Everybody Wants Your Money : The Straight-Talking Guide to Protecting (and Growing) the Wealth You Worked So Hard to Earn

by Latko, David W.

• ISBN13: 9780060851156
• ISBN10: 0060851155
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-22
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

In this book, you'll learn the real-world, street-smart rules for managing and protecting your money -- told through the everyday experiences of people like you. Never before have such valuable insights and sage advice been stated in such a witty, informative, and straight-from-the-shoulder way. And that's no accident. The product of a lower-middle-class family, David W. Latko is a self-made multimillionaire who today manages more than $100 million in client assets -- and he did it by applying the plain-spoken truths contained within these pages. But Everybody Wants Your Money is not just one more book that promises get-rich-quick secrets. Rather, it is a detailed guidebook to protect yourself from the money traps we fall into by trusting our families, financial advisors, neighbors, or friends -- who mean us no harm but know little about building wealth. And Latko arms you against the unscrupulous predators who covet all that you possess -- and in the process will rob you of everything you need to achieve true financial security. Latko's book lays bare the scams and con games that target each of us on a daily basis, and tells you how to recognize -- and defeat -- those who delight in fleecing the unwary. In these pages, you will learn: How brokers, financial advisors, lawyers, and other "professionals" get their hands into your pockets . . . and how to pick professionals you can trust How today's divorce laws make a mockery of the so-called equitable settlement . . . and what you can do to prevent the resultant financial catastrophe How to manage the hard questions of estates, trusts, and wills while keeping your children from torpedoing your financial security, whether through good intentions or not Why most people lose staggering amounts of money when they shop for autos . . . and how to best even the most savvy car salesman in every negotiation How to keep your identity from being stolen in today's perilous world . . . and what to do when it is The real secrets to making money in real estate . . . and keeping it! Everybody Wants Your Money is packed with innovative, low-risk, and proven strategies for protecting -- and passing on -- the money we make and the wealth we build.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Preface	xvii
SECTION I How Brokers, Advisors, and Other ``Professionals'' Get Their Hands into Your Pockets---and How to Beat Them at Their Own Game	1	(54)
The Name of the Game . . .	3	(7)
Financial Advisors: Tales from the Dark Side	10	(9)
The Greatest Stock Con of All	19	(4)
It's All About the Benjamins (Uh . . . I Mean, ``The Commissions'')	23	(10)
Picking the Right Financial Advisor: Ten Questions to Ask . . . and How to Score Their Answers	33	(22)
SECTION II How to Invest in Real Estate Without Getting Taken Every Time	55	(80)
Real Estate: An Introduction	57	(3)
Four Real-Estate Myths	60	(12)
If You're Thinking About Buying a New Home . . . Don't	72	(8)
Second-Guessing Second Homes: A Radical New Approach	80	(25)
Destination Clubs: Five Points to Ponder . . . Before You Sign on the Dotted Line	105	(7)
Real-Estate Agents	112	(11)
On the Auction Block	123	(6)
Real-Estate Seminars and Other Scams	129	(6)
SECTION III You Always Hurt the One You Love (To Repeat: Everybody Wants Your Money)	135	(44)
Divorce---the Real Equal Rights Amendment?	139	(18)
Men Are Dogs	157	(7)
Kids: To Heir Is Human	164	(11)
Bonanza! (Or, Leaving Your Children All Your Money . . . at One Time)	175	(4)
SECTION IV Simply, Wheels	179	(24)
It's the Wheel Thing: Automobiles and You	181	(22)
SECTION V Scams, Confidence Games, and Identity Theft---Welcome to the New Wild West	203	(34)
Who Are You? Tales from the World of Identity Theft	205	(12)
We All Live in Today's Wild West---and the Black Hats Are Winning . . .	217	(11)
Uncle Sam, the Flimflam Man	228	(9)
SECTION VI We Have Met the Enemy---and He Is Us . . .	237	(20)
The ``Fiendish Five'': The Biggest, Baddest Financial Mistakes Around . . .	239	(6)
Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish . . .	245	(12)
Note on Sources	257	(2)
Index	259

Excerpts

Everybody Wants Your Money
The Straight-Talking Guide to Protecting (and Growing) the Wealth You Worked So Hard to Earn

Chapter One

The Name of the Game . . .

If life were truly straightforward, you could discover much of what I write about in this book on your own -- simply by tapping a key on a computer.

Do you want honest information about an investment in which you're considering placing your hard-earned money? Tap! Do you need to calculate the mix of risk versus reward -- in professional circles, we call this "asset allocation" -- that is right for your age, income, family situation, and so on? Tap! Do you feel an urgent desire to separate the scams from the genuine opportunities? Tap!

