This show aired on October 18th 2007. Suze Ormand was the guest.
Felice was a stay at home mom with six children. She had maxed out the credit cards and was spending $300-400 per month at Starbucks. She would go on shopping sprees and then become depressed. She spent tons of money on her hair, nails, hair extensions. She hid receipts from her husband. In a shopping spree to WalMart, she spent approximately $110 on candy, glasses, jewelry and an outfit. She lied about her spending and had her kids lying for her too.
Felice said she did not want to feel like a failure and said that she had an overbearing Mom and husband and that she felt good making decisions.
Jana, Felice's friend wrote in the show to get help for her.
The husband had not a real clue and was finger pointing however, the kicker is that although the husband makes $5-6K a month, it seems to be disappearing fast PLUS they have NO health/dental insurance for their children or themselves.
Suze pointed out to the husband that not providing essentials with his income was shameful and selfish. She also said that Felice spending so much money on herself was equivalent to the husband's dilemma.
As Oprah pointed out, it seems as though they were sleepwalking through life, and "living outside of themselves" and were "spiritually disconnected and living a lie, in denial" and what were they teaching their children?
Suze said they needed to get real and be honest about their situation if they were to get out of it.
A taped piece revealed more of Felice's behavior.
In her house, she showed custom painted murals that she spent thousands of dollars on, silk plants costing $6-7K total. The kids closets showed that they had hardly any clothing at all, the closets were nearly empty with but a few items and plenty of hangers. She said that they buy clothing, they wear it a few times then it goes into her garage sale room to sell off. She said that if she paid $50. for something, it would sell for a dollar.
They also showed how she spent money on the children's birthday parties:
$1500.00 for a beauty party of nails. Her daughter and friends went in a limo.
$1500-2000.00 for a zoo animal party
$2000.00 for a snow party (they had to order the snow, they live in CA)
$4000.00 for a party in Las Vegas
Felice and her husband Phillip, thought they were $50K in debt but it turns out they were in $100K in debt. They had not a clue this was the reality.
Suze dispensed the following advice:
Save yourselves by knowing all info and to control your destiny.
It is evident you don't know who you are and you need to define yourself.
This is dysfunctional.
Start now and fix the future by changing behaviors to save yourself.
Suze said that on a scale of 1-10, how bad is this? It is off the scale and 1000 times bad.
She looked at their finances:
They took cash advances with high interest rates.
They had three cars although they said they were trying to sell one with no luck. ($1700. payments per month).
Mortgage ($658K)
Other loans ($135K total)
Mention was made on the type of mortgage they had which meant they had no equity in their house at all so they had nothing and would make nothing if they sold it.
Drastic measures must be taken.
Felice must get a job with health insurance.
It was suggested she work at Starbucks at 20 hours per week (nights and weekends) and after 90 days she would qualify for full health insurance which would cost $150-300 per month.
Get life insurance 10 year term insurance for a value of $100-600K.
Sell their house (Felice was against this) and move to Seattle WA where it would be less expensive than in CA. and they can pay down their debt. WA has no income tax and they can pay down debt faster.
It was also suggested that Felice return to work as a mortgage broker and work in that field part time.
Her husband is a computer contractor and works independently so the area is ripe for him to find a job.
Suze pointed out that CA is too expensive for them and starting over fresh would do them wonders.
It was also mentioned that they NOT take any money from their parents to help them out as this is a situation they created and their problem they must solve.
The Doyles, Cory and Shauna -- a young NYC couple expecting a baby.
Income: $146K per year combined but will be down to one income.
Student loans: $230K
Credit Cards: $60K
Luxury car payments: $1300. per month
Shauna likes to shop: purses and shoes are her weakness.
Cory has a massive DVD collection which he said he can live without now.
Student loans have not been paid and they get 6-8 calls a day.
Five years ago, they were debt free now they are "struggling because of poor choices".
Suze said:
"You create your own problems by creating the circumstances."
"Credit card debt is present day desires but you are paying for them in the future."
Cory admits buying a car to impress people.
Loss of one salary means you have to stop buying stuff.
Sell some of it to get some money back and pay down debt.
Never miss a loan payment.
Bankruptcy does not wipe out any student loan balances.
Financial Check Up RX
Never spend to impress others. (Who cares and isn't that shallow?)
Is it kind?
Is it necessary (do you need it?)?
Is it true (do you have the cash to pay it)?
Then don't spend.
You own the power to control your destiny.
Spend wisely.
My comments/opinions: These shows are good to educate people about money. It seems many people don't know how to manage money because of lack of financial education. Suze and many other financial gurus say that the system is set up to take advantage of people. People don't read the fine print and when things go wrong, they find out it is worse than they thought and are surprised.
They are surprised because they did not read the fine print or understand what they got into in the first place but signed on the dotted line.
Now Oprah has plenty of example people on with large incomes and money issues. However, what about people who make under $50K and are trying to survive on that? It seems that a large segment of the population is left out and they are the average people who watch her show.
Oprah needs to get with the reality of most people, not the ones who make great incomes and have no common sense on how to spend and save.
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