Source: Ternary variance
Don't get me wrong, the "deserved" in the title is actually talking about myself.
I recently almost returned to poverty in the middle class, and after reviewing the whole process of things, there was only one conclusion that I had died, and I could only scold myself for "deserving it".
I work in a large Internet company, and my income is more than enough for the upper and lower levels, which is considered a standard middle class.
There has always been a three-piece saying that the middle class has returned to poverty: high mortgages, full-time wives, and international schools.
These three-piece suits, except for the international school, the other two sets did not escape.
Fortunately, through the consumption downgrade and prepayment in previous years, the problem of high mortgages has been basically solved, and now I only have one set left.
But human nature just likes to die, and the middle class "likes" to be harvested.
Without the stress of a high mortgage, the income that was originally used for prepayment became a monthly surplus, so the money needed to find a place to go.
I thought about it and was ready to buy a shop.
The experience of almost being harvested
My appeal is to find an asset that brings stable cash flow and will not consider asset liquidity for the next 10 years, so if the location of the shop is good, it is more suitable for my needs.
Buying a shop is a taboo in investment, mainly due to poor liquidity, high taxes and fees, and high risks.
But I decided not to listen to those investment bloggers, thinking that they are for ordinary people, and I know my needs very well, not ordinary investors.
That's the first problem I had when I died: I felt that I was smarter than anyone else.
Blindly confident, I spent a few days understanding the current store market.
It is said that it is a few days, but in fact, it is only the hour before going to bed every night, after all, work has taken up most of the time.
After a few days of information gathering, I found that the current shop market is too attractive.
Shops with a 10% yield can be found everywhere, and some of them only cost a few hundred thousand yuan for a total price. What kind of fairy investment product is this, I watched the intermediary video for a few days, and I immediately got on it.
I added some intermediary WeChat, learned about the information of shops in a surrounding city, as high as 11% of the yield, the popularity of a certain plaza, and the incendiary words of the very sought-after listings made me very excited, and I even discussed with my family to go to see the house and pay the deposit.
That's the second problem I have to die with: making a decision without a deep understanding.
Although I didn't invest a lot of time, it wasn't like I didn't do any homework.
I repeatedly confirmed the reliability of the income with the agent, and the agent replied positively.
What the agent said may not be all right, and I verified it myself.
The most important thing when buying a store is the flow of people. In order to verify the flow of people in the store, I searched for food and beverage takeaway information in the mall, and I can see that the takeaway business is not bad through the number of transactions and reviews. This shows that the surrounding flow of people is still relatively large, and there should be a lot of offline traffic.
But I also have some questions, such as:
The return on investment is so high, why should a certain mall be sold?
I searched for information about the recent land sale of a certain Da Plaza, and found that Wang Shoufu had a debt of 100 billion yuan and had to sell his house to pay off his debts.
Everything seems to make sense, selling the shop is to pay off the debt, and I am secretly happy, isn't this still possible to pick up the leak?
That's the third problem I have to die with: there is no sense of risk.
Busy work saved my life
Originally, I was probably about to step into this seemingly beautiful trap, but fortunately, my busy work saved me.
Originally, I decided to look at the property on Wednesday, but there happened to be a task at hand that was not completed in those days, and the viewing time could only be changed to the weekend.
It was these days of waiting that I wanted to see if there was any negative information about this square. After changing a few different keywords, when I finally searched for the word "rights protection", I found that this turned out to be a big hole.
On the Internet, I directly searched for the project's rights protection discussion post.
I talked to the person who left a comment on one of the posts and learned that this shop is a typical leaseback shop routine.
For example, the actual price of the shop is 1 million, and the seller sells it to you for 1.3 million yuan, and promises to give you a rent back of 100,000 yuan every year. You calculated that the yield was good, and the rent for the first two or three years was indeed given to you, but after a period of time, the other party shrank sharply to only one or two hundred thousand yuan per year on the grounds of insufficient rental income. When you do the math, you find that the rent you were originally refunded is actually just a premium for you to buy this shop.
In the end, you buy a shop with an annual yield of less than 2% and huge liquidity, and the 1 million funds are equivalent to being completely trapped.
Sure enough, high-end hunters often appear in the image of prey.
Before writing this article, I had only heard of the three-piece set for the middle class to return to poverty. I later learned that there is also a "three-piece set of middle-class death": investing in shops, quitting his job to start a business, and trading stocks full-time.
I won one of the three-piece set of returning to poverty, and I almost won another one.
If my head was hot at that time, maybe I would really return to poverty in the middle class, do you think I deserve it?
I think back to many of my middle-class friends who also like to die, and they have different harvesting postures.
