Lessons from Til Debt Do Us Part

Holy smokes.

As a gen­er­al rule, I don’t watch much TV. I got rid of cable over a year ago and bought a TV anten­na, so I get only the most basic of basic chan­nels. The few shows I fol­low I either binge watch at the end of the sea­son, catch up with them online the week after the episode comes on, or very rarely catch it on TV in it’s timeslot.

I had a lazy week­end so I read a bunch of books, knit­ted and watched some NFL foot­ball. (Did any­one see the Chiefs come back? No? It was amaz­ing.) I’m going to be trav­el­ing a LOT the next 6 weeks, so I want­ed to store up some ener­gy. That meant binge­ing out on the boob tube. I now remem­ber why I don’t watch a ton of live TV, because the com­mer­cials were hor­ri­ble. Cheesy, cringe wor­thy, and try­ing to sell me crap I don’t need.

How­ev­er, once in awhile I get sur­prised by what I’m miss­ing by not watch­ing TV.

Some­one on the finan­cial inde­pen­dence sub­red­dit linked to a YouTube chan­nel full of episodes from a show called Til Debt Do Us Part. I’d nev­er even heard of it before, but giv­en that it seems to be a Cana­di­an show I’m not sur­prised. Here’s the link to the show’s site in case you want to check it out. Only peo­ple in Cana­da can see the episodes but there are plen­ty avail­able else­where on the web.

The basic premise of the show is the host, a lady by the name of Gail Vaz-Oxlade, comes in and helps a fam­i­ly fix the prob­lems with their bud­gets. She goes over their cur­rent spend­ing habits, lets them fig­ure out a bud­get with­in cer­tain para­me­ters and then gives them a series of chal­lenges to work on. Depend­ing on how they do at the chal­lenges, they get some mon­ey from her at the end to put towards their debt. Some fam­i­lies real­ly appre­ci­ate the help and work hard to improve, and oth­ers.….. well.….. don’t try so hard.

After watch­ing a few episodes (also known as most of sea­son 8), I noticed a few com­mon themes show up with each fam­i­ly and how they were being brought down by their poor deci­sions. I pro­vide a con­trast from an FI per­spec­tive to their deci­sions to see how these “nor­mal” behav­iors pre­vent them from ever hav­ing a chance to retire, let alone retire super early.

Car debt

Each fam­i­ly fea­tured had car debt or as one guy called it, “neg­a­tive equi­ty”. One or both their cars were either leased or under a long term loan with ridicu­lous inter­est rates. The host made one guy live in his car for an entire week­end to real­ize how insane it was to pay so much for some­thing that would­n’t help him or his wife out should they lose their roof over their head. This guy also had an expen­sive motor­cy­cle just sit­ting in the garage he end­ed up putting up for sale.

I don’t have any car debt. I bought my first car at age 18 for $4,000. I put half down and got a loan for the oth­er half which I paid off in 18 months. In those 18 months, I learned I hat­ed hav­ing a car pay­ment. At one point, I had absolute­ly no mon­ey and a pay­ment due. I ran out and got a job to pay for it, but it was a less than ide­al sit­u­a­tion. I paid that month and then used my Christ­mas mon­ey to pay down the next few months before I left for basic train­ing. I would’ve loved to use that mon­ey for any­thing but a car payment.

I’m only on my sec­ond car at the moment. The only rea­son I have anoth­er car is the first one got totaled in an unfor­tu­nate col­li­sion with a full grown deer. When I totaled my first car, insur­ance cut me a check for $4k. I could­n’t find a decent car at that price range, so I took some of my bonus from the mil­i­tary and paid cash for a nice car that cost $8k. That was over 5 years ago!

Just imag­ine if I’d bought a brand new car that cost $25k with a 5 year loan at 1.5%. My pay­ment would’ve been rough­ly $450 a month. I would’ve paid almost $1k in inter­est to the bank/stealership/credit union. $450 a month just to have a new car! What! That’s the amount I set aside each month to put in my Roth IRA! Instead of pay­ing them, I paid myself and hit $100,000 net worth at the age of 25.

