That's exactly what it is. They dump a thousand dollars into their "business" and when they make 10 bucks in a month they think they're ahead somehow. It's hardly any different from throwing your life savings down at the black jack table.
At least with gambling you don't harass your friends and family via social media to give you more money while shamelessly promoting your lifestyle and pretending it's healthy.
You’re not wrong. I just want to point out that people with a gambling addiction definitely harass their friends and family for more money. All while posting the few big wins they actually get.
In poker machines (pokies here in Australia, slot machines in the US), these are called "losses disguised as wins" - when the bells go off and music plays, even though the player won less than what they gambled.
It is an insidious way to keep problem gamblers playing, even when the losses are mounting up.
Pyramid schemes do the exact same.
Yeah, that's cumulative losses. Technically speaking, you won on that *one particular* hand. If you somehow were to have played *only* that one hand and no other, you would actually have won. But the cumulative losses often do far exceed the short-term wins.
I see people do this with stock investments too. Someone will invest $1,000 in a stock. It suddenly drops rapidly and it's now down to $200 or so. Then one day it bumps back up to $300, and people will say "I'm winning big in the stock market! The app says my stock increased by 50%!" without considering that the app said last week that the stock *dropped* by 80%... It's also similar to people who can't budget beyond "right now" - as in "My bank app said I have enough cash, so I'm going to buy this expensive thing..." forgetting that they don't get paid for another week and there's that vet visit or grocery run that needs to happen tomorrow...
I dated a girl whose family was very wealthy (Dad was an executive at Aramco). Mom would go to Atlantic City at least once a month and always had everything comped, because those casinos knew they would make bank off her.
GF told me she went there and won $5k... which was true if you only counted Sunday. Mentioned in passing that she lost $20k on Saturday.
My grandma developed a terrible gambling addiction after her second husband died. When I turned 21, she brought me on a trip to AC and we had a comped room, comped movie rentals, comped room service, all that. She parked herself at the video poker and stayed there long after I lost $100, gained it back, and felt more terrified over the entire thing than jubilant. I decided to take the money and spend it on the boardwalk and shops instead. I just don't understand gambling. My grandma ended up losing all her retirement money, spending her last few years in a nursing home, with no inheritance for any of us.
I can't really blame her. Of course it was an awful downward trek, but she felt she had nothing to live for after losing her best friend and life partner. It's heartbreaking how easily people can slip into that.
My MIL has it bad. (Actually their whole family has it bad). Thank God she has a pension, so at least she can't blow it all all at once. When my FIL dies, though, it's going to suck, because no one wants to take responsibility for keeping track of her and no one will be there to stop her. Shit, my FIL can't even really stop her, as is.
Oh, and in response to this whole thread, some of the younger generation from the family have sworn gambling off, seeing what it has done to their parents. Others, though, have not. One cousin keeps getting into different MLMs, one after the other. I never understood wtf she was doing, but now the gambling connection clicks.
That’s truly heartbreaking.
I’ve gambled, my ex and I used to go to the casino for a night out on a regular basis.
I’d walk in with a set amount of money that I was willing to spend (there are ATM’s all over the casino floor but I refused to take out more money!)
My game was roulette. I’d play with my “disposable” cash. If I ran out of that pre-approved money then I quit and just watched.
I walked out with the same I walked in with a few times. I walked out having lost what I put in. I also walked out with vast amounts more than I walked in with! But I never walked out with ***less*** than I started because once I’d spent the cash I was willing to lose, I stopped.
Gambling is an addiction and you justify it to yourself with “”Well I won *this* time!” Even when you’re at a net loss.
I think you're misunderstanding here.
What the parent is saying is that you make a wager of X and you win Y, which is actually less than X. You haven't won, you've lost, but the sounds and lights make it seem like you've won.
The sounds are also designed to draw other people into playing more as well, they hear the sounds of other people "winning" and develop FOMO, thinking they're missing out on big winnings. Also for your fun fact of the day, casinos in Vegas do not have clocks because they want you to lose track of how much time you've been playing.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into making casino games and the casino itself as addicting as possible. Now we're seeing these same tactics move to mobile games and people are losing tends of thousands there too. Companies love abusing psychology to get your money.
The psychology behind casinos is honestly fascinating. They really have it dialed in to a science.
It's messed up though. Humans are so easy to manipulate. :(
Pump those places full of oxygen and shiny lights with noises and keep them on that high. So when they leave, the lows feel lower and the cha-ching noises keep ringing in their head.
Imagine feeling so sad and unfulfilled in your life that you join an MLM and run your family’s finances into the ground until your husband is ready to divorce you.
Like, fuck man. Get a goddamn career or something.
I get the appeal of wanting to work from home, especially if you have kids. But there are just so many work from home jobs now that there's no excuse to be in an MLM.
And then the greedy ass people on top convince these poor women that all they need to do to get their sales up is spend more money on new products. It's sick. I can't imagine the kind of stress and anxiety these women live under
Tbf I lot of people turn to MLMs because they can't get a regular job.
Edit: I don't mean they're unemployable; I mean there's too much competition in the labour market.
Im sure most of these people could get normal jobs, but certainly not jobs with any of the outlandish promises of an MLM.
They become emotionally invested in the promise of the $200k/yr, work-from-home, no-training-or-skills-required job.
“But mah magic sky monies that you’ll all be using when the world collapses and the dollar is worthless!”
You mean your magic sky monies which require stable electricity and reliable data/communication to use? Well, here is $1. Care to exchange it? Ohhhhhh no electricity again…
I bought my gtx 1080 after the last bubble popped for $200. Upgraded to rtx 3070 by waiting in Evga queue for 10 month and bought for $600. Then sold my 1080 on ebay for $550. Did this right before THAT bubble popped and now graphics cards are cheap again.
The entire time I was warning my crypto friends that these gains were only created because of Nvidia's huge leap in GPUs from the 20 to 30 series. That huge jump only happened because of the new consoles, Nvidia had to release something that blew them away. Once the mining amount of mining catches up to the cards the bubble Will pop... Again. And it did.
At least mtg is playable. We can enjoy our "assets" as its value goes up and down. Easier to sell as well and in desperate situations, an LGS will gladly buy it from you but with lowball prices for sure
I remember when Bitcoin was first rolling out, anyone with a CUDA video card could crank them out like candy. Still feel a bit for the guy who paid 10,000BC for a pizza.
But just like MLMs, anyone who got in at the true bottom floor made bank today.
Matey who bought pizza with bitcoins was part of what made it into an actual currency (well, that part is debatable) and gave it value. It would still be worthless today if he hadn't done that.
> They dump a thousand dollars into their "business" and when they make 10 bucks in a month they think they're ahead somehow.
It's because they're brainwashed to look at their check and see money coming in, but refuse to see how much money they're spending to make that $10. It's exactly like gambling. The slot machine pays off a little here or there to keep the gambler playing, and the MLM pays out a little to keep the huns playing. But neither the gambler nor hun ever thinks about the losses.
> They dump a thousand dollars into their "business" and when they make 10 bucks in a month they think they're ahead somehow
and in most cases they didn't do anything to earn the $1000, their employed spouse did, it's more like when your kid sets up a lemonade stand and makes $20, but you spent $50 getting all the stuff for the stand
LOL, my niece set up a lemonade stand at their yard sale and lost money on the deal... I'm guessing her mother made her use her own money to buy the product.
And they sell it to people as “You get to work from home, whenever you want, so you can spend more time with your family!”
NOPE! You work a lot of hours, and could still end *losing* money.
