MMR 2: The Potts Family

Kimberley

Thats what i thought Martin meant by what he said..

elvis_bloggs

It's no use watching a programme about saving money if you don't have any, anyway, we poor people would sooner watch an old black and white film in the afternoon.

Fran

elvis_bloggs wrote:

It's no use watching a programme about saving money if you don't have any, anyway, we poor people would sooner watch an old black and white film in the afternoon.

Well there is a point, because anyone can save money on utilities, phone etc., as long as they realise that even though they don't feature as subject matter that the same principles can apply to them.

Edinburghlass_2

Bogof_Babe wrote:

I don't really agree that fewer visits to the cash machine = money "saved".

Also it would be good if we could be told which service providers etc. are offering the best rates, rather than just advised to shop around, which I would think most people do anyway.

Each programme listed on Martin's Make Me Rich page has the relevant articles that pertain to the days programme which will show which service provider Martin recommends.

Haven't seen today's programme yet :xmassmile

Spendless

Fran wrote:

I found the amount of children's clothes obscene for kids of that age, no offence meant to the family, but I thought the kids are spoilt on clothes & toys.

To be fair she did say that a lot of the clothes were hand me downs. My kids are a similar age and Martin would have come to the same conclusion looking thru their wardrobes but I rarely buy mine clothes. I have 3 different sources that pass on hand me downs, as well as relatives who buy clothes in sales for them as well as at Xmas and Birthdays. I only get rid of the clothes as they outgrow them and I save neutral stuff for the younger one. It's the same with toys we cut down last year on how much we buy them cos of the amount of we have buying them things.
£400 a year on Happy meals though:eek: . Is it my maths or did that work out at a happy meal twice a week for the kids?

MSE_Martin

Rather annoyed that I wrote a big long response to this and then my wireless went kaput so will try and retype (though the enthusiam always goes the second time).

A few points

1. Forgive me for the low income/debt thing. I was writing quickly and am VERY aware of the difference, yet what i wrote was wrong and i must apologise. In fact we do debt crisis twice in the series, not on purpose, part of the nature of "going in cold" means some people's finances aren't what we expect.

2. No lower incomes. Let me be honest (i shouldnt be as i may be saying things i shouldn't). ITV wanted 'really big savings, at least £5,000 per programme). I argued that really big would be 20% of income, but it wanted "big numbers". Now I'm good but im not good enough to save someone earning less than £10k a year five thousand pounds.

3. What's the programme for? For me this is an interesting vehicle to get people thinking about MoneySaving. Of course it isn't perfect. I would prefer a live half hour to talk to people about what they do - but thats something that wouldn't be commissioned. So the case studies are there as a demonstration and hopefully the issues come out. ITV have been commendably brave, doing a 'stop spending' programme is a much easier sell.

Think yesterday we talking about 'existing customer balance transfers', today about 'whole of market mortgage brokers' on a mainstream TV programme - its never been done before! So yes while the info isn't what MoneySavers are used to it is there. ANd of course as we film months in advance we simply can't be contemporaneous.


As for the family. They were a lovely family, but i am struggling to remember their finances. One thing to say - dont add the numbers up too carefully. I do a proper budget with them and things are calculated. For example the MacDonalds savings of £400 didnt include the fact that they would need to buy elsehwhere, yet this family were already buying enough food for all meals, but wasting it.

This was the pilot programme and originally 45 minutes long, in that we talked about wasting food. When itv decided to do 15 x 30mins (actually the programme is 23 mins long in reality after ads) rather than 10 x 45s, the format changed.

Throughout the series you will see things like that. Remember i am there a whole day, the process is genuine, but it is impossible to communicate everything, so just trust the figures, i was very careful to make them real even if you have questions, those are ones i will have gone through

rach1973

Spendless wrote:

£400 a year on Happy meals though:eek: . Is it my maths or did that work out at a happy meal twice a week for the kids?

I worked it out to be that too - SHOCKING

Kimberley

1. Forgive me for the low income/debt thing. I was writing quickly and am VERY aware of the difference, yet what i wrote was wrong and i must apologise. In fact we do debt crisis twice in the series, not on purpose, part of the nature of "going in cold" means some people's finances aren't what we expect

I forgive you just because your a dish

Oh and can't wait to see the Pig again and Martin ARE YOU GOING TO MANUFACTURE THAT PIG FOR US TO BUY?

Fran

Spendless wrote:

To be fair she did say that a lot of the clothes were hand me downs. My kids are a similar age and Martin would have come to the same conclusion looking thru their wardrobes but I rarely buy mine clothes. I have 3 different sources that pass on hand me downs, as well as relatives who buy clothes in sales for them as well as at Xmas and Birthdays. I only get rid of the clothes as they outgrow them and I save neutral stuff for the younger one. It's the same with toys we cut down last year on how much we buy them cos of the amount of we have buying them things.
£400 a year on Happy meals though:eek: . Is it my maths or did that work out at a happy meal twice a week for the kids?

I missed them saying about hand-me-downs, if that is the case then ok, but you can refuse! There isn't a need for so many clothes, when mine were that age I was always giving away clothes that my children had hardly worn. Let's say the child in this family had 35 tops & 35 bottoms: 35 outfits. By age 4 there's no need to change clothes so often because of leeky nappies etc., so if it's 35 outfits & the child wears 2 a day, that's 17 days (2 and a half weeks) that these outfits last, wearing a different set every day if she wears 2 different sets each day. How quickly do children grow? Assuming she's outgrown the outfits within 3 months (lets say 15 weeks), each set will only have been worn 6 times. That is obscene as far as I'm concerned (sorry to everyone who spoils their children like this, I too had unworn clothes when mine were young!). A four year old will wear what you put them in (if they won't then you already have a problem!) so it's all so unneccesary! :rudolf:

halloweenqueen_2

I looked at it this way, how can people on 50K a year have debts?:snow_grin

If you can show how people who shouldn't be hard up are wasting money and can't afford a foreign holiday it may put the point across more about how much is being wasted and how much you waste by not shopping around on utilties, it has inspired me to dig out the small print on my mortgage.
Fair enough I may not save £7K + a year but if I can save 1K a year by switching and slightly altering my life style, as I'm on less money than them it will still have a big impact on my life.
ITV are not going to give a show to martin to save someone a couple of hundred £'s a year, they want results, theres nothing to say we can't use the same principles.
Poorer families are usually penalised more by utilites like having to pay charges for pre payment meters etc, or to draw money out of machines if there is no bank in their area with a free cash machine. Switching would be beneficial to them as well.
I think the family did have more savings they could of made, the clothes for instance,the ones with tickets still on weren't hand me downs and why couldn't they have been sold instead of given to a charity shop (no offence to charity shops).
If they could save that much money a year without really trying, they could save the value of their car loan in a year if they just pushed themselves a little more.
They have a low mortgage at £350 a month, if they can reduce their outgings by 7K a year in theory they could pay that off much quicker and become debt free.
I wish them well:xmastree: