← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
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John Hope Bryant
Holiday.
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John Hope Bryant
With millions of books on Amazon, there's a reading feeling for everyone. For example, Juan's as he drifts away to nirvana after only the first chapter is different to Maya's when she discovered the narrator was in fact the evil twin, which is also different to Noah's. Aw anytime the cute cyberpunk is mentioned, even though in reality he'd be totally out of his league. From two to Amazon books, that reading feeling awaits.
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John Hope Bryant
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hol Bryant, a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iheartradio. Yo yo yo John Hope Bryant here. This is Money and Wealth with jhb. So reader ass listener ass supporter asks how can I make $10,000 in two weeks if my life depended on it. I don't want to say who the listener was because 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 can't is a big word. My middle name is Hope. I'm not saying you can't. The likelihood of you being able to do this legally to make $10,000 in two weeks, and I assume in this question you're working class, middle class, or you're not. I mean, I can make $10,000 in two weeks, but I don't need it. Right. If you, if you need it right. The very, 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 10,000 in two weeks is very low, which means you're going to have to do something sketchy and which means you're going to put your life at risk. Reminds me of Chris Rock. Said dude next door neighbor robbed him and he knew he robbed him. He's like, hey man, what's going on? I heard you got robbed. He said you didn't hear stuff because you were doing stuff. You robbed me. So, yeah, don't rob anybody and don't do anything illegal. And karma is real. Whatever goes around comes around. And if it looks too good to be true, it normally is. So, yeah, that's a. The short answer to the question is you really can't legitimately make 10,000 in two weeks. Now that's the bad news. Everything else I would tell you is the good news. By the way, love is work. Love is laziness. Anti love is evil. Evil exists, but it's very rare. Most people are just lazy, intellectually lazy, financially lazy, physically lazy, spiritually lazy. They don't want to do the work, they want somebody else to do it for them. Only in the dictionary does the word success come before the word work. Because it's alphabetical, right? So here's the good news. You know, you got to do the work. Everybody has to do the work. And now, you know, if you do the work from the neck up, from the shoulders down, you work smart, not hard. You can get to a point. That is my story. My story, where you can make $10,000 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 20, 30 years to get there. What's this for? Means it's interest on, you know, a dividend. It's dividend, 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 off of an asset and the assets not on your ass. Right. This is a real asset. Right. And you're benefiting from it, by the way. It's an old saying, but it's true. And this is that further up the ladder, you get sort of story. Well, it's harder to make 1,000 on 10,000 than it is to make 10,000 on 100,000. But it's harder to make 10,000 on 100 thousand than it is to make 100,000 on 10 million. If you have 10 million, it's actually pretty easy to make $100,000 a year. It's actually, if you have, excuse me, 4 million, $3 million a year starting assets, you can make six figures without lifting a finger. Just passive income. You never touch the principle. If you just make sound, conservative investments in the stock market or there's a range of other things you can do, it stands to 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, $100 million a year. If you have a billion dollars in assets, that's 10%, by the way, of return on the billion dollars, where your principal doesn't go away, and you've made 10% of that, which is $100 million. So. 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 15 cents, you're just trying to. You're always trying to make some mula, some money, some cash. You know, again, you get into that whole scamming, messing around world where, you know, somebody's literally trying to get rich quick. So multilevel marketing, you know, there's a lot of people running around. I do. I'm, 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 discourage 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 going to get shot or killed or arrested. Answer to can somebody who makes $50,000 a year make $10,000 in two weeks if their life depended on it? The answer to 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, its itself, the modern world itself, somebody is always trying to separate you from your money, you from your wallet. This is John O'Brien. This is Money and wealth. So, yeah, how to identify scams is, you know, there's three triggers. Really. It's more than three triggers, but here's some easy ones. There's an emotional trigger. These are the triggers that people were trying to pull on you to get you to separate you from your wallet. There's an emotional trigger. There's a formal trigger. In other words, trying to look like they're part of the system. Emotional is like inspiring you, convincing you and trying to make you feel like you're part of a movement or doing good or whatever. And then there's greed. And the biggest of these three, without question, is greed. So let me get into this. In no particular order. There's a couple out of. Well, again, no particular order. That pick on Madoff. Madoff, Madoff with I think it was $50 billion with a B. 