Wasn’t there a pole once that said if Oprah ran for president she would win?

Please don’t take every email personally even though people are pouring their hearts out to you…perhaps just send them along to a narrower topic that you have already blogged about and a wish of encouragement.

I have been checking this blog for the past year and finally I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you so much for everything

When our own personal caca hit the fan we committed to changing things and had to swallow our pride. I remember the embarrassment of “confessing” to my parents and the humiliation I felt when we turned down our first invitation to dinner. But we did it. My parents weren’t even surprised and more than disappointed they were worried because they had always bailed us out and we had reached that point when they could not help us anymore. In hindsight it would have been a lot better for us if they had said right from the start that they WOULD not help us. But parents love and try to save their kids.

We actually sat down and tried to come up with believable lies to explain why we could no longer go out to dinner with our friends. Soon saw that this was going to be an endless and stupid game because you can only have so many headaches before your friends shove you into an ambulance and insist that you have a brain scan right now! So we simply said that we could no longer afford to go out for dinner but that they could come and have coffee with us after they ate out. Surprisingly they said – Oh no. It wouldn’t be the same. Let’s have a potluck instead. And the one thing I noticed as we continued with our potlucks is that they seemed relieved.

We decided early on that we would still keep our business private mostly because we didn’t want to become annoying reformed debtors who could only talk about that. (That plan failed forme) However, after we started to get straight people began to notice that we seemed a lot more relaxed and started openly asking us questions and telling us about their finances.

This is a very touchy and difficult maze to enter and then try to get out of with friends. Right off I noticed that there were some who were really serious about getting out of debt but that there were also those who were willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk. They were the ones who kept coming back to us looking for the easy out and the quick fix and not believing it when we told them that there wasn’t one. I think they thought we were keeping all the candy for ourselves.

The serious ones got it fairly quickly and just figured a lot of it out for themselves. For the others all we could do was repeat and repeat and repeat what we were doing and try to steer them to watching ‘Til Debt. It got really frustrating and some actually got resentful against us. My Dad used to say that advice can be given but you should not expect that it will be received.

I am now a lot better at just giving them the short version of the advice they have asked for and accepting that it is going to be ignored until the next time they got really worried and panicky. Not judging just stating facts and we understand because we did the same for years. I want to help but I do get annoyed. You can take a debtor to a budget but you cannot make them think.

( I can’t add 2+2, but I can follow the jars and go from there and if I can, ANYONE can.)

@diana – great post – rich, poor, single, married, same sex, student, retired, divorced, children, no children, pets, no pets, renter, owner, city, country….(did I miss anyone?) these “life” rules apply to you! ALL of you! You can play the game however you want but those are the rules. We all make what we make. We live within it or we make more.

As for ditching the loser?? Well, I was the loser in my relationship and my hubby was patient and I changed. I am still not as frugal as he is but I have definitely reformed my ways.

i’m getting blue in the face too gail!

Also congrats to everyone who has a positive story to share. I love hearing these!

There will always be people looking for a quick fix. And unfortunately, since your show has cash involved, you probably get more than your fair share of people looking for a money tree.

Hang in there and don’t let them get to you. There’s a special place in heaven for people like you.

“Gail can talk, we can talk, but unless someone holds these people desperate people’s hands and say Step 1 is this… now lets do it (probably together) they may never be able to take that first step.”

If you need someone to hold your hand every step of the way, it’s not going to get done. Gail cannot visit everyone with a debt problem in the world. If you have children or a spouse counting on you, it’s up to YOU to fix the problem, daunting as that may be.

There are plenty of resources already out there, including on this blog, on the website, and on the show. But it seems many of these people don’t want to take the initiative to learn or to try or to do. They just want someone to save them.

And that’s part of the problem. If you’re not willing to take matters into your own hands, and say, “I’m going to LEARN how to fix this”, nothing will change. If you’re still looking for someone to fix your life, things won’t improve, even WITH Gail’s help.

Thank you. I am sorry you get so many letters asking the same things, over and over, and wanting a ‘magic’ (read: effortless and instant) solution. But thank you for doing what you do because there are folks like me who took what your wrote about (I got your books out of the library too!) and said on the show, rolled up our sleeves, did the work, and are THRILLED with the results. Hubby and I have a plan, we’re working as a team, our family is having more fun (believe it! free/cheap stuff rocks!) and we are building our dreams together. We also sleep better at night having sorted out some missing elements (disability insurance! as a stay-at-home Mom of 2 young boys, completely dependent at this stage on self-employed hubby’s earnings…wow! What a risk I/we were taking!)

So thank you. If you ever doubt that you are having an effect (broken record syndrome), please remember me and the THOUSANDS like me who are so thankful someone pointed the way so that with a little (or a LOT) of hard work, we can get to where we want to be.

I do, sometimes.

People write to me too (DEFINITELY not as much as to you), and ask me how to get out of debt, save for a future, budget and track expenses.

I am just.. exhausted with repeating myself in every different way I can think of to help everyone, but sometimes it just boils down to doing it.

I am starting to feel like the fundamental problem with everyone is not that they don’t want to get out of debt, save, budget or track expenses.

It also isn’t because they aren’t smart, or don’t have the resources & tools to help them out (SO MANY great blogs out there repeat over and over again, how to set up a budget)..

It’s because people are in denial and/or lazy.

Period.

They want someone like you, to come in with a magic wand, tell them how bad the situation is, wave a little pointer stick around and give them EXACTLY what they have to do to get out of debt or change their lives.

They want YOU to do the grunt work for them, because it isn’t hard or difficult for these smart people.

Hell, even for me, it was torture to go through all those letters for my student loans (none went to collections or missed a payment, however) and to re-live the pain over and over again, chugging back some Pepto Bismol while I figure out how much I owe IN TOTAL and to start drafting a plan to get out of debt.

But I did it. Alone.

But with the proliferation of great PF blogs such as yours and many others, as well as your TV show & many others.. or radio shows… people are just getting lazy. Clamouring for help even when the answer is staring them straight in the face on my blog or yours and screaming and pleading them to follow our steps.

Take a whole day off and do it.

Like a band-aid. One rip.

Sorry for the long rant. Just.. getting frustrated. *sigh* I want to help, but I also want people to stop taking the easy way out, and start helping themselves as well. Proactively.