In my previous article “The Top 10 Criteria to be a Wise & Successful Parent”, I mentioned that some of the criteria are to be able to provide the necessities in life (material needs), i.e. food, shelter and clothing and to provide a stable and comfortable home for your children.
Well in order to be able to fulfill that requirement, the parents have to be financially stable. One way to ensure stability is by controlling your finances, i.e. keeping track of your spending, eliminating your debts and building up your savings. Money that has been spent is gone and debts will take more of your money away due to the interest payments.
Money issues
It is a common fact that married couples with or without children argue about money or finances at one time or another. It is no secret that it is one of the sensitive issues for married couples and one of the top causes for couples to break-up or get a divorce.
As a wise parent, you know that it is your responsibility to ensure that the family’s finances are in good order. However, it is difficult to ensure this if both parents do not openly talk about it, do not want to acknowledge their financial problems or if only one parent is handling the finances or they just do not know where to begin.
Where to start?
If you have no idea where to begin, then I suggest that you watch the TV show “Til Debt Do Us Part”, hosted by a woman named Gail Vaz Oxlade who is a Canadian financial writer. In the show, she works with married couples that are facing financial problems and helps them to get their finances back on-track. She normally starts off by touring the couple’s home to see how well they live. She does a detail check on their actual spending and most of the time, the couples are caught spending way above their income, in other words, living beyond their means. It is not surprising then to see the high debt accumulation.
To help the couples, Gail will give them a few challenges or assignments that address the root cause of their problem. The goal of course is to improve their financial situation. To begin with, the couples are requested to live on a strictly cash budget and to record down all their spending. This is to encourage the couples to keep track of their spending and is aware where their money is going. The cash money is kept in jars allocated for various purposes like food, transportation, entertainment, clothing and gifts. Earlier on, she had confiscated the couple’s credit cards to ensure that there is no more debt accumulation. In one show, she actually freezes the cards in a container of water.
The are weekly challenges to be completed such as the ‘Life Lesson Challenge’, the ‘Budget Booster Challenge‘, the ‘Future Plan Challenge‘ and the ‘Relationship Rescue Challenge’. In one show, the couples are requested to move to a cheaper abode as their financial situation does not allow them to stay at their current home. In another show, the couple is requested to find ways to increase or boost up their income. In the relationship rescue assignment, the couple must work together and communicate with each other to complete the task given. At the end, the important thing for the couple is that they learn about their money mistakes and take control of their finances. Most importantly, they work together as a couple to address their problems and hence in the process become a better parent.
Successful ending
Finally at the end of the show, the couple will be rewarded with $5000 for successfully completing the challenges or assignments, which is used to help them pay down their debts. I have seen couples that only get partial of that amount when they were unsuccessful during the challenges. Overall, the couples would have learned to control their spending, to do budgeting, to have a debt repayment plan in placed and to have a long-term savings plan.
So if you want to be a wise parent and ensure your family’s finances are in order, you might benefit from watching this TV show. You can watch it on Channel 733 on Discovery Home & Health by the satellite TV provider, ASTRO (Malaysia). You may also check out Gail Vaz Oxlade’s website at http://gailvazoxlade.com where she answers questions from the public about money and finances.
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