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The college years were a really exciting time, I spent five years in college and had some of the best years of my life. In college I learned quite a few tricks for getting by and staying ahead of the game.

Here in this post I will discuss the following:
(1) Getting Money for College (that doesn’t have to be repaid).
(2) Getting Textbooks for less and making money off the textbook return system (arbitrage).
(3) Things you Need in College (ie: Fake ID, Safe, Ritalin, etc.)
(4) How to Get Prior Exams, Assignments, and Term Papers for your courses.
(5) An Easy Way to Make Extra Spending Money around Campus
(6) Spring Break!

Getting Money for College

The majority of college students need help to pay for college. Tuition rates are going up every year and most colleges and universities are run like businesses to make a profit. Thus students are looking for ways to pay for their college education.

Student loans may be a necessity, but there are also other sources of funding that could help pay for school. There are many opportunities to be awarded funds that do not have to be repaid, as student loans do. Most people don’t realize these programs are out there and never apply for this free money.

FastWeb offers a service where you fill out a simple application and they see if you qualify for any existing scholarships, grants, or financial aid programs. It also gives you the opportunity to create your own scholarship program! Try it out. It can’t hurt because it’s a free service and you may just find that they give you money for school.

How do students get money in the form of grants? Students apply for government grants for college by filling out the The Free Applicaton form on these sites. By completing this application form, students will be automatically matched with aid programs that they qualify for.

Grants are always free money and do not have to be paid back. Grants may come in the form of federal grants, state grants, or even local grants. Students will learn which grants they have been awarded after they fill out these forms and get the results back in the mail within a few weeks.

You can also take a look at Scholarship Expertsfor similar grant and scholarship programs. It’s also free to sign up and see if you qualify for grants or scholarships.

The majority of people who use these free services will find that they will be unknowingly awarded free money for college.

College Textbooks

Don’t ever buy textbooks from your college bookstore. It’s a total rip off, college books are expensive enough, however colleges will often try to mark up the prices of their textbooks as much as 50%-100% more than retail price of the book. They even do this with their used books. They make so much money off this textbook markup. So if the retail value of the book is $60, expect to pay anywhere from $90 to $120 for this book at the bookstore.

Buy all your text books from your local Borders Books, Barnes and Nobles, or order them online from Amazon.com for much less than the price that books cost at your college bookstore. Amazon.com also caries used books and allows you to sell your textbooks online to other college students.

Chegg.com is a new service that allows students to rent text books at a fraction of their cost. They ship the same day with priority mail so that you will receive the book within 3 days. You can use the promotion code, WinterRent to get an additional 5% off.

Make Money from Textbook Arbitrage

Since the college book stores have such a large markup on their textbooks this leaves an opportunity for stuents to make money off their system.

Here is what to do:

When the semester starts go to your college bookstore and get the prices of all your books. Go online and buy your books with the cheapest price you can find new or used. It’s a good idea to end up with at least a $30 difference between the price of the online store and the bookstore. So if a used math textbook is $68 at the bookstore, try to buy it for $38 online.

Now that you got all your books for a cheaper price continue on with the semester until the end. You are already ahead of the game because you paid less than full price on your books.

At the end of the semester the bookstore will start buying books back from students. Most college bookstores don’t ask for receipts when buying books back from students. So go to the bookstore and see how much they’ll give you back for the book. Remember that math book you bought for $38, you might sell it back to them for $53. You earned $15 -not bad- but say if you sold them 5 books then that will be a total of $60 that you made

Let’s assume that the bookstore will only buy the math book for $33, this means you lost $5.

DO NOT sell them the book. Wait until the new semester starts and post an ad for the book.

Here is what your ad should look like:

Math Textbook
Excellent condition
Price: $55
Bookstore price: $68 used book
                             $80 new book

There has gotta be someone who will buy the book from you.  It’s definitely a good deal for them too!

Also look around campus through out the semester and I am sure that you will find textbooks that people lost or left behind from time-to-time. You also may be able to sell these books back at the end of the semester.

