bluntmoney.com

We all know the saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Why is it then that people are taken in again and again by scams of all sorts?

In some cases, people are taken in because they’re not as aware as they could be of technology. (An example of this would be clicking on a link in a phishing email.) But many times it’s more complicated than that. Consumer affairs lists the top ten scams of 2007, which range from work at home schemes to fake lottery wins. There are a lot of victims.

A lot of the time, what does us in is a combination of hope & greed. Who doesn’t want to believe that there really is a miracle cure, that you can get rich quick, that someone really does have the secret to quick weight loss, etc?

I was taken in by something once myself. A man pulled up to our house and asked me if that was my car in the driveway. When I said yes, he offered to pull out the dent in the door for several hundred dollars. I refused, and he kept lowering the price. Eventually I figured it was worth a shot, since I knew that having it done by a body shop would cost me about $700. I HOPED that he could save me money. The truth was, I paid him $150 or so for him to try (and fail) to take out the dent. Then I paid the body shop the $700 to do the job right, so it actually cost me an extra $150.

Why did I do it?

I had hoped for a quick fix. I had hoped for the easy solution. I was greedy, hoping to keep more of my money. The whole situation felt wrong, but…I was so tempted. Even now, it’s hard to explain why I opened my door, talked to a stranger, bargained with him, inspected his work and found it lacking, took his word for it that I was wrong and the dent would finish popping out later, went to the ATM machine, withdrew cash, gave it to him, and watched him drive away.

I’m not stupid, but I made a series of stupid decisions. (And the situation could have ended up much worse than just me losing $150 and some pride.) Even knowing that I’m not alone in doing stuff like this doesn’t bring much comfort.

But, I did a valuable lesson from this: don’t let desire for a good deal or wishful thinking overpower your gut. Your wallet and your pride will thank you later.

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