The Toronto Star
Taking aim at reckless spending
The Toronto Star -
ELLEN ROSEMAN
February 6, 2008
With a slowing economy, suddenly everyone's talking about controlling spending and taming the credit monster.
The relentless media coverage of RRSPs is giving way to a new fiscal reality. Many consumers are maxed out and need to get off the buy now-pay later treadmill.
Among leaders in the campaign against reckless overspending:
Mary Wiens, a producer with CBC Radio in Toronto, was talking to a young colleague about an airline trip he was planning to take. Instead of booking his own tickets online, he was paying with cash because he had sworn off credit and debit cards.
"As Jason (Osler) was explaining the logistics of applying his cash-only policy to travelling, I found myself thinking this might be a useful conversation on air," Wiens says. The result was a week-long series, Inheriting the Credit Crunch, that ran on Metro Morning and Here and Now (the local afternoon show).
You can find the series online at www.cbc.ca/metromorning.
Gail Vaz Oxlade was a successful personal finance author. Before that, she taught bank staff how to sell RRSPs.
Now she's the host of Til Debt Do Us Part, a reality show on the Slice TV network in Toronto that has been sold around the world. It was just renewed for a sixth and seventh season.
Vaz Oxlade makes house calls to couples who can't live within their means and makes them live on cash. She gives them tough tasks to perform, and hands more than $5,000 cheques to those who meet her demands, while withholding rewards from the weak-willed.
Vaz Oxlade can't go anywhere without being recognized and asked about her famous jar system for living on cash. In fact, she's noticed many houses with cash jars sitting on window sills.
"As a financial writer, I was talking to people who were already interested in money. But I wasn't getting to the people who need the most basic help," she says.
At www.gailvazoxlade.com, her website, she takes questions - "how do you calculate the amount that goes in the jars?" - and blogs about her travels.
She's hosting a free money management seminar at Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel next Wednesday evening, sponsored by Credential Financial Inc. (www.credential.com/masteryourfinances).
James Cunningham is a stand-up comic. He uses his entertainment skills to teach high school students in a 45-minute session called Funny Money.
"You have no idea how much your lives actually cost," he told several hundred students yesterday at Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School (where I went to hear him).
"You're graduating into a very aggressive and dangerous financial world and you're not prepared for it. You've got to be on top of your money and you're not."
His humour disarms the students and soon they're spilling their secrets - such as how little they think they'll spend once they get to university.
What's the cost of school supplies? One teen guesses $50, not realizing that's what it costs just to get an ink refill for his computer printer.
"My dad buys the ink," he tells Cunningham, who notes school supplies average $350 in the first year.
You can find out more about his talks, sponsored by the Investor Education Fund and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, at funnymoneyhighschools.com and on Facebook (Funnymoneyman).