The MAG: Dealing with the D-word

Repeat after me: "I" "I"
"am a" "am a"
"dickwad." "dickwad?"

That little exchange comes from the mouth of Gail Vaz- Oxlade, proudly recalling a maverick reality TV moment when she tricked a reluctant over-spender into calling himself, well, you read it already.

The guy was not only wrecking his own financial future by insisting on buying leather furniture and toys on credit, but also stressing out his non-confrontational girlfriend, who feared saying no to his whims would mean the end of their couplehood.

In a way, most of us could benefit from a hard talking to at the kitchen table. Maybe we won't bust out the d-word, but I can think of a few others that might describe our approach to money and budgeting, such as foolish and fuzzy-headed.
Roughly 50 per cent of Canadians are unable to pay off their credit cards every month, according to Credit Canada. Debt loads have been increasing steadily since 1990, so that now the average Canadian is in deep to the tune of about $80,000 (mortgages included).

At Credit Counselling Sudbury, a non-profit that provides free credit counselling, its employees are seeing people coming in with larger and larger credit card loads.

"The average is around the $27,000-$28,000 per person," said Linda Morel, executive director. "That is unsecured credit. Not a mortgage. Just unsecured credit. That's the average amount. It's huge and it's scary."

While big banks and perhaps even automotive giants might be saved by government bailouts, us average over-spenders won't be so lucky. And debt is on the minds of many in these recessionary times.

Vaz-Oxlade's show, "Til Debt Do Us Part," started a little ahead of the current financial crunch, about 2 1/2 years ago. She took a break from filming season seven on Monday afternoon to squeeze in this interview.

Its hook works much like weight loss, puppy training, or de-cluttering shows. An expert, Vaz- Oxlade, forces couples to address their bad habits and then leads them forward toward change.

Many are extreme cases, such as the couple with more than $100,000 in credit card debt, making the viewer feel much better about their own situation. But unlike other shows of this nature, it has the added element of diving into a taboo subject -- money and debt.

Typically, Vaz-Oxlade takes away their credit cards and gets the couples to make a budget by putting cash into labelled glass jars. Each couple is also given three tasks. If they succeed, they're rewarded with $5,000.

Vaz-Oxlade has no shortage of candidates. The problem, she said, is people don't have a good idea about what they're making and even a poorer idea about what they're spending.

"We've distanced ourselves from the money so much," she said.

When Vaz-Oxlade asks people what they make, typically they quote the gross figure, not the actual take home amount.
"That's the first part of the problem," she said. "You know that ad on TV, 'You're richer than you think.' You're not. You're probably poorer than you think."

So, we're kind of wishful about what we earn but also have an even vaguer sense about what we spend.

"Because we have access to overdraft, lines of credit and credit cards, we are using those forms of credit to supplement our forms of disposable income," Vaz- Oxlade said.

In the past, you bought stuff with either cheque or cash. You kept a book in your purse or wallet with a running tally. Now, most of us find out the tally after the fact, when the bills come in.

"I think anyone who doesn't pay their balance off in full every month shouldn't have a credit card," Vaz-Oxlade said.
And making more money is often not the solution.

"Money is not something you should be prepared to do anything for. You should have your priorities set. What are you prepared to exchange your life energies for? ... All those things that are experiences are more important than the acquisition of stuff."

With the couples, emotional issues arise out of spending patterns or create them. For instance, in one case every time he bought a toy, she retaliated with clothes and shoes.

"They're racing to bankruptcy ... It's just a power, control game," she said. "People grow resentful of the other person trying to control them. Regardless of whether they're right or wrong. Nobody wants to be told what to do."

Instead, Vaz-Oxlade counsels they should let the budget be the bad guy. And yes, everyone should have a budget.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has also tapped into this zeitgeist, worrying about our collective consciousness, although her series of Massey lectures, collected in book form as, "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth," is by no means a how-to manual.

Instead, it looks at why we as a social species has created the concept of borrowing and lending.

Atwood was in Sudbury last week for a birthday benefit, celebrating her 69 years. Her curly hair has gone grey and she looks slighter and shorter than one would assume a literary giant to be. People of her generation didn't tend to fall into debt because they didn't have the same access to credit.

"I knew how to add and subtract and live within a budget ... I think I borrowed money once in the 1960s and I paid it back a couple months later. It was easier then. School fees hadn't gone up so far. My generation was (born) just at the end of the depression."

It was in the 1970s that everything changed when credit companies began mass mailing out their cards and soon anyone could qualify.

"Now it's hard to function without them ... Somehow if you don't have one, you're a non-person," she said. "But at the beginning, nobody had them and that habit of borrowing against the future wasn't a habit."

Is it possible to turn back?

"Turning back has just been enforced. Sooner and later. It's like running out of food. If you don't pay attention to agriculture on the Earth, you'll be forced to pay attention to it through famines," she said.

In Payback, Atwood takes a writerly approach, dipping in and out of time and fiction, from the first buy-now-pay-later scheme proposed by Faust to retelling the Scrooge story with the ghosts of Earth Day Past, Present and Future.

In her accounting, little glass jars aren't going to solve our problems. Debt is more than what we owe the bank. It's what we owe the Earth.

As Earth Day Past explains to Nouveau-Scrooge:

"The killing of the Earth is driven by poverty on one hand and greed on the other. The poor countries are in debt to the rich ones."

Vaz-Oxlade talked about how we've distanced ourselves from money so much, it has ceased to be real. Atwood goes a bit further. We've distanced ourselves from the source of our wealth, the Earth, that we now equate steak wrapped in plastic as food rather than the cow in the field.

"If there is nothing to eat, of course, the economy won't matter," she said.

Copyright © 2009 The Sudbury Star