Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for September 26th, 2007

In my life I have had some wonderful friends and acquaintances and I count my blessings for every one that I have met (and will still meet), the following “Best of” posting is from May 2005 and it is about a piece of advice that I gave a dear friend that completely backfired, and I regret to this day (I also regret that this friend is no longer with us either).

A parable about advice (not just financial)

A few years ago I car pooled with a wonderful guy we’ll call Jack for this story.

One day after my wife and I came back from a great vacation in Florida, I told Jack about how to get free tickets to Paramount Studios in Orlando, by attending a “Time Share Condominium Sales Pitch” (my father-in-law told me about it), I told Jack that it was a hoot and also kind of sad seeing the “poor souls” (my opinion) who ended up buying these things. The Sales guy was relentless, he was going to take Canadian money at par, he was going to let us pay with our credit cards, we could stay there right now if we wanted, etc., but we stuck to our guns, got our free tickets and left, laughing as we walked out.

Jack thought it sounded like a good idea because he and his wife were going on vacation to Florida in a couple of weeks.

Fast forward to the day after Jack and his wife came back from vacation. The conversation was mostly about how much fun Jack and his wife had while in Orlando, so then I said, “How about that Time Share sales pitch, what kind of a shmuck would buy those things?”, and after a long pause Jack said, “Well, me, I bought one…”, I think my jaw dropped to the floor, and I might have said two words for the rest of the trip to the office. I never mentioned time shares ever again.

Moral to this parable? Advice is a dangerous thing to hand out, and you had better be ready to take the heat when the advice goes wrong.

This is why I try to always be careful when giving out advice, because I am fully cognizant of the damage ANY advice can do. Most time shares I have seen are not worth the money outlay (my opinion), please don’t construe this posting as me endorsing them in any way shape or form.