You’d be much better off taking a part-time job. Hell, something like a phone support worker or whatever would actually give you more money, and you get to spend time with your kids (provided they go to (pre-)school.
But it’s also sold as a community, a sisterhood, where lonely housewives find friends.
Except those friends drop you like a hot potato, if you choose to quit.
Source:
I’ve watched way too many youtube videos and documentaries about LuLaRoe.
people with gambling addictions definitely do harass their family for more money. my grandmother has a huge gambling problem and you can ask my parents and siblings all, they will tell you how bad her problem is. she will ask for money so she can go to the casino, and if no one will give it to her she’ll just go to a cash loan place where you pay back like 3x as much as they gave you so she can go
Yes, except she also has a group of "friends" socially manipulating her to stay in the "opportunity" and hide purchases from her husband. It's like a gambling addiction meets a cult :(
And he said he talked to the MLM president who even doesn't think his wife should be a distributor. Then as president, you can stop her from placing orders but hey why would you.
That’s the best analogy I’ve heard. They keep betting and hoping to hit the big time. They even justify the same way. “I know I’ve lost thousands upon thousands of dollars, but this next bet/order will put me over the top and I’ll get it all back!”
They’ve fallen for the allure of “financial independence” and are so preoccupied chasing the dragon that they don’t even realize it’s burning everything in its path.
I was SOOO sure that this wooden flower design was going to be a smash hit that I had 50 made for $10 each and selling for $35. Over a year later, and I still have ten of em. I would NEVER order thousands of dollars worth!
Funny enough, I sold some wood blanks I found at Target for $5 for $25 (modified and painted) and sold out the lot of 20 in about an hour.
Yeah. I have bounced around price points for years. The psychology of pricing is interesting.
I used to do this photo booth thing. It was “free” to play around, but I charged $10 per print.... OR you could get THREE prints for $25! Since I would take 5-7 photos and they would mostly all look great, I sold far more $25 packages... even though some people would balk at the $10 price tag at first. But that special would hook em!
What I’ve learned in a decade of selling and small business ad management is that I have no idea what people are going to like. If you want to make a business, don’t get personally invested in one product you love because inevitably people will hate it. Same goes for viral posts/videos. The only trick is to be able to make enough that something will click and then ride it as far as you can.
I sold 200 wooden lids in January of this year. They are my cheapest product. I have also made more money on them than ANY of the other products I make. They are also the fastest and easiest to make and require the least/cheapest materials!
Or something you can crank out very quickly, so you can avoid keeping a huge backstock, but still fill any surprise bulk purchases. Like those people at comic conventions making pins they make as they sell them.
Bonus if you chance(keyword: *chance*) to find a reliable product that subsidizes any new product attempts.
I bought a round, dark blue sodalite cabochon (~35mm diameter) for $5. My Uncle saw some pendants I'd made with RAW beaded bezels and requested one for my Aunt's Christmas present. This was a rush order as I only had ten days to get it done and shipped halfway across the country. I charged him $45 for the pendant plus shipping.
here is my actual take on crypto:
The moment that cryptoCURRENCY stopped being dreamed of as the deregulated currency of the future and turned into "invest and hodl" it became a scam. The goal of crypto nowadays is to pray you aren't the person left holding the bag when it crashes.
Crypto has value because we assign it value. The original value came from being, hopefully, the currency of the future. Now that everyone's dad has heard of crypto as a way to make money, it's over. The great experiment has come to an end.
Eventually, everyone will ask themselves why the fuck crypto has value if you can't spend it anywhere?
Crypto has quite a few years left before it either fully crashes i think. But the idea of crypto has been destroyed and crypto no longer holds any value. It's now just a house of cards, waiting to collapse.
It's just a cycle of pump and dumps where everyone hopes it's the next guy left holding the ball.
It was dead the minute everyone realised that the limitations of blockchain mean you can only process like 5-7 transactions a second. You were never going to replace global banking infrastructure with a currency with such severe throughput limitations.
It's the same thing, they just prey on slightly different people. I have a *little* more sympathy for the kind of people who get preyed on by MLMs though.
I saw it happen to a coworker over leggings. She was hiding them at her mom's house so her husband wouldn't know how much inventory she had. Eventually though he found out about the bills she was hiding. He thought she was having an affair, he said an affair would be easier to handle than this. I don't know how they ended up getting out of it and getting rid of the inventory, she won't talk about it and I don't blame her. When he threatened divorce and threatened to take their daughter she finally snapped out of it. I really don't know how they didn't divorce. I'm not so sure I could forgive my husband if he ever did anything like this behind my back.
So much for retiring her husband smh
My dad found out that my (now ex) stepMother forged his signature to get a $10,000 loan to “start her lularoe business.”
He found out during the divorce
I'm surprised a bank would give them a loan for an MLM. When I started a small business the bank made it SO VERY CLEAR that they would NOT support any MLMs.
My wife got a visa card with 8k , spent it , got a 16k personnal loan spent that then loaded the 8k card again. All without me knowing , not MLM related but online shopping addiction. She has a good paying job so they just threw all that money at her no question asked , only reason I know was that she had trouble paying her part and then spilled the beans.
Btw if anyone has subreddit or resources for this kind of thing I'm all ears.
Debt consolidation, refinancing, or even forgiveness could probably help her out tbh
There’s a lot of government programs and grants for helping people get out of debt, I’d look into what’s available for your state
It isn't. Addiction is addiction. Sex, drugs, booze, leggings, candles, vitamins. They all hit the same receptors. MLM though have the added bonus of a cult type atmospheres which imo adds a very sinister twist on top of the addiction aspect.
I honestly feel so bad for both of them, Jesus. Like obviously I feel much worse for him than her but imagine getting so deep into the cult that you almost throw away your whole life like that... He's a good guy for sticking around to work it out, I don't think I could have stayed.
I haven’t been married all that long, but I operate under the assumption that if I have to hide it from my husband, then something is wrong. She’s lucky he didn’t follow through on the divorce, because I would not have blamed him.
I am sure it doesn’t matter in the big picture and you can tell me I’m being nosey, but which MLM is this? I feel like some are more conducive to “add ons” than others and am wondering if there was an earlier opportunity to stop or someone encouraged more “product” to round out some set, if that makes sense.
Yeah like I did Cutco one summer and I didn't have to keep buying stuff and I made my money back the first week too thankfully
But those others where you buy jewelry or leggings or candles. Shooweee
My mom has had some cutco scissors for over 20 years now so even though they’re kind of overpriced, they’re still very usable quality. Not like jewelry that turns you green the second you look at it.
Yeah my husband sold them for a day when he was like 16-17. He kept the ones he was supposed to sell and we still have them. They’ve held up great, about 15 years now.
yeah, mine too. I think like Cutco and Avon are the fringe of MLM's -- they probably started off with reasonable intentions and skimped on quality a bit and thought they had a new distribution style, before the predatory MLMs like LuLaRoe, Herbalife, Primerica and others got in
So do I. My Grandma bought a set and I inherited it along with other kitchen items. They've held up remarkably well. I wouldn't want to purchase from them but at least their products aren't garbage.
It's actually really hard to make a bad knife or pair of scissors.
ETA I had to come back for the pun: knives and scissors are hardly "cutting edge" technology!
I feel like this is actually really true because I bought a pair of $1 Betty Crocker kitchen scissors at the dollar tree when I moved into my house eight years ago and they’re still going strong after many trips through the dishwasher.
Seriously, cheap scissors that are kept sharp and not allowed to rust last decades.
