Gails Blog

Despite the way I dress on TV, I’m not a clothes horse, and some people’s obsession with handbags, shoes, shirts, skirts, blouses, jackets, watches… well, I could go on forever…  seems weird to me. I’ve been in homes where there are hundreds of pairs of shoes, dozens and dozens of pairs of jeans, and cupboards and drawers full of clothes, along with loads of debt. I scratch my head. What drives us to collect all this STUFF when a) we’re in debt and b) we just can’t afford it?

According to the Stats Man, in 2002 Canadians spent $21.5 billion dollars on clothing and accessories. Women’s clothing made up about half of that spending, men’s made up about 29% and the rest was on kids’ clothing.

So, just how many pairs of shoes can we wear? Do you really need 40 T-shirts? And how can a handbag priced at $600 ever be a good idea, particularly if you’ve got ANY debt?

Clothing, it seems, has a lot to do with how we see ourselves and others. Many people use clothing as an opportunity to express themselves, and just as many use it as a means of judging others. If you’ve caught yourself looking at some fatty walking along in a too-tight t-shirt and cringing, or wondering why that woman would pair that lovely plaid skirt with that horrible polka-dotted ruffled blouse, you’re guilty.

Men and women are so weird about their clothing obsessions that they actually lie to each other about what they’ve paid. Sometimes they lie UP to impress. Sometimes they lie DOWN to appease. But the very fact that you feel you have to lie about what you spent on an item should indicate how twisted this all is.

I’ve listened and watched people almost get into battles over the question of whether to by cheap-and-often or quality-that-lasts. People get all uppity about their brands. And there are dopes who believe that dropping $400 on a pair of shoes, handbag, new jacket, is something they HAVE to do. There are people who’ve told me they HAD to buy it because they were “saving so much.” And there are people who, despite having several versions of an item already, have to acquire the next one anyway.

Now that the prices of food and gas are going through the stratosphere, it’ll be interesting to see if people are willing to cut back on their STUFF so they can keep eating. I’m not willing to take a bet on it since this aberrant shopping behaviour is totally unpredictable.

If you find that you’re guilty of having too much stuff, but you just don’t know where to start, it may be time to take inventory and make some choices. After all, you can’t possibly wear it all, and there is such a thing as “too much of a good thing.”

Empty your drawers, putting everything on your bed in a pile. If you have seasonal clothes, separate the seasons, and put the clothes you’re not wearing this season aside.

Of this season’s clothes, choose those you really love and actually wear on a regular basis.

If you have special occasion clothes, pick out the ones that are your favs.

Put the clothes you love back in your drawers leaving space around the clothes so you can get them out easily. If you’re stuffing your drawers, you still have too much stuff.

Now, do the same thing with your off-season clothes, putting the ones you’re planning to keep in a bin for the swap-over, and setting aside the stuff that’s just accumulated that you NEVER wear.

Ditto handbags, shoes, jewelry, hats, scarves, undies, PJs, and whatever else you’re hoarding. And, of course, there are all the clothes hanging in your closet. Yup. Them too.

You can do this exercise for your linen closet, your towels, your dishes, glasses, cups and mugs, DVDs, CDs, books.

Now, make yourself a promise that you’ll never impulse buy anything again. If there’s something you need, you’ll put it on a list. You’ll price it out, and write a target price beside it. Then you’ll buy it when you have the money to pay for it, and it has hit your target price. If you want to keep simplicity front and centre, add that you’ll get rid of something you no longer use every time your bring something new into your space.

As for what to do with the stuff you’re divesting: charities abound. If you have women’s and children’s clothes, consider your friends and family, then a women’s shelter. If it has value, sell it on Craig’s List. Put whatever you earn toward your debt. If you don’t have any – YEAH! – put it towards your next experiences.

It’s experiences that make us happy, not STUFF. Commit to having a great experience with a friend, your partner, your kids, and then give yourself something to look forward to that you can use to battle off the STUFF MONSTER the next time it rears its ugly mugg.

Back in Season 2 – heavens, that seems so loooong ago now – one of my peeps made an interesting observation to his family. Gerry of Kelly&Gerry said, “We’re not poor, we’re broke.” Good distinction.

Periodically I hear from people who want to bust my chops because the people on my show make lots of money and I shouldn’t be rewarding them for their stupidity in overspending. Hey, I’m making TV people, if I had to work with poor people all the time, it’d be a pretty boring show. And believe me, there’s a big difference between being POOR and being BROKE.

People who are poor don’t have the resources available to improve their financial situations. They may face a personal challenge, such as a learning or physical disability. It may be because life has kicked ‘em hard and they haven’t found their way back to their feet: divorce can do it; widowhood can do it; unemployment can do it. So can having a mess of kids before you’re financially prepared. Poverty is not something I can do anything about.

