right,
But you know, I should have knew what I signed
up for. They didn't force me, they didn't twist my arm.
(37:28):
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
(37:51):
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, if I got to
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.
(38:12):
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
(38:34):
different prisms over at different times. And 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
(38:55):
a vacation, then at time share right where they And
the problem was as an entrepreneur, I never knew what
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?
(39:16):
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
(39:38):
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
(39:59):
lif 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,
(40:22):
if I wanted to buy that place and 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
(40:45):
hundrety thousand, I bought it for 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,
(41:07):
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
(41:31):
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
(41:52):
dealing with sophisticated investors and sophisticated management companies, and when
you want out, you know it's a tip, 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
(42:15):
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, and
(42:39):
you didn't pay attention, you're going to get nailed a
likelihood 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 that
lower end, not as ethical, have debt collec action departments
(43:00):
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. Well, they've
made their money three times on that thing if you
(43:21):
paid it over time. So if you default it on
a halfway through, they've already made their profit. Then they
hit you with load with all kind 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 andy remarket it. They remark the same property
to some other person who's going to be their next victim.
(43:44):
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 financial coach. Just tell them John Brown, attention you,
and I gave you a whole lecture about how I
lost money on time share. I don't want you to
lose any money. There are good time share companies out there,
(44:06):
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
turn on an investment. It's return on fun right, peace,
(44:44):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from The
Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Yo Yo Yo,
John O'Brien Here, this is Money and Wealth with jj B.
So reader ass, listener ass support her ass? How can
(00:25):
I make ten thousand dollars and two weeks if my
life depended on it? I don't want to see who
the listener was. I'm about to blow up the question.
The answer is, you can't unless you rob somebody and
then you put your own life at risk. I mean
you cant is a big words. Right, My middle name
is Hope. I'm not saying you can't. The likelihood of
(00:46):
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
(01:07):
very low, which means you're gonna have to do something
sketchy in which means you're gonna put your life at risk.
Maser 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
(01:28):
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. The question is you really can't
legitimately make ten thousands in two weeks. Now, that's the
(01:52):
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 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
(02:13):
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, not hard. You can get to a point
(02:34):
I e. My story, my story where you can make
ten thousand dollars in two weeks. But at that point
you're compounding mostly like in other words, 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.
(02:55):
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.
(03:17):
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. What'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
(03:38):
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 touch the principle. If you just make sound
conservative investments in the stock market, or there's a range
(03:59):
of other things you can do. It stands the reason
if you have a billion dollars in 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
(04:19):
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
(04:40):
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 goourage
(05:00):
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?
(05:23):
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, this is money and wealth. So, yeah,
how to identify scams is you know, it's three triggers. Really,
(05:45):
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
(06:08):
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, again,
in no particular order. They pick on, made off, made off,
(06:29):
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
(06:51):
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.
(07:14):
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
(07:34):
because I've got a one MBB initiative and I never
like confusing anybody confusing it two 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 when I pull
(07:55):
the guy's name, we're talking and you know again the
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
(08:19):
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
(08:40):
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. Fun
(09:00):
Joe lows this guy's name. The Department of Justice tried
to prosecute him. That prosecute abstincia 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
(09:24):
know got taken for a ride in this thing. A
lot of people got hurt. Right then you step down
a few levels and this is a couple in Texas,
black couple. I want I want to mention their 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
(09:44):
by mentioning. Then they making a bad situation worse. But
you know, you're 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
(10:04):
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
(10:26):
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 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 marn a mega church
(10:46):
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 you would have
called me out or told him to stay away from
it with a foot pole. But he convinced himself that
when somebody came to him with with Chinese bearer bonds
or some kind of crazy thing, that he convinced himself
(11:08):
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
(11:29):
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,
(11:52):
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
(12:14):
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'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
(12:34):
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, to 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,
(12:55):
I'll get had a photographer come at me adding a
formal event a couple of weeks ago. Hey man, I
got these boss from some country and I want to talk. Nope,
I'm just telling you right now, if it is an
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, but we're
having a meeting right now. It always fascinates me when
(13:16):
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? Buy 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
(13:37):
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,
(14:00):
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 and they get you to
pay some application fee. A lot of these folks do this, Oh,
we're and give you a million dollars. Just pay this
ten thousand dollars application fee. Anybody who comes to you
at that with any of any of that stuff wrong
and scam. Right of application fee scam one of the
(14:22):
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 right. And they will
(14:46):
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 be 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 masqueraded as
(15:07):
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
(15:28):
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
(15:49):
some story and they call you a whole bunch of
times over a period of time and get you and
get comfortable with you and ask you about your family.
