Jazztin Antonii Acedillo 
“No risk, all reward, start earning passive income immediately!”
If you’ve been on the internet for long enough, every once in a while you may have come across the occasional from rags to riches story paired with a referral code for merchandise or coaching and consultation sessions.
As inspirational as others may seem, one can’t help but look at it through a skeptical lens and nitpick details that seem off or too good to be true, but with a rise in popularity as of late, you can’t help but wonder what’s going on.
Hook
First, you get lured in with all kinds of marketing strategies, fancy words, and unrealistically high returns. Leveraging the psychological principles of urgency, scarcity, and social proof, they cultivate a sense of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and prey on the desire for quick and effortless wealth.
Sinker
Once you get a taste, it’s certainly hard to limit yourself, inevitably you start wanting more. With the promise of wealth and success slowly being ingrained, you invest more time, money, and effort into the scheme. You may start purchasing additional products, upgrade to higher-tier memberships, or rope others into the same scheme, your involvement deepens and you slowly rely on it.
Why this is a concern
Gaining financial independence, having the luxury of disposable income, and not having to worry about making ends meet are something that we all strive for. A sense of financial freedom, learning to invest, and having a few side hustles here and there are all well and good but the danger comes in when people fall victim to schemes promising quick and effortless wealth.
What happens when you rope in someone with no disposable income, already struggling to make ends meet and the supposed business just vanishes into thin air? Having trusted your judgment or being influenced by your enthusiasm they decided to join, only to find themselves left with nothing. For those in unfavorable financial situations, the loss of even the smallest sum of money can be detrimental, leading to the inability to pay bills and provide basic needs for themselves and their families.
With unclear or unspecified business models and no transparency on how profit is generated, can you ensure that your personal data and money is secure? Many of these schemes operate on unsustainable practices and even outright fraud. Having little to no information regarding its business model and process on how it generates profit, you could be exposing yourself to fraud, identity theft, and financial loss.
If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is, but when desperateness, opportunity, and a little bit of curiosity mix, one might find themselves getting involved in all sorts of things. Get-rich-quick schemes are predatory in nature and exploit those affected by poverty and know little about its dangers. While you may hear stories of those who actually made it big time from using that system who’s to say that this wasn’t just an isolated case of luck, among the 8.1 billion people in the world you have around a 0.0000123 percent chance, is this a risk really worth taking?
Every individual’s circumstances are different, some are well-off and have the luxury of disposable income, while others are not so fortunate and are barely getting by. Romanticizing resiliency and just ‘working hard till you eventually make it’ gets tiring at times. At the end of the day you ultimately still get to decide how you get and what you do with your money, but think about it for a while, before taking the bait, ask yourself: Is it really worth the risk?