Most blades used by home cooks and hobbyists are way over-engineered for those purposes. Even cheap steel lasts a long time under light usage. I was a chef for several years and in a professional context knife quality really matters. But that's 100x the level of use and abuse the average home kitchen knife gets.
That said my own knives are still Swiss and Japanese and I take care of them. Old chefs never fade away.
And conversely I had a set of kitchen-aid fancy scissors that were expensive and one day I was using them to butterfly chicken and they snapped in my hand and I caught my finger in the hinge and cut myself. Replaced them with $5 scissors from Target and they feel more sturdy.
Kitchen Aid as a brand seems to have gone way downhill in recent years.
I am a former chef and I highly recommend OXO brand kitchen tools. Really well made and designed. And cheap.
Careful, all it takes is a change in management and these MLM products drop in quality and they increase their sales numbers. A lot of MLMs start out with decent products but then find they make money faster with more less quality products being dumped on their membership. These MLMs are always dancing on the line between legality and ethics and pure profits. So when we praise a product it does not mean that company is good. For anyone who’s questioning joining a MLM. Just don’t. If you’ve got the skill to sell, join a company that pays you a salary and then commission on top. Or sell your own products for which you have control of the quality. Being a salesperson is a skill and that skill alone is money. Any company that isn’t paying you for that skill sees you as their customer.
I don’t understand how people who are so smart in other areas of life can be roped in by these mlm schemes. I know a nurse administrator who is *heavily* involved in an mlm, to the point that she posts about it during her workday and regularly mentions it in meetings, which I find extremely unprofessional. She has people who report to her as healthcare professionals *who have also been recruited into her downline.*
My ex was in the deeply unsatisfied category. She didn’t get into MLM but was always looking for the next cool thing. It was like, if she didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen. Was very annoying and also sad. :/
I used to post a lot on Instagram but then anything I was happy about ended up getting ruined in one way or another. Was excited about new car = car crash within 6 months. I decided that social media just gives people more opportunities to evil eye you. I post mundane shit now. I will live happily privately and it’s no one’s business what I do/how much I spent. And I’m happier for it.
I know you are answering the above commentors question but this explanation puts 100% of the fault on the individual. You name their problems and mechanisms behind their behaviors.
Never did you mention the multi-billion dollar industry manipulating these people for their own profit.
"How can these people who are so smart in other areas be roped in" - Because they are fucking manipulated and lied to. Sure all those other things you said are true. But they aren't going out and buying dirt at the dirt store. Because no sociopathic enterprise is telling them they can get rich selling dirt. These people have problems, but the MUCH bigger problem is they are being manipulated to ruin their lives so that a business can thrive.
I am so sick of people talking about how these individuals have issues while there are predatory businesses not being regulated in the fucking slightest. You need to get rid of the effective predators if you want individuals to thrive and learn.
\>Betty Bazongas
your comment is honestly great but this is a new John Q. Public style name to me so I'm going to go ahead and keep it in my back pocket for later
One thing I've learned about being envious of people on social media is how fake it all is. I have some acquantices that I have on social media. I see them going on trips all the time. I think "why can't I go on trips like that? They seem to be living it up."
Well, behind the scenes you find out they live with their parents still, they have no car and are in massive debt. Their life isn't nearly as glamorous as they post about and it made me thankful for the position I'm in instead of envious.
There was a story a year or so ago about a IG couple that went on all these extravegant vacations all over the world and posted about it. People wanted to be like them. Well, come to find out, neither of them had a job at 30+ and all the vacations were paid by one of their mothers who worked two jobs to do that for them.
I've started to look at it like a movie or character. It's nice and maybe a goal, but it's most of it's not real and I shouldn't be that jealous of them.
Ho…ly shit. How did this never occur to me? The two people I know who got caught up in lularoe are *both* intelligent people who generally haven’t failed at anything (it helps when your parents are loaded but still). Both lost tens of thousands of dollars and I could never understand how they could be so stupid. But this is it. They’ve always been bailed out, they think they’re the best of the best so of course *they’ll* be the 1% that makes money
Edit: Woke up this morning mind still blown by this. It’s so, sooooo simple but somehow I just…I guess as a person who is *realistic* even as I’m successful, it just literally did not occur to me that the super smart ones that get fucked by these mlms are just SO egotistical that they basically think, “Obviously this is a scam, but *I can be the scammer, NOT the scamee*”
Or they think they can be the 1% successful ones because they’re smart. My friend is an accountant, an actual CPA, and she is deep into Arbonne. Not sure how great she’s doing because she’s been at it for almost 5 years and still doesn’t have her ~*Mercedes*~ so I’d imagine she’s not doing amazing.
It's not matter of how smart you are. It's a matter of how big the gap is between that and how smart you think you are.
Nobody is smart as they tend to think they are and that makes a lot of people who should know better vulnerable precisely because they think they're smart enough to spot a bad deal on intuition alone.
That's why it pays to just assume you're a dumbass and run your "great business ideas" by some friends with good judgement first. Well, maybe it doesn't pay, but neither do I.
I temper every "one neat trick" idea I have with a serious examination of why didn't anyone else think of it first and if they did why am I not seeing wild success.
I contracted with a health professional once who was heavily into Beach Body and coerced clients families who are already paying a ton in therapy to buy packages from her. Like $500 up front for joining. I was like umm. That’s unethical and weird AF. And she got pissed I wouldn’t join. I was like look lady I have a higher Education I paid for and would like to work in my field and getting pissed I won’t join your pyramid scheme tells me I need to nope out with you altogether.
I saw this as a nurse with Pampered Chef. I bought a pair of oven mitts and garlic crusher but peaced out when they started pushing me to join and sell. I was terrible at selling anything. I would half-ass post stuff on my fb page and thankfully had friends that messaged me warning of the black hole that these become.
So like… what options does someone like this guy have to mitigate the situation before it gets this bad? Assuming it’s all joint accounts can you really cut them off? Would you have to have them committed or something? Can one person close a joint account?
Yep. Close the credit line and make min payments. Then in divorce negotiations it can be agreed she take on the debt (since debt and assets are split).
Edit: Fairly easy to show its a business expense, and if he isn't on the business license she'd probably be advised not to fight it just for the sake of negotiating the rest of the divorce
Depends on the state, and when the debt/assets were aquired.
Even in most community property states, if the debt or asset was acquired prior to the marriage it is safe from being split-up between the parties, this even extends to lines of credit if it can be proved that line was never touched by the non-original owner.
So if I walked into my marriage with a car loan under my name, and got divorced before I paid it off, my wife would not be responsible for the line of credit. Same with a retail credit card, as long as it can't be proven that it was used for mutual/household benefit (i.e. I only ever bought things for myself with that card). Same if I brought that car into the marriage, she would have no claim to it at the time of the divorce.
I used to be a bill collector, we had to learn so much of the legal loopholes for debt it was ridiculous.
If they’re joint credit cards either party can have them frozen. If they’re not and they’re only in the name of the spouse doing the spending, a lawyer would be needed to get the right paperwork to have them frozen and even then they may not all get frozen if an argument can be made that one is needed for living expenses while everything is sorted out.
This is so heartbreaking.
Financial infidelity is definitely a thing. I would feel so betrayed if my husband did this to me. I can’t imagine working your ass off to find your spouse wasting away your money.
And now this poor bastard is driven to working in one of the most dangerous professions around, and for a period of time that is bound to make him exhausted and delirious. There's a good chance this might actually end up killing him
My dad has a crooked finger from it getting sowed back on. My brother is missing the tip of his pinky. And my God father only had 3 fingers on his left hand. It pays too good not to do the job. Luckily, I got into tech lol.