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 working class folks, middle class folks and poor folks here in really primarily. But he was dealing with high net worth investors. How do you 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 heads to common sense. Common sense is not so common. If you look for the truth, you'll find it right. But the rational lies is to tell rational lies. And you tend to believe what you want to believe. So whether it's Bernie Madoff who made off with 50 billion or whether it's this dude who out of Malaysia, the one. I don't want to get this wrong because I've got a 1 MBB initiative and I never like confusing anybody. Confusing it too one mbb and this is one BB or something like that. Anyway, it was a dude out of Malaysia who scammed the country out of billions. Billions, I mean, just out of the sovereign fund of Malaysia. By the way, see, when I pull the guy's name up, 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 the. It appears the Prime Minister was also in on the scam. Right? And this guy went and hid in China and he's still in China. I read this book. I don't often read 700 page books, but this book I did read and it's fascinating and I'll come back to that because I'm trying to look up, I want to make sure that I pull up this guy's name and you can do some research on him yourself. This is like, you know, and he's a young guy, he was in his twenties, but once again, and he did, you know, he financed Hollywood movies and he had all kind of legitimate one. MDB is the name of the scam, by the way. And Joe Lowe is the guy's name, right? $4 billion stolen from that one MDB fund. Joe Lowe is this guy's name. The Department of Justice tried to prosecute him. They prosecuted Absentia because he's on the run. They were able to trace down $100 million. But I mean, this guy scammed just everybody. It's fascinating. There's documentaries out on it. Check it out. The Prime Minister again, big names Wall street investment firms and you know, got taken for a ride in this thing. A lot of people got hurt, right? Then you step down a few levels and there's this couple in Texas, black couple. I don't want to mention their name. They're still being, you know, going through the criminal justice system. And while there has been a verdict raised, it's not over. And I want to ruin their reputation by mentioning their name, making a bad situation worse. But, you know, you'll probably know what I'm talking about. They use spirituality in the church to try to get folks to time into their. I'll say blessed. That's all I'm gonna say. And again, they promised you something that you shouldn't have believed. They, you know, they were talking about doubling or tripling your money or some crazy thing. I forget the numbers, but it was like crazy or it was even worse than that. I mean, bigger than that. There's no way you can give these kinds of returns. Again, greed, right? They use emotionalism and they use, I guess, the formality of the church and they use greed. They use all the tricks of the trade. Do I think they were bad people? Do I think they woke up in the morning and said, ooh, let me scam out my own people. No, I don't think that's the case. I don't know them, but I don't think that's the case. I just think that again, the rational lies is to tell rational lies. You convince yourself that what you're doing is the right thing when it is the wrong thing. And the dude I know, guy I know, pastor out of Houston, really nice guy, ran a mega church in Houston. Reverend Kirby John Caldwell, he's serving time right now. Do I think he did something malicious? No, I don't. But he convinced himself, and I wish he would have called me out or told him to stay away from it with a 90 foot pole, but he convinced himself that when somebody came to him with Chinese bearer bonds or some kind of crazy thing, that he convinced himself that it was legit. He had a stack of documents, again, formality, a stack of documents that supposedly proved that this was legit. I would have told him it wasn't. And he, you know, use his influence or other people used his influence as a prominent pastor to raise money from unsuspecting investors. And it all blew up and he, he's in jail right now and is, you know, I mean, this guy's counseled presidents. Again, a nice guy. I like him. To this day I like him. And do I again, do I think he was malicious? No, I do not. He's even paid restitution. He actually paid back, I believe the principal sum of the money that was invested through these bonds out of his own funds. But, you know, I don't know what else, I don't know the details and whether other people lost additional money. But if you just looked at this, anybody who understands finance and understand how the world works looked at this and said, how did this get down? Again, no disrespect to the pastor, it was a pastor of a very prominent big church. But how did this sophisticated financial instrument with so called governments in the big finance world get down to the local level of a pastor of a local church? And how did he end up with this in his hands to be able to take advantage of. It's just the world doesn't work that way. Greed in and of itself would have caught that opportunity way before it got to him. In other words, if people on Wall street knew that there were a