Did you see UN-BROKE: What You Need To Know About Money On ABC Friday night? Starring Seth Green, Samuel L. Jackson and Christian Slater, the one-time special purports to help educate us (or those who don’t know) about personal finance. We can call it the celebrification of personal finance.
I didn’t catch it on TV, but I watched the loop of trailers on ABC’s site. At the same time, I was chatting with some of my other fellow personal finance blogger friends on Twitter about it (do a search on #unbroketv). Here’s a few of our thoughts:
@Matt_SF: Are we really this dumb? Do we need movie stars as eye candy to learn about personal finance & investing? #unbroketv
@SuburbanDollar – All I heard was what has been done wrong, not how to fix it, I agree with everything that was said, but America needs help, not history now.
@MyLifeROI – The format shows how the American public is… Christian has to show his abs for the public to listen to 401k advice #unbroketv
@alanschram – i like that #unbroketv is focusing on really simple, basic $ fundamentals. I don’t care that they’re not that accurate, they’re being said
@SuburbanDollar – Now that I like “I am broke as hell and I am not going to take it anymore” – Sam Jackson #unbroketv
@Green_Panda – Go Samuel Jackson! Personal responsibility is the biggest part of personal finance. #unbroketv
@Matt_SF My beef w/ #unbroketv is that society is at a low point if we need movie stars to motivate us to learn. Do they give lollipops to?
@MoneyEnergy RT @MattJabs @MMarquit: it gets ppl at least thinking about it…It’s painfully obvious our society needs a return to the basics #unbroketv
@MMarquit – The real question is this: Will we as a society actually CHANGE our financial habits? I’m not sure #unbroketv will accomplish that…
@Green_Panda - ABC: Make Un-broke a mini series. One topic per episode. #unbroketv
Did you see it? What were your thoughts? Was it useful, or was it just a “dumbed-down” version? I think I agree with MMarquit and MattJabs – if it helps people focus more on their money, then it’s good overall.
You can also check out some of Free From Broke’s thoughts on the show – he watched the whole aired version. That makes two of us working hard thinking about money on a Friday night:)! Speaking of which, ABC’s choice of airtime is interesting, don’t you think? 9pm EST on a Friday? Perhaps they assume those who can’t afford entertainment are at home anyway on a Friday night? Or that people at home on a Friday will be the ones who most need to hear the information? This seems convincing to me. It will be interesting to see what the ratings and overall reactions were to the show. I know several of us finance bloggers would like to see it in a mini-series.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I thought it was a “dumbed down” version of personal finance, but I also agree that it is good as long as it helps the general public focus more on their money. Keep in mind that to the average person, personal finance can be a dull and unimportant topic. ABC was merely trying to use its marketing skills to garner more viewers. Perhaps it wasn’t that the public is stupid, but because ABC wants to reach to the viewers who wouldn’t care to watch a special on personal finance. This of course leaves the rest of us, who would watch it dumbfounded.
It was boring. I am mad as Hell that Obama wasted all our money on trying to bail out GM and they still are going to file for bankruptcy. WTF? They should have done that in the first place 6 months ago. Maybe this show should have been shown in the Oval office and in Congress. Tell the government to stop spending! Stop wasting our money on stupid pictures of NY and parties and fundraisers. Tell our Treasury Secretary to pay his taxes before he expects us to pay ours. This show was demeaning and the only reason I didn’t turn it off was because I wanted to see what the public was watching- being brain-washed. It really had common sense info that most people already know and the only one that needs the information on that show in our government and the President.
@Will – good points, for many people perhaps, something very entertaining is needed to make personal finance seem “cool” enough to be worth paying attention to. If so, that’s very sad. And who knows what was going on behind the scenes at ABC.
@Lee – yep, many analysts would agree with you on that one about GM. Many wanted them to just go bankrupt from the get-go, when they were already bankrupt. Good point, even the Fed and government need to learn how to not spend more than they have…. except…. the Fed is the literal “engine” of nominal growth (ie., inflation) in the form of printing money.
When you consider how many people have financial problems the show covered what it needed to. It wasn’t trying to preach to the converted. The ideas were pretty simple but were accurate in their message and hopefully will get some folks thinking about their situation. Hey, maybe it means they look some info up and find sites like ours for more details!
And nice theme BTW!
I think it was pretty cliched with the usual factoids and statistics relating to personal finance. I guess as someone who’s been interested in personal finance for a while, I kind of knew everything they were talking about anyway, so, like FFB says, they aren’t preaching to the choir. I guess there are a lot of people out there that don’t know how to handle their personal finances.
Still, I felt like they were all the basics: spend less than you earn, enroll in your company’s 401(k) (especially for the match), have savings/emergency fund, etc. And sometimes they threw around statistics that seemed to be slightly unfounded or outdated. Plus, these days, not all student debt is necessarily good debt (as they said) because you might not be making enough coming right out of college to stay on top of your bills.
Anyway, it was a mixed bag. Mildly entertaing (especially the etrade babies and seth green’s cribs), relatively informative, but nothing new for people that already know what’s going on.
@FFB – that would be great if that happened. I’m not sure it added much on the “info” side as just on the “managing money can be cool” side. And I’m increasingly thinking it was more of a marketing test rather than any altruistic desire to help people in this economy:) but I’d have to hear from ABC to know more details about that.
@Stephanie – yes, these points seem to be the consensus… we definitely weren’t the target audience. And isn’t Seth Green’s “cribs” performance a bit strange…putting on that role, etc.? It was a weird mix of fiction/drama, almost an SNL type style. Maybe more comedy show than even getting any of the points across. Probably did succeed in celebrifying personal finance basics, though! And the E*Trade Babies’ designers are genius!
The biggest problem with the average person is the mismanagement of their credit card debt. Most people dont pay their entire balance off each month but decide to pay the monthly minimum and get charged fiancne charges (itnterest). The banks love this and i feel is the most inefficient thing one can do who owns a credit card.