My brother is having a hard time right now. Someone convinced him to drop $5000 on a how to trade commodities package. Said it was guaranteed, but the fine print was more like he was guaranteed to receive it. Anyway, he has "won and lost", but mostly lost, to the point of bankruptcy.

It's such a hard lesson. Nothing is ever truly free. Always look for the strings. And always always always ask yourself what the persons motives are.

I just got caught myself, on a much smaller scale. Signed up to receive a magazine free for a year, with the fine print that they would auto renew it and charge to my card. What they didn't say is that they would charge $200 a year, and break it up into such tiny amounts on the credit cards that it would not be noticed. I only discovered it when I called to cancel, simply because I wasn't reading it that much.

Everyone has a reason for offering something free, or a deal. So many things have not just S&H, but auto delivery trials that can't be canceled after 5 days, and so many things to get you to buy more, invest more.

I do believe in utilizing freebies, gifts, samples, free with purchase, but with caution. If I can find something that I need to buy anyway, at a discounted price, and they want to give me a gift, that's great. But if I don't need the product to start with, I have to resist the temptation to just see what it is, what it's like, if it's really better than what I have. This is how we save money, how we retired when we were 40. But it is still a struggle, finding the balance between getting a good deal and getting taken for a ride.

My brother is $65K down, and out his retirement, in his 60s. Not a good position to be in. I will be helping him out, because I'm the one who always rat holed money away like our mother did. I like the rush I get from spending, but not the guilt that comes afterwards. I LOVE the high I get saving money, checks coming in instead of going out, and NO remorse.