oh that would just be fabulous i can't be the one all the time to be going and working more i need you to do that too obviously and i do that's the three in a perfect world get up you lazy bob you don't get up you don't eat [Music] money money [Music] i'm amy i'm a registered nurse and i make 60 000 a year my name is paul i'm a graphic artist and i make approximately fifty thousand dollars a year we have done wow a lot of things in the house the entire house rewires placed almost all the windows painted pretty much every square inch of the ceiling's insulin guided our bathroom kitchen countertops same appliances the roof i think we have spent to date approximately 35 000 on our home renovations we encountered various problems with asbestos with termites we've had to sort of you know put things on our line of credit and then sort of keep our fingers crossed that we can pay it off as quickly as possible paul i think you should probably have a look at this credit card with me why our trip up north was a little more than i thought it was gonna be just put on it what you put on last month are you sure we decided on myself doing all the finances mostly because paul was not very good with his money frankly i didn't trust him the bills get paid as far as i know we give each other an allowance and amy has excess at the end of the pay cycle and i'm going into the negatives i tend to spend my money foolishly on you know food we always buy stuff for both of us to bring food to work we will often buy him food and it goes bad this is old meat gross everything that i spend money on pretty much is our home picture frames trinkets accessories we really want a puppy we pretty much said as soon as a puppy arrives that all the projects in the house are off neither of us spend money smartly our debt worries me a lot and i think about it constantly i'm almost chronically sleep deprived because i'm always worrying gail please we really need help to get out of this debt i really really want to get rid of it it's hanging over our heads like a black cloud this month i'll help this couple move from red to black i've been solving money problems for over 20 years tackling everything from high finance to low income i help people understand money and debt which is still a huge mystery for most folks and it's the number one reason couples split up so now i'm making house calls first-time homeowners amy and paul bid off more than they can chew they may be house proud but it's leaving them cash poor this house is costing a fortune and i'm gonna nail them on it kale foss huxley i'm amy nice to meet you nice to meet you hi i'm paul come on in hey did you put in heated floors yes ma'am so you got a lot of money then huh [Music] this is the fancy fancy camera how much did the camera cost i think it was about sixteen hundred dollars after everything is it paid for no uh-huh i'm in big trouble isn't he the guy who only buys lunch at work so she even buys you the makings for lunch and you still won't take it what is wrong with you ooh the basement let's go to the basement oh god okay this place is a mess when they got it they didn't bank on termites or asbestos this is going to cost a lot of money you've been flying by the seat of your pants and this house became a major project that you weren't prepared for you're right and as the surprises mounted so did the debt mm-hmm in the midst of a crisis with the house you went through to bought yourself a fancy camera well no despite the fact that you're buried in debt you've gone and bought a 1600 dog we come up with um great ideas such as traveling or work on the house and and then the next week it gets replaced with something else have you made a budget for the dog yet yes liar we did you only made a budget to buy the dog he didn't make a budget to feed the dog no conceivably you could end up not having the things that you want because you've just not paid attention to the little things you ready yeah you're spending [Music] 61 of your money we haven't even got to mortgages we haven't got to food we haven't got the transportation what are you thinking wow home improvement 147 salon and tanning you get your hair done a lot yeah i do a hundred and forty three dollars a month on beer how much beer do you drink wow oh my god i really did not realize there was that much trackable cash flow for um buying alcohol entertainment oh god yeah i knew that was gonna be bad 700 a month who do you people think you are are you kidding me god it looks like we're living like rock stars like rock stars what are you talking about looks like you're spending like rock stars between your line of credit and your credit card you owe over nineteen thousand dollars most of this happened since you bought the house yes have you itemized what you've spent on this house no it's all memory if you aren't tracking what you're spending on the house how will you know if you are being reasonable right in terms of spending money on this house you are spending fifteen hundred dollars you have not yet earned every month and if we take your current debt and add in that fifteen hundred dollars every month and compound it in five years you will owe over five hundred and seventy thousand dollars i'm actually feeling light-headed by you saying that oh my god i kind of for a split second my head went totally empty and i just thought take a breath because you're gonna pass out and you have to promise me right now that you're willing to do anything i ask get you out of this problem i promise absolutely i promise too okay over the next few weeks i'm going to give you a series of challenges to do you do the challenges to my satisfaction i'll give you up to five thousand dollars depending on this debt don't do the challenges you don't get the money okay we'll exchange some bad habits for some good ones