Things You Will Need in College

FAKE ID

If you are under 21 years old, it would be super beneficial to have a fake drivers license. Most college and fraternity parties allow underaged people to drink alcohol, but a fake id will allow you to go to bars, night clubs, and purchase alcohol at liquor and grocery stores.

This will also allow you to make some extra spending money through buying money for your friends and having a slight markup on the price.

Be sure to get a quality fake drivers license from a reputable site which uses proper hologram and barcode technology.

The ID Shop - Cost $100.00-$130.00
I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y.org - Cost $100.00
ENovelty ID - Cost $99.00

Check out my post on The Low Down on Fake ID cards for more information on these fake id cards.

SAFE

If you have anything that you want to keep safe or you don’t want to get caught having then I would suggest getting a small safe to place under your bed. Things occassionally get stolen in the dorm rooms and campus security may have the right to search your room without your consent. Therefore you want to keep your valuables and things you don’t want to get caught with in this safe.

Dorm buildings often has fire drills. These fire drills are not only to prepare students for a potential fire, but they also give campus security the opportunity to search dorm rooms during the 20 minutes that everyone is outside of the building.

I was friends with a campus security officer who was trying to determine if a particular student was firing a paintball gun out his dorm window. So they scheduled a fire drill and then searched this students room and he was caught red handed.

SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR w/ a large screen

On many math, science, and engineering exams the professor will allow students to use calculators. Some students use traditional calculators, but I always found it beneficial to use the large screened scientific calculators because these allow you to pre-program them with formulas, terms, or anything else written that might help you with the exam. I always spent days getting info from the textbook into my calculators before my exams. I used a TI-85 calculator which was the hottest thing in that day, but I am sure that there are much more hi-tech calculators that can also be used.

RITALIN PRESCRIPTION

Ritalin is one of the most over prescribed drugs out there today. It helps you to concentrate and focus. You can get a prescription for ritalin either from your general practitioner or based on a referral written by a psychologist or psychiatrist.

This drug is not only good for late night work and cramming sessions, it can also be sold for $5 a pill and is in very high demand. However, there is some risk to selling this stuff so be careful!

There is one more advantage! Most colleges allow students with a prescription for Ritalin to take all exams untimed! Therefore you have a clear advantage over most of the other students. I did not know about this until the end of my sophomore year of college. Sometimes it helped, other times it was not necessary.

OLD EXAMS, TERM PAPERS, and ASSIGNMENTS

One of the advantages to being in a fraternity or sorority is that they save all the exams, term papers, and assignments of all the members in their library arranged by major, by course, and by professor. Often times I found that professors would reuse alot of the same assignments and exam questions and sometimes they would not change at all. This gives you another unfair advantage over everyone else.

Try to find students who have taken a particular course and see if you can get the work that they did in the course from them. After taking a course offer copies of your work to other students in exchange for favors.

There are also companies which sell term papers that can be used to help you to do a good job and cut down on the time that you would spend writing them on your own.

Duenow.com is the world’s largest online essay and research paper website and is used by more than 3 million students a year. DueNow.com provides students of all ages and levels unlimited access to over 40,000 essays, book reports and research papers for an average charge of just $9 per paper.

Make Money Promoting Local Businesses

There are tons of businesses near most colleges that want to advertise on campus and sell goods or services to the students. However most colleges won’t allow these businesses to solicit on the campus themselves and will charge them with trespassing if they do so.

Fraternities and sororities at my school made thousands of dollars each semester going to local business and offering to help them advertise their business by sliding take-out menus and flyers under all the dorm room doors on campus, put up flyers on bulletin boards, or promote their business in other ways.  The college can’t do much to stop a student from promoting a local business. 

There were two pizza and wing delivery restaurants, a chinese delivery restaurant, a local laundry service, and a few other businesses that wouldn’t mind paying $300-400 to pass a restaurant take-out menu or flyer under the doors of all the students on campus.

Doing this once would often boost these businesses sales between 25-40% and they would make thousands of dollars more in sales within a few days, sometimes even within a few hours. Therefore we were able to even raise the price as high as $1,000 for a couple hours of easy work.  It was highly effective and profitable so the businesses didn’t mind paying these prices.

