Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar
What is the investment opportunity from America’s financial crisis? Somewhere north of one trillion dollars of debt mortgages, credit cards, and other forms will be written off and sold to buyers at pennies on the dollar. It gets even better: There are ways to buy that debt with no money of your own. Society’s collective pain from this crisis means that it’s unlikely to occur ever again on this scale. Investors with the right roadmap are poised to profit spectacularly. Bartm [Read More...]
Buy Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar at Amazon
Other Items of Interest: Question: How do you transfer music to an ipod? Do you know the answer?
As with any person or organization (church or business) that has achieved any measure of success you will be able to find plenty of negative if you google or yahoo it enough. As a person, I don’t care if Bill Bartmann wears a halo or if he rips babies from the womb and eats them whole. I bought the book (through a Brian Tracy joint promotion) in order to use it as a blueprint to wealth and that blueprint hasn’t worked.
I like Bartmann’s straight forward writing style and his occasional use of humor. I was nearly in the floor laughing at times.
As for the substance, I would call this book a “how did” rather than a “how to”. The world has out grown the method.
Bartmann is correct when discouraging the reader from approaching branches of large banks. I actually manage a branch of one of the nation’s top 10 banks and Bill is right – you would spend horrid amounts of time getting to someone “in charge” and when you did finally break through you probably wouldn’t get anything out of it.
Otherwise, I have discovered through actually utilizing the information in the book that the system Bartmann used 15-20 years ago is now an anachronism. For example, one of the local banks in my town garnishes the wages of charge off DDA and delinquent consumer loan customers. They don’t send the delinquent accounts to collection agencies, they keep hammering away until they find a payroll check to garnish. No room for me in that scenario. Another local bank sells the accounts to a collection agency and afterwards the accounts are never seen again – the accounts never return to the bank once the primary collector get hold of them.
At present, I have approached 5 banks – 3 in northeast Oklahoma (Bartmann’s homeland) and 2 in northwest Arkansas – using Bartmann’s system. So far, I am 0-for-5. I will try a few more however, in this day and age it’s pretty easy to quickly run out of local, home town banks to visit. Granted, 5 isn’t an incredible sampling, but it’s probably 5 more than many of the reviewers here have attempted. Besides, who’s going to adopt a new system they read about in a book and visit 53 banks until they find one that will bite?
Final summary: reading how Bartmann amassed his fortune makes for an intriguing read and as a banker I found his explanation of bank operations refreshing and some times hilarious. However it is my experience, vast or minimal that may be, that the system that worked for Bartmann years ago may not work to the same degree today. I wouldn’t in 100 years throw around terms like “scam” or “rip-off” but I will use “impractical”.
Does anyone find it odd that every review (save one) was written on the same day (June 2nd 2009)? This usually suggests a collaborative effort from a specific group of people working to hype the book up.
His story and marketing is manipulative as he was only a BILLIONAIRE ON PAPER. HE NEVER ACTUALLY HAD THE MONEY, IT WAS JUST IN THE VALUE OF HIS COMPANY.
Yes, he went to the Fortune 400 list, only to lose all of his money and go bankrupt shortly after. If this guy was such a savvy businessman, HOW DID HE LOSE A BILLION DOLLARS?
Its not like he has a story of Trump who went from 900+million in the hole back to Billionaire. He is now having to use his story and motivational speaking skills just to get his wealth back.
If you google Bill and his history, you will find the story of an egomaniac who appears to feel empowered by his wealth and nothing else. That is how he defines himself.
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The book may be useful if you plan on calling people to collect on bad debts, but following this person as a motivational speaker? A quick review of his past and character would likely change your mind.
Bill talks about how he became a billionaire in 1998, but leaves out something very important. What happened after 1998? I’ll tell you. His company went bankrupt due to fraud. I do not know the full details about it, but I know he had something like 120 multi-million dollar creditors which stinks of some kind of half business half ponzi scheme, but again…i do not know the details of the fraud and I am not claiming that is was ponzi, only that is what it looks like to me.
If I could ask Bartmann a question, it would be “If you had made a billion dollars from this business, why dont you do it again? Why waste time writing books and giving seminars(which is not as profitable)? Why not get back into something you know about instead of doing books and seminars about how you USED to be a billionaire?”
Let me be clear that in his book he never says he lost all that money. He says in his book he made a billion dollars (although I’m not sure that he did, only that GS said his company was worth a billion, not sure he ever had a billion in cash or that his net profit ever totalled 1 billion from his business) I had to do a little searching on my own to find out he lost it all.
If you want to be inspired though, its a decent read. But dont think that this “blueprint” for making money will make you money.