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BUT I HAVE MY moments where it all goes out the window. I wish there was another way. An easier way. Like the alchemists of old, I succumb to delusions of instant wealth! Lead into gold! The fountain of youth! A laundry detergent that also makes you thin! I want to believe that out there somewhere is a formula, a foolproof formula that will make me RICH! A NIGHT AT THE GRAND HYATT It was after just such a moment of chemical imbalance that I found myself at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York last month, attending a (FREE) two-hour seminar designed to create “1,000 new millionaires by the end of this year.” Of course, I was there ostensibly for work. But deeeeeeeeep down, where I’d never admit it to anyone — OK, yes — I was willing to be one of those millionaires. And as much as I didn’t believe it was possible, as much as I felt like I was walking into a scam, I secretly wondered if maybe, just maybe ... |
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When I walked into the vast ballroom, it was packed with hundreds of other millionaire wannabes. I was shocked. Shocked! Who knew there were this many people yearning for an easy way to get rich? But it was also a relief. It’s embarrassing to walk into something like this, terrified that someone from your last job might see you. As I squeezed myself into one of the folding chairs, I became just another hopeful face in the Super Bowl-size crowd. STEP RIGHT UP, MA’AM The guy up front was smooth as he delivered his well-practiced sermon on the gospel of Robert Allen. In case you aren’t a fan of late-night infomercials, Robert Allen is a real estate investment guru and the author of “Nothing Down for the ’90s: How to Buy Real Estate With Little or No Money Down” and other books that are basically about how to buy and sell property without using a dime of your own money. I’d tried to read his new book, “The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth,” on which the seminar is based, but with little success. First of all, reading the book takes so many minutes that you feel cheated in the first chapter. (Shouldn’t I be a millionaire already?). Second of all, he wrote it with Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” and you don’t want to get me started on that. So I was feeling cynical. Impenetrable. I wasn’t buying it. At first. But Smooth Guy was good. I knew he was good because I didn’t even notice that I was starting to believe him. After all, the facts speak for themselves. Robert Allen has a knack for making wads of money from kooky real estate deals. I define kooky as this typical strategy: You make a cash offer on a property you can’t possibly afford, so you get another investor to loan you the money, then you “close quick” and sell it immediately to someone else for more money, thus making a killing. 7 PROPERTIES IN 57 HOURS Robert Allen once bought seven properties in 57 hours in San Francisco using none of his own money. I checked it out with the Los Angeles Times, where they get so many requests for this particular 1981 story that the research department knows it by heart. Then he did another stunt in St. Louis where he taught three unemployed people to do it. |
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What’s more: Bob wants us to learn the system. After all, Bob doesn’t need to make any more money. Bob is rich already! Bob just wants you to learn the system. Anyone can do it. An eighth grader can do it. It’s That Simple. LETTING LOOSE MY INNER BILLIONAIRE I was weakening. Like that moment at a party when the guy you wish would leave you alone unexpectedly takes your hand and despite yourself you feel a tingling at the backs of your knees as your resistance departs. Like that. It all sounded so easy, so plausible. And besides — THERE WAS A SYSTEM. I love systems. That’s why I love my budget. Systems work. And all I had to do was learn it. Something about getting business cards. Calling myself a real-estate investor. Don’t answer the phone. Always return calls. (Why? Unclear. Never mind.) Buy foreclosed properties. Foreclosures are at a 30-year high. (They are? Never mind.) Buy low. Sell high. Use other people’s money. Venture capitalists advertise in the classifieds. Sure. By summer I could be buying a small island off Capri — WHAT WAS I WAITING FOR? