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?
Ha, so there actually was a time when I was in five sports leagues at once! Have I mentioned that moderation is something I’m slowly learning? Haha.
I actually disliked the five-sports-leagues for non-financial reasons. I would meet people in a given team/league who would want to socialize outside of the sport, but I’d have to say “sorry! I am actually playing another sport on that night.”
It’s ironic, I signed up for sports league to enhance my social life, to force myself not to hang out on the internet after work, but by taking it to such an extreme, I actually hindered myself from being able to develop a lot of those new connections.
TJ recently posted…Where I Spend Money Today
Those shows drive me crazy. But it is scary that cases that bad exist out there. Don’t know how people let it get so bad.
Fervent Finance recently posted…Everyday I’m (Not) Hustlin’
I love Canadian tv. It’s like American tv, but just a little bit better. Ex: Canadian Amazing Race is better than American Amazing Race.
My wife and I watched a bunch of episodes of Til Debt Do Us Part while on vacation, while we weren’t hiking around the Canadian Rockies. I like Suze Orman, but Vaz-Oxlade gets into people’s homes and shows how their lived experience generates unnecessary costs. Orman just lectures from behind a desk.
Norm recently posted…Cheapskate Analysis: Should I Replace All My Light Bulbs With LEDs?
I’m on the East Coast of Canada and have seen Till Debt Do Us Part before (although my family now has Netflix and hasn’t had cable for almost 3 years), I alternated between shaking my head and feeling like we’re not doing too bad! No car debt, we spend within our means but we do have debt from purchasing a business, I would like to spend less and throw everything we have on the debt and my wife would like to spend more, so we do compromise there. I’m the one who spends on hobbies (martial arts lessons, gear, etc) but it keeps me sane and for me it’s definitely ‘worth it’.
This all sounds so “common sense” to you and me, Gwen, but this is radical thinking for the population at large. I wish I could say I saw the show, but my TV watching is worse than yours. I don’t watch local stuff and even YouTube videos are a rare event for me. I did share this post on social media. This is an awesome article, Gwen; more people need to read it!
Wealthy Accountant recently posted…New Publishing Schedule at The Wealthy Accountant
I’ve seen parts off this show before — unbelievable. Part of it is just getting into a terrifying spiral where not having money makes you spend money as soon as you get it.
I do have to admit to being guilty of shopping without a list as well, though! ~80% of the time we don’t buy anything, 15% of the time we get something we forgot to write down, and 5% we buy something random we might regret. It’s just fun sometimes to see all the random gadgets that exist. 🙂
Yay thank you for posting about this TV show! There is a similar American show called “Big Spender” that I had been hooked on and loved. Shows like this are so motivational to me & so is your blog! Thank you! 🙂
I’ll have to look it up! Thanks for the tip!
I love this show. I am currently binging your blog and had to comment even though I’m almost a year late on it. My fiancée and I got completely hooked for a while and watched everything we could find on it. Gail also has 2 other shows called Money Moron and Princess. Also good to watch. Princess gets a bit frustrating to watch as it’s mostly just young 20 something women who live with their parents and sponge off of their income while going on thousands of dollars worth of shopping sprees every month. Not my style at all.
By the way. Like I said, I’ve been binging your blog the past couple of weeks. Love it all. Great stuff! 🙂
Hey Maverick thanks for reading! I love comments even if it’s not the day of publication 🙂 I had a run in with Gail on Twitter recently so she’s not exactly my favorite person anymore. Princess sounds terrible to watch!