Why People Are Still Falling for the Nigerian Prince Scam in 2021

The brutal truth you need to know about building wealth

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The fantasy of “getting rich quick” is incredibly appealing for anyone living through financial hardship.

When I was dead broke and selling insurance, I can vividly remember sitting down with a “prospect” who was considering switching insurance companies for his business and asked me to put a proposal together.

Thinking back on the situation a decade later, it’s obvious that he was using me as leverage to save a few bucks with his current provider and never had any intentions of doing business with me.

I convinced myself I was getting the sale because it was a game-changer, and I was desperate. I would have made upwards of $30,000 on the deal, and it would have allowed me to clear my debts and change my life. So, I ignored the obvious signs that I was being used and convinced myself that this deal was really going to happen.

Living without enough money is painful.

Our minds don’t like pain, so we become receptive to the idea that someone can offer you a solution to make that pain go away in the blink of an eye. We look past the obvious red flags and focus on the promise of making the financial pain go away.

You’ve probably been exposed to countless get-rich-quick schemes in your life;

• How to set up an easy “passive income” business (just buy my program first.)
• Multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes.”
• And, of course, the classic “Nigerian prince scam,” which still swindles people out of $700,000 per year in the U.S alone. The Nigerian prince scam started in the ’80s and still fools people to this day.

How can a scam that was proven to be a scam nearly 40 years ago still fool people?

There are a lot of people living in financial desperation.

When you’re living in a state of desperation, you want it to end so badly that you end up falling for the most well-documented scam in modern history because someone is offering you a way out.

While most of us aren’t falling for the Nigerian prince scam, many people still seek out “get rich quick schemes.”

The brutal truth about getting rich

If you want to get rich, I‘ve got some good news and some bad news.

The good news;

I can tell you how to get rich.

The bad news;

It’s a boring process that will take a long time.

The steps I took to begin building wealth

• Invest in yourself.
• Build organizational equity.
• Avoid lifestyle inflation
• Adopt an investment strategy so boring that you don’t feel the compulsion to constantly check your account balance.
• Rinse and repeat for a decade or two.

Let’s expand on each of these ideas.

Invest in your most valuable asset; yourself

Your ability to earn an income is the most important investment you’ll ever have in life. Our ability to earn an income is what makes investing in any other type of asset possible.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “it takes money to make money.”

We can interpret that quite literally as the founding principle of our wealth-building journey. The more income we earn, the more money we have to invest and build our wealth.

Think of your income as the building blocks of your money fortress. The more you make, the more materials you have to build a bigger and stronger fortress.

A few ideas on maximizing your income

1. Get certification.

Certification means increasing your marketable skills in the job market. A University degree is one way to do that, but there are others;

• Trade schools.
• Diploma/certificate programs.
• Technical training and programs.

You can even get certification directly from Google for $49/month to land a job that pays $55,000 or more.

I am a believer in the 4-year University degree, but not for everyone and not at any cost.

As the world of online learning evolves, there will be more opportunities to make affordable and profitable investments into your human capital; you just need to be ready to jump on the opportunity.

2. Build organizational equity.

This is especially important when you are establishing yourself in a new career or a new employer. I’ve been working in my career in public policy for nearly a decade, and if there is one piece of career advice I would give to anyone starting their career it’s this;

Build a reputation as the most reliable person in the office

Remember, you don’t get paid for giving your time to your employer; you get paid for adding value to your employer. Any company is nothing more than a collection of people;

• Your boss.
• Your co-workers.
• Support staff.
• Board of directors.

If you want to “add value,” just think about what you can do to make everyone’s life easier (especially your boss.) If you build that reputation early on, that is how people will think of you for years to come. If you do that, you will begin to build what I call “organizational equity.”

Organizational equity is when your employer trusts you and looks at you as indispensable. Organizational equity can be cashed in down the line for many things, including;

• Promotions.
• Pay raises.
• More vacation.
• More autonomy in your job.
• Working from home more often.

While many people my age bounce from job to job, I have stayed with the same organization since grad school. I built a reputation as a worker and someone that can be counted on. Over the years, I have built substantial organizational equity.

If you’re going to work your ass off, just make sure it’s at a job you enjoy or at the very least can tolerate. Truly giving everything you have to a job you hate is a recipe for burnout.

Avoid lifestyle inflation

Once you obtain certification, find a job you like and work your ass off, and begin building organizational equity, your income will start to rise. This is where the hard work of managing money begins.

Making more money does not help you build wealth unless you can hold onto it. As your income starts increasing, there will be a natural pull to spend more money and upgrade your life to match your new salary.

The need to spend more as you make more is called “lifestyle inflation,” and it is the insidious killer of wealth.

Avoiding lifestyle inflation is necessary to increase your savings rate, and is, therefore, necessary to build wealth.

If you want to ensure your cost of living does not rise at the same rate as your income, take the decision out of your hands.

Every time you get a raise, your monthly take-home pay increases. If you want to save all of your new income, set up an automated savings plan equal to how much your income increased.

Let’s say you got a raise that added an extra $400 to your monthly take-home pay. All you need to do is call your bank, and have an automated savings plan where an extra $400 is taken from your checking account and deposited in your savings/investing accounts.

That takes the decision of whether to save or spend the money out of your hands.

Adopt the most boring investment plan imaginable

Once that new money is directed towards your investment account, the final big question is how to invest that money to build long-term wealth?

Investing in the stock market is one of the most reliable ways to build long-term wealth. But only if you invest the right way.

The dangerous way to invest in the stock market is to pick and choose individual stocks. While picking stocks and trading might seem fun, it’s often not very profitable. Statistically speaking, most investors be better off sticking their money in government bonds than trading stocks.

I don’t invest to have fun. I invest to make money. That’s why I have adopted the most boring investment strategy imaginable;

Invest as much as I can every month in a handful of low-cost index funds, and sit on them for several decades.

An index fund is simply an investment tool that tracks an entire stock market. When you invest in index funds, you don’t need to worry about what happens in the stock market on a day-to-day basis.

Some stocks will do great, and some will do poorly, but you don’t really care since you own them all.

There will be bumps and market crashes along the way, but for long-term index investors, these should not be seen as a reason to panic but a reason to buy more when prices are low and expected future returns are high.

If you want an extremely detailed explanation of index funds and why I invest in them, check out this story.

How to Get Started as an Index Investor

A comprehensive guide for beginner DIY investors

medium.com

Rinse and repeat a few decades

So, there you have it, the simple formula to getting rich;

• Invest in yourself.
• Build organizational equity.
• Avoid lifestyle inflation
• Adopt an investment strategy so boring that you don’t feel the compulsion to constantly check your account balance.

The final variable is time. If you follow these steps, you will get rich, but it will take a long time. That is the “brutal truth” about getting rich; it takes a long-ass time.

Accepting that fact has been one of the most freeing experiences for me. When I was financially desperate, I wanted to get rich quick, but since that is little more than a pipe dream, it led to continual disappointment and stress.

Once I accepted that building wealth is a lifelong process, I embraced that hard and boring work and became more relaxed, confident, and happy.

If you want to learn more about the steps to financial freedom, I invite you to enroll in my 4-day free course that blends basic money management with digital entrepreneurship.

This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.