I can't resist using this as an opportunity to do a bit of remeniscing (sp?).
A few months ago, there was a man from British Columbia who made a post in one of the topics of this forum, in which he was (at least purportedly) seeking advice about an "early retirement" (a.k.a. get-rich-quick) program in which he had just enrolled. He was also obviously "fishing" for others to join him. He posted a link to the organization that was sponsoring this program, and out of curiosity I took a look at it.
A few things about it that immediately set my "bullshit detector" tingling were:
(1) that its opening page graphic of a sailboat in the tropics (implying a lazy, carefree retirement) was precisely the same as my daughter's "desktop" picture downloaded from Microsoft;
(2) that the "hype" contained Biblical references (implying the sanction of a divine being); and
(3) that participation in the program involved "recruiting" others to pay a fee to join (the hallmark of a pyramid scheme).
Regarding item 2, I have a lot in common with Mark Twain, who was certainly America's premier critic of phoniness in religion. I was born on the same date (November 30), in eastern Missouri, and spent a lot of time in my early years on the Mississippi River. And I agree with him that one thing worse than palin dishonesty is dishonesty cloaked in religion.
So, I posted what for me was a very polite response (since I generally like Canadians) advising this man that, if he was who he claimed to be, he had better disassociate himself from this scheme before he and others ended up losing money.
For whatever reason, I see that those posts have been deleted from this forum. But guess what! The very same scam is now being promoted by one AndyMolnar. I guess what we need is for Whakamole to pound it down once and for all
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I'll add an interesting thing about Mark Twain that relates to personal finance. In his novel "Puddinhead Wilson," he apparently coined the saying "Put all of your eggs in one basket, but WATCH THE BASKET." While this sounds clever, it is actually horrible investment advice. Twain apparently followed it himself and lost his fortune by investing in some sort of a typesetting machine that never proved commercially viable. It just goes to show you that even brilliant people aren't perfeck
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