I was watching some reality this last week. There is a new reality show on meter maids. You have got to be kidding me. I actually saw part of one episode and looked a little interesting. Then just got boring. Poor meter maids, stupid people. LOL. Same arguments over and over and over.

Anyway, then I saw "The Real Hustle." It was a few scam artists pulling off various scams. The first one caught my attention as a lady was sitting alone in a park with her purse sitting by her feet. I usually put my purse on the floor as well, but wrap the strap around my knee or put it between my legs. Apparently this is smart; not paranoid. They took her wallet in like a minute. But I have to say it was eye opening since I could see the same thing happening to me. Regardless how careful I was holding on. (They also stole a cell phone from a guy who had it sitting right in front of him. Tricky!)

So it sucked me in. But then it just got really stupid. I thought, "Who falls for this stuff?" It was tricky but I didn't see the lure in the other 2 scams. One was that monty game on the street where they get people to bet loads of money then and there, on a card game. Just screams scam. Regardless, I wouldn't gamble $60 or so on the street. Maybe $2. LOL. But it was a well planned trick that got a lot of people to drop a lot of $20s pretty quickly. Amazing.

& then of course the stupidest where a guy walks into a cafe on his cell and loudly talks about the antique plate at the market around the corner selling for $60 when it is really worth $800. Not that I would think it was a scam. But I can't honestly see getting excited and running to buy the $60 plate. PArticularly not being much of an antique seller. LOL. Of course they made $9,000 off that scam in the course of ONE Day! Which means pretty much means that just about everyone that overheard that conversation ran to grab the worthless plate for $60. YIKES!

This is all very relative to personal finance. The dear friends I have that struggle the most financially, are the ones who are the most gullible and least financially savvy. They have fallen for all the scams in the book. They can never give up the hope of winning money or getting something free (usually these are scams that cost them in the end). They spend so much time AND money chasing these "get rich quick" schemes. All they really had to do was buckle down and get a financial plan. It's much simpler and less heart breaking in the long run.

Anyway, the SA blog covered this topic today and I so it spurred me to write on it.

I am very thankful my parents taught me from a young age to spot a scam. I learned that "you don't get something for nothing" when I was probably 8 or 10. & that is the time to teach your kids. When they don't have any money to lose. LOL. So they don't learn the hard way when they are older and do have money to lose.

& watching the Real Hustle I think will probably open my eyes to some scams I hadn't heard of. I don't think my knowledge and wariness makes me immune from scams. I wish! However, the bulk of the scams that you run across daily are usually simple and quite obvious to the skeptical. I mean, if I had a penny for every time I won a "free vacation" or a "large sum of money". I had a lot of friends recently "win a free computer" and handed over their credit card for the shipping which cost hundreds of dollars. Also, the penny stocks, I know people who can't pay their bill but buy the penny stocks they get sold in the obviously spammy e-mails. (Not thinking why would people give you this insider info for free? & the basic rule - never pay ANYTHING for a prize. Don't give your credit card #!)

I also saw this article on the topic. Another good, relevant one (and mentioned "The Real Hustle" too).