Reward Yourself during Spring Break

SpringCity.com is the travelocity of SpringBreak travel and events. They offer the best Spring Break deals at the best prices and can show you exactly how to find the action!

StudentCity.com is the leader in Spring Break Travel for college students in the United States. Their mission statement is to “Help students organize and promote trips which enable them to celebrate youth through travel.”

StudentCity.com travels more college students than any competitor on spring break each year, to over 30 destinations. The site focuses on college age travelers, ages 18 to 24.

StudentCity.com is partnered with MTV, Maxim, American Eagle, Rock Star Energy Drink, and others. You will benefit by traveling with the largest and most reliable company in the business.

There are tons of scams that bartenders and waiters can pull on both their customers and on the establishment where they work.  They range anywhere from simple to elaborate.  Sometimes the restaurant or bar is in on the scam, other times they are the ones being scammed and the customers are not even cheated.

These scams range anywhere from cheating customers by over charging them for drinks and or food items, adding additional items on their bill, increasing the tip amount on the credit card receipt, and stealing their credit card number or even running additional charges on their card without them knowing. 

They can cheat the bar or restaurant by not actually ringing up drinks or food that was sold to the customers, over charging customers and pocketing the different, or even seating entire groups of people and charging them without even ringing them up so that they can keep the money. 

Some waiters or bartenders only make $40-60 a night doing these scams, but some that work at large, busy establishments can make up to $400-500 a night if they are good at what they do. 

So how do they pull it off?

They certainly don’t just sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity to drop out of the sky.  These scammers will actually help and sometimes force customers to make certain decisions to help facilitate their scamming, often times without them even knowing.

Create Opportunities to Work Your Favorite Angles

1. Convince successive guests to order the same items, thus giving yourself the opportunity to re-use checks.  This is an easy sell, they just make these items up as tonight’s special and offer them a low price.
2. Convince guests to order the items that you can get your hands on without a ticket and which cannot easily be tracked by the restaurant.
3. Convince guests to purchase an item that you need to complete a profitable maneuver, if you have a receipt for two sirloin steaks and two people just sent sirloin steaks back to the kitchen on the other side of the restaurant, you want the next two people to buy these two steaks that were already sent back and you want to reuse the receipt that you had from earlier that night.
4. When you want cash, convince customers to pay cash by either saying that the credit card machine is broken or their card was declined.  If you want a credit card number or to make additional charges to their card get them to pay by credit card.

Cheat if you have to.  If push comes to shove and no one is taking your suggestions, 80 competitive items until you get the order that you want:  “I’m sorry, Ma’am.  We just ran out of vodka, can I suggest a local draft beer instead?”.  You would be surprised how well this works.

Blend in.  Maintain a low profile by suggesting inventory that is difficult to track.  If you are skimming the bar, the draft beers will be less traceable than the bottled beer.  If it’s coming from the kitchen, move inconspicuous entrees that can be quickly and easily prepared, rather than steak or complicated items that take longer to cook.

Play it off.  If you’re not careful, you might just make Employee of the Month.  Suggestive selling is too much work for your average waiter, so your manager will be delighted to see you taking the initiative.

Other Tricks

1. Keeping the extra receipts with their credit card information or writing down the numbers so they can be sold later on to a third party.
2. Getting them to sign their credit card receipt in pencil so that you can easily write in a higher tip amount after they have left the restaurant.
3. Giving them a copy of the recipt without the tip amount and keeping the one with the tip amount so that you can write it in later for any amount you want.  Including the tip as part of the bill without telling them so they leave a separate tip.

Peter Francis and R. Chip DeClinkta, two notorious waiters and bartenders, from New Orleans - the corruption capital of the America, have come up with a book that outlines all these scams.  Their book, How to Burn Down the House: The Infamous Waiter and Bartender’s Scam Bible, is their collective collection of scams that they have picked up over the 25 years that they had both working in the Bourbon Street bar and restaurant industry.

Below is a video from MSNBC dateline describing this book and how these waiters and bartenders can make up to $1000 on a good night with their scams.

I also found this video below of how bartenders can pull off simple scams of making weaker than normal drinks without the customers realizing it.  Sometimes these bartenders do this to make extra money for the bar or sometimes they do this so that they can pocket some of the money from the drinks without the bar knowing about it.

