Almost everything you say here is true, except...
Back in the 1980's Dave Del Dotto and similar authors started writing books on how to profit from Real Estate. I actually coughed up the scratch and tried it.
I bought several houses with no money down, and even took checks at closing for no less than $17,000 - on every house I ever purchased. In 2008 I owned a 4 bedroom house on ten acres, that I paid off in full in less than three years.
Dodd-Frank and the housing crisis ended all that, and none of it changed the fact that my ex wife decided that house was more valuable to her than our marriage, and now I live in a tool trailer I built from jobsite scrap and a few bedframes I bought at Goodwill.
Life isn't predictable, but not all financial advice books are just bullshit. Education, skill, and hard work can be used to good effect, but we are not in charge of our destiny. Strange that, but true nonetheless.
Thanks for being a skeptic. It is the first quality of a scientist. The second is humility, and very few scientists can get over how great and smart they are to reach that second quality. The third quality is being open minded and willing to follow the evidence, even if it goes where you don't expect.
Don't let your knowledge get in the way of learning the truth.
Very well said!
agree here
That is real life, right there. It's rare for people to hit it big and keep it the first time.... or second.
Still, this does not prove anything. Again, the lottery example. Many people bought the book. Some ended up like you, making some sales. Most didn't. Your thereafter life events only add to my arguments since they could happen before you bought the book and your life would be completely different.
The books were what they were advertised to be, a system that allowed someone with no money to buy property and get paid to do it. I only know this because, despite my skepticism, I bought the books and did it.
Other people might get such information and not follow it. I can't fault the books for that. That I ended up losing everything I ever owned was not the books fault either, it was mine for being in a terrible marriage to a terrible person and putting a fat, juicy reward on the table for betraying me and my kids.
My takeaway from the life I've led is that I am not the author of my destiny. I am but the protagonist.
just because it happened to you it doesn't mean it could happen to everyone else. it is not a recipe. read this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
I am aware that YMMV. Honestly, I am the poster child for YMMV! However, the books I purchased were exactly a recipe that could be followed by anyone. That's what I did. That doesn't mean that everyone that tries to follow a recipe is an equally good cook, or that all those with the recipe follow it.
I'm not trying to convince you that self help books are all legit. All I know is my personal experience with the real estate books showed that those were.
Sadly, Dodd-Frank legislation wrongly ended lender's ability to fund the kinds of purchases and buyers that such books taught. This is a large part of why I have not done it again.
When I tried, the legal landscape involving private finance had changed a lot, and lenders that worked in the area were heavily regulated to prevent the poor from breaking out of their poverty, as I had in the past.
Presently, if you aren't availed of a high paying job and a good credit score, creative financing methods are limited to such personal acquaintances as you may have, because commercial sources have been eliminated from the market.
My friend, more than this I do not know.
People who are religious and survive car accidents claim that miracles are real. They go out and are describe how their ways saved them. Heck they even describe their vision just before the accident.
Do you know what the problem is?
The vast majority of christians that took the exact same steps did not survive to say "hey dude, it didn't work". You only hear the opinion from those who are alive.
same exact thing happens with self-help books.