SIMPLE GUIDES TO COMPLICATED CHOICES
BUYING A CAR | REAL ESTATE | STOCK INVESTING | MEDICAL CARE | LEGAL ASSISTANCE | & MORE
Everything comes with instructions. From light bulbs to oatmeal — and of course every appliance & every medicine.
And those instructions always begin the same way – – with a READ THIS FIRST warning.
But what about the big decisions & purchases? The ones where you really cannot afford to make a mistake? Like Buying a House or Car? Or Investing for your Retirement?
And then there are those areas where mistakes can cost far more than just money – – medical & legal matters that can threaten your your health or safety…
The READ-THIS-FIRST series can be your guide. A new kind of instruction manual that will help you avoid the mistakes that matter most. And show you how to make decisions that are right for you.
The Editors of READ-THIS-FIRST have all been there. We’ve learned — through experience — how to avoid the major traps and pitfalls. And we’ve put together this series to help you get what you really need and want in the important buying decisions we all must face.
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The Great Housing Bubble, Part II is already here, but very few realize it.
The seeds were sown 7 years ago, in 2008 when the Federal Reserve Bank set the interest rates to “zero” more or less. You may remember this was done to stimulate the economy. To unfreeze the banks and foster more loans and mortgages to be written.
Housing prices have come back somewhat. In some regions they have recovered fully. In others, only partially. That’s because there is an inverse relationship between interest rates and housing prices. When interest rates go down, housing prices go up. When interest rates go up, housing prices go down.
And that’s what’s about to happen. In a very big way. You see, the past 7 years of super low interest rates is unprecedented. And unsustainable. At a certain point, the Fed will be forced to raise the rates. And when they do, they will suck all the air out of the housing market.
What can you do. Learn what’s really important about buying a house in our book: READ-THIS-FIRST: Before You Buy a House! The information is invaluable.
What brand of coffee do you like best?
What brand of car?
Of jeans?
Why do we call them “brands”? Did you ever wonder?
The origin of the word “brands” come from — you guessed it — cattle ranching. For centuries, the owners of livestock have burned their “marks” (now called “trademarks”) into the animals they own in maintain their rights of ownership no matter where an individual of the herd might stray to.
When the Industrial Revolution took off in the 1800’s, manufactures faced a similar challenge. Once goods could be mass produced and transported (via train, truck or plane) customers might not know (or remember) the source of their favorite items. Manufactures hit on the idea of “branding’ their items, so that their customers could always find their way ‘back home” to the “ranch” that produced the goods.
The comparison is stronger than the public realizes, but companies get it totally. Not only to the “brands” (via their “trademarks”) bring customers back for repeat purchases, but these “brand preferences” develop early and very often last a lifetime.
In other words people get “branded” — like cattle — for life.
In most cases these “brand preferences” form in your teens or twenties, then they never change. People use the same deodorants, toothpaste, eat the same cereal, buy the same cars, etc., etc., etc. for decades — only rarely, if ever, changing or even questioning the decisions made as young adults.
The power of “branding’ is why we see so much advertising everywhere. Companies simply cannot do too much to keep the image of their brands alive.
Your choice is simple. Are you just one more head of cattle, another sheep going to the slaughter? Or are you a human being with a mind that understands that today is not the same as yesterday?
How many times in a lifetime do you get a car?
Buy a house or condo?
Pick a stock to trade?
Choose a doctor? A surgeon? Or a long-term medication?
The answer: not enough.
Not enough to come close to the people you deal with on the other side of the transaction.
They do it daily, or many times a day.
They do it for a living. You are doing it out of necessity.
You are the amateur. They are professionals.
READ-THIS-FIRST — Before you suit up and take the field, learn the rules of the game. Our guidebooks help you level the playing field. It will cost you less than $10 to learn how to protect yourself on life’s big purchase decisions.
And you may save thousands, and quite possibly even your life. READ-THIS-FIRST!
“I don’t believe advertising. I don’t watch TV commercials. Ads have no effect on me.”
These are the Big Lies we tell ourselves.
The unfortunate Truth: Advertising works. It works on you. It works on me.
It’s just a part of being human. We have wonderful brains. And they are hard-wired to remember everything. Everything we see. Everything we hear. Everything we touch. Everything that comes in from one of our “5 Senses”.
Advertisers know this, and they use this fact of “human nature” to influence and manipulate the behavior of everyone on earth.
There are two aspects that make their ability to influence you more strongly or not.
1) The first is repetition. If you hear or see the same ad 10 times, you might not be influenced. If you take it in 1000 times, you are more likely to be “sold”.
2) The second is the power of the sensation. A loud message effects you more than a soft one. A color TV commercial with lots of motion and a great soundtrack works better than a black & white flyer on a telephone poll. And of course, that’s why, as we all know, the volume on TV commercials is much louder than the program you were just watching. The ads literally scream out at you.
The important thing to realize is: if you see the same ad over and over again … you will be influenced. No matter how much you tell yourself that you do not pay attention.
This is a hard and fast unalterable law of human existence, and if you believe otherwise, you are simply flattering yourself with a lie.
Accept the limitations of being human. If you want to avoid being influenced by advertising, there is only one way to succeed. Don’t look at or listen to it. Turn off, tune out.
Of course, that’s not really a viable option, unless you want to live in a yurt in the wilderness of Idaho, so we’ll talk a lot at READ-THIS-FIRST about how you can put yourself back in control.
Many people think that the most powerful force in the world is the U.S. Military.
Good guess. But wrong. The U.S. Economy is much more powerful. The U.S. Economy consists of all those companies and individuals who are trying every day to sell you something.
Collectively all those companies and people spend more on advertising, public relations, sales, marketing, customer service, etc,– and the money spent on selling you stuff dwarfs military spending.
If you are smart, you acknowledge this. You realize that no one spends that kind of money on things that don’t work. All that advertising does work. And when you wake up in the morning each day… “you’ve been sold”.
It’s just a constant state living in America. Unless you are living “off the grid” on an artichoke farm in Nevada.
READ-THIS-FIRST has a mission to help you break free. To see the world of commerce as it really is, not as you’ve been told it is.
Of course, this is not the movie “The Matrix”, and you can’t just take a pill to clear your vision. But READ-THIS-FIRST guidebooks will help you see clearly. Our guidebooks are filled with short, simple facts that you need to know — especially when confronting the bigger purchasing decisions in your life.
READ-THIS-FIRST guides are designed for “first timers”. But when people with experience (buying cars and homes, using lawyers) read our guides, they tell us that they learn quite a bit, as well.
One closing thought. One of the most famous sayings about advertising is this “Half of advertising works. We just wish we knew which half…”
We want to add this: “Half of advertising is true.” READ-THIs-FIRST will help you figure out which half…?