Ok so shoot me now as I say I'm not a big Oprah fan. Honestly I've seen her show only a handful of times but as I was flipping channels yesterday I came across the show and they were talking about a "diet" so I had to watch since I have a weight problem. As I watched though they kept talking about curbing spending, watching what you spend, and the term Debt Diet came up. I finally realized the diet they were referring to was a diet from spending. I was SUCKED IN. Unfortuately I missed the first episode, but I caught the 2nd. Has anyone else been watching this?? Some of the key points were check your credit score, destroy debit cards which I have always been against using anyways since sometimes you forget to write things down, cut out extras anywhere you can and use that money towards a debt, and live on a cash weekly budget. What a great freakin idea! I never have been keen on carrying money around, I've always used my charge card and paid it off or wrote checks. The only thing about using my charge card is sometimes I don't always pay off the $600 or so I may charge in a month so then I get charged 11% interest. Mainly I use my credit card because it's a Upromise and we get money back for college, sounds like a great plan, till you subtract that money from the interest you've occured in a month!
I've been pretty good with a budget on our bills in the past but the rest of the money I just spend, I don't save anything usually. It drives Dave insane. I'll put $1600 on our bills (House, car, electric, gas, phone, cable, cell, credit card) then pretty much spend whatever without even thinking about it so I plan to try the Oprah Cash Weekly budget and see if this helps us save. I'll give Dave $50 and me $150 a week to spend on what we need and I'll keep the money in an envelope as they said on the show so I can keep receipts and write what I bought on the envelope. We'll see how it goes but I'm hoping if it works, we can really start hauling in the money on our savings. As I mentioned in a previous post, Dave's already thinking I'm blowing all our money on junk and we have should have thousands more in our savings then what we have now. So now I will prove to him that I can control where our money is going!
Don't miss Oprah today! It's Part 3 of the debt diet!!! If you want to see more on this, click here for her site.
8 comments:
I got sucked in to this show as well. I watched the second half of it today.
I can so relate. Some weeks I'm great and others, not so much. When I put things on the credit card I'm not as careful as I am with the debit card. I think I'll try cash as well. Let me know how it goes for you guys!
The one thing I hate about watching Oprah.... did you notice that the commercials come every 5 minutes? What the heck?!?
I should try turning the TV on! I missed this and it would have been great to see it! Will have to check out the website for more info!
Holy Moly, Sabrina! I just watched one of these epidsodes that I had Tivo'd. I can't believe the lady with $170,000 in debt and still getting her hair done every week and still shopping all the time and driving a BMW!
I do think materialism is a sickness in this country and we would all be well served to stick to a cash restricted budget. If you don't have the cash to pay you don't buy. With that said, we do pay all of our cc's every month and we do live well within our means. But I know we waste a ton of money because we are terrible about tracking our finances.
I am eager to see how your version of the Debt Diet goes!
I watched this debt diet when it first aired (I think in April or so) that's when Shawn put me on the cash debt diet. Having cash really does make me think twice about buying things. Shawn and I are trying hard to pay off our reno bills but it's hard with me making $600 less every month. I agree with Jess materialism is a sickness, and I have it *sigh*
I loved that series of shows that Oprah had. They were aired over here a few months ago, I learned alot of key points from them. I've always been the one to handle our finances and I do a pretty good job with it, but even I learned some things. Now I give Sean $50 a week that includes his lunch money and if he runs out by thursday then I guess on friday he's brown bagging it..lol. I've also cut out alot of shopping that I was doing. I'm so proud, I haven't bought Sierra any clothes online in almost a mth..lol thats huge for me..lol.
Over here we have to carry euro's on us at all times which I like better, this way we know exactly how much we're spending and can keep track of where it's going.
First thing everyone should do is check their credit report, I did with sean's and found alot of errors that had lowered his score, in the process of getting fixed now. Watch the rest of the shows, they're really informative.
Ginny
hmmm, tell me more about the debit card thing being bad? I use it for everything because if I have cash, I will blow it much faster, plus if we get low I can look on the computer (I enter every receipt into Quicken) and Matt & I can see quickly where we spent too much in a week. We have a budget set up for when Maddox comes and we have daycare, things will be tighter, but mostly we save, tithe, and pay our bills then blow everything else, but we put a good chunk of saving in each check. I know there is way more cutting back we could do and save more (like for vacations, etc.) . . . I'll have to check out the site and see what I can learn as well.
Michelle- I think the biggest issue with Debit cards is alot of people DON'T write down what they purchase. I don't have one for that reason since I'm so forgetful, Dave had one but we canceled it because I was having to look online to see what he used it for. It's so easy to just use the dumb thing over and over like a credit card and not even think about it. I think banks actually look forward to people forgetting to write things down. We have always had tons of money in our checking and that's really bad because we just spend spend spend!! LOL
They're not bad for all people, just certain ones like us who are careless with their money!
Lindsay- They do have tons of commercials on Oprah! I noticed that too! WTH!?! I bet since so many people watch the show, it's like the Superbowl with advertising and different companies fight for commercial spots. Probably pay more for the Oprah time slot too. lol
Rhonda- Episode 4 is on Thursday! Yeah she has all kinds of tools on her site.
Jess- I know! Wasn't the BMW payment $1600 a month?? Must be nice!!! My van is only $372 and sometimes I think maybe that's too high! LOL
Sheri- I never thought if Shawn watched this when he put you on your budget. I had no idea this had been aired before.
Ginny- Did Sean ever get his credit report corrected or are they working on it? We checked ours awhile back and it was fine. I wanted to do that first before we started looking at houses.
Damn. I wish I had seen these episodes of Oprah. I'll check out the link.
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