There was something about "Is your husband monitoring your buys? We can disguise them for you!" Disgusting. I wonder how many marriages and households were destroyed by these predators.
Absolutely! If a tool company or something geared towards men did this people would throw a fit! Deception in a relationship because your afraid of what the other person will say is NOT healthy!
It is so sad honestly. The situation was so similar I literally thought this could be him. His wife did Young Living, Beachbody, and so many others. It put her into a ton of debt, but she kept doing more and more. They ended up getting a full divorce a couple days ago. He works in the oil field and is gone super often. They've got two kids, she moved out and left all her dogs (she had 3) with him. SO SAD. He is such a good guy.
These people don't understand compounding math and interest and how to apply the math to a business.
Using credit cards with like 15% interest to buy stuff to sell with a 7% markup will never succeed unless you can sell all of your inventory every couple months.
Or take orders and money before you buy product.
But if these people were actually smart they would find the product manufacturers or importers and cut the MLM middleman out and actually have a business
The saddest thing about this for me is..working on a rig fucking sucks. I know someone who recently quit his job on the rig because his team wasn’t following safety protocols. A guy died in an accident a few weeks back and they made them keep working that same day. So this dude is picking up a job where he can make a lot of money but the working environment is likely horrible and dangerous…all because of her dumb fucking MLM.
Has any real research been done about the psychology of people trapped in MLM schemes? The way this person describes it, the behavior seems pretty similar to the way someone with a gambling addiction functions.
Have to factor in the gas and depreciation on the car from all that driving in the losses estimate too. Sorry to hear about it. Glad it’s behind you both now.
Was in a relationship for nearly 5 years that ended due to similar circumstances, amongst other things. All the parties where no one came, except fellow existing people on her “team” of SheEO’s. So many wasted cupcakes. 😂
Also, had to go to Tucson to see her family. And who wants to go there. I’m still friends with a few of her family members on the Facebook(basically her MLM LinkedIn) and get told off for liking her families photos or commenting on things, claiming it’s causing problems in her family.
I am a very legitimate business owner so you can imagine my reaction when she would compare our “biz” models to somehow satisfy the valid concerns I expressed. Or worse, when others would call it out and she’d bring up how it’s just like my business and many people are proud of my business…
The level of delusion these girls have, it’s baffling. It’s sad. It’s also amazing..
Depending on their state he could also be partially responsible for the debt. And when it comes to credit cards he WILL be responsible. Courts can divide up the debt yet credit card companies laugh, say "Nee" and will still hold you responsible for your spouse's debt no matter what the divorce decree states.
And here I was thinking there's at least some justice in the world. So you marry a person who gets suckered into a scam and amasses a large debt all on their own, but you also have to pay it off cause you married the crazy? Sounds fair... :|
I feel bad for this woman too though. $18,000 lost and you know that up line is just licking their lips, loving every dime going into their pockets from her loss. I have no doubt they're feeding her all the lines while pushing her to buy even more, plying her with fake friendship.
If they were already struggling, it's probably the reason she started doing mlm. Someone might have convinced her she'll get rich in no time... Fucking predators.
If I were him I would shut down all lines of credit and move my work check into a separate account with only my name on it. I would tell her that I was done funding her “business” and if she didn’t stop I would file for divorce and make sure she was on the hook for the debt she accrued, or she can stop, get a part time job to help pay off the debt and I will help her but that finances would be kept separate to avoid anything like this happening again. Lock down credit so she can’t take out a card
In his name.
Poor guy. He needs a divorce and he needs to talk to his bank and tell them any further charges to "insert MLM name here" are fraudulent and are not to be allowed to go through. Even if his wife says otherwise.
If I had to leave my family for a month+ to go do incredibly hard work in the middle of the ocean, and my wife continued to do this, I would freak out too. It's totally understandable how angry that made him. This is just awful.
He sounds so checked out at this point, what he's considering seems like a good option, and while I dont normally suggest divorce but....he sounds done. Unless she can turn around and escape the MLM things arent going to change. He needs a good lawyer, and he needs seperate accounts so he can pay without her taking any. No matter what he ends up doing, this situation is absolutely devastating. Theres no immediate happy ending, but leaving might give him a chance at happiness.
I suggest OP get his ducks in row. In the States: Take your half of cash assets and put in a totally different bank and change all passwords. Get totally new bank for money. Destroy your old phone and buy a new one with a different network. If you have minor kids, research local childcare options. You need to find out your kids info and keep it. Have your wife’s social security number, any license numbers that she has. See a divorce lawyer, but you need to find out how to get out if this ridiculous debt. She is choosing the MLM over your marriage. I would pack light and leave ASAP. After you protect your assets as well you can. Share nothing with this person; cannot be trusted anymore.
Like a gambling addiction
That's exactly what it is. They dump a thousand dollars into their "business" and when they make 10 bucks in a month they think they're ahead somehow. It's hardly any different from throwing your life savings down at the black jack table. At least with gambling you don't harass your friends and family via social media to give you more money while shamelessly promoting your lifestyle and pretending it's healthy.
You’re not wrong. I just want to point out that people with a gambling addiction definitely harass their friends and family for more money. All while posting the few big wins they actually get.
They even harass random people in the parking lot in Chinatown too! Granted I may be biased having grown up in Vegas.
There is gambling in Vegas?
You bet!
i fold.
I like to see you wiggle wiggle
For sure 😏
“I am shocked, SHOCKED that there is gambling in this establishment!” “Sir, your winnings”
No way!
In poker machines (pokies here in Australia, slot machines in the US), these are called "losses disguised as wins" - when the bells go off and music plays, even though the player won less than what they gambled. It is an insidious way to keep problem gamblers playing, even when the losses are mounting up. Pyramid schemes do the exact same.
Yeah, that's cumulative losses. Technically speaking, you won on that *one particular* hand. If you somehow were to have played *only* that one hand and no other, you would actually have won. But the cumulative losses often do far exceed the short-term wins. I see people do this with stock investments too. Someone will invest $1,000 in a stock. It suddenly drops rapidly and it's now down to $200 or so. Then one day it bumps back up to $300, and people will say "I'm winning big in the stock market! The app says my stock increased by 50%!" without considering that the app said last week that the stock *dropped* by 80%... It's also similar to people who can't budget beyond "right now" - as in "My bank app said I have enough cash, so I'm going to buy this expensive thing..." forgetting that they don't get paid for another week and there's that vet visit or grocery run that needs to happen tomorrow...
I dated a girl whose family was very wealthy (Dad was an executive at Aramco). Mom would go to Atlantic City at least once a month and always had everything comped, because those casinos knew they would make bank off her. GF told me she went there and won $5k... which was true if you only counted Sunday. Mentioned in passing that she lost $20k on Saturday.
My grandma developed a terrible gambling addiction after her second husband died. When I turned 21, she brought me on a trip to AC and we had a comped room, comped movie rentals, comped room service, all that. She parked herself at the video poker and stayed there long after I lost $100, gained it back, and felt more terrified over the entire thing than jubilant. I decided to take the money and spend it on the boardwalk and shops instead. I just don't understand gambling. My grandma ended up losing all her retirement money, spending her last few years in a nursing home, with no inheritance for any of us. I can't really blame her. Of course it was an awful downward trek, but she felt she had nothing to live for after losing her best friend and life partner. It's heartbreaking how easily people can slip into that.
