If it looks too good to be true ...

I am absolutely over people losing their money. Way back in the late 1970s and early 1980s I started writing and doing radio segments on investment. A lot of this was about the positive aspects of saving and investing: using savings to pay down high-interest personal debt, saving to buy a home, paying off your home loan, buying a well-located investment property or some good quality shares.

Over 40-plus years, these commonsense ideas have generally worked a treat. I say generally, because none of us has a crystal ball and with investments there are inevitable disasters. At a personal level, most of my property investments have worked out well. But along with a few of my university buddies, in about 1984, I bought a property for the grand sum of $21,000 in Tawonga, near Mt Beauty, Victoria. We thought we’d build a ski lodge to enjoy as a group. We