Alternative investments

In our modern era of "get rich fast or die trying" culture, investments promise both financial freedom and financial ruin both in equal measures to the unwary and the unprepared investor.

Why is this so?

There's a sucker born every minute
As the famous saying goes, "There's a sucker born every minute." Investment scams abound in today's world especially with the internet replacing face-to-face interactions with websites, URLs, forums, MSN, emails and electronic communications. This helps to create an environment where fraudsters, scammers and other unethical scoundrels can leverage on the internet to lure you, yes -- you! the unsuspecting investor with lures of low risk and high returns. "Sure-thing" type of investment products and packages.

In order for us to be equipped to know more about the risks of investing, especially in fraudulent schemes, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has some useful resources for us to check out.

The BBB warns us to consider the following taken from http://www.bbb.org/alerts/article.asp?ID=358, article titled, "Investment Fraud Proliferates":

• Take your time before investing your money. Don't be pressured into buying. Be wary if you are urged to "buy now or forever lose your opportunity to profit."
• Research the investment opportunity. It's unlikely you will make money in a business deal you can't understand or verify.
• Find out about the company's reputation. Invest only in offers you know something about.
• Obtain all the information you can about the company and verify the data with impartial, outside sources. Contact the Better Business Bureau to get a reliability report on the company.
• Be extremely skeptical and cautious about any unsolicited phone calls you may receive about investments.
• Also, don't believe everything you read - or assume that all slick promotional materials and web sites offering investment deals are legitimate.
• Don't send money by overnight delivery or wire transfer, or authorize a credit card, payment or automatic debit to your bank account to anyone you don't know.
• If in doubt, do not part with your money. Seek professional advice."

One of the key reasons why people lose money to scams and fraudulent schemes is the lack of understanding of the investment product or scheme. We fall prey because of lack of knowledge and sometimes because of lack of due diligence on our part to find out more about what we are investing in.

Before you go on into the next "sure make" type of investment be it land banking, wine investments, paintings, commodities, practice what Confucious said, "know what you know and also know what you know not, that is true knowledge."

Be well and prosper.

I signed up for PayPerPost!

Now what is PayPerPost? It is a place where you can write posts on your blogs and earn some cash doing what you love best, blogging! Their website describes their value proposition as follows:

"Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required."

What is payperpost?
What payperpost does is that that match up advertisers with bloggers to generate interest about the advertisers' products or services using the viral marketing element that blogs and bloggers provide. It is a form of ads on blogs. You can see it as word-of-mouth type of advertising except that the mouth is more the blogger, the computer and the blog site that allows you to monetise your favourite activity: BLOGGING! :-)

I have signed up with PPP since June 2007 so I have been with the program for about one month. Initially, I was a little bit sceptical on when I would see my first paid post as while there were a number of paid blogging opportunities on payperpost, a number of them had pre-requisites which as a newbie postie, I didn't qualify. However, there were also a number of paid post opportunities that were open to newbies as well. I tried one of them and guess what? I snagged my first USD 7.50 for that post. It was not all smooth sailing, one of my other posts got rejected as I didn't use the requisite key words and appropriate labels as requested by the advertiser.

Due to personal commitments, I didn't check out payperpost opportunities for about 2 weeks and then one day I received an email saying that there was a PPP direct opportunity. That meant an advertiser wanted me to blog about something and would pay me USD 5.00 for doing it! I managed to login and wrote a post reviewing the website www.debthelp.com. That took me the whole of about 30 minutes. After the post was done, I was surprised to find that after a couple of days, payperpost credited my paypal account with USD 5.00! That was very quick and efficient on their part!

What I love about PayPerPost
What I love best about PayPerPost is that they pay relatively fast once the post has been approved. The approval part for my initial posts were a bit longer but for my recent post it took about 3 days. In my 1 month plus experience with PayPerPost, I have made USD 5.00 + USD 7.50 (with USD 5.00 already paid into my paypal today!).

I will use this money to buy myself a nice cappucino to reward myself for a job well done! :-)

While I have not made any new friends through PayPerPost, I have learned more about writing for a specific purpose and to sharpen my skills in reviewing and commenting about a website or topic. The opportunity to practice writing and evaluating some content helps me to write even better for my other blog posts as well!

If your interest is piqued and you like to write blogs, why do pay PayPerPost a visit? You might find that they can help you monetise your blog and reward you for what you already love to do: write blogs!

Wealthly within vs wealthy without

Have you ever wondered if those who look wealthy are truly so?

Do you think if you are wealthy you need to show it or it shows through your inner confidence, self-esteem and self-assurance?

Have you ever wondered if that lady next to you wearing a Rolex or that gentlemen with a thick gold bracelet has a high net worth?

Read on to find out if you are just as curious as myself in knowing how well your fellow commuter on public transport is faring in his or her journey towards financial freedom.

A game you can play on public transport
One of the activities I like to do when I take public transport is to observe my fellow commuters. Those of you who take public transport may want to play this little game that I do, guess their net worth! This is just a game and I am not advocating that we judge people by their net worth but rather to examine to see if there might be relationships between how people display their wealth within through showing off their wealth without. :-)

Rich within and without
I've read "The Millionaire Next Door" as well as articles about the legendary thriftiness of billionaires such as Warren Buffet, Ingvar Kamprad and they have inspired myself to do the same. Hence, I believe that many who have high net worth do not indulge in ostentatious displays of wealth while those who have low self worth tend to compensate by appearing to have wealth in terms of jewellery, luxury watches and other more public displays of wealth.

One way of looking at it is that people who have a relatively high net worth know that they have money and do not want to stick out in the crowd with public displays of wealth. Hence, they tend to wear ordinary everyday clothes and accessories that allow them to blend easily in a crowd. The interesting thing you may notice is that people who tend to have gold chains, jewellery, tend to be those whose likely net worth is lower than the average. I've seen many ah-peks who dress is singlets and shorts and spot heavy gold bracelets while travelling in the MRTs. I've also seen more senior ladies who also dress simply but are heavily adorned with gold jewellery. Are they of high net worth? Perhaps. My intuition tells me that it's more likely they don't have too much in their bank accounts and in the way of investments but rather the more flashy on the outside, the less flashy is their investible savings.

You decide on the wealth within or without
How does this relate to you? Life is short, you have the power to decide what you want to do with your money. If it is to use that bonus for an Audermars Piguet timepiece or that Toyota Camry or even that Mont Blanc pen you have been eyeing, so be it. But think about what is more important to you? Having the wealth within as part of investible savings that yields positive cash flows to help build your retirement fund or that Audermars Piguet timepiece that will do wonders for your ego and self-esteem but works essentially the same as a $50 Casio watch?