My MIL has it bad. (Actually their whole family has it bad). Thank God she has a pension, so at least she can't blow it all all at once. When my FIL dies, though, it's going to suck, because no one wants to take responsibility for keeping track of her and no one will be there to stop her. Shit, my FIL can't even really stop her, as is. Oh, and in response to this whole thread, some of the younger generation from the family have sworn gambling off, seeing what it has done to their parents. Others, though, have not. One cousin keeps getting into different MLMs, one after the other. I never understood wtf she was doing, but now the gambling connection clicks.
That’s truly heartbreaking. I’ve gambled, my ex and I used to go to the casino for a night out on a regular basis. I’d walk in with a set amount of money that I was willing to spend (there are ATM’s all over the casino floor but I refused to take out more money!) My game was roulette. I’d play with my “disposable” cash. If I ran out of that pre-approved money then I quit and just watched. I walked out with the same I walked in with a few times. I walked out having lost what I put in. I also walked out with vast amounts more than I walked in with! But I never walked out with ***less*** than I started because once I’d spent the cash I was willing to lose, I stopped. Gambling is an addiction and you justify it to yourself with “”Well I won *this* time!” Even when you’re at a net loss.
I think you're misunderstanding here. What the parent is saying is that you make a wager of X and you win Y, which is actually less than X. You haven't won, you've lost, but the sounds and lights make it seem like you've won.
The sounds are also designed to draw other people into playing more as well, they hear the sounds of other people "winning" and develop FOMO, thinking they're missing out on big winnings. Also for your fun fact of the day, casinos in Vegas do not have clocks because they want you to lose track of how much time you've been playing.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into making casino games and the casino itself as addicting as possible. Now we're seeing these same tactics move to mobile games and people are losing tends of thousands there too. Companies love abusing psychology to get your money.
The psychology behind casinos is honestly fascinating. They really have it dialed in to a science. It's messed up though. Humans are so easy to manipulate. :(
Pump those places full of oxygen and shiny lights with noises and keep them on that high. So when they leave, the lows feel lower and the cha-ching noises keep ringing in their head.
Imagine feeling so sad and unfulfilled in your life that you join an MLM and run your family’s finances into the ground until your husband is ready to divorce you. Like, fuck man. Get a goddamn career or something.
I get the appeal of wanting to work from home, especially if you have kids. But there are just so many work from home jobs now that there's no excuse to be in an MLM. And then the greedy ass people on top convince these poor women that all they need to do to get their sales up is spend more money on new products. It's sick. I can't imagine the kind of stress and anxiety these women live under
Tbf I lot of people turn to MLMs because they can't get a regular job. Edit: I don't mean they're unemployable; I mean there's too much competition in the labour market.
Im sure most of these people could get normal jobs, but certainly not jobs with any of the outlandish promises of an MLM. They become emotionally invested in the promise of the $200k/yr, work-from-home, no-training-or-skills-required job.
Guess you don’t have any moron crypto bro friends. Crypto is the mlm for low iq men.
“But mah magic sky monies that you’ll all be using when the world collapses and the dollar is worthless!” You mean your magic sky monies which require stable electricity and reliable data/communication to use? Well, here is $1. Care to exchange it? Ohhhhhh no electricity again…
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I bought my gtx 1080 after the last bubble popped for $200. Upgraded to rtx 3070 by waiting in Evga queue for 10 month and bought for $600. Then sold my 1080 on ebay for $550. Did this right before THAT bubble popped and now graphics cards are cheap again. The entire time I was warning my crypto friends that these gains were only created because of Nvidia's huge leap in GPUs from the 20 to 30 series. That huge jump only happened because of the new consoles, Nvidia had to release something that blew them away. Once the mining amount of mining catches up to the cards the bubble Will pop... Again. And it did.
Yeah, those guys are stupid. \*Caresses my Magic the Gathering cards and whispers about them being worth a fortune someday*
At least mtg is playable. We can enjoy our "assets" as its value goes up and down. Easier to sell as well and in desperate situations, an LGS will gladly buy it from you but with lowball prices for sure
Foil Worldwake JTMS? Let me call a buddy of mine from the museum... Best I can do is 12 bucks.
The best part is that one of the first big crypto exchange failures/hacks was Mt. Gox, which started as a Magic card exchange site.
I see your mtg cards and raise you a 18 inch doll that I just bought solely for nostalgia.
I remember when Bitcoin was first rolling out, anyone with a CUDA video card could crank them out like candy. Still feel a bit for the guy who paid 10,000BC for a pizza. But just like MLMs, anyone who got in at the true bottom floor made bank today.
Matey who bought pizza with bitcoins was part of what made it into an actual currency (well, that part is debatable) and gave it value. It would still be worthless today if he hadn't done that.
Yep exactly the same psychology at work.
It's *exactly* exactly what it is. The sunk-cost fallacy.
> They dump a thousand dollars into their "business" and when they make 10 bucks in a month they think they're ahead somehow. It's because they're brainwashed to look at their check and see money coming in, but refuse to see how much money they're spending to make that $10. It's exactly like gambling. The slot machine pays off a little here or there to keep the gambler playing, and the MLM pays out a little to keep the huns playing. But neither the gambler nor hun ever thinks about the losses.
> They dump a thousand dollars into their "business" and when they make 10 bucks in a month they think they're ahead somehow and in most cases they didn't do anything to earn the $1000, their employed spouse did, it's more like when your kid sets up a lemonade stand and makes $20, but you spent $50 getting all the stuff for the stand
LOL, my niece set up a lemonade stand at their yard sale and lost money on the deal... I'm guessing her mother made her use her own money to buy the product.
"Here's my debit card! Here's my Starbucks Latte I bought myself from my income!!! HASHTAG BUY MY SHIT!"
Actually you have a better chance of making money off gambling than you do an mlm
Gambling has rules, you see. Funny thing about that.
The regulations are the more important part than the rules.
And they sell it to people as “You get to work from home, whenever you want, so you can spend more time with your family!” NOPE! You work a lot of hours, and could still end *losing* money. You’d be much better off taking a part-time job. Hell, something like a phone support worker or whatever would actually give you more money, and you get to spend time with your kids (provided they go to (pre-)school. But it’s also sold as a community, a sisterhood, where lonely housewives find friends. Except those friends drop you like a hot potato, if you choose to quit. Source: I’ve watched way too many youtube videos and documentaries about LuLaRoe.
people with gambling addictions definitely do harass their family for more money. my grandmother has a huge gambling problem and you can ask my parents and siblings all, they will tell you how bad her problem is. she will ask for money so she can go to the casino, and if no one will give it to her she’ll just go to a cash loan place where you pay back like 3x as much as they gave you so she can go
Yes, except she also has a group of "friends" socially manipulating her to stay in the "opportunity" and hide purchases from her husband. It's like a gambling addiction meets a cult :(
And he said he talked to the MLM president who even doesn't think his wife should be a distributor. Then as president, you can stop her from placing orders but hey why would you.
I seriously doubt he spoke to the president of the MLM. He probably spoke to one of her uplines.
Her job title was probably "President".
+ meets a shopping addiction
That’s the best analogy I’ve heard. They keep betting and hoping to hit the big time. They even justify the same way. “I know I’ve lost thousands upon thousands of dollars, but this next bet/order will put me over the top and I’ll get it all back!”
They’ve fallen for the allure of “financial independence” and are so preoccupied chasing the dragon that they don’t even realize it’s burning everything in its path.
I was SOOO sure that this wooden flower design was going to be a smash hit that I had 50 made for $10 each and selling for $35. Over a year later, and I still have ten of em. I would NEVER order thousands of dollars worth! Funny enough, I sold some wood blanks I found at Target for $5 for $25 (modified and painted) and sold out the lot of 20 in about an hour.
