Question. Why do seemingly intelligent people get excited about lousy ideas (especially lousy ideas promoted by sometimes obviously seedy people)?
Answer. The urge to get rich is easier to massage than the desire to avoid being poor.
We assume we will be the exception to the rule. That’s like a toddler thinking, “I’m going to be the one who does not fall down before I learn to run. I am going to win at this game – let others be the losers!”
Add to that an almost universal tendency to focus on our obvious and visible wants instead of our deeper and more hidden needs. The result? Much too often we are willing to go out on a limb in our dream of becoming part of the class of the shrewd and savvy people – those we think have beaten the laws of nature.
Only too late do we discover that no one beats Mother Nature’s immutable Law of TINSTAAFL. It is true, we learn, that There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
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The author calls it TINSTAAFL, but I prefer the truism “A fool and his money are soon parted.” By my theory we have 18 years (give or take a few) to teach our children. After that, their nature makes them too independent to learn from our experience. Then nature (the free market filled with shisters and cons) gets her chance to take over the education process.
There are people that consistently make good business decisions…and then there are the rest of us. Few of us are given the background to know a solid business plan when we see it, to distinguish the difference between an investment and a speculation, or to determine the quality of a business’s cashflow. We’ve been sheltered from financial risk for so long, we wouldn’t know it if we saw it…until it bites us in the wallet.