legitimate way to double your money using government bonds, that deal wouldn't have made it out of the first office it showed up to on Wall Street. You would Never got down to the big office of the local office, to the, to the, to the smaller office, to the, to the regional office, to the, to the church in Houston. Right. So I see this stuff coming. People come at me all the time. Hey man, I'll get. I had a photographer come at me at a formal event a couple weeks ago. Hey man, I got these bonds from some country and I want to talk. Nope, I'm just telling you right now. Is it into 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, hey, let's just have a meeting. I don't need that. We're having a meeting right now. Always fascinates me when somebody says, hey, John, I just want to meet with you. Well, you're talking to me right now. We're having a meeting, right? What are we going to talk to behind closed doors, on four walls, right Behind a desk in a chair that you can't tell me right now? Right. Anyway, 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 tale. If it looks too good to be true, it normally is. I've told you a couple about a couple scams. Let me tell you what Experian 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, you know, yeah, like they're going to give you loan forgiveness. And what they really want is your information. And they're going to. They're just trying to reel you in. They get you pay some application fee. A lot of these folks do this, oh, we're going to give you a million dollars. Just pay this $10,000 application fee. Anybody who comes as you at that with any of that. Any of that stuff. Wrong Scam. Right of application fee scam. One of the easiest scams on the planet. They feed on your greed and your emotionalism and your lack of financial literacy. They offer you some big number and just tell you all it takes is for you to give us this small number in relation to the big number and we're going to pay you for the rest of your life. Does that really sound like it's rational? Okay. It doesn't sound like A pipe dream. Hello, it is. And they will often say, like, student loan government dot com. Did you see that? I'm just making this up. Like student loan government forgiveness. I'm making this up. Dot com. There is no dot com. This government. It's going to be.gov gov or dot or worse than be dot org but I wouldn't even believe that, right? If somebody's masquerading as a government is going to be.gov or have something 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'm in default on my property taxes and I had to, like, look at it five times because it looked like it was from a taxing authority. But when you look at it really closely. No, it's just some business. Some, some. Some. I can't call them entrepreneur because it's not legit. Some. Some business charlatan masquerading as if they're the government. Right? And phone scams. People calling you, impersonating, trying to, you know, get you all wrapped up in some story. And they call you a whole bunch of times over a period of time and get you. And get comfortable with you asking about your family. They don't care about your family. They care about separating you from your wallet. Text scams. I've had those people send me a text. It was. Here's a funny one. They sent me a text as if it was me sending the text to me. They had messed up John Bryant. You know, this is John. Brian. I want you to wire me, you know, I need. I'm in. I'm. I'm in. I'm. I'm in. Stuck in an airport in, in Russia. And, and they've taken my credit cards and you know who I am, I'm legit. Just send me, you know, real quickly, $1000 or 1200 bucks or something. I'll get it right back to you. Scam. Right? And I've had people in my company who got text messages saying they were from me. It clearly wasn't my phone number, wasn't my email address. It was by it. They sent 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 $10,000. One of my former employees actually did this. It wasn't $10,000, but it was over a thousand. We reimbursed her for that and actually tried to get her to do a video to like share her story. She was so embarrassed. She didn't want to share her story, which upset me because I'm like, well, we paid you back for a scam. We didn't have to. Nothing to do with us. At least you could do is educate other people. Anyway, she's not with us anymore. But, you know, this stuff happens like all the time. Zelle scams, cryptocurrency scams, romance scams. This is a big one. Online purchase scams, employment scams, check fraud scams. I got one of those. How to avoid. Okay, so here's a check fraud scam, right? This is mine. So I'm in Nigeria, and this is emotionalism. They got me on emotionalism. I'm in Nigeria with ambassador Andrew Young 20 years ago. I remember Dick Gregory, the famous comedian, said, I love going to Africa. This is 20 years ago. I love going to Africa because there, even my old canceled credit cards still work. Not the case anymore. Now everybody has digital and, you know, connected to the Internet, whatever. But so I was. I was in Nigeria. We were guests of the President. The united. Of the President of Nigeria, the then President there with Ambassador Andrew Young and the African. African American Summit, Reverend Leon Sullivan. All that was legit. We're at a African art bazaar outside the hotel. Again, government officials around, security around. And I'm trying. I'm all caught up in the emotion of the moment. You know, we're all African, we're all from Africa. Everybody's from Africa. I'm trying to show