As you may or may not know, Aden and I have been shooting for Maxed Out this week, last Saturday (during the on-set of the snowstorm) all day (and half eve) in the ol' NoYo homestead, a full-day shoot downtown and last night for a couple hours in studio. As I stated before, there's a lot of "magic of television" involved in making any reality and this show is no different. I know, and you know, that they're not going to spend weeks following us around awaiting TV-ready opportunities to arise, so we've distilled down our daily routine and our favourite activities and common occurrences into two full-day shoots. We'll let you wait and see to see what we actually did.
I found the two day shoots quite enjoyable (if Saturday a tad long), and the crew (Karen, Brian, Adam, Mike, Peter and all the rest) have been good fun and very easy to be around. While some might think the cameras to be obtrusive or difficult to deal with, they haven't really bothered me at all. I might not be an utterly natural camera presence but I do feel that I'm not overly overwhelmed by the camera (I've done interviews for City TV and Space, amongst other camera-on-the-street things before and they've been nerve-wracking and probably useless, left on the proverbial cutting room floor). I certainly have no problem talking about myself, my life, etc., whether I do so eloquently or not, I can't really say. Hopefully it all gets spliced together and I don't look like a total geekdom-obsessed, financially-irresponsible knob (even if I am a little bit). But, then, I know it can be cut together in a number of different ways to make for, well, entertaining television, and I resigned myself to that fact from day one, so I'm fine with it. I think Aden's a little worried that I'm going to be made out to look worse than I actually am in terms of my financial (ir)responsibility, but for all my financial awareness of late there's a bed of truth to that characterization, which I fully admit.
Last night we had our "map and plan" (or, to put it in Idol terms, results night), where Alison (your host and mine) gives us the results of her full goings-over of three-months of our financial paperwork. And, really, wow. If you've never taken the initiative to break your spending down into categories and examine your spending habits, do it. Take two or three months of bank statements, bills, and anything else that will tell you where your money went and see where it's all going, how much is going out, and how much you're actually bringing in. Aden and I were shocked at nearly every number presented to us, even a little skeptical (calling them "TV numbers" once or twice in post-shoot conversation).
After our shoot we heatedly discussed and justified the number and realized that the 3-months of statements, etc that we provided to the show (all, relating to our immediate post-marriage period) isn't exactly the best representation of our regular life together, as additional money came in for the wedding, and we spent a lot of money on moving expenses, including our awesome wall of shelving and an armoire for the bedroom which were needed to make the space suitable for us, and we had a couple of plane trips to account for. Then again, we've only been together 4 months and there really is no "best representation" to look at... as far as Alison is concerned, those three months represent how we're going to live out the rest of our lives if we don't do something about it....
Anyway, we did bandy a lot of money between ourselves in that time (which I can see would be very difficult to understand from an outside perspective), but even still the numbers that we were disbelieving, upon self-examination, turned out to be much closer to fact than we were initially willing to admit, at least in the context of that 3-month period. If anything, the results we were given put us into mind to do our own examination, and in the end, that's what being on the show is all about... coming to grips with our finances, and that's the ultimate reward of this. Alison has put into light our shortcomings in terms of how we deal with our money (or, better yet, how we ignore it), and has charged us with the task of addressing it. Things like taking a look at our RRSPs and understanding what we're investing in and how we're investing is something we both have been ignoring. Understanding our collections, and cataloging it has been fast tracked from "sometime next year" to, erm, now-ish, and reigning in our spending will begin Monday (although, we've already been striving to do that).
We've been given a plan, a spending plan, and it's doable, but not immediately so (at least not in full). Most everything, in terms of reducing spending, limiting spending on certain items and examining how to recoup monies from our deadweight collection is all acceptable. We've been asked to shift my 1-year debt pay-off (still on target) to a 9-month debt payoff, and in order to do that we would need to combine our incomes and switch our thinking from her money/my money to "our" money. Is it "our debt"? Erm, yes, I guess. But it's still hard not to consider it my debt. Aden had gotten rid of her debt before I met her, so saddling her with paying off my debt isn't something I feel comfortable doing... What we've been asked to do, essentially, is put my ENTIRE net income onto my debt every month for the next 9 months, leaving Aden to pay for everything else and that's something I don't think we're ready to do, especially given how stressful being a 1-income family had proven to be for her in the past. Maybe once I get past the credit card hurdle (both will be paid off in 4 months regardless of whether I follow my plan or Alison's plan), then Aden and I will examine the situation, our immediate goals, and our finances and see whether it's time to see both our incomes as one income and progress from there.
You get these people who are resistant to "the plan" on these debt management shows, and you shout at them to "just do it, don't argue" but actually being in the center of it, I understand how difficult it is, especially given the habits we have. Aden and I are a young couple, in that we've only been married for 4 months (in two days) and we're still working on the idea of combining our lives. It's been relatively seamless in many respects, but it's still difficult in some, and we're working on it, but we need time, and a one-month (three week, actually) time frame just isn't enough time to come to grips with it.
That said, I'm certainly grateful for all the work, thought and planning Alison and crew have put into what we need to do for our situation, and we will be implementing most of it immediately, and perhaps all of it at some point down the road.