So who makes good targets? A guy out on a date trying to impress a woman, a group of guys out on a business dinner, or a drunk guy is not likely to dispute a higher than normal bill. They make easy targets.

So how do you protect yourself from these scams? Always watch the waiter or bartender closely, make sure that they are giving you what you are buying, don’t let them decide your order- pick what you want and not what they suggest, check the bill carefully and make sure that it’s accurate, pay cash or pay credit card (and keep an eye on the waiter while he is ringing you up), and always re-check the bill before you sign for the credit card receipt, always use a pen, check to see if the tip has already been factored into the cost of the bill, and write the tip amount so that it cannot be changed. At the end of the month overlook your credit card bill and make sure that there are no unknow charges.

There are tons of Offshore Internet Sportsbooks out there that operate within a gray area.  They are technically not legal or recognized legitimate businesses in the United States, but since they are offshore there is not much that the United States government can do to prevent people from placing bets with these services.

The authorities never go after people who bet with Offshore Sportsbooks.  However, they sometimes do go after the people who run these businesses if they are Americans who return to the states.  For example, Jay Cohen, the founder and president of World Sports Exchange, one of the original Offshore Sportsbook was arrested and spent 17 months in a Las Vegas prison after he returned to the United States from Costa Rica.  Sometimes professional sports teams go after players for gambling illegally.  Jamoir Jagr a hockey player with the Washington Capitals was penalized after he was caught placing bets with a Sportsbook in Belize.

These Offshore Sportsbooks make millions of dollars every year taking bets from people across the nation and there is not much that the government can do about it.  It would be rather safe to rip them off without any legal ramifications since they are outside the United States and operate in such an unrecognized manner.

So how can you place bets for football, baseball, basketball, horse racing or any other sport with these Sportsbooks, without the risk of losing money if the team loses?  Here’s how.

Find an Offshore Internet Sportsbook that accepts Western Union and then find a 24 hour Western Union near your own location.

Find a reasonably decent game to bet on that is later the same evening between the window of say 5:00 pm and 11:00 pm.

Withdraw money from your bank account , preferably the max that the sport book allows on the first bet which is usually $1,000-$5,000.

Most internet sportbooks are offshore and usually in the EST time zone which is three hours ahead of the PST time zone in California.  So if regular Western Union locations close at 5:00 pm, the location on the West Coast will be open 3 hours later than the locations on the East Coast, however some locations in the United States are even open 24 hours.

What you do is open an account (use fake name incase you want to do this more than once), call the toll free number of the Sportsbook.  They will ask you to fund your account. You do this by credit card or you can use a Western Union Money Transfer. Tell them or email them that you want to use Western Union. You will get instructions for making the transfer, then you call or go on the Western Union website to find out what time the Western Union near the Sportsbook closes, example. 9:00p.m.

Next you pick a game that is playing “AFTER” their Western Union is closed (horse races sometimes work well since they run 24 hrs all over the world). You send the money transfer to them right before their Western Union closes, ex. 8:55p.m. Then you call the Sportsbook and notify them that you sent the transfer and give them the control number.  They will track the number and see that you did send money, so they “will” let you place your bet.

Now if your team wins, the next day, you inform the Sportbook that you would like your winnings along with your original bet. They will send it to you because they do want you to continue to play with them in the future.

If your team loses, just notify Western Union that you want to cancel your transfer, a small fee will be incurred, go to the 24 hr Western Union in your area to pick your money up. Now since the Western Union at the Sportbook location is closed, they can’t pick up the money.  When they do go to pick it up, they will see that you cancelled the transfer, just disregard any emails or just deny that you cancelled.  Just go find another internet Sportbook or reuse the same place after a month or so under another name.

Here’s a quick trick to make a few extra dollars by harvesting money from pay phones.  

Find a traditional pay phone like the one pictured above, try to gain access to the phone wiring either through the plastic shroud running down the wall, the junction box, or through the telephone enclosure.   There are two sets of wires coming out the back of the pay phone enclosed in a black insulated casing. 