- There is a high leverage to buy a school district house, because the assets have shrunk sharply after the school district housing price has plummeted.
- There are those who are enthusiastic about consumerism and pay a large IQ tax on daily consumption, resulting in only a small amount of savings over the years.
- There are those who are addicted to travel and star chasing, and although their income is high, they spend a lot of money on experiential consumption, and they have no savings.
- There are those who believe in numerology and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to support the master.
I wonder why the middle class likes to be harvested.
Why do the middle class like to die?
Many people say that the middle class is back in poverty because they underestimate the risk, overestimate the future cash flow, and so on.
This is indeed the reason for the return of the middle class to poverty, but it is only a superficial reason, and what we need to be more concerned about is why such a miscalculation occurs?
People can't earn money other than they know, and even if they earn it by luck, they will lose it by strength.
The middle class is easy to harvest, and it must also be because of cognitive problems.
To summarize my experience briefly, I think there are several reasons.
Question 1: The illusion of the dividends of the times: I am better than others
The middle class is relatively successful.
In terms of income, the middle class has surpassed most people, and the ability to buy a house and settle down in a big city has already surpassed most people in the country.
In terms of life, the middle class has a stable weekend holiday and can travel several times a year. At the circle level, the middle class usually sits in a comfortable office and comes into contact with relatively high-income people.
Many of today's middle class are the lucky ones of the times, but the middle class is not necessarily smarter than others.
After 2008, China's economy began to grow in great strides, with more and more new industries emerging. Many middle-class people have taken advantage of this economic growth dividend, and the rapid development of the street industry has occupied important positions in the company and obtained income that exceeds that of others.
It is natural for those in power to think that this is because they are smarter and harder than others.
This is clearly an illusion.
Problem 2: The time of the middle class is squeezed dry
You can't make more money than you know.
I don't know much about shop investment.
I don't know the common routines of shop investment now, and my cognition is still stuck in the concept of "one shop for three generations" more than ten years ago. My friend was harvested by the school district because he thought that the price of school district housing would be as strong in the future as it was in the past, but he didn't notice that a similar system of student allocation would gradually reduce the school district's premium.
This is essentially a sign of laziness to think, but can we be blamed for being lazy to think?
No! Because the middle class really doesn't have time, our time has long been squeezed out.
The middle class is just too busy.
Usually, the middle class has to be busy with work. For the middle class, staying up late is a daily routine. Even if you have to learn, you need to learn professional skills to prevent layoffs due to not keeping up with the times. In this era, you can only stay where you are if you run hard.
On weekends, the middle class has to be busy with families. The middle class generally has a baby in the family, and the family of the chicken baby accompanies the child to various cram schools that weekend; Families who don't have a chicken baby should also take their baby to various outdoor sports or travel. In the past two years, there have been many respiratory diseases, and middle-class people with babies have to go to the hospital several times a year.
You say, what time does the middle class have to raise awareness?
If you don't reap, you reap whom.
Problem 3: Weak risk awareness
The reason why there is a three-piece set of middle-class poverty return is essentially because the middle-class has a weak sense of risk.
When we are young, we rarely think about what will happen when we are old.
The income of the middle class has generally grown steadily in the first decade of employment, and it seems that it will continue to grow in the future. That's why I dare to buy a house with high leverage, my spouse doesn't work, or I go to an ultra-expensive international school.
Many middle-class people have high incomes but little savings.
When there is a major change in life, such as illness, job loss, or other unexpected circumstances, then the economic situation can quickly deteriorate.
Moreover, the relationship network of the middle class is relatively simple, and the quality of the people around them is relatively high, so their wariness of others is weak.
I believed the agent's words because I didn't think they would fool people about rent. Because when it comes time to sign the contract, these problems can be falsified immediately.
But the agent's approach is to lure you to the deal step by step, and then use some reasons to prevaricate the past in the final link. When you sign a contract, you often have already done so many things, and there is a high probability that you will sign a contract in the end.
This is all a sign of a weak sense of risk.
In essence, I still feel that I am different from other people and will not be so unlucky.
What to do
What to do?
I think the core is one thing, accept the reality that you are an ordinary person.
The middle class returns to poverty, or they love to pretend to be forced to package themselves with consumption that is higher than their ability to commit to, and obtain inner satisfaction. Either they are pretentious, feel smarter and luckier than others, and make decisions that are beyond their own perception.
So, as long as you feel that you are an ordinary person, that you are not superior to others, that you are not smarter than others, then you will not make the above mistakes.
While preventing yourself from making mistakes, you should plan for the future and ensure that you save for basic living security.
The sooner you accept that you are human, the sooner you will benefit.
If you have any experience of being harvested, please interact in the message area.