They don't care about your family to care about separating
you from 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
(16:12):
know this is John Brian. I want you to wire me.
You know I need I'm in, I'm in, I'm stuck
in an airport in Russia 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
(16:34):
messages saying they were from me. It clearly wasn't my
phone number, wasn't my email address. It 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, it 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
(16:56):
actually did this. It wasn't ten thousand dollars, but it
was you know, over a thousand. We reimbursed 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 to educate other people. Anyway,
She's not with us anymore. But you know, this stuff
(17:20):
happens like all the time, zeal 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.
(17:42):
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 went I was
(18:04):
in Nigeria. We were guests of the President of the
Unit of President of Nigeria that then president. There were
then Bassaror Andrew Young and the African African American Summit,
Reverend Leon Sullivan. All that was legit. We're at a
African art Bizaar 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,
(18:26):
We're all from Africa. Everybody's from Africa. I'm trying to
show my support right for my brothers and my sisters
in Africa. And I'm not mad. I'm about to give
you 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
(18:47):
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
(19:08):
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, Nigerians
are probably the smartest Africans on the planet. Sorry, I'm
not offending anybody else, but as far as entrepreneurship in business,
some of the smartest on the planet. They ever get legal,
they'll run the planet, they run the world. My god,
(19:30):
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 a mister Bryan.
I'm so sorry to bother you. You gave me a check.
(19:52):
I went to the bank. The bank wouldn't cast the
check because I don't have the proper idea, the proper credentials.
And hope you enjoyed the art. Was so honored to
meet you. Blah 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? And this is this is unfair. What do
(20:14):
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
(20:35):
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 bank. I thought I was smart. I wire him
one thousand dollars to Western Union. Hold on, now, he
texts back, not text sorry, emailed back back in those
(20:57):
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 credentialist 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.
(21:19):
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 they 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
(21:43):
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,
check's beIN cash. Boom, drop the mic. You caught me
coming and going. All I could do is raise my
(22:03):
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
(22:26):
I put on my marriage press card, you don't take
the marriage bress, 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
(22:48):
had to believe he had the right email address and
waited to the exact right time 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 almost do anything but 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
(23:11):
moonshine running in the Appalachian Mountains, you know, moonshine runners.
They realized they'd 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
(23:31):
beach and driving in fields and driving around in circles,
and hello, here comes NASCAR and five generations later of
wealthy a billion dollar families that they can track their
history to moonshine running. So rainbows only follow storms. She
cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First. Everybody has
gone through something to get somewhere. And so here's our
(23:51):
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,
(24:15):
so thank you for your question. I love questions. 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
(24:37):
whole podcast episode should be like what you don't do?
Don't do it, don't do it, don't done, 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
(24:59):
otherwise you destroy in 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 than your money. Now
the now, the white notices turn into blue notices, turning
to yellow notices, turning the pink notices, turning the in
(25:21):
the in the eight hundred calls and cut off notices.
And then 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
(25:42):
off and I and I remember having toe 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
(26:04):
score is below six twenty, which is half of Black America,
not poor people as all of us, then you wake
up in 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 you usuld say,
growing up in South Centralia. Credit you want his credit
right right, That's why his credit was all tore up
(26:26):
heuldn't even say the word credit. It 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
(26:47):
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 Montero black Montero jeep leashed to me by Mitsubishi
of West Covina or whatever it is. I don't know
if they're still there. They are. Thank you, guys for
(27:07):
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 that
(27:29):
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,
(27:50):
kept hustling, then on the back end I would it
would pay off, and I would then pay off my debts.