If you strip the black insulation away from these wires.  You will see four colored wires.  The regular telephone operations are handled by the green wire, “tip”, (electrically positive) and red wire, “ring”, (electrically negative).   The coin mechanism relays and solenoids are powered by the yellow and black wires.

Find a section of the wire where a cut will not be easily seen from outside the telephone box.  Strip off the black insulation off the cord, exposing all four wires. Now cut the black and yellow wires but leave the other two wires intact.  This will disable the coin mechanism, but the phone itself will still be completely functional.

Now conceal the wiring that you cut either by tucking it back into the telephone enclosure and concealing them or by closing the actual telephone box.

Now leave the phone and people will come by and use the phone.  What will happen?  Well, when they put money into the pay phone, it will stay in the coin mechanism until 1 of 2 things happen.

1. They connect their call, talk, and then hangup.  After they hangup, their money goes from the coin mechanism into the collection box.
2. They call a number that doesn’t answer, or get busy signal, or terminate the call before anyone answers, and then hangup. When they hangup, the money goes from the coin mechanism to the coin return.

However, since the black and yellow wires have been cut the coin mechanism is disabled so the money does not go to the coin collection box or the coin return, it just remains in the coin mechanism area.

All you do now is come back a few hours or days later and re-connect the black and yellow wires, pick up the handset and then hang it up.  All the money that was put into the phone that day comes shooting out the coin return.  It’s not unusual to collect between $10-15 per busy pay phone using this method.

I would suggest doing this during the weekend especially on Sunday because some people will call the operator and tell them that the phone took their money and they will dispatch repair people.  I would guess that these repair people work less on the weekends so the phone would most likely not be fixed until Monday.

This trick can only be used to make some extra change, it won’t make you rich or provide any sort of reoccurring income like some of my other scams that I have talked about previously, but it’s a neat little trick.

Most people see winning at Casino Games as being one-third skill and two-thirds luck and this is probably accurate.  Casinos exist to make money and therefore most people who go to casinos end up losing money to the house, the odds are always geared in favor of the dealer and the house, but usually the individual players themselves all have the same opportunity to make money. Games like poker and blackjack involve some skill, but they also rely heavily on the luck of the players.

However, there are a million ways to cheat at casino games inorder to give you an unfair advantage. I wouldn’t recommend using these tactics at actual casinos because they have trained dealers, cheating experts, and security measures in place to catch people cheating. If you are caught cheating you will most likely be arrested and go to jail. However, these tactics would be fun to do at poker night with your friends or at a casino royal party.

Roulette Scams

Cheating with roulette usually involves past posting techniques where you either use a sight of hand, a distraction, or the help from another person to place a bet or change a bet AFTER the outcome of the game has been determined.

The video below, shows you effective techniques for cheating on the roulette table.

Dice Games Scams

Cheating with dice games usually involve altering the dice by rounding their corners to land on a certain number more often than other numbers or spinning them a certain way in a cup in a controlled manner to make them land on a certain number.

The video below, shows you effective techniques for cheating in dice games.

Blackjack Scams

Cheating with blackjack is easier than any other card game with the exception of three-card monty. The most effective way of doing well with blackjack is through card counting when only one deck is used, however nowadays casinos are using as many as 8 decks (and sometimes half decks) to prevent card counting from taking away the house advantage. However, many non-casino games usually only involve one deck which makes card counting possible.

Shuffle tracking involves watching how cards are shuffled and then seeing where the cards you want are going. This technique is possible using multiple decks.

Ace tracking is another technique involving keeping track of where the aces are going during a blackjack game.

The video below, shows you effective techniques for cheating on the blackjack table.

Poker Scams

Cheating with poker can be rather complicated. These techniques involve using card marking, loaded decks, and shuffling techniques. The real key to these scams is a psychological game: deal your opponents great hands to build up their confidence and cause them to place high bets, you may intenionally want them to see your cards prior to returning your last two cards to make them think that they definitely have a better hand than you, however you actually have the best hand. These techniques are very complicated and harder to pull off.

The video below, shows you effective techniques for cheating in poker games.

