Well fellow ProcrastiN8rs, the weather’s getting cold. You know what that means. Time to hibernate and refuse to leave the house for the next few months, staying warm on the comforts of the couch.
I don’t know about you, but man, I HATE the cold! Much worse than the heat. Don’t get me wrong, being hot is uncomfortable. Especially when you’re just like...standing there and sweating your balls off. I mean, it’s one thing to be working out or doing some heavy physical labor and working up a sweat. That happens. That’s kind of expected. If I’m moving around a lot or exercising, I’m gonna sweat. It’s inevitable. But it’s a whole other realm when I’m literally just standing there and freaking pouring buckets of perspiration from my skin. The act of being idle becomes a sweaty activity. It can be so hot that being lazy is impossible, because even if you’re just lounging around doing nothing, you feel sweaty and out of breath, like you just ran a marathon. That, my friend, is certainly uncomfortable. I’ll admit. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, but I’ll tolerate it. But cold? Cold is actually painful. It literally HURTS to be cold. I mean you reach the point where you can’t even move. Your face, toes and fingers transform from human appendages to icicles and your muscles become numb. You’re literally frozen. It’s awful. There’s a fine line between *slight* discomfort and genuine PAIN, so I’ll take heat over cold any day. I’d much rather be a bit sweaty than frigidly paralyzed by icy air. Like is it really a healthy inhabitable place where the AIR hurts you? Of course, living here in the Northeastern part of the States, cold weather is something I inevitably face every year. And the only thing colder than the air outside is the heart of a dirty scammer! That’s right, my lazy dudes, winter is coming and ‘tis the season of ripoffs and fraud. Every year, during the winter season, you’ll see a slew of scammy websites, apps, products, and investment opportunities pop up left and right. While the outside world is decorated with lights, tinsel, and mistletoes, the Interwebs is decorated with fake deals, false promises, and scammy companies. What a jolly good time! Maybe people want to get a little extra cash to spend on the holidays. Maybe they want to take advantage of people’s willingness to spurage on “Black Friday” deals. Maybe, just maybe, people are on edge because they’re in pain from all this cold weather. No but seriously, for whatever the fuck reason, things take a bit of a spiral during the cold time, weather that has anything to do with the weather or not. But we’re not here to theorize about why or how that happens. We’re here to make you aware of what’s coming. Along with the bombardment of scams you’ll see crop up, we also see the impending doom of a dip in investment portfolios. Both the stock and crypto markets have a history of taking a bit of a downfall around this time of year. So unless you’re Amazon, Wal- Mart, or some other big billionaire retailer making bank during their month long Black Friday, it’s easy to lose money if you’re not careful. Last week, we covered the ProcrastiN8 Red Flags to Look Out for to Avoid Online Money-Making Scams and one of the reasons I decided to do that is because we’re about to see a blizzard of scams slam down from the skies. Today, I want to encourage you to hibernate, to relax and stay warm during this winter season. We’ll take a look at the type of bitter cold scams and frostbitten money loss traps you should look out for this season. Because just like cold weather, cold scams can cause you real PAIN! Again, I want you to be able to make a living from the comforts of your house, so I’ll share with you the experience I learned in making money online for about a decade. So grab that blanket and sit on by the fireplace, grab a mug of hot cocoa and let’s dive...right into it! The Super Awesome Deals are Super Not Real! We all want to get that special gift for that special someone...and maybe that special someone just so happens to be ourselves. Either way, when it comes to gift buying, we want to save money. Saving money in some “super deals” has become the whole gimmick of the season. Black Friday has slowly expanded into Black Month at this point, with “pre” Black Friday sales launching as soon as we howl at the moon one last time on Halloween night, Black Friday used to be a single day where stores would sell all their overstock at a huge discount, but it’s turned into a month-long phenomenon. Now stores are purchasing products for the sole purchase of being sold/displayed during Black Friday time; no longer selling just their overstock of supplies but going out of their way to buy MORE supplies just for the sake of filling the shelves. I say Black Friday “time” here too because as a key note, it’s no longer a single day of the year, but a whole fucking season of sales. And here’s the thing, it’s not even really *that* great of a deals anyway. See, there’s a lot of hype for grabbing a good deal. So much to the point, where stores aren’t offering the deep discounts that they used to during Black Friday time and instead are offering similar discounts to the random sales they have throughout the year. You’re really not saving that much. It’s all marketing. They sell you the *idea* that you’re getting a really good deal, when really it’s no more of a discount then you would have gotten during a random sale day in June, for example. Sometimes, they don’t even cut prices at all, but play off the psychology that people are out on the hunt for a good deal, so they just label it as such. Even legit companies become quite scammy this time of year, just to feed off the hype. To demonstrate how willfully hyped and ignorant people become during Black Friday, my dad and my aunt used to go out Black Friday, not necessarily to shop, but just to absolutely fuck with people. They’d grab something, totally worthless, like a pack of M&M’s and shout“OMG M&M’s ONLY A DOLLAR A PACK!” Next thing ya know, hordes of people would sprint over to grab this “exclusive deal” on candy. The kicker, the M&M’s weren’t even on sale. They were just the normal price you’d pay They used this same tactic with tampons, condoms, and even adult diapers. People would go nuts over this stuff. I ain’t kidding. Now, they aren’t marketers or anything, but they understood at a very fundamental level, people are willing to buy *anything* if they are given the premise that there’s a “limited time” to get it. It’s all about selling FOMO. Buy now or you’ll miss out on this great price! It’s the perfect opportunity to sell your snake oil. But seriously, imagine