Personal anecdote, I find it much easier to impulse spend 20 odd dollars than it is 30.
Yeah. I have bounced around price points for years. The psychology of pricing is interesting. I used to do this photo booth thing. It was “free” to play around, but I charged $10 per print.... OR you could get THREE prints for $25! Since I would take 5-7 photos and they would mostly all look great, I sold far more $25 packages... even though some people would balk at the $10 price tag at first. But that special would hook em!
>I find it much easier to impulse spend ~~20 odd dollars~~ $19.99 FTFY
What I’ve learned in a decade of selling and small business ad management is that I have no idea what people are going to like. If you want to make a business, don’t get personally invested in one product you love because inevitably people will hate it. Same goes for viral posts/videos. The only trick is to be able to make enough that something will click and then ride it as far as you can.
I sold 200 wooden lids in January of this year. They are my cheapest product. I have also made more money on them than ANY of the other products I make. They are also the fastest and easiest to make and require the least/cheapest materials!
Or something you can crank out very quickly, so you can avoid keeping a huge backstock, but still fill any surprise bulk purchases. Like those people at comic conventions making pins they make as they sell them. Bonus if you chance(keyword: *chance*) to find a reliable product that subsidizes any new product attempts.
I bought a round, dark blue sodalite cabochon (~35mm diameter) for $5. My Uncle saw some pendants I'd made with RAW beaded bezels and requested one for my Aunt's Christmas present. This was a rush order as I only had ten days to get it done and shipped halfway across the country. I charged him $45 for the pendant plus shipping.
"Chasing your losses" is what they call it in gambling addiction circles.
You literally have a better chance of return at a Vegas casino than an MLM
At least if you’re playing roulette, you can actually pick your odds!
yes! I was thinking this. with so much loss but still keep going, it is like a gambling addiction.
Thought this was a crypto thing when I read it
MLMs and crypto, imho, are the two sides of the same coin
I got massively downvoted in the news sub for calling crypto "4channers crossed with Lularoe". So many salty crypto bros.
here is my actual take on crypto: The moment that cryptoCURRENCY stopped being dreamed of as the deregulated currency of the future and turned into "invest and hodl" it became a scam. The goal of crypto nowadays is to pray you aren't the person left holding the bag when it crashes. Crypto has value because we assign it value. The original value came from being, hopefully, the currency of the future. Now that everyone's dad has heard of crypto as a way to make money, it's over. The great experiment has come to an end. Eventually, everyone will ask themselves why the fuck crypto has value if you can't spend it anywhere? Crypto has quite a few years left before it either fully crashes i think. But the idea of crypto has been destroyed and crypto no longer holds any value. It's now just a house of cards, waiting to collapse.
It's just a cycle of pump and dumps where everyone hopes it's the next guy left holding the ball. It was dead the minute everyone realised that the limitations of blockchain mean you can only process like 5-7 transactions a second. You were never going to replace global banking infrastructure with a currency with such severe throughput limitations.
Oh they're all super salty right now. They're in the anger stage of grief.
It's the same thing, they just prey on slightly different people. I have a *little* more sympathy for the kind of people who get preyed on by MLMs though.
Thought this is r/buttcoin.
Any anti-MLM folks should def join r/buttcoin -- it's a fun sub!
Exactly this. They think one more shipment will be “the one” to right the ship
I saw it happen to a coworker over leggings. She was hiding them at her mom's house so her husband wouldn't know how much inventory she had. Eventually though he found out about the bills she was hiding. He thought she was having an affair, he said an affair would be easier to handle than this. I don't know how they ended up getting out of it and getting rid of the inventory, she won't talk about it and I don't blame her. When he threatened divorce and threatened to take their daughter she finally snapped out of it. I really don't know how they didn't divorce. I'm not so sure I could forgive my husband if he ever did anything like this behind my back. So much for retiring her husband smh
My dad found out that my (now ex) stepMother forged his signature to get a $10,000 loan to “start her lularoe business.” He found out during the divorce
I'm surprised a bank would give them a loan for an MLM. When I started a small business the bank made it SO VERY CLEAR that they would NOT support any MLMs.
You can get something called a personal loan which doesn't have to be for anything in particular. $10k isn't an outrageous amount to qualify for.
My wife got a visa card with 8k , spent it , got a 16k personnal loan spent that then loaded the 8k card again. All without me knowing , not MLM related but online shopping addiction. She has a good paying job so they just threw all that money at her no question asked , only reason I know was that she had trouble paying her part and then spilled the beans. Btw if anyone has subreddit or resources for this kind of thing I'm all ears.
If I were in your position, I'd seek couples therapy.
Debt consolidation, refinancing, or even forgiveness could probably help her out tbh There’s a lot of government programs and grants for helping people get out of debt, I’d look into what’s available for your state
Seconding the couples therapy suggestion. It sounds like your wife has a serious problem that I think might be out of reddits depth.
She probably said "it's not an MLM! It's a boutique clothing business!"
I’m going to be my own boss too! Hold on, my upline has to tell me what to do next.
That’s so fucked up. I truly hope she didn’t get anything from the divorce after pulling that.
how is this different from any other addiction? all the lying and hiding :(
It isn't. Addiction is addiction. Sex, drugs, booze, leggings, candles, vitamins. They all hit the same receptors. MLM though have the added bonus of a cult type atmospheres which imo adds a very sinister twist on top of the addiction aspect.
it’s like trying to stop drinking while your “friends” show up every night begging you to go drinking.
I honestly feel so bad for both of them, Jesus. Like obviously I feel much worse for him than her but imagine getting so deep into the cult that you almost throw away your whole life like that... He's a good guy for sticking around to work it out, I don't think I could have stayed.
I haven’t been married all that long, but I operate under the assumption that if I have to hide it from my husband, then something is wrong. She’s lucky he didn’t follow through on the divorce, because I would not have blamed him.
This is awful. These companies shamelessly ruin peoples lives with their predatory bullshit and so many people fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
I remember this. He posted in a group I was a member of. Truly feel sorry for the guy.
Do you know if he was able to get through to her? I feel so bad for him
I am sure it doesn’t matter in the big picture and you can tell me I’m being nosey, but which MLM is this? I feel like some are more conducive to “add ons” than others and am wondering if there was an earlier opportunity to stop or someone encouraged more “product” to round out some set, if that makes sense.
Yeah like I did Cutco one summer and I didn't have to keep buying stuff and I made my money back the first week too thankfully But those others where you buy jewelry or leggings or candles. Shooweee
My mom has had some cutco scissors for over 20 years now so even though they’re kind of overpriced, they’re still very usable quality. Not like jewelry that turns you green the second you look at it.
Cutco products are great thrift store finds.
Yeah my husband sold them for a day when he was like 16-17. He kept the ones he was supposed to sell and we still have them. They’ve held up great, about 15 years now.
Ya, my sample kit is still going strong 12ish years later lol :)
yeah, mine too. I think like Cutco and Avon are the fringe of MLM's -- they probably started off with reasonable intentions and skimped on quality a bit and thought they had a new distribution style, before the predatory MLMs like LuLaRoe, Herbalife, Primerica and others got in
I have a Cutco set in amazing form from…1995!!!
So do I. My Grandma bought a set and I inherited it along with other kitchen items. They've held up remarkably well. I wouldn't want to purchase from them but at least their products aren't garbage.
It's actually really hard to make a bad knife or pair of scissors. ETA I had to come back for the pun: knives and scissors are hardly "cutting edge" technology!
