Financial Advisors React to the WILDEST Money-Making Schemes

We all like making money. So, why not react to the wildest money-making schemes? Brian Preston (CFP®, CPA) and Bo Hanson (CFA®, CFP®) are back reacting to the internet's wildest money-making schemes (from an "8-figure 12-year-old day trader" losing $11,000 before breakfast to Mr. Beast grocery scams). Building wealth isn't about outsmarting the system with a clever scheme, and we’re here to share why following tried and true strategies can help you build wealth that lasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:01Brian Preston?

  We all like making money. Unethical ways to make money, part 12. So why not react to the wildest money making schemes?

• 1:08Speaker 03

  This guy found a genius way to make money.

• 1:10Speaker 04

  Brent, I am so excited about this because when I hear scheme, I know that the internet is about to deliver.

• 1:17Brian Preston?

  That's where the good stuff is, schemes.

• 1:19Speaker 05

  Welcome to my realistic day in the life as an eight-figure, 12-year-old day trader. Every day I usually wake up around 2:00 a.m. Today I decided to sleep in a little. First thing I do after waking up is to make some coffee and go for a run. Feeling a little tired today, so I just did a light jog and then we're headed straight to the gym. Gary Vee motivational speech on, a quick back workout, some deadlifts, hoop sesh, shower, and we're headed to the office. At this point, it's 6:00 a.m. Pacific time. The market opens in 30 minutes. So I begin by checking up on my clan and collecting some gold and elixir. 6:30 a.m. I see a Big Dipper formation on the AMD stock. So I go in with some options. While I wait for that position to hit my take profit, I go ahead and cook up some breakfast in the kitchen. Come back to a $4,000 loss on that AMV position. I then quickly go into a few more trades here to make all that money back.

• 2:02Speaker 05

  But we hit another $7,000 loss on Neo stock. So I took a loss of about $11,000 for the day. I'd say that's a little better than usual for me.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  So much pressure, especially for young people, that there is a one only right way to be productive and efficient and effective. And I just don't think that that's true. That's not been my experience.

• 2:22Brian Preston?

  Let me go ahead and cut through all the noise and give you the investing cheat code. That's right. Here it is. Lean in. Come on in.

• 2:31Brian Preston?

  Instead of trying to beat the market, be the market.

• 2:35Brian Preston?

  Buy those index funds. There you go. I just summarized it, made it easy. That's the scheme that's gonna work.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  This guy found a genius way to make money. He set up a cardboard sign near a cycling track that just said bottles. Pro cyclists often drop their water bottles during races to save weight and go faster. And sure enough, some riders started tossing their bottles right where his sign was. In the end, he collected a bunch of bottles, made about $5, and helped keep the road cleaner at the same time.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Here's the thing, this was good for everybody. It cut down on litter. It was a way for the cyclist to improve their ride. And he made a little bit of money on it. Look, there wasn't a huge impact of this. I don't say this is a scheme. I think this works. I think this is okay.

• 3:15Brian Preston?

  So, look, I'm out of the game on this stuff, but for, there was a season where my wife was running these half marathons. And I did find it amazing that a lot of people just like disrobe while they're in the middle of running or cycling or whatever.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  I have not been to those races.

• 3:31Brian Preston?

  And then they get hot and then they're ticked off that they've only run three miles when they got 10 more to go. So I think there's probably a whole business out there where people like pick up Lululemon or all the other fancy clothes that are just distributed on half marathons or marathon runs.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  So you saw this clip and you're like, you know what, he had bottles.

• 3:50Brian Preston?

  No, I'm trying to help him. I'm trying to help him cut the corner.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  And it's gonna say clothes on it.

• 3:54Brian Preston?

  This is not the way you make the money. This was, this is, I'm telling you, there's a better way to do money.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Come run the Money Guy Marathon. Clothes optional, right? That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm hearing you say.

• 4:05Brian Preston?

  They don't get naked. But they get hot.

• 4:09Speaker 06

  Most people look at insurance as death benefits and they get money I gotta be able to pass away. The wealthy look at insurance policies as something that grows in assets.

• 4:22Brian Preston?

  Oh, he's talking about.

• 4:23Speaker 06

  They don't use the bank. They become their own bank.

• 4:27Brian Preston?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:27Speaker 06

  By getting a certain insurance policy on theirself, which grows in interest that they can borrow from. If I have $500,000 inside the insurance policy, I can borrow from me tax free. So whatever I spend is completely tax free.

• 4:46Speaker 06

  You can live off $5 million inside of insurance policy.

• 4:51Brian Preston?

  Step one, get $5 million.

• 4:53Speaker 06

  To 10% interest because it spits out every single year. This person is going out and giving their money to the dealership, paying them off every single one. And going to pay their, giving their money to the banks by paying their mortgage. The wealthy borrow that money from their insurance policy and purchase the house. And they paid theirself back off with it. They go to the dealership. They purchased a car in full with the insurance policy, tax free.

