How I Got Hustled

February 18, 2008 · Filed Under Street Smarts 

I was reluctance to post this since humility is not my greatest asset. Here it goes…

I don’t know if street smart is something you were born with or with experience. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. You know what I mean. I’m sure you met some really really book smart people in your life, but when it comes to “street smart”, they don’t know jackS***. I guess I consider myself more of street smart than book smart. However, I wasn’t always like this. It comes with a lot of hard earned lessons in life. I want to share with you some funny and sad stories of How I got Hustled. Haha…be prepared to laugh.

The Strip Club

I don’t mean those strippers hustling me..haha. Squeezing in an extra lap dance for another $20. But this one time, my buddies and I went to a strip club for a friend’s birthday. It was a Bring Your Own Beer(BYOB) type of strip club. We sat around with no alcohol thinking “damn..this ain’t no fun.” About an hour later, this dude came to our table asking us if we would like to buy some beers since they have so much leftover. Wanting to drink so bad, I said sure and forked out $30 for 6 cans of beer. In my city, you can’t drink after 2 AM. Needless to say, he sold it to us around 1:55 AM. We had to give up our alcohol to the security. I got played.

The Car Salesman

In 2005, I bought a new BMW 325i for $33K. I wasn’t planning to buy a new car since I couldn’t afford it. This was before I know anything about interest rate, etc etc. Of course I bargained for a lower price, but he was smart enough to see right through me. I know the basics, but nothing as far as negotiating the interest rate. I accepted whatever he gave me. It was at 8% interest rate. If I knew better, I would have shop around, especially credit unions, for a better interest rate before going to a car dealership. About the same time starting this blog and educating myself about buying cars, I refinanced to 6% with a local credit union.

The Street Hustler

This happened a few years back visiting a friend of mine in New Orleans. We drove through the city and had to stop for some gas. If you ever been to the east side of New Orleans, you could see the devastation of Katrina. Talking about being in the hood. Me sitting in the car and minding my own business, this guy came out of nowhere and the conversation went like this:

  • Street Hustler (SH): Wassup dawg..yo man..I got some good $hit…
  • Me: Nah mann..we kool…I’m aaightt.
  • SH: Seriously, what you need. I got these XXX tapes, DVD, camera, camcorder….whatever you need dawg.
  • Me: Forreal huh..I’ll check it out..can’t promise anything.
  • SH: Check out these camcorders here man…Just got this off the trucks..you know what I’m saying.
  • Me: Yea..okay..pretty nice. (It was dark, I saw a glimpse of it…didn’t really see the name brand..I thought it was a Panasonic)
  • SH: $150 a piece yo.
  • Me: Nahhhh…too much..I’ll give you $50.
  • SH: Cops are everywhere manng(quickly threw two camcorders to the backseat of my car)..aight aight..tell you what give me $150 for both.
  • Me: Kool..yea, I can do that.

I drove off quickly thinking I got a pretty good deal for two Panasonic camcorders. Upon closer inspection of the Camcorders, it was a piece of junk. Some made in China crap. I don’t think it’s even a camcorder. Instead of Panasonic, it was Panoramic something. To this day, they are sitting in my garage collecting dust. Man, I got hustled.

Share your story:

So those are my three true stories. The real world is not an easy place. People out there willing to do anything for a buck. I guess those lessons taught me a lot. It’s fun to think back, but I know no one want to be the receiving end of it. The best way is to learn from other people mistakes. If you are reading this, and I know 500 of you guys read my blog everyday, tell a story how you got “hustled.” Don’t be shy, no one going to find out who you are. haha. Comments away.

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Comments

6 Responses to “How I Got Hustled”

  1. somedude on February 18th, 2008 11:43 pm

    I eventually gave what would amount to $500 over the course of three months to a local bum with a sob story. This was during a time when I believed love was all you needed, and everyone was good deep down inside. I got hustled big time.

  2. Solwoldjr on February 19th, 2008 8:41 am

    Shortly after graduation I bought a Toyota Camry. I loved the car, but less than one year later I was recruited for another job with a company car. So young, naive me decided to sell the camry since I could use the company vehicle for personal use.

    I was seriously upside down on my car as was my wife and I. Well the friendly neighborhood car dealer told us that would be no problem. He ended up convincing us to buy a brand new Pontiac Grand Prix GTP with the supercharged engine, power everything, leather, 6 disc in-dash changer, power sunroof, etc.

    I don’t have to say that not only could we not afford the car, but now we were seriously upside down on this thing. We got hustled!

    Anyway as I matured I came to realize my bad decisions. I had to pay a lot of money on that car to finally own it outright. The lesson I learned the hard way is to never buy a brand new vehicle.

    The last vehicle that I bought was a fully loaded two-year old Chevy Tahoe with 16k miles
    for $15k less than the original purchase price. This was almost at trade-in price. I put the truck on a three year note with 2.9% interest through GMAC. I’ll have positive equity on this thing for the entire duration that I own it. Some guy owned this truck for two years, put 16k miles on it and lost about $20k on the deal. Now who is the hustler?

  3. Jeasley on February 19th, 2008 12:27 pm

    Most recently, I got hustled in Mexico. I was attending my bro’s wedding and my boyfriend and I could only afford a very short trip. Upon arrival as we were walking through the airport, we were approached by some guy from the tourism board or so we thought. As he offered some free info and coupons, before we knew it we had given him 50 bucks for two dinner/show tickets. Not a bad deal if we had time to attend the dinner or time to attend the timeshare speech where our tickets would be held. The deal felt icky to me but this was my boyfriend and I’s first trip together and I didn’t want call him out in his home country, so I kept my mouth shut. Turns out he was just going along with it because I was. Next time I’ll go with my gut.

  4. Hu$tler on February 19th, 2008 6:19 pm

    Thank you for sharing everyone..keep them going..I love hearing these stories.

  5. PT from Prime Time Money on February 20th, 2008 4:01 am

    Hu$tler,

    I just got hustled by Dish Network and Dish Pronto. They offered me a free companion airline ticket for signing up for satellite. The fare on the tickets are essentially double the price of a fare anyone can get on the internet. So it’s not worth it. I feel like a sucker, although I’m not really out any money. I just can’t use the thing. I posted about it here on my blog.

  6. Dont hustle me on February 20th, 2008 12:33 pm

    HaHaHa funny stories here goes mine, when I was young and stupid I got hustled coming out of the mall some black dudes approach me and ask me if I was interested in buying a laptop.

    I said yeah sure let me check it out it was inside a black plastic bag the box was sealed. To be safe I ask them to open up the box, that I wanted see the laptop they were hesitating they finally open up the box and let me peek in, at that point I was convinced the laptop was inside because I could see something well I was wrong as soon as I pay these fools they got out of the parking lot like if they just rob a bank.

    I was like shit something wrong I went inside my car quickly open up the bag and the box wrap up in another black plastic bag when I finally was done unwrapping everything a book of yellow pages is what I found. ha ha ha thinking about it still pisses me off.

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