what marketers are trying to play here. The other thing too, you gotta keep in mind is that you aren’t saving money if you’re spending money you weren’t going to spend in the first place. People will buy things just for the pure reason that it’s on sale, thinking to themselves about how much money they’re saving. “Oh I better get it now while it’s so cheap”. Thing is, it doesn’t matter how cheap it is if it’s not something you really wanted to buy. Like okay, maybe if you need extra toilet paper and there’s some on sale or maybe you need a new lamp or something. But if you buy a big screen TV on an impulse just because you don’t wanna miss out on a deal, well I have news for you, bucko: you ain’t savin money. You don’t spend money to save money. It’s that simple. Of course, you may justify the purchase to yourself by saying something along the lines of “Well, I was thinking of getting one eventually. I might as well get it now while it’s on sale.” Well, that’s why you budget and save up for it. Now you’re gonna put it on your credit card because you don’t have the purchase in your budget. And then what, pay interest on the card purchase? You’ll end up paying more in interest than the amount you quote on quote “saved” on the sale. On top of that, as I mentioned, there’s probably a sale for that thing you want with as much, if not MORE of a discount than you’re getting during Black Friday. Now going along the lines of the deals aren’t worth it, it’s around this time of year that you’ll start seeing ads for straight up scam deals. This relates back to spotting a scam by seeing something that’s “too good to be true.” You’ll see something like the notorious “$28 mini laptop” WOW! What a deal! Twenty eight bucks for a laptop! If this isn’t raising red flags though, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s no computer you can build for that cheap. And even if you could, you can guarantee it’d be ridden with spyware or maybe explosives. You’ll end up getting shipped a box full of rubber bands, a surgical mask, and a RubberMaid container...or something else. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what: that whatever’s in the box upon delivery will most certainly NOT be that little laptop you were hoping to get. This is just one example of a common “too good to be true” type deal. Scammers use it as a way to get your money, or worse, your personal info. A lot of these sites will have you enter your credit card info,. I can promise you, even if you are shipped the actual product you ordered (which spoiler alert: you won’t be), you’re risking sharing your information with some random company. The kicker is you probably won’t even get it shipped in time for Christmas anyway. These companies are usually from China or other foreign overseas countries that take weeks if not months to ship something. If you really need a cheap last minute gift or deal, do what I do, go to Five and Below or a dollar store. They have cheap deals year round and it’s not a scam. Or better yet, just stay at home. Be lazy. Forget holiday shopping. It's all corporate propoganda anyway. Let’s move on and talk about some other scams to look out for during this cold season... The Opportunity of a Lifetime! If they aren’t offering you a deal of a lifetime, well then they’re certainly going to try to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime. While the elves are busy making toys, scammers are busy making scam programs. You’re going to see EFT games, alt coins, and High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs), all promising HUGE returns right around this time of year. This is to get you to shell out your hard earned money to fill the owners’ stockings. You’re going to see a lot of BIG projects with very ambitious goals or otherwise promises to fulfill pop up like Christmas trees in people’s houses right around now. Funny how everyone gets so inspired by eggnog and figgy pudding to achieve such grand things. Those grand things will melt away like a snowman, as each program disappears as quickly as they came. And sure, they may pay, at least for a little bit. But the program will close, the site will shut down, all before you get a chance to hit any sort of profit margin. But don’t be discouraged from investing in them at all. There are strategies you can use to come out on top. It’s a risky game, but one worth it if you manage to pull it off. You gotta play HYIPs like James Bond plays his dating game: get in early, get out fast. The early bird gets the worm, as they say. And as much as a prcorastin8r as I am, investing in an HYIP or new alt coin or EFT is nto something you want to be late to the party for. If you’re interested in how to play the HYIP game, I have an article about that I wrote before. Anyway, unless you’re playing the game the right way, you’re going to lose. Even if you do play by the right rules, there’s still a risk. It’s a gambling man’s game for sure. Just don’t be throwing your money at investment opportunities of new startups or otherwise “groundbreaking” technology or whatever. That’s all story and fluff. ‘Twas the night before losing all your money, if you’re not careful. And finally, the last thing to look out for, is not necessarily a scam, but definitely a loss trap with your investments. The Markets Will Dash Down Faster than a One Horse Open Sleigh! I don’t know if it’s people selling off their stock shares and crypto coins in order to have a bit more spending money for those oh so mediocre Black Friday deals, or if people are just following the trend and panic selling, but historically winter is a rough time for trading. I mean even right now, as of writing, the crypto market as a whole is on a steep downtrend, crashing negative 20% in just a week. But that’s all normal. It’s nothing to worry about, man. I’m no stock broker, investment expert, or otherwise financial guru. I’m just a lazy dude, so I’m not offering you any sort of advice or anything. I’m just laying out my opinion, man. But for real, the minute the temperature drops, the market drops too for a few weeks, maybe even all the months of winter, but it always recovers right around the time the first flower begins to bloom in the spring. I always see it as the real Black Friday sale. Like oooh look dividends are on sale! Bitcoin is on sale! These Axie Infinity EFTs are on sale! The worst you could do is panic sell. Never panic do anything, yet alone sell your investments. Relax and stay calm. HODL! Things will warm up, eventually. Just lay low and hibernate your investments. Brace yourselves, winter is coming! Take it easy, N8
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