my support, right, for my brothers and my sisters in Africa. And I'm not mad. I'm about to give you. To tell you this story, but I'm not mad at this person. They actually. This was so smooth and so smart. I wanted them to have the money, right? This was my. I get to tell this story for the rest of my life. So it was worth the money I lost. So I go to buy a piece of art and I wrote a check. He let me write a check. And I. I don't remember the exact amount, but let's just say I wrote the check for $1,000, right? So I wrote him a check for $1,000 for the art. He allowed me. Now this is smooth. Now he allowed me to take the art with me. So I give him $1,000 check. I take the art with me. I get on the plane, I go home. The art's in my office. Two weeks have passed. This is so smooth. These Nigerians, these scams. Not everybody in Nigeria, but Nigerian scams. I mean, Nigerians are probably the smartest Africans on the planet. Sorry, I'm not offending anybody else, but as far as entrepreneurship and business, some of the smartest on the planet. They ever get legal, they'll run the planet. They run the world. My God, this guy is so smooth. This guy was so smooth. Waited two weeks. A confidence scam. Waited two weeks. Build up my confidence in him. Emailed me. Now, what would happen if I. 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, Mr. Bryant told me. I mean, Mr. Bryant, I'm so sorry to bother you. You gave me a check. I went to the. To the bank. The bank wouldn't cash the check because I don't have the proper id, the proper credentials, and. Hope you enjoyed the art. Was so honored to meet you. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Speaking to my ego. I'm so, you know, so proud of the work you're doing. Yeah, right. You about to work me over and, well, I'm like, well, what can I do to help you? Of course. I got the Superman complex, right? What can I do to help you? This is. This is unfair. I mean, what do you mean the bank's not giving you the money? I can't. This is my ch. Do. Tell them to cash my check in your name. I'm sorry, Mr. Bryant. 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 tell you what. I'm going to wire the money to you. It was Western Union. I'm sending you the thousand dollars by Western Union. I checked the bank, by the way. Check had not cleared. I know somebody sitting there saying, john, don't do it. Check the bank. I checked the bank. The check had not cleared. Okay, we're on the same page. I am the financial literacy guy, right? So I'm like, okay, I checked back. I thought I was smart. I wire him $1,000 to Western Union. Hold on. Now he texts back. Not text, sorry. Emailed back. Back in those days, 20 years ago. I'm sorry, Mr. Bryant. The Western Union won't allow me to pick up the money. They say I have an ID problem. The other one, the first one was a credentials problem, this one was a ID problem. What do you mean they won't give you the money? Yes. Mr. Bryant, I'm so sorry. They won, won't accept my ID. They're going to send your money back. I don't know whether I told him not to do that. I think I did. And I think the money did come back to me. And then I. They told me we'll 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, I'm completely distracted. I wire another thousand dollars now to his sister, so called sister, right? And I'm waiting for confirmation. I don't hear anything. Finally, I get my people to check Western Union. Yes, the money's been received. Fantastic. Secretary comes to my office. John, you might want to check the bank. Call the bank. Check's been cash.
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Coca Cola Advertiser
Boom.
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John Hope Bryant
Drop the mic. Dude caught me coming and going. All I could do is raise my hand to the dude like, okay, that was really, really smooth. Now you won't. First, it happens to me, you know, it happens to me once, shame on you. Happened to me twice, shame on me, right? But it's not happening 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. Not a moss if I go to someplace I put on my American Express card. You don't take emergency press. You're not getting any money from me or I'll pay cash, no checks, no nothing where I can't, you know. You know, it has to be debated later. Don't think so. This dude again, 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 would respond to his email, had to believe he had the right email address, and waited till 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'd almost do anything with nothing. What happens when we become legal, my lord? Right? And by the way, I'm not picking on black people. I picked on every race during this podcast. But do remember that NASCAR came from moonshine running in the Appalachian Mountains. You know, moonshine runners, they realized they've been running from the police, that it was illegal, and you couldn't do that for the rest of your life. You're gonna get, you know, prison, probation, parole or dead. It was no retired moonshine runners. So they said, well what can we do? Ah, we can drive. And they start driving on in the mountains and driving on the beach and driving on in fields and driving around in circles and hello, here comes nascar and five generations later of wealth. You have billion dollar families that came. They can track their history to moonshine running. So rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First. Everybody has gone through something to get somewhere. And so here's our story as well. Love and Light John Hope.