we learn to plan for the future and we're going to learn how to prioritize your goals that sounds very good to me and the very next thing you need to do is go and get me your debit cards and your credit cards because you're about to learn to live on cash all right do not buy anything more until you are out of debt do you understand me we won't you buy anything more i will come back and haunt you [Music] money money money money money money with a great income and no kids amy and paul shouldn't have any debt so where's the money going we've done some pretty extensive renovations to this house it's almost a hobby of ours even with this expensive hobby they haven't cut back anywhere we normally go out once a week 700 a month are you kidding god in five years you will owe over 570 000 seeing the show in the past i never thought that we would be anywhere near what some of these other people have been told but they're no better off than anyone else so for the next month this couple will learn to live on a strict cash budget no more credit cards they'll complete weekly challenges to tackle their money and relationship issues and if they're willing to change i'll reward them with thousands of dollars no changes no money all the cards liar you are the department store ones too yes okay and you have a card upstairs that you have not yet activated yes go and get it for me too okay i don't even think about that one so now that you can't use your plastic anymore you're gonna have to learn to live on cash but you're not gonna have all the cash you had before i'm gonna cut you variable expenses by 62 percent you're gonna go from spending about forty seven hundred dollars to about eighteen hundred dollars um okay okay you will have 125 a week for food 137 a week for transportation 67.75 cents a week for entertainment 43.75 cents for clothing and gifts which means you'll have about 175 dollars a month okay compared to the almost eighteen hundred dollars a month you've been spending on stuff okay and seventy dollars a week for other this includes everything from banking to medical costs to the cats and potentially the dog right which brings us to your first challenge this is a life lesson challenge okay and this is about exchanging bad habits for good okay i want you paul to come up with two bad habits amy has horse habit um sorry i'm having a hard time answering this one and amy you have to come up with two bad habits that paul has okay now those bad habits have a cost associated with them so you're gonna note the cost and add up what you're gonna save by not doing those bad things anymore okay over a year and then you're going to compound that savings to retirement because it's not just 20 this week it's at 20 every week and what would that add up to in 35 years now to help you along i want you to think along these lines you have some plastic catch amy seems to think you have a bad habit no doubt it will end up saving you a lot of money [Laughter] you never get your butt out of bed on time to make your own lunch so you can make your lunch every day and if i go to work at night you can't jump in the car and go and eat fast food replacing fast food with carrot sticks i know i am making my dinner don't worry i'm definitely not getting fast food tonight i make myself very simple meals i saved making the elaborate meals for when me and amy are together thinking about choosing her love for high-end hair products my shampoo costs four dollars and i know hers costs 50 so that's a pretty big savings you're going to hate me buying too much coffee at work you would have to pick that one yeah sorry i am so used to just going and grabbing a coffee as soon as i get to work i've been doing that for eight years so it'll be a habit that'll be a bit tough to break i'm not looking forward to it we're going to find out how much these bad habits have been costing us yeah that's a week of lunches yeah now no dinner easily two nights okay each coffee i buy is a dollar 42 for a large like most people amy and paul have no idea of the long-term cost of their daily indulgences but about 42 here and a buck 42 there over 35 years really adds up we'd be saving hundred and six thousand six hundred and sixty nine dollars over 35 years that's with six percent interest oh my god you wouldn't expect coffee to add up to that so you were quite surprised at the amount you can save when you have the long term and put away a little amount when he told me the amount i just about fell off my chair i was again speechless it was just very surprising and that's the thing when you have time it doesn't take a lot to make a lot you just have to be consistent in terms of what you're saving so having done this now and figure that you can live on a budget we come to the next challenge you have to face your future plan challenge okay and this room was the beginning of all the disastrous news that you would keep getting about this house once you moved in right people buying a home never think of what it costs to keep a home rule of thumb is you spend three to five percent of the value of your home every year maintaining and improving your home we're going to use the five percent figure for you okay because you live in an older home that works out to about fourteen thousand dollars a year or twelve hundred dollars a month i have a feeling she's taking the house money from our our beer drinking budget you need to figure out what it's going to cost you to bring this house to the standard you want it to be at so you have to walk the house and come up with all the things that need to be done so you can make a plan for how you're going to spend that maintenance budget okay i'm going to send frank to help you coming up sorry i'm a little angry right now so i could say you're a little fly [Music] money yeah termites weren't the only