Sunday, August 8, 2010

Fool Me Once...

As I have mentioned before my brother in law has an interesting tactic on how he likes to make his money. He likes his money making to be as easy as possible and usually at the expense of others. My first experience with this was about six months after my husband and I got married. We were living in the basement apartment of my in laws and both working so money wasn't too tight at the time.

I should also probably mention neither my husband nor myself were very experienced in the financial world. The year before we were married my husband managed to spend about twenty thousand dollars on Cd's and dates with me. (And yes he feels I was totally worth it.) I was doing a little bit better, but not much.

Okay so here we were, my husband and I, being very green to the financial world and along comes my brother in law. He and my sister had been married a little over a year at the time when he found the way to make all of us rich beyond our wildest dreams. He had just found this up and coming Internet company that we could all get in on the ground floor with for only a small investment. This company had a new spin on how to make money on the Internet by selling things people already buy at the store. He mentioned names like Nike, Huggies diapers, and many other name brand name items that had already signed up to sell their product in this "Cyber Mall".

I'm sure you're probably already giggling to yourself, but you have to remember this was over eleven years ago. Not many people bought a lot online at the time...well not like they do now anyway. 

So my brother in law had my husband and I sitting down so he can give us his presentation about how we could be one of the first to invest in this company. After he gave his little spiel I looked at my husband and asked him what he thought. He wasn't too impressed with the whole thing because at the time we didn't even own a computer let alone have the Internet, but if you signed up you received a nice leather binder when you  so he thought it wasn't a totally waste and said I could do it if I wanted.

So now it's down to me. I sat there for a few moments going over in my mind what I should do while my brother in law rambled on how nice the stupid leather binder was and how it was totally worth the one hundred dollar sign up fee on it's own. I couldn't give a rats butt about the stupid binder, but I was still thinking pretty hard if I should pass this golden opportunity up.

Now I'm sure you're thinking "Don't Do It", but you have to understand that I grew up hearing the story of my grandfather who had the chance to get in on the ground floor of Coke Cola and passed it up because he didn't think the investment would ever pay off. I had to listen to this story being told by my father at least once a year and can still hear him almost sobbing how we all could have been rich had my grandfather just taken a chance. (See where I'm coming from now)

So I wrote the check, signed the papers and asked what was next. My brother in law told me he would get back to me on what to do next. About two weeks later he called to say we all needed to go to these meetings being held by the company and we all had to get as many people we knew to invest and go to these meetings.
At this point I'm a little uncomfortable asking people to invest in something I still know nothing about after two weeks of being in on the "ground floor".

So my husband and I decided to go to the first meeting without inviting anyone to get a feel of where all this was heading. We sat down next to my sister and waited. There were only about seven of us in attendance and I was starting to get a little worried at the low turn out when the presenter of the meeting stood up introduced himself then jumped right in to welcoming us as the newest members of...wait for it...almost there...here it comes...Amway!
Yep I am now screaming inside my head. I had just signed up for Amway's newest conquest of taking over the world using the Internet. Someone please kill me is all I could think. At that moment I looked at my husband, bugging eyes and all, and said "I think that's our sign to leave."

That was the one and last time I ever got in on my brother in laws stupid money making ideas and yes I still wish I could get a refund and give the stupid leather binder (which I still have eleven years later) back!

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