- [26:25]
Coca Cola Advertiser
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John Hope Bryant
Yo yo yo, John O'Brien here on Money and Wealth. So there's a fan question from underscore, Mr. Charisma at Instagram. Underscore Mr. Charisma. So thank you for your question. I love questions. There is no there are no dumb questions like Quincy Jones. I asked how'd you get so smart? He said, I'm just nosy as hell. I want to know everything about everything. That's why God gave you two ears and one mouth. So you listen twice as much as you talk. So I love questions. Even questions that make me shake my head right? This whole, this whole podcast episode should be like, what you don't do, don't do it. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. So his question is, is paying your bills more important first or investing? And actually in a stabilized world, the answer to me is simple. You pay your bills because otherwise you're destroying your credit card. If you don't pay your bills, you're 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. Now you got too much month in your money. Now the white notices turn into blue notices turn into yellow notices turn into pink notices turn into 1-800-Calls-CUT OFF notices. And 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 phone bill off. I remember all my stuff getting turned off. And I. And I remember having toe up credit, toe up from the floor up. And it was not fun at all. So half of black folks have a credit score below 620. 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. And still if you, your credit score is below 620, which is half of black America, not poor people. That's 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 like, so you got to get your credit straight. As my dad used to credit. Used to say growing up in South Central, credit. He want his credit, right? Right. That's why his credit was all tore up. He couldn't even say the word credit. He was good at business, but not good at financial literacy. Now I just said all that. But my story would suggest that I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth because I made a bet on investing in me. And I cannot say this is for everybody because I could have been wrong. I could have completely. Now, I guess I could have made it right by just creating credit agreements. But if you go and listen to my story and you track it, when I was homeless, I hadn't paid the car note, the black Montero Jeep leased 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 financing my life by accident, financing my dreams by accident, my businesses, and not coming after me with a tow truck because I needed that car to get around. But I didn't. I couldn't invest in my business and pay the car at the same time. And I didn't have an apartment because I lived in my Jeep and I. But I took the 500amonth that 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 $5 a month, a month coming in and residual payments. 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 in my money. I had too many bills and not enough revenue and. But I thought if I just kept hustling, kept hustling, kept hustling that on the back end, I would, it would pay off and I would then pay off my debts. I could have filed bankruptcy. I didn't. And as soon as I start doing well, I called West Cob and whoever their financier agent was, I called all my creditors and I cut a deal and negotiated my payment. So I, I invested in me and that investment paid off. But it could have imploded. And if it had imploded, what I, what would I have done? I would not have filed bankruptcy. I still would have, would have, wouldn't got a job somewhere and I would have cut a deal with my creditors to pay them back little by little and rebuild. 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 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, not just cash it, and determine the size of my payoff with the return on the big bets I was making of investments in me. Well, thank God, some of which paid off. But if you just have a, if you're on a salary in a regular job, you don't have that kind of upside. And you need, like my mother did, like my father did, like my most, My family did, you need to steady insure, right? So you need a good credit score, pay your bills, put a little aside. You can do fractional investing, which means less than if you have $10 and the share price on something you want to buy is $100. You can buy $10 of a share. Fractional investing. I talked about timeshares, which is not the same as fractional investing because fractional investing is investing in an instrument that actually could be worth much more than what you're putting in it. Whereas the timeshare investment I made, clearly it was worth less than what I put in it because it was not intended to be an investment on the, on the front end to begin with. So I would say invest in yourself. If you're an entrepreneur, small business owner, that says something different than if you are like 9% of most people, an employed individual. Most people listening to this podcast are employed individuals, working class, middle class, whatever. So get your credit score right, keep it tight, pay your bills, communicate with your creditors on a regular basis. When you can't pay a bill, call them before they call you. Take whatever you have left. Don't go to Starbucks or I'm not hating on Starbucks, Starbucks. Don't go to some fancy barista place, go get you a Keurig machine, a coffee maker at home and save that, you know, 300 bucks a month or at least 100 bucks a month from that and then take $100 of that and invest it in stocks, bonds, invest, you know, whatever it is you like to invest in. Mutual funds, 401k, whatever. Start small and let it compound. I started an account at Aereo Capital Management, black owned mutual fund company when I was in my teens. In fact I had a chance to invest in the company my dumber and didn't do it when he first founded it, John Rogers. But I didn't open an account and I put a little bit in every month. I looked up one day it was $87,000. Back, back and back. At a time when 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 65,000, $60,000 a year, right? So it was like 80 some thousand dollars. I don't remember what it was, but I used that for something meaningful way back when. It might have been to put a down payment on my first piece of real estate, but I had forgotten about it. I just kept putting a few hundred dollars a month into this account and it compounded. Capital Management aerial investment got, I think it's aerial investment actually. John Rogers, you just look it up. John Rogers and Melody Hobson, Aerial investment, black owned by the way, biggest black owned mutual fund in the country and they were doing, they did great then, they're doing great now. And so I yeah, put in X and got out X plus Y and then use that to make another investment in the rest of this history, as they say. So I hope that answered the question, the fan question. Thank you. Underscore Mr. Charisma and let it keep them coming. Love and light. This is the Civil Rights movement. You have questions, go to Operation Hope. Talk to one of my financial coaches. I talk to them every quarter. They always find something messed up on my credit score. By the way, my credit report.