I could have found bankruptcy. I didn't. And as soon
as I start doing well, I called West could be
the Mitchibishi 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
(28:11):
had imploded, what would I have done. I would not
have found bankruptcy. I still would have would have wouldn'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 in 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
(28:32):
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 I 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,
(28:53):
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.
(29:17):
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 tended to be an
investment on the front end to begin with. So I
would say invest in yourself. If you're an entrepreneur small
(29:38):
business owner, that says something different than if you are
like Nierson 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
(29:58):
Starbucks or I'm not hating 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 months 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
(30:19):
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
(30:40):
dollars back, back and back at a 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 thou sixty thousand
dollars a year, right, so it was like eighty some
thousand dollars. I don't remember what it was, but I
use that for something meaningful. Way back when i'd have
been to put a down payment on my first piece
(31:01):
of real estate, but I had forgotten about it. I
just kept putting a few hundred dollars a month into
his account, and it compounded. Capital Management Aerial Investment got
I think it's aerial investment actually, John Rodgers, just look
it up, John Rogers 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.
(31:21):
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
(31:43):
my credit score. By the way, my credit report. Yo yo.
This is John Hobrian and this is Money and Wealth
on the Black Effect podcast network with my brand Charlemagne
(32:05):
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 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
(32:26):
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 Siegels's name, who wasn't is in the time share
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, just watch it yourself.
(32:48):
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 opposed to work
or your teacher, you're 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
(33:08):
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 place and some fancy location.
(33:29):
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
(33:51):
because it happened to me, and the only real estate
investment that I've lost money on that I can remember.
By the way, maybe it might have happened. No, only
what 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
(34:12):
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't mention his
name because everybody will know who it is in la
(34:35):
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 this thing with thirty
five thousand dollars two weeks of time share on the
(34:58):
beach across from the beach in Newport Beach. 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 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,
(35:21):
I think it was thirty hundred dollars a year, fifteen
hundred dollars eighty no dollar 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.
(35:43):
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
(36:05):
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 fee simple real estate, I
control when I buy, when I sell, how to negotiate
what I do with it on time shares, they control it.
(36:25):
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
(36:46):
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
(37:07):
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 plane tickets and oh blah blah blah blah blah.
So from an investment perspective, it sucked. It was horrible, right,
But you know, I should have knew what I signed
up for. They didn't force me, they didn't twist my arm.
(37:28):
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
(37:51):
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, if I got to
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.
(38:12):
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
(38:34):
different prisms over at different times. And 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
(38:55):
a vacation, then at time share right where they And
the problem was as an entrepreneur, I never knew what
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?
(39:16):
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
(39:38):
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
(39:59):
lif 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,
(40:22):
if I wanted to buy that place and 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
(40:45):
hundrety thousand, I bought it for 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,
(41:07):
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
(41:31):
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
(41:52):
dealing with sophisticated investors and sophisticated management companies, and when
you want out, you know it's a tip, 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
(42:15):
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, and
(42:39):
you didn't pay attention, you're going to get nailed a
likelihood 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 that
lower end, not as ethical, have debt collec action departments
(43:00):
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. Well, they've
made their money three times on that thing if you
(43:21):
paid it over time. So if you default it on
a halfway through, they've already made their profit. Then they
hit you with load with all kind 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 andy remarket it. They remark the same property
to some other person who's going to be their next victim.
(43:44):
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 financial coach. Just tell them John Brown, attention you,
and I gave you a whole lecture about how I
lost money on time share. I don't want you to
lose any money. There are good time share companies out there,
(44:06):
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
turn on an investment. It's return on fun right, peace,
(44:44):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from The
Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
John Hope Bryant
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!