Being BROKE, on the other hand, is something I can help people do something about. If you’re broke, you have resources available to you and you can  improve your financial situation, you just may not know how. It may be that you’re financially illiterate. It may be that you have no will power, no ability to defer gratification, no time management skills. Or you may simply be LAAAAZZZZY! I can teach you. I can help you see another path. I can kick your ass. I can help you make it better.

I have worked with people who have one foot in both these camps: they’re poor, but it is of their own making, and I can make ‘em make more money. But most of the people I work with are BROKE, and most of the people who watch the show who benefit from the tactics I offer are BROKE.

I often get letters from people who say things like:

Gail, I need help. I’m on a disability income and I don’t make enough money to feed my family, so how am I supposed to save?

You’re right. If you don’t make enough money to feed your family, you’re poor and my strategies won’t work. You have to undo poor – find a way to make more money – before you can put financial strategies to work.

As for the people who “make lots of money and are in debt,” they’re the reason the show exists and so many people who watch have been able to benefit. If the doctor hadn’t been overspending by three times his income, we wouldn’t have had a show. And if the chick with the dogs hadn’t been overspending on her pooches, we wouldn’t have had a show. Ditto the teacher who wouldn’t go out to work, the babe who only wore stuff three times, and the guy who gambled.

Years ago when my family emigrated from Jamaica, the woman who helped to raise me didn’t want to stay in Jamaica either. Daphne, whom I loved with all my heart, wanted her own opportunity. My dad got her a visitor’s visa to the U.S. and she stayed. Daphne learned to read and write at my mother’s elbow. With no education, no financial nest egg, no job, Daphne got busy creating a life.

Daphne worked a full time day job and a full-time night job, looking after an elderly woman who needed an attendant at night. Daphne learned to drive, bought herself a car, bought herself a house, paid for her legalization in the U.S., brought her children to live with her, put her daughter through college. My lord, the woman had fortitude!

The last time I saw Daphne was about twenty years ago. She wanted to buy me something. I was the little girl she’d helped to raise, and she was determined to give me a gift.

I still have the dress Daphne gave me. It’s ratty. Really ratty. But I wear it almost every week. It reminds me of her every time I put it on. And she is my beacon of strength.

Our circumstances do not define us. We can achieve anything we put our minds to. We have the power to make life whatever we want. Some of us want more.

Daphne wanted more. And she busted her ass to make it so. She achieved a lot, moving from poor to not so poor, to secure. She made a life.

God grant me her tenacity.

I’ve just finished working with a couple that I LOVED! Sweet, enthusiastic, bent. So much room for improvement. The first thing I noticed when I Dropped My Bag And Had A Quick Look Around was that there wasn’t a corner of the house that didn’t have a doodad of some sort in it. I asked if this was part of her culture – if she was recreating the home she’d grown up in. Noooo. That wasn’t it. She was just a Stuff Gatherer. I pointed out that there wasn’t a corner of the house that didn’t have a little table with stuff on it, candles, or some other doohickey. She didn’t see what I saw.

Later I went into the main floor bathroom and, as I was having a pee, I noticed that in front of me, in the corner, was a set of candles – tall – just standing there in a threesome. How strange, I thought. When I glanced under the sink, there in the corner was a picture, leaning up against the wall, UNDER THE SINK. I brought my Tchotchke Queen into the bathroom. She gasped. She’d never noticed that she was filling her corners with STUFF.

Three gremlins were at work in this house. And I’m sure they inhabit many homes, so I’m sending you around your house to look for them and evict them. I’m going to deal with them one at a time so you have some time to come to terms with these gremlins if they are at work in your psyche.

First up, the I’m-the-Shopper Gremlin, which was always whispering in Lucy’s ear. Since she was responsible for keeping her house beautiful, keeping her children beautiful, keeping her husband beautiful, she was always shopping. She loved a good bargain and made a habit of hitting the Everything-60%-Off-Everyday Store every chance she got, which was usually EVERY DAY during lunch hour since there was a store right across the street from work. And she hardly ever went in without buying something. New hand towels, a shirt for her husband, clothes for her kids, a beautiful set of glasses, another picture, yet one more candle… Her family had made her responsible for the acquisition of what they needed and she was taking her role as BUYER very seriously.

Problem is, the I’m-the-Shopper Gremlin has no clue about the difference between a NEED and a WANT. It just wants to SHOP. And so, with this gremlin whispering soothing messages of love, caring and responsibility in her ear Lucy shopped.

The first thing I needed to do was bring her to her senses on what was a NEED versus what was a WANT. With some help, she had to go through rooms of her home and take out the “wants”, piling them up for me to see. More importantly, she was piling them up so she could see the crap she’d gone into debt for. What a success! Worked like a sledgehammer. So there was Lucy, surrounded by her stuff, wondering how the hell she could have been so unconscious in her shopping.

