I just started a new job and in a casual 1-on-1 chat today my colleague started talking about wanting to become more financially literate and start investing. When topics like this come up with people I'm not close with, I typically say very little because there is rarely anything to be gained by trying to offer advice to people or even share your approach. There's just too much downside.

I'm more than happy to talk with close friends or family about what I'm doing or recommend what they should do, if they ask, but make sure to always tell them that this should just be taken as food for thought and is in no way financial advice and that they should probably speak with a professional.

For instance, my mother, who isn't very financially savvy, called me a few days ago and asked me where I would put money right now. I asked her to specify her investment horizon and she tells me 1 year. She's selling her house of 10 years at a huge profit, renting something much smaller and wants to know where to park 500K for one year. So I said probably a GIC but all of my current investing is for 20 years plus so I'm not very attune with what vehicles make sense for her. And that with the amount of money she is looking to invest she can easily afford and should definitely seek professional help.

Now, back to my colleague, she goes on to mention that she's attending a course by this guy named Darren Winters. She seems really excited to learn "how to make her money work for her" and loves that this guy is self taught and got to where he is by asking professionals questions and gathering info. I'm immediately dubious. She goes on to send me a link to his website and I take a quick look at it, search for his LinkedIn profile, and to see if he has an online presence on YouTube etc.

What I find is worse than I was expecting. I was expecting to find a talented marketer offering "standard" advice around investing a large part of your net worth in a S&P500 etf and 60/40 bullshit etc. Stuff that is pretty much universally regarded as good advice, but easily found for free.

What I discovered was someone with a pretty lackluster online marketing campaign encouraging financially literate people to start FOREX investing. I don't know my colleague very well, but we have a good rapport. She's a very sweet person who is self described, "terrible with money" and is just getting out of credit card debt for the first time in her life and probably making 100K CAD per year.

I'm genuinely concerned that she could lose a ton of money trying to imitate the "advice" she receives from this Darren slimeball. But it seems like there's no easy way to approach this situation. Maybe I could try to briefly mention in passing that I looked into Darren Winters and his courses seem interesting, but I've heard FOREX trading is very risky.

I have two questions. Firstly, do you agree that this course is a scam? Secondly, how would you approach this situation and why?

TLDR; Financially illiterate colleague signed up for a course to learn how to FOREX trade from scam artist. What should I do without risking our very cordial relationship?

https://wealthtrainingcompany.com/in...aining-course/

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...4/jobsandmoney

Just say it looks like he's a hustler, and there's even a site called thetruthaboutdarrenwinters.com. Say that FOREX is a zero-sum game (negative with inflation) and she has basically no chance long term against the people who work at big institutions and have much better tools and connections and decades of experience. Your advice would be to just put the money in a retirement fund, max out IRA, and spend her time doing something she enjoys in life rather than staring at charts and getting scalped by FOREX pros. "That's my view, but do what you want."

Then she'll probably go through with it anyway and get destroyed, and resent you for being right, or she'll idolize you for being right, and either way she'll end up filing a false sexual harassment charge and you'll get fired.

Well, that escalated quickly. My main concern with being so forward is accidentally hurting her feelings and souring our working relationship. I'm sure many people would feel insecure when confronted with the reality that they were duped by a scam artist, and a pretty lousy one at that.

What makes this all the more bizarre is that she works in talent acquisition and recruitment. Therefore a large portion of her job consists of sourcing high quality candidates and screening them for technical skills and fit. This guy very obviously doesn't pass the sniff test.

She will probably just resent you and do it anyway. She makes 6 figures and would assume she would have enough common sense to know will 5 minutes of research just how risky forex is. Maybe she is only putting in a few thousand. Anyway I would stay out of it. Wait for her to lose money and she will come to you for advice then.

Thanks for your input, yeah I'm gonna try my best to not say a word.

I would let her know personally... just wouldn't try to worry about it one way or the other based on her response.

Help her out.

This is easy to me. Tell her. Package it using neg hits/high self worth type strategy: "I'm doing you a favor ***** telling you what's up and you should be grateful for me helping you out". Be an ******* about it.

Trust me on this. Women respect strength. She'll be poor and looking for someone to trust after she goes and does forex anyway, and then you're in.

Second option: bone her. If she's happy then she'll be a) more likely to trust you when you give her advice and b) happier so not looking for the gamble.

The implication seems to be that you want a relationship with her? Anyway, if that's the case, this would be a good chance to get close to her and "teach" her about some finance things. Just don't tell her individual stocks to buy.

Of course you should help her out and explain what she's getting into. You can do it diplomatically or just get straight to the point, but I can't understand why someone wouldn't want to come to the aid of a friend/colleague- or even why they would have to seek advice in the first place.

My reasoning is an educated high earning adult female is no doubt aware of the risks involved here and likely has been told it’s a bad idea or scam already. If she is telling coworkers she has told family and friends, some who would be warning her. Unless you are her closest contact. In this case after hearing it so many times, it will just be an annoyance. I wouldn’t think by telling her you are being a hero or giving any info she hasn’t heard

I don't like to tap the glass.

You can’t help people that don’t want help. It’s very hard to help people who need help and don’t kno they do. Trying almost always ruins the relationship if you try to force it just take your opportunities when they come.

This is why courses are so profitable. You get people like OP's colleague and then people who are so scared to speak up he had to create a thread on what to do.

Either say your mind or don't. Nobody likes a puss

agreed. Unsolicited help - even if it turns out right - usually leads to relationship deterioration. Ego defense and all that.

So if you want to help, be generic and try to avoid personalization that would make your colleague feel like someone who needs to defend their fallacies.
E.g. say things like it sounds to good to be true to me.

