Oprah Winfrey.
February 28th, 2010
When I’m running at the gym, sometimes I don´t listen to personal development talks on my I-pod, I just watch the TV in front of the jogging belt.
Recently when I did this the Oprah Winfrey show was on. Since I hardly ever watch TV at home and certainly not specific shows, I put my attention on following it. The topic was how families handle their family economy, whether they make a budget and if so, how they did it.
I must admit that I was quite shocked when I heard their reasons for participating, particularly as these families were from the US middle classes, not families with poor incomes. Let me give you some examples:
One couple argued about whether they should spend $ 35,000 on what the woman thought was a very nice and “luxurious” wedding, or $ 20,000 on a wedding with lots of beer and vodka which the man wanted! The real circumstances for them were that their total income per month was $ 7,700 and they had expenses of $ 7,850. In other words, they were already in debt by $ 150 every month! In my world I wonder how they can even think of such weddings.
There was another family with two teenage daughters who proposed to study at quite an expensive private college. The father wanted to take a loan of $ 160,000 for each daughter! They went through what the actual monthly cost of these loans would be, and it was obvious that it would cause them a huge deficit in their budget every month. In spite of this the father still proposed to take the loan!
The expert on the program then turned to one of the daughters and asked what she would study in order to get a job with a good income when she graduated. The answer was that she didn’t know but she would find out during her studies! Then she asked the father why they couldn’t choose a college that wasn’t private and therefore wasn’t so expensive, and the answer was that he wanted them to study at a ‘good school’.
There were several other families after these two and all of them had a similar confused reality and confusion around money and economy.
In a way I’m not surprised that much of the so-called financial crisis started in the US, when you see these people and families that in my view are so incredibly stupid that to me it’s almost unbelievable. Please don’t forget that we in the western world often act in a similar fashion, so I imagine that many of you reading may know others acting like this – and may do so yourself!
All that I have described above has to do with our attitudes – towards fear, money, our abilities, success, weakness- you name it.
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