Victim mentality
I gotta take issue with some of the comments in this thread about people with a "victum mentatility"
When a battler who is not finanicaly informed and educated makes good they are a success story that "anyone can emulate", (which; according the personal development guru's, infers that both poverty and weath are simply choices people make) when a batter who is not finanicaly informed and educated and goes under they "deserve what they get," ie a "fool and their money soon part", they automatically "blame the gold fish;" "any one but themselves" etc.
Ordinarly people who are not trained to look after themselves financially but are only trained to be cannon fodder for industry, are forced to take risks in order to try and provide for their own old age, to try and "get ahead" or to otherwise try achieve financial security, etc, they are faced with a mountain of information, facts and opinions from people who in some cases they have no option but to trust ( cos you have to trust or believe someone in the end dont you, yea I know, the ciche trust but verify etc), to make decisions to invest in something. They rely on the advice to experts to this.
Not everyone has the benefits of hindsight, particuarly that of others. Our state goverments keeps offering warnings against rip off merchants and they are always telling people to "do their homework". (remember westpoint)
Huge advice is'nt it? They seem to be very reluctant to tell people how to do their homework, what to look for, where to go on the net to do it, how to check people out etc. They certainly dont recommend people to forums such as this. Even if they did; it takes dozens of hours to read through all the posts even on one forum such as this to get the gold from each post.
We are told to get advice from experts not from our local mechanic or hairdresser etc and when ordinarly people do take advice from experts and they later find they have been used by someone for their own gravy train, others jump on them and engage in blaming the victim for going down the tube.
A question to people who blame the victim.
How is someone who is just an ordinarly industrial worker to sift through all the websites of service providers to learn, sift thorugh several discussion forums, attend several boot camps, (to check one gainst the others after all we must do our homework must'nt we), read half a dozen books to learn enough to risk a life time of savings which might not be much, by venturing into some form of investment and then not have you jump on them if they still go down the tube?
Here is another question for you.
Would you blame the victim if someone done all the homework you would have them do and then failed to make money by not investing in the perth residential property market simply because they thought the residental makert in perth would not go much higher than it is today (15 October 06) and in fact, for example, a 450k house in 5 years turned out to be worth 950k in 5 years time, would you then say it their own fault that failed to make money???
How accurate do you think this statement is?
People who blame the victim do not blame the victim when they are the victim.
thanks - eddie
