The world has gone from Location, Location, Location to Spendaholics

Austin_Allegro

Spendaholics, IMO makes excuses for peoples' behaviour and relies on silly gimmicks (like filling an entire house with chocolate bars etc) because it makes good tellie.

Jay Lenno or whatever her name is is ok, but I don't like Benjamin Fry. I doubt if he has any formal qualifications because he calls himself a 'psychological coach' or somesuch, rather than a psychologist or psychiatrist.

He seems to have sub-GCSE level of pseudo-Freudian analysis and blames everything on childhood trauma. It's pop psychology of the worst womens' magazine type.

I much prefer Alvin Hall - one of my financial heroes - who uses tough love and a more rational, cognitive approach.

olly300

Austin_Allegro wrote: »

Spendaholics, IMO makes excuses for peoples' behaviour and relies on silly gimmicks (like filling an entire house with chocolate bars etc) because it makes good tellie.

Jay Lenno or whatever her name is is ok, but I don't like Benjamin Fry. I doubt if he has any formal qualifications because he calls himself a 'psychological coach' or somesuch, rather than a psychologist or psychiatrist.

He seems to have sub-GCSE level of pseudo-Freudian analysis and blames everything on childhood trauma. It's pop psychology of the worst womens' magazine type.

I much prefer Alvin Hall - one of my financial heroes - who uses tough love and a more rational, cognitive approach.

Benjamin Fry has his own website-
http://www.benjaminfry.co.uk/about-biography.html

After a degree in physics and philosophy at Oxford University Benjamin studied psychotherapy at Regent's College in London. He has recently returned there to study towards a professional doctorate in psychotherapy.

If you think that getting down to way people spend out of control is making excuses for their behaviour then you obviously think anyone with a mental illness can snap out of it. Benjamin and Jay's actions are to find ways that work to control that personal's behaviour. Jay's help is practical and Benjamin's is making the person think about what is behind their own behaviour to back Jay's work up.

Dithering_Dad

!!!!!!? wrote: »

I quite fancy owning a regular-sized campervan. The new VW California looks ace and it's no bigger than a typical 'transit' type van, so you could bung it into a garage when not being used (probably).

Much better than a caravan anyway (bloody mobile roadblocks) and would give years of fun family holidays.

If you're buying a VW camper then you can't get any cooler than the type 2:
http://www.danburymotorcaravans.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=19



These are built brand new in Rio (as buses) and are converted to motorhomes at Danbury. They have modern water cooled engines, so you lose the traditional air-cooled farty sound of the old type 2's but they're more reliable and faster.

Wouldn't mind if one of my neighbours had one of these on their driveway instead of the 'white box' designs of modern mobile homes!

clobber_2

Alvin Hall has a lovely voice too.

GracieP

!!!!!!? wrote: »

I quite fancy owning a regular-sized campervan. The new VW California looks ace and it's no bigger than a typical 'transit' type van, so you could bung it into a garage when not being used (probably).

Much better than a caravan anyway (bloody mobile roadblocks) and would give years of fun family holidays.

My parent's biggest regret is that by the time they could afford one only my youngest brother was young enough to want to go on a family holiday. Though we did all take a trip to see the 2000 solar eclipse in it. I was 21 and my brothers were 18 and 14. All I can remember was a lot of arguing, my whole family laughing at me as I really needed to pee and didn't want to use the chemical toilet and that it rained throughout the whole damn eclipse, so all we saw was a darkening behind the clouds.

But they use their camper all the time now, nearly every weekend they go away with their club. And in the summer they get the ferry to France, with some of their camper owning friends and drive around Europe for a month or so. And they come back with the van loaded up with wine.

Campers are pretty expensive though, if you want a decent one. Their current one was €34k, which apparently is an amazing bargain for a Hymer* of that age. Their first one was only a few thousand, as it needed work and was incredibly ugly inside, but my parent's could do that themselves, and they sold it for €3k more than they bought it for when they upgraded. (They bought their second one from Richard Gibson, who used to play Herr Flick, the Gestapo officer in 'Allo,'Allo.) But it's worth taking a look at them in the near future as forced sales and repos will knock the cost down.

*Hymer- I'm told it's the BMW of campervans.

neverdespairgirl

lostinrates wrote: »

Ta NDG!