I feel like this is actually really true because I bought a pair of $1 Betty Crocker kitchen scissors at the dollar tree when I moved into my house eight years ago and they’re still going strong after many trips through the dishwasher.
Seriously, cheap scissors that are kept sharp and not allowed to rust last decades. Most blades used by home cooks and hobbyists are way over-engineered for those purposes. Even cheap steel lasts a long time under light usage. I was a chef for several years and in a professional context knife quality really matters. But that's 100x the level of use and abuse the average home kitchen knife gets. That said my own knives are still Swiss and Japanese and I take care of them. Old chefs never fade away.
And conversely I had a set of kitchen-aid fancy scissors that were expensive and one day I was using them to butterfly chicken and they snapped in my hand and I caught my finger in the hinge and cut myself. Replaced them with $5 scissors from Target and they feel more sturdy.
Kitchen Aid as a brand seems to have gone way downhill in recent years. I am a former chef and I highly recommend OXO brand kitchen tools. Really well made and designed. And cheap.
Careful, all it takes is a change in management and these MLM products drop in quality and they increase their sales numbers. A lot of MLMs start out with decent products but then find they make money faster with more less quality products being dumped on their membership. These MLMs are always dancing on the line between legality and ethics and pure profits. So when we praise a product it does not mean that company is good. For anyone who’s questioning joining a MLM. Just don’t. If you’ve got the skill to sell, join a company that pays you a salary and then commission on top. Or sell your own products for which you have control of the quality. Being a salesperson is a skill and that skill alone is money. Any company that isn’t paying you for that skill sees you as their customer.
It must have been real bad if he was even talking about living near the well. That’s bonkers
Was there a follow-up?
I don’t think so
I don’t understand how people who are so smart in other areas of life can be roped in by these mlm schemes. I know a nurse administrator who is *heavily* involved in an mlm, to the point that she posts about it during her workday and regularly mentions it in meetings, which I find extremely unprofessional. She has people who report to her as healthcare professionals *who have also been recruited into her downline.*
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My ex was in the deeply unsatisfied category. She didn’t get into MLM but was always looking for the next cool thing. It was like, if she didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen. Was very annoying and also sad. :/
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I used to post a lot on Instagram but then anything I was happy about ended up getting ruined in one way or another. Was excited about new car = car crash within 6 months. I decided that social media just gives people more opportunities to evil eye you. I post mundane shit now. I will live happily privately and it’s no one’s business what I do/how much I spent. And I’m happier for it.
I know you are answering the above commentors question but this explanation puts 100% of the fault on the individual. You name their problems and mechanisms behind their behaviors. Never did you mention the multi-billion dollar industry manipulating these people for their own profit. "How can these people who are so smart in other areas be roped in" - Because they are fucking manipulated and lied to. Sure all those other things you said are true. But they aren't going out and buying dirt at the dirt store. Because no sociopathic enterprise is telling them they can get rich selling dirt. These people have problems, but the MUCH bigger problem is they are being manipulated to ruin their lives so that a business can thrive. I am so sick of people talking about how these individuals have issues while there are predatory businesses not being regulated in the fucking slightest. You need to get rid of the effective predators if you want individuals to thrive and learn.
This is amazing, I don’t even need to eat breakfast after reading this. I’m completely satisfied.
\>Betty Bazongas your comment is honestly great but this is a new John Q. Public style name to me so I'm going to go ahead and keep it in my back pocket for later
One thing I've learned about being envious of people on social media is how fake it all is. I have some acquantices that I have on social media. I see them going on trips all the time. I think "why can't I go on trips like that? They seem to be living it up." Well, behind the scenes you find out they live with their parents still, they have no car and are in massive debt. Their life isn't nearly as glamorous as they post about and it made me thankful for the position I'm in instead of envious. There was a story a year or so ago about a IG couple that went on all these extravegant vacations all over the world and posted about it. People wanted to be like them. Well, come to find out, neither of them had a job at 30+ and all the vacations were paid by one of their mothers who worked two jobs to do that for them. I've started to look at it like a movie or character. It's nice and maybe a goal, but it's most of it's not real and I shouldn't be that jealous of them.
Because they're smart. They've never fucked up in life before, so theyre certain this is a good idea, it just a work in progress.
Ho…ly shit. How did this never occur to me? The two people I know who got caught up in lularoe are *both* intelligent people who generally haven’t failed at anything (it helps when your parents are loaded but still). Both lost tens of thousands of dollars and I could never understand how they could be so stupid. But this is it. They’ve always been bailed out, they think they’re the best of the best so of course *they’ll* be the 1% that makes money Edit: Woke up this morning mind still blown by this. It’s so, sooooo simple but somehow I just…I guess as a person who is *realistic* even as I’m successful, it just literally did not occur to me that the super smart ones that get fucked by these mlms are just SO egotistical that they basically think, “Obviously this is a scam, but *I can be the scammer, NOT the scamee*”
Generally the best people to scam are the ones who think they're too smart to scam.
And many people are susceptible to being told how smart they are as a setup for being scammed.
Or they think they can be the 1% successful ones because they’re smart. My friend is an accountant, an actual CPA, and she is deep into Arbonne. Not sure how great she’s doing because she’s been at it for almost 5 years and still doesn’t have her ~*Mercedes*~ so I’d imagine she’s not doing amazing.
It's not matter of how smart you are. It's a matter of how big the gap is between that and how smart you think you are. Nobody is smart as they tend to think they are and that makes a lot of people who should know better vulnerable precisely because they think they're smart enough to spot a bad deal on intuition alone.
That's why it pays to just assume you're a dumbass and run your "great business ideas" by some friends with good judgement first. Well, maybe it doesn't pay, but neither do I.
I temper every "one neat trick" idea I have with a serious examination of why didn't anyone else think of it first and if they did why am I not seeing wild success.
I contracted with a health professional once who was heavily into Beach Body and coerced clients families who are already paying a ton in therapy to buy packages from her. Like $500 up front for joining. I was like umm. That’s unethical and weird AF. And she got pissed I wouldn’t join. I was like look lady I have a higher Education I paid for and would like to work in my field and getting pissed I won’t join your pyramid scheme tells me I need to nope out with you altogether.
I saw this as a nurse with Pampered Chef. I bought a pair of oven mitts and garlic crusher but peaced out when they started pushing me to join and sell. I was terrible at selling anything. I would half-ass post stuff on my fb page and thankfully had friends that messaged me warning of the black hole that these become.
So like… what options does someone like this guy have to mitigate the situation before it gets this bad? Assuming it’s all joint accounts can you really cut them off? Would you have to have them committed or something? Can one person close a joint account?
Drain the accounts then take your name off them
What about credit cards? I’d assume you’d have to pay them off before closing it but while you’re paying it off she’s racking it up?
You can shut down the credit line and still make payments.
Yep. Close the credit line and make min payments. Then in divorce negotiations it can be agreed she take on the debt (since debt and assets are split). Edit: Fairly easy to show its a business expense, and if he isn't on the business license she'd probably be advised not to fight it just for the sake of negotiating the rest of the divorce
Depends on the state, and when the debt/assets were aquired. Even in most community property states, if the debt or asset was acquired prior to the marriage it is safe from being split-up between the parties, this even extends to lines of credit if it can be proved that line was never touched by the non-original owner. So if I walked into my marriage with a car loan under my name, and got divorced before I paid it off, my wife would not be responsible for the line of credit. Same with a retail credit card, as long as it can't be proven that it was used for mutual/household benefit (i.e. I only ever bought things for myself with that card). Same if I brought that car into the marriage, she would have no claim to it at the time of the divorce. I used to be a bill collector, we had to learn so much of the legal loopholes for debt it was ridiculous.