- [38:29]
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- [38:51]
John Hope Bryant
The.
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- [42:51]
John Hope Bryant
Yo yo this is John Hope Brian and this is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect podcast network with my brand Charlemagne. Good investment. I have personal experience with this. I'm gonna be very specific here. Are timeshares good real estate investments? The answer is no. Now I'm not hating on timeshares and there's different kind of timeshares and they're not really timeshares. They're more like real estate shares. The reason they call it a timeshare is it's actually not really as a value proposition about the real estate is about the time. So if you're a working class person, right, and I want you all to watch this documentary, the Queen of Versailles, which talks about this billionaire dude, David Siegel's name, who was and is in the timeshare business. And he explains it in the documentary how his son explains how they separate working class people from their wallets. Don't take my word for it, just watch it yourself. But let me just get into this straight away, that's just entertaining. This is factual timeshares. If you're a working class person, you're a postal worker, you're a teacher, you're some kind of a structured job, and you don't think you can afford vacations, which you need to get away, you know, and you want to know you can get away. And you know exactly what time of the year you're going to get away because your vacation is the same time every year. You can schedule that in advance. You want to go to some fancy place that maybe 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. 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 a presentation that nine times out of ten will have you writing a check or signing a very expensive loan agreement or making some other commitment that allows them to take separate you from your wallet. I know because it happened to me. And the only real estate investment that I've lost money on that I can remember, by the way, maybe it might have happened. The only one I can remember was a timeshare. And it's actually happening right now. I'm selling a timeshare I bought 30 years ago. 30? Yeah. 30 years ago. I bought an emotionalism because a civil rights leader in South Central LA who I was trying to befriend, I was trying to impress, I was trying to make him my friend. And he was, I'm sure, trying to get a free week's vacation and was told that if he sell this timeshare 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 want to mention his name because everybody will know who it is in LA. But I bought it 30 years later. I am just now rinsing the shirt that I got washed in from this so called investment and I'm. 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 $3,500. I bought this thing for 35,000 DOL. Two weeks of timeshare on the 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 Central la, so driving to Newport Beach I was like, oh my God, I can own a piece of this, right? But when I, when I sold that 30 years later and paid $3,500 a year, I think it was 3,500 a year, 1500, 1800 per unit per year and maintenance fee. If you don't pay the maintenance fee they default you in the agreement. And luckily and I even financed it with their ridiculous interest rate financing that the in house financing they did. It was some crazy interest rate 18% or some crazy thing. I don't even think about it. It was so high, gave me a nosebleed. I ended up paying that off, thank God a decade ago on the debt side, the loan side. So I owned the crappy investment free and clear but I still had to pay the maintenance fee every year. If I didn't pay the maintenance fee fee they could default me on my ownership agreement and put a lien against my ownership and take my ownership because if I don't pay the maintenance fee over two or three or four years they own the dang on thing because it's worth more than I can sell it for according to them. Because they control, by the way the outcome of the real estate which is one of the really important pieces about why I don't like timeshares with fee simple real estate. I control when I buy, when I sell, how I negotiate what I do with it on timeshares. They control, control it. I've already gotten, I already got it wrapped up in my own stories. Let me just finish it now, 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 10,000, $9,800 or something for one of the two units. And I don't know, I'm getting, you know, by the time I get out of this, I will have lost on the principal investment. So I paid 35, $38,000 30 years ago. I will sell it for less, probably $10,000 less is my guess than the purchase price. This is real estate on the beach in Newport Beach. And when you factor in the $3,500 or $3,800 a year and maintenance fee, I mean, it's simple math. Over 30 years, I got washed, I got soaked, right? And I didn'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 and pay for plane tickets and 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. I'm not hating on them. There was good marketing, good manipulation and, you know, good, you know, emotionalization because this guy got me to do it because I was trying to impress him. It's like, it's like a bad marriage. Easy to get married, hard to get divorced, right? I've been trying to get out of this dang on thing for a decade and a half, right? And you could transfer this timeshare 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 go someplace and my house is better where I'm going and I definitely not going, or if I'm used to something that's better than what you're going to put me in, I'm definitely not going anyway. So you