No matter what you invest in, you should be careful. Your money and your time are both precious resources and there are more than enough people and businesses out there who are willing to waste both to profit in some way. You might ask yourself what should I look out for when making these personal or business investments? How do I know what a red flag looks like? To better illustrate some of these ideas, let’s take a closer look at a fictional investor. We can call her Jane. Jane is a relatively new stock broker who works in an office near Manhattan. She makes alright money but nothing amazing as she has just started. She does not live with anyone and is fairly independent as a person. She supports herself to the best of her ability and has her own money and her financial portfolio where she makes most of the big decisions by herself. She has another financial consultant to help her in really stressful times but, for the most part, she typically does it herself. Now, Jane has only been working at this job for about a year but she’s already made more money at this job than at her previous two combined. It isn’t a large amount of money but it is enough to think about investing in some good business or personal opportunities that she has always wanted to look at. So the question then becomes, what should she look at? Well, there are two main types of projects she is thinking of investing in. The first is pharmaceuticals because she knows that is a burgeoning industry with a lot of potential. The second, and slightly more personal, are vacation homes along the Maryland coast. The Maryland coast is, after all, where her family spent their vacations as a child and she has a strong emotional attachment to the place. So, one day near the end of the financial quarter, she takes stock of her earnings and decides that she is going to make her decision within the next week. She needs to decide whether she is going to invest in a few potential pharmaceutical companies or a home she has been looking at. She just has to do the comprehensive research and decide. So what should Jane be on the lookout for?
Timeshares and Scams
Now, the home Jane is looking at is shared by others depending on the time of year and the price they pay. She honestly isn’t sure whether it is a timeshare or not so she does the smart thing and searches how to get a timeshare to know the basics and then legal advice on timeshares for added help. She then looks up a timeshare blog, looks up timeshare closing and how to cancel a timeshare just so she knows. She learns what a hardship clause is and how timeshare companies prey on people so that they can trap them in contracts that they can’t get out of. After her search of the hardship clause and other useful information, she closes the hardship clause tab and rechecks the stats and facts about the home she is looking at. The terms and conditions seem fair enough but the pricing is all off and, being a financially savvy person, she checks the fine print of the contract she would have to sign. She can see that it would be near impossible to get out of so she decides against it. Jane knows it is a smart move.
Other Scams
Jane heads back to her search for good drug companies after her hardship clause search and checks on her options to see if any of these are scams as well. A few are and she promptly closes them out, noticing that several herbal supplement companies she was looking at require a lot of time, attention and giving to people above you. She knows that these are all hallmarks of pyramid schemes and has no wish to get herself wrapped up in one. Finally, she lands on a legitimate one that makes drugs for heart conditions and decides to invest, knowing that is an ethical and moral company that treats their patients with real care and patience.