Cheating Devices

There are gambling devices that can be used to help people to cheat at different types of casino games. There are devices which can be used to count multiple decks of cards with blackjack. They can also use covert ways of communication to allow two people to work together to tell one another about another players cards. There are also devices that can measure the roulette wheel’s speed and the speed of the ball to determine on which number a ball will land with very close accuracy.

The video below, shows you effective techniques for using devices to cheat in poker games.

Most people are weary about gambling at casinos because they know that the house usually has a strong advantage over the players at the casino. These casinos are in business to make money so they will take any advantage that they can and try to make the most money possible. The odds are always stacked against the players however some games have better odds than others.

Winning Without Cheating at the Casino

Poker requires a great deal of skill and highly depends on your ability to bluff, your interaction with other players, and the skill of the players that you are playing against. There are alot of factors with this game, so I would avoid playing poker unless you are already highly skilled and experienced at this game.

Craps is extremely complicated, but much of the fascination with this game lies in its complexity. In the game, one player, the shooter, throws a pair of dice and bets, along with other players at the table, on specific numbers turning up.

On the shooter’s first roll, the wager also called a pass line bet is on whether he’ll throw either 7 or 11 (a win) or 2, 3, or 12 (a loss). If he hits 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10, that number becomes his point; your original wager is then on whether he’ll roll that number again before he throws a 7.

After making a pass line bet, when a point has been established, you can make an odds bet. You do this by placing another bet equal to one, two and up to ten times the original bet on the point number. The casino will pay true odds on this second bet, based n the probability of the point number coming up.

These true odds bets reduce the house’s edge in craps to less that 1 percent. Next to blackjack played with extreme discipline, this is the best bet you’ll have in casino.

The odds on slot machines are terrible. Many casinos make as much as 90 percent of their profits from slots machines alone. Smart gamblers avoid slots as surely as they do Lotto machines. If you must play slot machines then play the machines closest to the main entrances of the casino with the highest visibility. I worked at a casino for three years and they would put the loosest machines (best odds) in the areas which have the highest visibility so that more people would see them winning good payouts and want to play. It makes sense!

Roulette, in which you’re betting on whether a ball spinning above a wheel will land on a certain number, group of numbers, or color, has a simplicity that makes it a perfect game for anyone wishing to play.

In addition to the numbers 1 through 36, the roulette wheel has the numbers 0 and 00, which gives the house a 5.26 percent advantage on all bets– a significant edge. The odds are totally against you if you bet on the numbers, lines, or edges so ignore the inside areas all together. If you want good odds then bet on the outside. Either on the colors, red or black, or on the numbers odds or evens. This will give you slightly lower than 50/50 odds due to the green 0 and 00.

One trick is to stick to one color, say red. Bet $20 on red, if you win then walk away. If you lose then bet on red again, but this time double your bet to $40. This will make up for the bet you lost $20, the money you are putting down now $40, and give you an additional $20 winnings (original bet). If you win this bet then walk away, but if you don’t then keep doubling your bet until it eventually does hit red which it must sooner or later. If you have a couple hundred dollars in cash on hand you will be buffered and most likely won’t lose.

For example, you bet $20 on red and lose. You double the bet to $40 and bet on red again, you lose. You now double your bet to $80 and bet on red a third time, only to lose again. You bet $160 on red, and win. You have just made a total of $320, which means $20 (1st bet) + $40 (2nd bet) + $80 (3rd bet) + $160 (4th bet) + $20 (winnings) = $320 (total). So even though you lost 3 bets, you still made $20 on the fourth bet. This system greatly reduces your odds of losing.

Most people believe that Blackjack is the easiest and best game to play in a casino and depending on how you play, this can be true.

The object of the game is to take card that bring you close to a total of 21 without going over. Face cards count as 10. Aces count as either 11 or 1. Each player at a blackjack table plays only against the dealer and not other players. If a player takes too many cards and goes over 21, they lose the hand. If the dealer takes too many cards, the players all win. Otherwise, if your hand is closer to 21 than the dealer’s, you win.

You bet your money before you see any cards. In some situations, you can raise your bet after seeing your first two cards. When you win, you are paid 2 to 1. If you get a Blackjack which is an ace and any card worth ten then you win a slightly higher multiple of your bet.

