By Ian Harvey
It’s a fact: holiday hangovers are worse in January.
It’s not the eating or the drinking to excess which causes the pain, it’s those credit card bills which keep appearing in the mailbox – attesting to the fact you overspent your budget.
Joanne Muys has a better idea. Learn to control your spending and budget properly and you’ll never suffer those post-holiday blues again.
The long-time Birch Cliff resident and mom launches her second series of peer-support group classes for those who want to take control of their spending Jan. 16 at Community Centre 55 at the corner of Main St. and Swanwick Avenue at 7 p.m.
If the concept of people helping people sounds familiar, that’s by design. It’s all based on needs vs wants much like those diet groups or drug and alcohol programs.
Joanne Muys
“I thought if it works for Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous, why not personal finance?” said Muys.
The idea is just as it sounds. For four 1-1/2 hour sessions, she’ll lead the group through a series of exercises and assign homework which will force attendees to really examine their spending and learn how to get it under control.
Then, in subsequent classes attendees will share their victories and discuss their challenges, supporting each other through the process.
“Everyone is shy at first because that’s natural,” she said. “But once we get going people open up and start to share tips and ideas which is really what’s it all about.”
There are four sessions over eight weeks and cost is $75 each person or $125 a couple.
Household debt at a record high
The timing is spot on. A recent poll by CIBC found Canadians are focused on debt reduction more than retirement planning but few are making progress. Statistics Canada reports household debt to income ratio hit a record 164.6 per cent last year.
In previous years the poll found retirement savings was the ranked as the most important priority but that has fallen to 12 per cent from 24 per cent of respondents in two years.
Muys has a successful career in the IT sector but she and her husband Charlie never seemed to get on top of the household budget
“We took a long hard look at our spending and started to organize, looking at what we needed rather than wanted” she said. “In the last year I would say we’ve “found” $20,000 for saving and investment and paying down the mortgage that would have otherwise vapourized.”
She and her friends started sharing ideas around budgeting and pretty soon she’d developed a program which she hopes can help others get their spending under control.
Budgeting
She ran the first series of classes last November at 55 Main after gathering her friends together for a prototype session over the summer and the feedback convinced her there is a need.
“The first session is about the homework in which I get you to put your spending into four buckets, the essentials like “living” which is the mortgage, house insurance and so on and then things like transportation and family.”
The plan is for participants to take a look at least a month, preferably three months of household spending to get a real handle on the essentials and then to identify the discretionary spending.
“It’s not really new, there’s lots of stuff out there on the web, they may use different labels but it’s all similar,” she said.
Group support
The difference is the interactive nature and face to face support of the group.
“Like Weight Watchers we don’t want to know about your debt or income or spending,” she said. “This isn’t debt counseling. Like Weight Watchers we celebrate the victories and offer support. Dieting is about diet and exercise. You watch what comes in and goes out. It’s the same with personal spending.”
Muys prefers couples in the classes because it is a chance for both parties to understand the issues but it’s not essential that both attend.
”In one case I had someone come who wasn’t the money manager in the household but wanted to understand the process,” she said.
She’s hoping to expand the concept and reach out to younger people for home budgeting is an essential skill they may be lacking.
“There are so many communities where this could be helpful,” she said adding she’s also pulling from her IT background to organize a webinar (online live seminar accessed via the Internet) for about 150 of her colleagues in at the multinational corporation she works at and hopes to develop the interactive online aspect further.
You can reach Joanne Muys via email: joannemuys@rogers.com.