Lucy isn’t alone. There are loads of people who do this. But Lucy got the message. As I was showing off my new, snappy shoes (pink, green and yellow high-heeled sandals which I picked up for $16), she quipped, “Were they a need or a want, Gail.” Ha!

So how do you get a handle on the I’m-the-Shopper Gremlin?

Some people decide they will only shop one day of the week. You’ve seen me encourage fams to do this, since it takes away the temptation of the Impulse Buy.

Some people decide to shop with a list and only buy what’s on the list. If they see something they want, they add it to their next list.

Some people declare a moratorium on shopping, deciding to participate in Shop-Free days two or three or four days of the week. So they can’t buy ANYTHING on Shop-Free Saturday, for example.

Then there are the folks who challenge themselves to see how long they can go without buying anything. (Usually gas and food are the exceptions since they are virtually always NEEDS.) If they do shop, they have to start their counting again, and they’re always trying to beat their last best No Shopping Streak.

If you’ve got this gremlin running rampant through your life, what’s your plan to cope? Without a plan,  the I’m-the-Shopper Gremlin will not only end up costing you a lot of money, it’ll also end up making you spend way more time than you should have to DUSTING! ? Boo, hiss to the  I’m-the-Shopper Gremlin.

Up next, the Having-More-Means-A-Better-Life Gremlin.

I was shopping on Danforth Avenue yesterday morning. This is my old neighbourhood and it felt great to be back in the buzz. Now that I live in the bush (which I looooveee), it’s a treat to come back to my old stomping grounds and see what’s new.

One of the drawbacks of living in the country - which is counter to what you’d think when you were getting ready to move there - is that the fruits and vegis aren’t as varied or as fresh as you can get in the city. So I took the opportunity to stock up for Christmas.

I bought a lot of stuff: red peppers, mangos and cilantro for a soup I promised Alex I’d try to make for her. We had it together in a restaurant and I’m determined to reverse-engineer it. (Yes, I’m working backwards from what I remember it tasted like last summer. Wish me luck.)

I bought gobs of fruit. I’m feeding about 14 Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day (which is Ken’s b/day). With so many people in the house, it makes sense to make a HUGE fruit salad and then let everyone pick out the stuff they don’t like.

I found fresh basil. My basil plant has just given up the ghost and I clapped my hands in glee when I came upon the beautiful fresh basil. And lemongrass. So I think I’ll make a nice curry tomorrow with chicken, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, maybe some cauliflower, potatoes, and the Kaffir lime leaves I found in a Korean store when I was shooting in Guelph.

I love to cook. I can’t believe the number of people who blow their budgets eating out when home-cooking is such a pleasure and so much more cost-efficient. I gave one couple I worked with the challenge of making dinner for their extended family using only $40, about 1/10 of what they would normally spend taking everyone out to eat. They only spent $38! It can be done,  people. The couples I work with often have to give up their eating-out ways because I give them so little money to live on. Then they discover the sheer joy of working together in the kitchen, creating a meal, enjoying their togetherness along with the food.

As I’m filling my arms with berries, mangos and tangerines, a woman and her husband stop to talk. They love the show. And they want to know how much of what I do sticks.

It’s a good question. I get this question a lot. My best guess is that we work wonders with about 80 percent of the people I meet. Ten percent fall into the nebulous gray area: will they, or won’t they stick with the plan? And ten percent are lost, some from the get-go. I’m shooting the last show of season five right now (season three is on the air), so that’s 65 people in total that I’ve worked with on camera. That’s a lot of people who have been Gailed! And many of them exceeded my expectations.

It seems the reach of the show is wider than I initially thought. I left the fruit stands and headed into the local grocery emporium for hummus and pita. The pretty young lass at the cash register recognized me and told me how much headway she’s making with her debt. Good for her.

Good for you all. It is no easy task facing up to your debt. But as many of you can attest, if you have the guts to face up, ‘fess up, and get moving towards your goal, the feeling you get is FANTASTIC! People are writing to tell me how excited they are to be debt-free. Wow!  And when couples appeal to me for help now, they ask me to “come kick my butt.” Ha!

The reason why so many people are embracing the idea of being debt free isn’t simply because it’s a good idea. It’s because they have me kicking their butts. So here’s my challenge to all you recent converts:

Get yourself a butt to kick and kick it hard. Show whomever you’ve chosen the error of their ways. Show them how you turned things around. Show them that they can be debt free too. And tell them, once they’re on their way, that it’s their turn to partake of some butt-kicking.

When you’ve kicked a butt, write and tell me. Better still, post it under Have Your Say. This is where I’d like y’all to talk to each other.

Happy Holidays to you and your family. Here’s hoping your pantry is full and your heart is happy.

p.s. check out the new article, Got A Raise?