The most popular way to play Blackjack is the so-called “perfect strategy.” Based on the law of large numbers, which states that averages and tendencies gain strength over time , the perfect strategy was derived by computers simulating millions of twenty-one hands. This strategy says if your cards add up to 15 or lower than you need to get hit with another card, if your cards add up to 17 or higher than stand.

However if your cards add up to 16 then things get tougher. If you have 16 and the dealer is showing a ten card then you need to take a hit, however in this situation there is a 75% chance you will lose regardless of what you do because the house has an advantage because the dealer is always the last one to decide on their hand.

If you have a pair of aces or 8’s then you should always split your hand into two hands, this will increase your odds of either winning or breaking even.

Played correctly, this system assures you of being at no more than a 2 percent disadvantage against the casino. In practice, the house wins at a rate ten times higher, because few players follow the perfect strategy perfectly.

Recently websites have been popping up all over the internet advertising forex trading like it’s the hottest online craze since the invention of viagra.

Forex trading is also known as currency or foreign exchange trading and it involves trading one currency for another. This is the largest financial market in the world with an average daily currency trade of US$3.21 trillion. Forex trading is really risky and there are tons of scam forex trading websites that rip people off. Even through legitimate forex trading 90% of currency traders lose money.

So I want to introduce a new type of forex trading where you are almost guaranteed to make money. Sound too good to be true, it’s not.

STEP ONE: Always Buy Low

With this form of forex trading you invest in coinage from other countries that is the exact same size but less valuable than specific American coinage.

These low-valued foreign coins can be obtained at overseas, at some banks, at foreign exchange counters, or at foreign coin stores.

Below are some low-valued foreign coins (worth less than a penny each) that could be used in American vending machines:

American Quarter:

  Icelandic five-auran (worth 0.0008 cents each)
Uruguayan ten-céntimos (worth 0.0046 cents each)
Mexican ten-centavos (worth 0.009 cents each)
Danish fiveore (worth 0.0098 cents each)
Pervuian twenty-céntimos (worth 0.6 cents each)

American Dime:

Trinidad penny (worth 0.0016 cents each)
Malaysian penny (worth 0.003 cents each)

STEP TWO: Always Sell High

These low valued foreign coins can either be used to purchase goods from American vending machines or even exchanged for the more valuable American coins of the exact same size. The coin return button on some vending machines will give you the lowest coin in the internal coin hopper for a particular coin type which is usually different than the actual coins that you had dropped into the machine.

Try looking at the date of a quarter that you drop into a soda machine, then hit the coin return button and wait for the coin to drop into the change return area - look at the date again and you will probably notice that its a totally different quarter than the one that you put into the machine.  These type of machines can be used for exchanging your foreign coins into more valuable American coins.

You could also cash these coins in using Coinstar or Coinmaster at your local supermarket however they charge a fee of 8.9 cents per every dollar cashed in using their machines. They have the option of cashing in your coins for a giftcard for free so this may be a convenient way of exchanging your foreign currency into more valuable American coins.

I would advise against trying to use these foreign coins at casinos since many newer slot and video poker machines have security measures in place to catch people using foreign coins. I would also avoid using these coins at the post office or at other federal facilities.

However, you could even cash these coins in at your local banks. It’s rather easy, take the very cheap foreign couns that are the same size as quarters.  Get a paper coin wrapper. Wrap a few real quarters on the ends but fill the rest of the roll with the cheap foreign coins. Wrap the roll and with felt-tip pen write some phony account number on it to add an element of authenticity. Take the roll of coins into the targeted bank. If you dress like a business person and go at a busy time, especially with the account number written on each roll, and the rolls in a bank sack or your briefcase, the teller will probably give you ten dollars per roll without checking. The only downside to this convenient method is that the entire transaction will be captured by the banks cameras.

Guaranteed Profits

Since the low-valued foreign coins listed above have a value of less than one cent each. You will be making 24-25 cents for every coin that you cash as a quarter and 9-10 cents for every coin you cash in as a dime. A roll of quarters is worth ten dollars each and a roll of dimes is worth five dollars each.