• 5:20Brian Preston?

  You know, it's not cost free, expensive whole life insurance.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  That's right. That's exactly, uh, there are glimmers of truth in what he was saying. There are, you know, you can build up cash value inside a life insurance policy. You can borrow against that cash value. It's a tax free event so long as the policy does not go into lapse. The problem is, is if you want to spend money, you want to use your resources. Why on earth should you have to borrow it from yourself? Because now you're playing this game to where you gotta make sure the policy stays in force. And one of two things happens, either you have to pay back that money at some point, or it becomes this giant taxable event, or you gotta die.

• 5:57Brian Preston?

  You know, this infinite banking thing that, that, that you see, the reason you see so much coverage on is because selling life insurance is extremely profitable. Yes, it's true that the uber wealthy do use life insurance for some arbitrage opportunities that they.

• 6:13Brian Preston?

  That's the wealthy. They also fly in private jets. I don't see you trading in your Southwest tickets to go buy an airplane. First step, step one, go buy a jet. You know, that's what that's essentially what these guys do when they say, hey, all you have to do is build up $5 million. Nobody's giving you the $5 million. You still have to fund these things. You still have to pay all the cost of insurance. There's a better way, and this is not, that's, that's why it's fitting quite nicely into our schemes.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot, designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network, and no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 7:40Speaker 07

  Okay, this is genius. And behind every genius product idea is a genius business idea. Here's how I would use this above ground pool to make a million dollar business and how you can do it too. I would go to Tractor Supply and buy a $400 stock tank like this one. Then I would go to Amazon and buy a $200 above ground pool jet and nozzle kit. I would get them to my house. I would build this using YouTube and chat GPT. I would take professional pictures of it and post pictures and videos of it in all of the mom Facebook groups and on Facebook Marketplace. I guarantee you, you can build these for under four hours and a thousand dollars in materials and sell them for $5,000.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  So it's hot tubs. He's building hot tubs. Was it a pool or was it a hot tub?

• 8:19Brian Preston?

  I don't think there's a heating element. There's only a filter element.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Sure above ground pool basically in

• 8:26Brian Preston?

  This is gonna have a designated market by the way, I don't, I don't see it. Maybe here in Nashville it would do well, but I just don't see this. I don't see you going to Manhattan and going to the tractor supply store and setting this, setting up this um scheme. You're gonna end up spending eight thousand, no, mark that, twelve thousand dollars worth of supplies. So you might sell two and one of those could be your mama or your grandma buying your above ground thousand dollar. Nobody wanted swimming pool.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  I don't see grandma getting in that pool. I don't think that's a grandma safe.

• 9:00Brian Preston?

  And by the way, here's the business is you, you sell it to them for a thousand. And then you say, hey, in four months, when this thing's assessed pool and covered up with all kind of grime and dirt and everything else, I'll haul it away for four hundred dollars.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Look at that, get it on both.

• 9:17Brian Preston?

  Get them both ways.

• 9:20Speaker 08

  Unethical ways to make money, part 12. You're gonna go to Walmart and you're gonna have your friend follow you recording on his iPhone. Then you're gonna go up to strangers, you're gonna say, do you know who Mr. Beast is? Then you're gonna ask for one dollar to cover some of your groceries. They're gonna think they're in a Mr. Beast TikTok video. They're gonna give you one dollar and expect for you to give them ten thousand dollars in return. But you're gonna take that dollar and you're gonna walk out of the store. Repeat that 20 times at the Walmart and that's 20 bucks an hour. Work smarter, not harder.

• 9:45Brian Preston?

  Yeah, and then you get beat down in the parking lot.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  I'm playing this out.

• 9:53Brian Preston?

  By the way, you have to have this guy's hair.

• 9:58Brian Preston?

  And you have to make sure you show up with, with this, this tank top.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Tank top.

• 10:03Brian Preston?

  People truthfully might be thinking that if they don't give you the dollar, they're gonna get beat down.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  What about the people where it's like, do you know Mr. Beast? Yes, I do. Can I have a dollar for groceries? No, you can't. I don't think I would just randomly hand somebody a dollar. I don't think this would work. I'm thinking, I really thought through it. I don't think this would work.

• 10:19Speaker 09

  So there's a credit card hack where you go to chase.com, you request travel cards. So you get the Marriott, the Ritz Carlton card from Chase and then you get the United card. They're all Chase cards and those give you a high limit. So they'll give you like 20, 25. 5K limit because they're traveling cards and they expect you to spend a lot of money. So you'll get like 80K, 90K. And then what you do is you call Chase and you tell them, hey, I want to combine these cards into one. I want to transfer the credit limits into one card. But you apply for a Chase Freedom Card. That's 0% interest for 15 months.

• 10:48Brian Preston?

