Today I stumbled upon some show called America’s money Class which is apparently a show hosted by Suze Orman as she gives financial advice to people. At first I was expecting it to be like a talk show, which in many ways it is, but it seems like they are trying to brand it as a classroom of sort as if you are attending school.
Apparently what I was watching was the second episode but it gave me a good idea on the show style. I figured I would then watch the first episode too. There was an interesting part in the beginning where everyone in the room wrote how much debt they had where afterwards the they combined it and the debt was over twenty million dollars. As a pretty frugal person myself that just boggled my mind at how that small room combined so much debt.
For the most part I think a lot the information and advise thus far is more to do about fixing your own attitude when i comes to money which I whole heatedly agree is usually the biggest problem in why people get into debt. For example, lying to themselves that they can afford things that they can’t.
There was one advice that I thought was pretty neat where a couple asked if they should save for their child’s education as they don’t want them to go through the agony of student debt. The advice was to basically save for it but don’t tell the child about it at all but rather let them try to pay it off and go through schooling through their own financial efforts. Therefore, they will learn a lot themselves that way and will take their school decisions more seriously. Then as say the graduation gift you would then present them the money you saved to pay it all off.
I guess I will tune in weekly to see what else type of advise they show. I thought it was an interesting incentive too where they are having a contest which they dub as a final exam where after they show all the episodes you can go to a site and answer questions based on what the show talked about. Apparently if you score more than 80% you are then entered for a chance to win $50,000. So for those interested you can read more at http://www.oprah.com/moneyclass
Maybe I’ll just compile some notes and clips since I am going to be watching the show anyways and post it here for everyone to use. And to think they teach you not to share notes in school during exams.