Shopping

It amazed me the fam­i­lies in the show would go shop­ping with­out a list. One stay at home mom would go shop­ping just because she was bored! No won­der their house was over­flow­ing with unnec­es­sary crap and they had no spare mon­ey! One lady had to inven­to­ry every­thing in her house and was amazed their 2 year old daugh­ter had over 20 dress­es. It’s easy to for­get what you already have if it’s buried under a moun­tain of oth­er stuff.

If I go shop­ping for some­thing, it’s only for food or some­thing that needs replaced. Or an emer­gency. Like when I went to my friend’s wed­ding out of town and was informed the rehearsal din­ner required a nice dress and had to buy one there.

Aim­less­ly wan­der­ing around a store with­out a list and a spe­cif­ic rea­son to be there is just ask­ing to waste your mon­ey. I have a list (orga­nized by sec­tion in the store so I don’t waste time criss­cross­ing aisles), get what I need, and get out. If it’s not on the list, I’m more than like­ly not going to get it. An excep­tion being if it’s some­thing I need­ed and for­got about when writ­ing the list.

I know I will see things I want, but most of that is mar­ket­ing and very lit­tle of it is based on gen­uine need. Accept­ing temp­ta­tion will be there helps you real­ize the emo­tion (is temp­ta­tion an emo­tion?) when it hap­pens and helps you avoid it.

Means Based Spending

What is means based spend­ing? It means spend­ing with­in your means, or not spend­ing more mon­ey than you have. This les­son was drilled into me prac­ti­cal­ly from birth, but it seems the peo­ple on the show did­n’t get that grow­ing up. They rou­tine­ly spent $2–3k OVER their income each month. I sus­pect these cou­ples were cher­ry picked for the show based on how bad they were doing (I mean, it is TV after all and they need­ed view­ers), but still. It was ridicu­lous. What helped some cou­ples wake up from the spend­ing spree was see­ing every pur­chase list­ed out (Mint is great for this!) and see­ing what impact that over­spend­ing would have on their future. Being told you will have $600k worth of debt if you keep up this spend­ing seemed to be a good slap in the face for most couples.

There will be occa­sion­al months where my expen­di­tures exceed the mon­ey I have com­ing in, but they are few and far between. Most of those months occurred when I made a big pur­chase I’d been sav­ing up for months to make (fan­cy quilt­ing machine, big inter­na­tion­al flight, etc). Con­sid­er­ing I spent sev­er­al or more months sav­ing up and spend­ing less than nor­mal, those hard­ly count. Spend­ing more than you earn each and every month is a sure fire way to get into debt and nev­er be able to retire, let alone retire early.

Reasonable Hobbies

Hob­bies are some of the best things in my life. They keep me ground­ed, allow me to express my cre­ativ­i­ty, get me out of the house and let me meet new peo­ple. How­ev­er, I keep it very rea­son­able. I’m in one, maybe two sports leagues at any giv­en time. One guy on the show was in 5 leagues! And gam­bled with his bud­dies dur­ing their week­ly pok­er nights. One, that’s way too much time away from home (where he had a new baby and a wife), and two, the league fees and mon­ey spent on equip­ment was tank­ing any hope they had of main­tain­ing a bal­anced budget.

Hob­bies are one of those things that sneak up on you. “Oh it’s fine to spend $$$ on this fan­cy spe­cial­ized doo­dad! I need it for this one project!” And then the project is over (or more like­ly, set aside and nev­er fin­ished) and you nev­er use the doo­dad again. Since I start­ed my side hustle/hobby this sum­mer, I’ve spent over $1k on it! And I bare­ly noticed. I gave myself a free rein over sup­plies and equip­ment although I did­n’t go incred­i­bly crazy because that’s not who I am. Imag­ine if i did that with every hob­by I have. I’d not only be broke, but way in debt. Con­trol your hob­bies before they start con­trol­ling your life!
In the future, if you have some free time you feel like wast­ing, watch a few episodes and see how the host was able to help at least a few peo­ple dig out of the debt hole they’d start­ed down.

Do you know any­one who should’ve been on the show? If you’ve seen it, what did you think?