Why will I ever need to know this crap [Algebra, History, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, and Geography] in real life? I've personally used these words, and I'll wager that most of us have done so at some point while being forced to do homework even though we had much bigger fish to fry. Little did I know while in grade school that I'd use the knowledge gained from almost all these subjects on an almost-daily basis, not only in real estate & banking, but in being a parent & volunteering as a Boy Scout leader, and even in running a family home.
This subject came to mind as I was reading this week's Coffee News over a sandwich. Coffee News is cheaply-printed in black & white font on glow-in-the-dark yellow 14X17 paper, folded in half to save display space. In the style of rural mom & pop restaurant menus, all 3 inches of margin on each side, top, and bottom of the paper contains ad space. Old, tired, inspirational stories and jokes are printed in the middle (ad-free) portion. It's a lousy little low-budget publication, but it's free and I've grown to look forward to reading it during lunch.
One of the ads I've been noticing for several months is for a guy pushing annuities (probably variables, I'd guess, since that's where the big commissions are). The ad reads:
"Never loose your principle again."
Yes, friends, you're reading it exactly as printed. Of course, standard spell-check wouldn't have caught a misspelling because both "loose" and "principle" are spelled correctly. Now I'm loosing my principle [unleashing my belief system]. Let's first assume that this was (is) a misprint on the part of the publisher. If that were the case, our annuity salesman could've corrected the grammar many months ago. Since he hasn't done so, I'm inferring that the annuity guy submitted the ad this way when he rented the space. Aside from my lack of comfort with annuities of any kind, I asked myself if I'd be inclined to trust this person with my money based on his grammar-butchering advertisement. NOT A CHANCE.
In my opinion, poor grammar in any form of marketing indicates carelessness, a reluctance to seek advice from experts, questionable judgment, and a general lack of professionalism. Finally, grammar issues aside, the validity of the statement is questionable. It IS possible to lose principal with an annuity.
Do you prefer not to lose your principal again? Open a CD at an FDIC-Insured Community Bank.
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