thing eating away at paul and amy's generous income you're spending almost twenty five hundred dollars a month or thirty three percent of your income on crap oh my god i've made them give up that habit these small indulgences have to be sacrificed if they're going to finish renovating their home we absolutely love renovating this house and we have some pretty big projects that we still have left to do i've challenged them to give up their rental mania and make a plan if they can i'll reward them with up to five thousand dollars the jam is totally deteriorated yeah looking at about 500 bucks so you would be looking at just to replace this floor probably in the in the ballpark of two grand quite easily well it just infuriates me that now we're gonna have to put out two thousand dollars just to fix the floor well at this rate we're not going to be able to ever afford the kitchen so let's just scrap that well we might as well get prices what would it cost to remodel this kitchen i see the fridge there but i also want a cutout right here designer sense there right yeah 10 grand plus plus plus another 3 000 for deck oh boy to get it converted to gas upgrade your furnace and your boiler you're probably looking in the market of uh seven to ten grand whoa okay i would say on the cheap you're close to about 25 grand i could do it myself for five there's always a buffer that you have to add in so i always tell people uh to at least calculate about a 20 in your budget i definitely think that um the kitchen's going to be waiting for quite a while i think i think a lot of these projects are going to have to wait for a while paul and amy have an expensive wishlist for their home even so paul's not willing to give up on the puppy they have their heart set on i'm still um ready to bend things to get this dog this week your washing machine broke yeah and your fluffing stopped up i know and happily you have handyman daddy to come in and fix things yeah right but that may not always be the case exactly okay so this is the renovation worksheet yes we figured out that pretty much in this entire year all we're doing is a window the project after the window is a pretty expensive project so it's the it's the saving for the oh my god you are thinking like future planners exactly okay so do you want to hear what this week's challenge is yeah it's your relationship rescue challenge so this challenge is all about learning to prioritize while working together okay you're gonna come back to this beautiful park and meet your coach and you know what buddy boy what's that because you are so dead set on this puppy while you're doing your challenge you're gonna have a puppy in tow okay i have pictures of having amy on a leash coming up puppy makes three she wants to go that way i want to go that way oh for god's sake this is stupid [Music] money money money money money money paul and amy were on their way to becoming house poor now they've given up bad habits and made a budget for renaults i don't know i think probably there's a couple things on there that just may actually never happen if they want to earn up to five thousand dollars they're gonna have to show me they've learned to prioritize hello paula and amy hi my name is mark welcome to the relationship rescue challenge we're going to be running up this hill with this ball which represents your debt you're going to pick your three top priorities in order and come back down the hill and paul meet lola okay lola [Music] choosing priorities while managing debt is hard that's your first one and adding another family member to the mix makes it even trickier would you guys want to pick what do you want to do next the house foundation that's what you want okay ready with you guys over here guys third bedroom deck mudroom re-tile the bath oh gas furnace how's it going with the dog she's a tough one now good now they know what their budget is these choices are easy i think we made really good choices i completely get it what are we willing to give up to get those few priorities that we have on top of having the challenge of the puppy yeah hi guys hello i want to hear all about the dog in the park and the challenge that's pretty heavy eh yeah it was definitely pretty heavy yeah did you find it hard or did it come reasonably easy i felt a little rushed making those decisions hang on a second guys you've been thinking about these things for a long time true when i got here you were spending by a fair amount of money fifteen hundred dollars good boy you were headed to 560 000 worth of debt not going to happen though right so glad to hear that if you stick to the debt repayment plan you'll be debt-free in a year oh my god be so great we also set aside some money for savings and emergencies three hundred dollars for long-term savings 200 for emergencies you put the 300 for long-term savings in a retirement plan reinvest whatever tax benefit you get and when you're ready to retire you want to have a guess at how much you'll have i'm really bad with math so i'm not even going to go there but 700 000 wow not so bad right it's amazing how do you think you did i think we did really well actually do you know i have all the checks wow there is the swapping bad habits for good okay there is the [Music] learning to plan together there's the prioritizing and then there's the having a good attitude sweet there you go thank you so much that's worked into your debt repayment plan yeah that's what helps to get you paid off in a year believe it or not the challenges actually made sense in our lives and um they're really applicable really good learning experiences but that's not all because you are dead down and determined to have a pooch then your pooch should have some training oh fun thank you thank you so much oh my god thank you so much [Music] money money money