Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Yay, Oprah!

Today will be the first new Oprah episode in months and I'm looking forward to it because I miss her shows. I rarely watch TV anymore besides a few PBS and Travel Channel shows - it's ALL crap otherwise and thank god for Netflix! Oprah's the one indulgence I have, and because she's a good person as well as a good entertainer, I feel good about watching. I sounds like SUCH a stay-at-home mom with my anticipation over OPRAH. LOL!

Speaking of Netflix, if any of you subscribe, send me your username so we can be friends and check out each others' queues! We watched a documentary I had heard about called Maxed Out. It's about the debt problems consumers face and predatory lending practices of banks and credit card companies. It also touches on the national debt and out of control government spending.

In the end, it's about personal responsibility and educating youself. Most of the people profiled were ignorant about money and finances. Those two words, to most people, make one's face pucker in distaste - they don't want to think about it or deal with it. Well sticking your head in the sand while your world comes tumbling down around you certainly does not help either! It's terribly unfortunate that personal finance is not taught in schools. But this documentary did not touch on personal responsibility as much as I thought it should.

Money is central our lives whether we like it or not and we must educate ourselves in its workings so as not to be vulnerable to these huge corporations who reap windfall profits from those who don't know better.

4 comments:

Carol said...

Amy,

I couldn't agree more!! When I was at Uni there was a great 'buy your first apartment' deal. I bought and my first year was incredibly cheap.....but then my mortgage and I really struggled to cope!! I remember not being able to sleep for worrying about how I was going to be able to pay everything. In the end I was able to sell my apartment and pay off all my debts but I have to say that most of them came from the fact that I owned the bloomin apartment in the first place!!

It taught me a valuable lesson and now I have no debt at all...not even a credit card!!

C x

Carol said...

That was supposed to read

but then my mortgage went up and up and I really struggled to cope

I think I may have dyslexic fingers!!

C x

Crunchy Domestic Goddess said...

we actually just canceled our netflix acct cuz jody was the only one getting movies and we really need to cut whatever expenses we can. that movie sounds good though. maybe if we sign up again down the road, we will chk it out. :)

Amy T said...

Good for you, Carol! I was also completely debt free when I moved to Thailand. I can't imagine being saddled with credit card bills while living there as their bill paying system isn't as efficient as in the US - I'm sure the UK is similar in convenience. I have only one bill I have to put in the mail, the rest is paid online.

You must have had an adjustable rate mortgage... that's been the bane of our economic woes here in the US along with folks who had bad credit all along and should have stayed renters. At least you got out OK.

Amy - yeah, I understand about cutting expenses. We have the most basic cable service because we need it just to get a decent signal for our broadcast stations. We don't go out to the movie theater and Golf and I love movies, so Netflix was the more