We have been wondering, you see, what our son might be called if we had one, but there is some confusion over the names in my husband's family. Someone at one point suggested ason I had , if brought up Jewish (undecided) would be called Ben Ben. I'm not sure how keen on that I am,

He would be Benjamin Ben Mr. Lostinrates. Actually, that is quite a strange name, I agree. But I'm not really sure what does go with your surname....

lostinrates

TBH, if we can get the right bit of land and build we'd be prepared to live in a campe, a horse box, or a static thingy, for a few years, rebuild some capital then build.

MrDT

!!!!!!? wrote: »

I quite fancy owning a regular-sized campervan. The new VW California looks ace and it's no bigger than a typical 'transit' type van, so you could bung it into a garage when not being used (probably).

Much better than a caravan anyway (bloody mobile roadblocks) and would give years of fun family holidays.

Jeez, from £36k!? http://www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk/california/

Nah, that's silly money. Much better to go down the second hand t4 transporter selfbuild camper route. You'd get a very tidy van and change from five grand.

I'd love to build a selfbuild van, but wouldn't want a t4 size van as a daily drive, and can't justify having both a van and a car when I can get by just fine without either!

Austin_Allegro

olly300 wrote: »

Benjamin Fry has his own website-
http://www.benjaminfry.co.uk/about-biography.html



If you think that getting down to way people spend out of control is making excuses for their behaviour then you obviously think anyone with a mental illness can snap out of it. Benjamin and Jay's actions are to find ways that work to control that personal's behaviour. Jay's help is practical and Benjamin's is making the person think about what is behind their own behaviour to back Jay's work up.

My point still stands. Mr Fry is NOT a qualified psychiatrist or psychotherapist. If the programme is about treating debt as an aholia in the same way as alcoholism or drug addiction, then it should be done so by a trained professional. On that 'Embarassing Illnesses' programme they have trained doctors. They don't allow people with a Cubs badge in first aid to do it!

If you think that getting down to way people spend out of control is making excuses for their behaviour then you obviously think anyone with a mental illness can snap out of it.

That's just the point - he doesn't get down to why people do it. He uses pop-psychology, cod-Freudian techniques (a lot has happened in psychology since Dr Freud's day which Mr Fry may learn about on his course).

They are treating what is essentially people's poor cognitive habits as a form of illness based on childhood trauma, which essentially locks them into a victim mentality (and thus reliant on further counselling).

I would argue 'spendaholism' is not an illness but a series of learned bad behaviours (facilitated by easy credit) which have to be unlearned, not the result of trauma. Lots of people have had traumatic events but do not go on to be spendaholics!

I have lived with two people with mental illness and realise it's not a case of snapping out of it - why do people assume anything other than the pop-psychology, weepfest approach to the mind is somehow insensitive?

clk299

I do think that his approach has some merit though. A common behavioural symptom of depression, for instance, is overspending. Reckless spending though, not 'we thought it was a good deal' or just not keeping tabs on things. The people who go on spendaholics are literally addicted to spending money; they use buying things as a quick fix when they are bored, or upset, or angry. That IMO is quite different from people who get into debt because 'I'm worth it' and buy the latest TV etc because the credit is there.

I think that is why the 'cold turkey' week is often quite emotional especially around day 3 or so; when people really feel the physical NEED to go and buy something. I wonder whether there are people who start the programme filming and find that what they needed was a SOA and a wakeup call and then they were like 'oh, ok! thanks!' and didn't actually feel that physical need to spend.

I am really speaking from experience; when I had depression, my view was 'it's only money, it doesn't matter in the scheme of things' and I bought things I didn't need because it made me feel that I was part of the world, that I 'fit in' a bit more. I ended up in a small amount of debt that was easy enough to pay back, but at the time it seemed a bit awful (it was a lot of money to me at the time).

I think sometimes, being shown that you do something (like them showing the subject the sheer amount of overspend) and then exploring why, and giving you tools to stop you doing it again, is pretty much what I had with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I am not saying it's the same thing but it is a similar approach. Also you can exhibit symptoms of depression in behaviour without actually needing a full diagnosis of depression, for instance. Or (like the other day) addressing the symptom (the spending) opens the door to the real root of the problem (feeling isolated, depression, bulimia) and now the woman can go and get proper help for that.

A lot of people have no self awareness. A lot of people think 'I spend money because I can't not' or 'becuase it makes me happy'. They don't think 'I spend money because it makes me feel less worthless, more deserving, and underneath I don't really think I am deserving'.