  A lot of work there.

• 10:49Speaker 09

  All your credit limits from the travel cards to your Chase Freedom Card. Now you have an 80, $90,000 credit card.

• 10:54Brian Preston?

  Add 0%.

• 10:55Speaker 09

  0% for 15 months. So I did that for me. I did that for my wife, Sill, and I did that for my dad. And I created like $300,000 of credit limits, 0%.

• 11:07Speaker 09

  So.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  So, but, but then what? Right, but, okay, so.

• 11:13Brian Preston?

  It's not free money. I mean, I guess they think 0%.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  But what do you do? Like you rack up this $300,000 of debt. You gotta, you gotta pay it back. I guess maybe he's thinking there's some sort of like arbitrage.

• 11:24Brian Preston?

  This is, this is not the way you make money. Go get out there and get as much credit limit with the banks. Yeah, they'll give it to you. You can go get money from the mob too. They'll give it to you and then at some point, you gotta pay the money back. But how many clients of our firm have come to us? We work with millionaires all across the country, 49 states. I don't think any of them have come from playing this 0% interest rate scheme.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Zero of our clients have 0% interested. They're way to wealth.

• 11:49Speaker 10

  The simplest path to making money. One, find a service people already buy. Two, do it in half the time, make it twice as easy, or remove all the risk. Three, ask everyone you know if they know anybody who wants it. Four, charge more than everyone else. And then five, don't stop when you get bored.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  Two and four where I have the issues, right? So I'll need to do it in half as much time or remove all the risk. I'm assuming that inside of this thing, no one else has figured out how to do it as efficiently as possible or to remove all the risk. I have some sort of insight that no one else has had, that no one else has figured out. That's a really, really difficult thing to do. It sounds great on paper, but in practice, that might be hard. And then, once you do it, then you're gonna come in and price above everyone else? Well, now I gotta be really, really good at sales. Cause I can go buy X this thing for $10 and I'm selling my thing for $20. Can this work? Absolutely. Is it as easy as just a little five-step process? If it was that easy, everybody would do it.

• 12:40Speaker 11

  I'm finally doing the side hustle that you guys keep asking me to try flipping a storage unit. I paid about $900 for this unit and another hundred dollars to rent a U-Haul. Let's see if we made any money. At first, I really wasn't finding much besides like household items. Then I came across this locked metal box, which I brought home. More on that in a bit. There was an old raggedy and all, a bunch of DVDs, a carpet steam cleaner. This silver tray was really heavy. These can be worth decent money. This old elephant phone was cool. Similar ones are selling for around a hundred bucks on eBay.

• 13:05Brian Preston?

  Bought a bunch of work.

• 13:06Speaker 11

  Receiver. Anyways, had to get this furniture out quick because I only had the U-Haul for one day. But behind this dresser, I found another locked case. And inside the dresser drawers were a lot of broken electronics and some brown sugar. One of the big reasons I bid on this unit was because there was a safe in the pictures. So I grabbed that. I actually found another one, too. There were some pretty nice tools in here. And then I scored a Nintendo DS Lite with a bunch of games. There was a car stereo, an RC car frame, and then way in the back was a brand new unopened 50-inch TV. This was everything that I decided to keep and sell. One of the locked cases just had paperwork in it. Another was a poker chip set. The total value is around 1,800 bucks.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  How much time did it take? He said it was a day, but I bet this was like a full day, right? So I'm thinking this is like an eight, 10-hour day to go through this. If you're gonna make this like replicable, you gotta do it over and over and over again. Well, sometimes you might have a storage unit that's gonna profit for you. What about the ones where it doesn't have that stuff? What about the ones where you actually take a loss or just break even? If this is something you're passionate about and you just have like a skill set for it, great, do it. But I don't know this is the way that you're gonna necessarily make a lot.

• 14:04Brian Preston?

  Well, you know, this really did create some like work anxiety. Cause look, I have this work already at my house. I can go clean out my garage. I can go clean out my upstairs attic. You don't have to go buy somebody else's junk. Sell your junk. There's the scheme that's actually gonna make you some money. Sell your own junk.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Building wealth is not necessarily easy. And a lot of these schemes wanna make it seem like it's a super easy thing. It's not easy. It's a slow process, but it is simple. You don't have to outsmart it. You don't have to come up with something new. There are tried and true strategies that you can employ that can really help you build wealth, not the things that we saw in these videos.

• 14:42Brian Preston?

  Look, if you're brand new to our stuff, you wanna know how you really can build wealth? Do this. Go to moneyguy.com/resources. We literally give it away. We tell you what you need to be doing. We talk about wealth multipliers. We show you the financial order of operations. There is a better way to do money. Don't cut the corner off and squander your most valuable resource. That's your time. I'm Brian. This is Bo. Money Guy Team. Out.

• 15:14Speaker 12

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• 15:44Speaker 13

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