can tell I'm sort of bitter about the whole thing. But it was my fault, right? Now, here's where it's a good idea if you want a no 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 wealth, thank God. So I was able to look at the world through different prisms over different times. And so I didn't want to go to the same place that I used to go to 20, 30 years ago. Wasn't interesting to me anymore. I want 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 over Year, decade after decade and you just want a vacation. Then that time share. Right where they. And they. And the other problem was as an entrepreneur, I never knew when I was going to have a week or two to myself and it would change every year because I'm hustling and running and gunning. But they need. But those I couldn't change. This also offended me. I couldn't change the dates. What do you mean? I own the place. What do you mean I can't change the date when I stay there? Because you own it with other owners. Right. And those other owners have a say. They've put in weeks that they want to reserve. And the managing partner of that, which is in this case was a hotel situation, they control the narrative. So I could say whatever I want. You know, I'm a limited partner to the general partner. I learned so much from owning that property. So it was actually gave me a PhD and what not to do. And you're hearing the backstory on 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 can love for the rest of your life or part of a network that you love and can switch out for the rest of your life. And you don't mind the monthly payments or the amount that you paid for it in advance and you don't mind the maintenance fees because that's, you know, that you're part of us experience that would cost you, in your opinion, ten times more. Okay. I mean, and by the way, the place I stayed in once or twice a year, if I wanted to buy that place, think about it now, today, cross street from the beach condo, sort of. I mean it would be a, it would be a couple. Yeah. Million and a half dollar condo. Say a million and a half dollar condo, maybe 2 million. Now when I bought it, 300,000. So when I bought it, 3000-013500-00350,000. I bought it for 35, $38,000. 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 timeshare, it's real estate share where you're buying part of a mansion, part of a 10,000 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, but there are networks of, there are these companies that you can basically buy a percentage of a yacht, percentage of a rv, percentage of a race car, percentage of a vacation home in different parts of the world or whatever and you really own, you know, a fourth of it or whatever it is. And you meet the people and you like the people. Cool. And you're dealing with sophisticated investors and if sophisticated management companies and when you want out, you know, it's a typically, you know, a decent deal when you exit and they facilitated it for you and you sort of, you could anyway. The wealthier you get, the more knowledgeable you are, the more sophisticated you are, the more financially literate you are, the better your chances that a shared equity situation will turn out giving you value. But if you're low income, low wealth, low financial literacy, desperate with a surviving mindset, you got too much money into your money, you're stressed out, you don't know the numbers, you're not paying attention. You finance the thing with the sponsoring company's finance wrong, you didn't pay attention. You're going to get nailed. The likelihood you're going to get nailed with something that's going to, 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? Like is. And then the debt collection piece becomes another business that they have. They have some of these companies, the lower end, not as ethical, have debt collection departments because they financed it for you and then they are charging 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, the, in many cases the predatory financing that they put in front of you and put you in. They made their money three times on that thing. If you paid it over time. So if you defaulted on 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, you you just want to be done with it. So you send them a going away present, a check and you sign off on it and they take that and remarket it. They remark the same property to some other person who's going to be the next victim. So just don't do it. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. It Looks Too Good to be True. That should be the whole title this whole week. If it looks too good to be true, it normally is. All right, love you much. And then you have any questions, go to Operation Hope. Talk to one of my Hope Financial coaches, tell them John Bryant sent you and I gave you a whole lecture about how I lost money on timeshare and don't want you to lose any money. There are good timeshare companies out there. There are good experiences. So don't. I'm not dumping on timeshare 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 timeshare and not a revenue share or a real estate equity investment share. And they don't emphasize any turn on an investment. It's return on fund. All right. Peace, Money and wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
- [56:03]
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- [57:46]
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- [59:59]
John Hope Bryant
At Amica Insurance, we know it's more.
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John Hope Bryant
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John Hope Bryant
When you combine auto and home insurance.
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