There are a few people I know who keep chasing investment opportunities. There are some people who are good in one field – say sales, marketing, operations, dentistry, physiotherapy,….could be anything, so they think they are good in finance. Of course some of them visit websites, talk to people, read books and suddenly believe that they have suddenly got competence to handle their finance. Unfortunately only 1 or 2 out of say n number of people I have met are really competent to handle their own money. I have said this in earlier posts, many people ask me ‘which are good books to read’. I send the link to them. ONLY 3 people (out of perhaps 3000+ whom I must have trained) have actually bought the books, read it, and applied it. Such people surely can and do learn – but the other 2997 do not even show an inclination to learn. Here are some schemes which have chased me….

Let me enumerate the ‘investment opportunities’ that I missed. Happily for me, I did not even waste an ounce of energy in considering these proposals except remembering the details enough for blogging about it :).

Car loan scheme: One proposal was Mr. A wanted to buy a car. So I had to use my IT return (which means my creditworthiness) to borrow from Icici bank (that was chosen by the intermediary) and buy a car. Let us say the EMI was Rs. 18,000, then Mr. A would pay me Rs. 22,000 p.m. for FULL period of the loan and at the end of the period Mr. A would buy the car from me at Rs. X (pre-fixed). That amount would be equal to the down payment of the car (that I made today) + 15% (i.e. 5% simple interest for 3 years).

The person who brought the scheme to me of course told me this was a fantastic 30% return scheme WITH NO RISK at all, and beautifully with no MONEY at all also!

Well to me the risks were as follows:

1. The car HAD to be in my name for 3 – being the term of the loan. If during that period Mr. A decided to hit somebody, do some funny business called drugs, or use it for transporting prostitutes, – and got caught, I WOULD BE IN JAIL. Simple.

2. If ANY person was hurt / killed in an accident in this car, I WOULD BE IN JAIL.

3. If Mr. A ran away with the car, I WOULD BE STILL paying the EMI, AND not even have the asset :).

4. Imagine complaining to the police that Mr. A stole my car. If arrested he could produce the papers showing he had the right to use the car. If not arrested I still pay the EMI. For recovering MY money I sue Mr. A. What a ride!

5. I should have played along and seen the agreement papers – would have been able to pick more holes in that perhaps.

more about such schemes….in later posts!