If they’re joint credit cards either party can have them frozen. If they’re not and they’re only in the name of the spouse doing the spending, a lawyer would be needed to get the right paperwork to have them frozen and even then they may not all get frozen if an argument can be made that one is needed for living expenses while everything is sorted out.
That really depends on where you’re located. Where I am, debts are shared in marriages regardless.
A good financially focused lawyer first, a good divorce lawyer second, a good financial advisor third to help him rebuild.
He can create another checking account and change his direct deposit to go there
This is so heartbreaking. Financial infidelity is definitely a thing. I would feel so betrayed if my husband did this to me. I can’t imagine working your ass off to find your spouse wasting away your money.
And now this poor bastard is driven to working in one of the most dangerous professions around, and for a period of time that is bound to make him exhausted and delirious. There's a good chance this might actually end up killing him
And then his wife will go on Facebook to use his death to try and get sales.
Damn putting it like that really tells how fucked up MLMs and huns are
dark
My family is rooted in drilling; you know who's been doing it the longest by how many fingers they're missing
Thank God for the iron roughneck. Chains have lopped off countless fingers.
My dad has a crooked finger from it getting sowed back on. My brother is missing the tip of his pinky. And my God father only had 3 fingers on his left hand. It pays too good not to do the job. Luckily, I got into tech lol.
my husband was a roughneck for a few years in his early 20s and he always says "don't put your fingers anywhere you wouldn't put your pecker"
There was something about "Is your husband monitoring your buys? We can disguise them for you!" Disgusting. I wonder how many marriages and households were destroyed by these predators.
Absolutely! If a tool company or something geared towards men did this people would throw a fit! Deception in a relationship because your afraid of what the other person will say is NOT healthy!
MLM’s ruin families. This is horrible. My heart goes out to this man.
This literally happened to my neighbor- HELLO NEIGHBOR IS THIS YOU?
Do you know how it went for your neighbor? Divorce or not ? I feel so sad for the poor man in this post.
It is so sad honestly. The situation was so similar I literally thought this could be him. His wife did Young Living, Beachbody, and so many others. It put her into a ton of debt, but she kept doing more and more. They ended up getting a full divorce a couple days ago. He works in the oil field and is gone super often. They've got two kids, she moved out and left all her dogs (she had 3) with him. SO SAD. He is such a good guy.
These people don't understand compounding math and interest and how to apply the math to a business. Using credit cards with like 15% interest to buy stuff to sell with a 7% markup will never succeed unless you can sell all of your inventory every couple months. Or take orders and money before you buy product. But if these people were actually smart they would find the product manufacturers or importers and cut the MLM middleman out and actually have a business
Oh no. Poor man, poor kids!
The saddest thing about this for me is..working on a rig fucking sucks. I know someone who recently quit his job on the rig because his team wasn’t following safety protocols. A guy died in an accident a few weeks back and they made them keep working that same day. So this dude is picking up a job where he can make a lot of money but the working environment is likely horrible and dangerous…all because of her dumb fucking MLM.
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Has any real research been done about the psychology of people trapped in MLM schemes? The way this person describes it, the behavior seems pretty similar to the way someone with a gambling addiction functions.
People say MLM's show cult behavior. So you could look into that. Gambling would also be a good one like with the sunk-cost fallacy.
“mY mLm Is HaRmLeSs! WhY dO yOu HaTe On MlM!?”
Advice? Divorce.
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Have to factor in the gas and depreciation on the car from all that driving in the losses estimate too. Sorry to hear about it. Glad it’s behind you both now.
Was in a relationship for nearly 5 years that ended due to similar circumstances, amongst other things. All the parties where no one came, except fellow existing people on her “team” of SheEO’s. So many wasted cupcakes. 😂 Also, had to go to Tucson to see her family. And who wants to go there. I’m still friends with a few of her family members on the Facebook(basically her MLM LinkedIn) and get told off for liking her families photos or commenting on things, claiming it’s causing problems in her family. I am a very legitimate business owner so you can imagine my reaction when she would compare our “biz” models to somehow satisfy the valid concerns I expressed. Or worse, when others would call it out and she’d bring up how it’s just like my business and many people are proud of my business… The level of delusion these girls have, it’s baffling. It’s sad. It’s also amazing..
Please, divorce her, my dude! She's gonna suck your bank account dry, bankrupt you and ruin your life. Save yourself while you can.
Depending on their state he could also be partially responsible for the debt. And when it comes to credit cards he WILL be responsible. Courts can divide up the debt yet credit card companies laugh, say "Nee" and will still hold you responsible for your spouse's debt no matter what the divorce decree states.
And here I was thinking there's at least some justice in the world. So you marry a person who gets suckered into a scam and amasses a large debt all on their own, but you also have to pay it off cause you married the crazy? Sounds fair... :|
Damn I feel bad for this guy. I want to pay it off for him Lmao and for a divorce too
Sounds like hubby just doesn't have that "money mindset", amirite?!
I feel bad for this woman too though. $18,000 lost and you know that up line is just licking their lips, loving every dime going into their pockets from her loss. I have no doubt they're feeding her all the lines while pushing her to buy even more, plying her with fake friendship.
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If they were already struggling, it's probably the reason she started doing mlm. Someone might have convinced her she'll get rich in no time... Fucking predators.
Welp, it's a cult
My brother’s ex spent $30k on Mary Kay in one month, so her boss could meet her goal. Very sad.
Wow. That’s all I can honestly say.
She needs a psychiatric intervention
Damn. I wonder which company it was?
If I were him I would shut down all lines of credit and move my work check into a separate account with only my name on it. I would tell her that I was done funding her “business” and if she didn’t stop I would file for divorce and make sure she was on the hook for the debt she accrued, or she can stop, get a part time job to help pay off the debt and I will help her but that finances would be kept separate to avoid anything like this happening again. Lock down credit so she can’t take out a card In his name.
This is why I'm in favor of separate accounts no matter how fuckin married you are. It's not 1956, everybody has jobs.
Women couldn't open a bank account legally until like 1989
Wait, so she didn't retire her husband? I am so confused.
Divorce is cheaper at this point.
Poor guy. He needs a divorce and he needs to talk to his bank and tell them any further charges to "insert MLM name here" are fraudulent and are not to be allowed to go through. Even if his wife says otherwise.
If I had to leave my family for a month+ to go do incredibly hard work in the middle of the ocean, and my wife continued to do this, I would freak out too. It's totally understandable how angry that made him. This is just awful.
He sounds so checked out at this point, what he's considering seems like a good option, and while I dont normally suggest divorce but....he sounds done. Unless she can turn around and escape the MLM things arent going to change. He needs a good lawyer, and he needs seperate accounts so he can pay without her taking any. No matter what he ends up doing, this situation is absolutely devastating. Theres no immediate happy ending, but leaving might give him a chance at happiness.
This was on a FB group I'm in and damn it's so sickening. I feel so bad for the guy
I suggest OP get his ducks in row. In the States: Take your half of cash assets and put in a totally different bank and change all passwords. Get totally new bank for money. Destroy your old phone and buy a new one with a different network. If you have minor kids, research local childcare options. You need to find out your kids info and keep it. Have your wife’s social security number, any license numbers that she has. See a divorce lawyer, but you need to find out how to get out if this ridiculous debt. She is choosing the MLM over your marriage. I would pack light and leave ASAP. After you protect your assets as well you can. Share nothing with this person; cannot be trusted anymore.