Anybody been to a fortunebuilders.com seminar?

[james.hendrickson]

Hi Guys,

Was just wondering if any of you have been to fortunebuilders.com seminar? They have mixed reviews...

-James

[feh]

Hi Guys,

Was just wondering if any of you have been to fortunebuilders.com seminar? They have mixed reviews...

-James

Nope.

My impression of all these kind of seminars is that they are great - for the people collecting the fees or selling the products.

[disneysteve]

My impression of all these kind of seminars is that they are great - for the people collecting the fees or selling the products.

Bingo. That's exactly the right answer. Any of those "free" seminars are purely marketing ploys do drum up business, sell over-priced books or investing schemes, and line up clients to pay them ridiculous fees to manage money.

All of the investment advice you could possibly need can be found quite easily for free on the internet. There are great discussion forums including this one and bogleheads. The legit investment companies like Vanguard and Fidelity have a wealth of educational content on their sites. You should never pay a penny to anyone to teach you how to invest with them.

[james.hendrickson]

Disney Steve, I always love your postings.

[sv2007]

Why are you interested?

A lot of these seminars can be beneficial to new comers into the game of building wealth by introducing ideas that they may not know. I'd say, if somebody's got time and has an interest in the topic/speaker and don't give into peer pressure, then it may be an opportunity to learn something.

I've not researched this particular seminar, but I have been to many free ones at trade shows (actually a lot of people even pay money to attend). Some not so good, while some added to my knowledge and way of thinking. After a while, you get the hang of picking the right ones and recognizing the bad quickly. In fact, I gave several presentations myself; it is a sale but also introduce new concepts and ideas.

I've never been to any financial ones though, but in order to attract customer/potential customer goodwill, the many I attended (and the ones I give) always focused on information dissemination first.

One has to realize that many things in the world cost money (people must eat), and money must be spread around to make money. I think this is a concept not really understood unless the person has some management experience.

[james.hendrickson]

Hey SV,

It seems like a lot of companies which do real estate seminars are controversial. FortuneBuilders seems like one one of the ones that comes up as extra controversial - they are charging something like $25,000 for services that a lot of their clients say could obtained for a few hundred dollars.

That said, some people really like the seminars, so I thought I would ask.

[sv2007]

Somehow I was under the impression that this is a free seminar; for $25k, it's pretty expensive. Just for price reference, professional certification courses, which can last a week or two, aren't that expensive (and that's with company reimbursements).

Do you have a syllabus? Then you can research some and dcide for yourself.

RE is funny in that, kind of gambling, the winners (maybe more luck than skill) are going to say really good things.

There's definitely some interesting real estate opportunities that most people don't know or have no experience/knowledge on, even many realtors. E.g. auctions, management company, land development/investment, remodeling, etc.

I think anybody can get the info they need and learn it while "on the job". We had a ton of help from county clerks researching our first auction target (depending on the auction type, you must know lien, easement, even history/past law suits); so there are a lot of free help available. But just remember, mistakes can be costly.

[james.hendrickson]

SV,

I guess I might pay up to $2,000 for some really good coaching, but $25,000 or more seems excessive to me. After all, when you think about the opportunity costs of it...$25,000 invested at market return over 10 at 7% is something like $49,178.78. Thats enough for a house downpayment.

So, for $25,000 it would need to be stellar advice.