Alas, despite the proliferation of ever-more-powerful computers and access to ever-more-voluminous data offered by today's Information Age, it seems that about all one taps into is an ever-increasing level of maddening confusion, personal frustration, overly complicated efforts at elucidation -- and outright misinformation.

Not coincidently, this is precisely what most of us have come to expect when dealing with actual human "professionals."

There's a reason for this. And as with so much of what passes for "reason" in the world of personal finance, it's not good news for most common folks.

Consider: Do you really need a financial advisor to invest your money? Of course not; with the proper access to accurate information, you could calculate your financial requirements, track performance records, determine a risk tolerance acceptable to you, and come up with a pretty good financial plan for yourself.

But the fact is that most people wouldn't. They've been convinced by a barrage of TV commercials that they are incapable of it. They are terrified at the prospect of navigating these dark waters without an "expert" hand on the tiller. And as a result, many of us throw open our doors to often-affable strangers -- "experts" whose concern for our prosperity comes in a distant second to their own and that of the companies they represent.

The sad fact is that in today's world, there are relatively few real experts in finance (or law, health care, or any of the purported "professional" disciplines) -- but certainly, there are vastly more expert salespersons than most people realize. Consider it the victory of style over content, of hyperbolic sizzle over the authentic flavor of a fine steak.

Over the next few pages, I'll show you how slick salesmanship, not professional competence, allows many so-called professionals to get their hands on your money -- often leaving you without the slightest clue of how it happened, or that it even happened at all.

Let's start with the person you most need to trust: your personal-finance hired gun, the financial advisor.

It's not hard to find a financial advisor these days; in fact, it's hard to avoid 'em. Stand on virtually any street corner in the United States and throw a brick in any direction. Odds are good you'll incapacitate at least one so-called financial advisor and wing several more.

According to the National Association of Security Dealers (NASD), today there are more than 650,000 "registered representatives" toiling away approximately at 100,000 branch offices, representing over 5,000 member firms.

What they all have in common is that each office is filled with people who understand without reservation that they must produce or perish. It's a savagely Darwinian existence for them; an apt analogy is that of a pack of hungry dogs snarling and slashing and snapping at the prospect of any fresh meat that happens their way.

Guess who is cast in that singularly unappetizing role?

Nonetheless, the atmosphere at most brokerages, wire houses, or financial-advisor offices (with minor exceptions, these are interchangeable terms) is carefully designed to camouflage their intrinsic carnality. In fact, au contraire; in most of them, you'd swear that you had transported to a land populated by particularly benevolent Rotarians.

If you've been escorted to an office (you may not be: see below), you'll likely find the desk festooned with pictures straight out of Norman Rockwell; an attractive spouse and adoring children beam at the random visitor from every frame.

Some of these pictures are, I'm sure, even real. Nonetheless, back in my own days at a major brokerage office, I knew of several brokers who acquired their "family" pictures secondhand. One knot of brokers even traded their desk pictures back and forth in a regular rotation -- in their own way, perhaps, spicing up their fictionally monogamous worklives.

More likely, particularly if you are a "walk-in" to the brokerage -- that is, one who has not been prescreened to determine how much money you represent -- you may not even be sitting in an office. Instead, you're walked to one of several open cubicles known to the initiated as the "bull pen."

If so, this is a sure sign that the broker smiling warmly at you is either a raw rookie or a snakebitten veteran who has had an extended streak of miserable luck; either way, the branch manager has a chart that lists your prospective broker's name lower than the fortunate few assigned a real office.

That's right; neither age nor seniority nor union rules holds sway here. Produce income -- for the firm, that is -- and a broker moves into an office (or into a nicer one, if she's a real moneymaker). Have an off year, and she's back among the Dilberts on the main floor. Ironically, brokers are themselves commodities: fungible assets, cogs in a machine that relentlessly reconstitutes itself with ease. Every month, brokerage firms receive thousands of applications from newbie salespersons, each hoping to sign on and cash in.

The stakes are indeed high: produce a paltry $200,000 in annual commissions for the firm, and the hapless broker will feel the bull's-eye on his back. Make it half a million, and he probably will be allowed to keep his desk . . . at least for another year. Losers are not tolerated, but a top producer can earn a seven-figure income. All he has to do is keep selling, keep moving the product -- and keep earning more money for the firm.

Everybody Wants Your Money
The Straight-Talking Guide to Protecting (and Growing) the Wealth You Worked So Hard to Earn. Copyright © by David Latko. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Everybody Wants Your Money: The Straight-Talking Guide to Protecting (and Growing) the Wealth You Worked So Hard to Earn by David W. Latko
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