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I was waiting for the pitch. That’s what I was waiting for. My inner billionaire was clamoring to be let loose, to realize all that untapped potential — and cash — but my brain still had a grip. This had to come at a price. But how much? IT’S TESTIMONIAL TIME! Then something bad happened. On the big video screen at the front of the room, they started to play cheesy testimonials of real people’s success stories. Oh, it was terrible. A complete buzz kill. I wondered if they were hired actors. Like “Ernie and Katherine Vargas,” who were shown in some unnamed suburb, next to properties they had bought and sold. And with a baby in a stroller. “We’ve fallen in love all over again,” Katherine simpered. Sure. Money. It brings us all closer. Until then I had been thinking, scheming: Should I do this? Or should I just write about it? Why just write about it, M.P., when you could become a millionaire? They say hope springs eternal, but then greed must be her twin sister. I actually had visions of how my little column would become known far and wide because I’d be the first personal finance columnist ever to become a MILLIONAIRE from a stupid self-help seminar. NOW THE WINDUP … We were down to the wire. It was after 9 p.m. They had given us all just enough information to feel crazed with ambition, greed — and fear. On the one hand, you were ready to go, on the other, you knew you needed more. “Did you learn a lot tonight?” our fearless leader asked the dazed audience. “Yeah!” everyone shouted. Well, if you learned this much in TWO HOURS with just ONE PERSON, imagine how much you’d learn in THREE DAYS with TWO INSTRUCTORS!!!!! THREE DAYS OF LIVE, HANDS-ON TRAINING!!!!! The audience murmured in agreement. |
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And how much is this golden opportunity? “The same price it’s been for the last 16 years,” Smooth Guy intoned, gesturing to the big screen, which now flashed the knock-me-down amount of: $4,995. AND THE PITCH I gulped for air and looked around, trying to gauge the reaction of the other millionaires in the room. “It’s so small, so insignificant in the scheme of things,” Smooth Guy said, without missing a beat. And because you all are here tonight, there is a special discount. That’s right, this three-day hands-on training is available to you for just $3,495 — AND I’ve been authorized to give everyone an additional $1,000 off! Now the big screen displayed the bargain basement price of $2,495. Of course, that’s more than I paid for my car. It’s more than half the down payment on my house! I felt, for the first time in my life, as though someone had poured a bucket of cold water over my head. It wasn’t my inner billionaire that I had gotten in touch with but my cynical, streetwise, inner New Yorker. And she wasn’t the least bit fooled by their little financial sleight of hand of seeming to knock 50 percent off the price. BACK TO REALITY I tried to tell myself that I’d known. That I’d felt the pitch coming all along. And I had. But I was expecting to get hit up, not sucked dry. I got that prickly, sweaty embarrassed feeling you get when you’ve been made a fool — even if no one was there to see it. But you still know you were THIS close to being had. As people zoomed to the back of the room to fill out applications and hand over their credit cards, I took stock of the evening. It started with the preaching of the Gospel: the man, the myth, the method. It moved on to the specifics — the system, the strategies, the techniques — which were already blurring in my mind. How much had they told us, really? Just enough to whet our appetite for wealth. Just enough to make you feel like $2,500 was not too much to spend on a course that could change your life and turn you into a true-blue millionaire. Then I started to do the math. There must have been at least 230 people who plunked down $2,500 that night. That’s $575,000! The course lasted a total of 22 hours. That works out to $26,136 an hour! I’d like to see Robert Allen make that kind of money buying real estate with no money down. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the kind of investment it takes to be a millionaire. I interviewed several people who committed their time and money to this dream after they’d taken the three-day training seminar. “It was like drinking water from a fire hose,” commented Robert Bond, who, like the other participants, came away feeling that he’d gotten a lot of information for his money, but he wasn’t sure what or how it would play out. Marjorie Stark, 60, who works for the public school system in Queens, was more overwhelmed. “When the seminar comes back to New York, I’m going to take it again,” she said, referring to one of the perks, which allows people to attend as often as they need to. “There was so much material, you couldn’t absorb it all.” Bill McMorrow, 52, who used to do architectural woodworking until a hand injury put him out of work, is more practical. “I don’t want to become a millionaire,” he said. “But I was inspired to make a decision about going into real estate and signing up for some classes so I can get my appraiser’s certificate.” In the next few months, we’re going to follow these and other folks as they try to work Robert Allen’s system. If they all wind up becoming millionaires, and I’m still a nobody working for The Man, I’ll kick myself all the way to the next seminar.
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