How often have you tried to help people in situations like this? For most people I know who try to do this, this ends badly for OP with no upside for either party most of the time. It's awkward to tell someone, in effect "hey you're such a moron you're getting scammed oh and by the way I know far better than you". No matter how "diplomatically" you present it, that's the implicit message you're conveying and their ego is going to spot it.

It's a near universal human response, especially from females (males are a little more realistic even before the whole "mansplaining" misandry took off). I mean, look at how uppity and upset you got in the bitcoin thread when I try to provide a little healthy perspective on your crazier-than-scammy-forex $100 trillion asset "great investment opportunity" bitcoin moon hope thesis and call your bitcoin ponzi scheme a ponzi scheme - people like you get downright upset and vicious and attack the messenger. That's the standard response to this situation. It's basically taking away an addict's happiness/hope for something better, and they defend that viciously. It's pure brain reward chemistry controlling behavior. Listen to chytry:

This is good advice but unlikely to be effective. The "full and total prick" route is the right way to go here, because what you're implicitly telling this female: "Hey you're too stupid to spot a scam and I have to be your dad here even though you're a grown woman, oh and by the way I know far better than you on this topic" is straight up ******* in her female way of thinking. So own it and be it. IRL people always respect and cower before big-balls honesty. That path has about a 40% chance of success imo (good outcome for both), vs <20% chance for any other route.

Cliffs: You need to be the ****boy of the forex scam advice universe.

I'd usually answer with something like "personally, I am skeptical of anyone who sells me on a way to make money easily instead of just making that money themselves. If I get that kind of offer, I'd do my due diligence and then decide what to do next. I've never heard of this so I can't say if it's good or not without doing my own investigation" with the hope that she'll do her due diligence and realize it's not a good idea.

If she follows up and asks you to investigate, the answer I'd give would be waiting a couple of days and saying "I read about it and I don't think it's something I would personally do."

If she asks whether she should do it, the answer is "It's not for me but I believe everyone should make their own decisions about their lives."

I like this approach.

I would help someone out every single time in a situation like this. I would consider an outcome where a friend/colleague is prevented from being scammed, very much an upside. But it's your right to act like a pussy and use sexist anecdotes as a way out, should you choose not to man up.

Your argument breaks down given that you have, for years, repeatedly posted that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme in the BTC thread. Either you do think that intervening has no upside- in which case you wouldn't have posted non-stop in that thread, or you're just a muppet who has nothing better to do. No one gets hurt and upset about negative things said about Bitcoin; people got frustrated because you're a dopey idiot wasting people's time. And hence why you were eventually banned.

I'm here to give out some advice, not to waste further time engaging with an idiot. You impede posters' willingness to respond to those seeking help by being a catalyst for time-wasting off-topic nonsense. Focus more on your play money imaginary trades rather than trying to start fights. Good boy.

Lol, I'm not sure what I said to give you that impression. My sole concern is if I offer her my perspective it could sour our professional relationship and that could cause me difficulty at work. She's very well respected by senior management.

Your first comment is about not tapping the glass. So you're a self hating puss?

give her all the research u did about him and make a case he is no good, tell her to just buy gold n silver, and crypto ez money

To those of you saying I should absolutely tell her, I unfortunately think I need to prioritize preservation of our working relationship right now. If a close friend or relative came to me with about Darren Winters, I would have no problems sharing my unedited thoughts on the manner. If I were 6+ months into the job maybe I would be more candid.

As of right now my plan is to say nothing, unless she brings the topic up again, in which case I will use that as an opportunity to say I briefly looked into him and that I've heard FOREX trading is incredibly risky.

This is exactly the uppity reaction that most women will have when you tell them (no matter how politely you phrase it) that in effect the thing they're excited about and makes them feel good is actually them being an idiot who's being scammed.

I just spit out my drink at that statement; this is exactly the kind of lack of self awareness she will have too

90% of the bitcoin thread is a dopey idiots wasting everyone's time, but not one of the "dopey idiot" bulls with far lower content than the bears gets banned. Why is that? Because people ultimately don't like having someone rain on their happy parade. It's basic human nature. It's why scams works. It's why politics settles into such polarized sides. It's why addiction is so hard to break and the blowback is massive on those who try to intervene. Your lack of understanding of human nature is comical.

You're giving bad advice that you're not willing to discuss the substance of. You're responding exactly in the same-hurt ego way at being called out as most women will when being told politely that they're getting involved in a scam. Have you no real world experience with people? Anyone who's not an idiot thinks that intervening here is <20% chance of being successful in any way and >50% chance of deteriorating the relationship for no upside. When it comes to addicts and scam victims, trying to talk them out of it often makes it worse, in that they go harder into that thing and try to prove it.

No one here is trying to start fights. I'm generously trying to give you some insight and you're going bananas because you're upset that someone is treating your opinion as silly. This defensive ego-driven response you show, by direct demonstration (you're welcome OP), is exactly what will happen most of the time for the OP if he tries to intervene. And it's a lot harsher in real life because the threat of someone in person attacking something you believe in creates an instinctive defensive response. People instinctively and rapidly avoid people who create those responses in them, regardless of the content. It's pure emotion, the opposite of the emotion that scammers play on to hook idiots like this girl in the first place. You have to be lucky for her to have the right personality to take it and it do some good (be a net positive over all scenarios), you're playing for a <20% good outcome here.

I think Tooth did an excellent job of outlining the risk/reward of this situation and the psychology involved in these general situations. I highly doubt the chance of a net positive outcome is greater than 30%.

I think the type of people who are susceptible to very obvious scams like this are significantly less likely to be receptive to criticism than the general population.