Media Diet – follow up

Aug 122008

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the impact that media has on our spending. The constant bombardment of seductive adverts for the latest gadget would drive anyone to use their plastic. I know I’m not alone when I say that more than once I have been duped into buying something I didn’t need by slick advertising. This in turn has often blown a large hole in my budget.

Anyway in that post – which you can read here – I explained that I was toying with the idea of going on a media diet. The thought of reduced stress and anxiety coupled with more time and mental capacity seriously appealed to me.

If I’m honest the results of my media diet were very mixed.

I think its best if I break down each media channel so I can explain what happened.

Internet.

I use the internet a lot for my job and for this Blog. I find that a lot of the time when I am on browsing the web that I have lots of websites opened. The thing is none of these websites relate to each other. I could have a finance website open while at the same time I could have a sports website. My brain has problems processing the unrelated pieces of information at the same time.

The net effect of having all these websites open was that during the day my thoughts became scattered. To combat this and help me reduce the amount of time I spend on the internet I downloaded a free trial version of a website blocker software. I then loaded the details of my favorite websites into it.

Every time I tried to log on to my favorite websites I got a “page cannot be displayed” message. Initially this was very frustrating but eventually I did lose a lot of interest in those websites and my productivity did improve…for a while at least.

TV.

I mentioned in my last post about a Media Diet that I recorded all my favorite TV shows and watched them all in one go at the weekend. When I was watching them I would simply skip the ad breaks.

This had a big impact. It freed up a lot of time in the evenings as my evening was no longer centred on a TV show.

I did find that when people that I work with were talking about the previous evenings TV shows that I felt a little left out. Small price to pay I reckon.

Newspapers.

I stopped reading the daily newspapers – most of them I read online anyway so I simply blocked their websites. At the weekend I would buy one of the Sunday broadsheets. These usually give a good overview of the weeks events.

All this was shaping up nicely and for a couple of weeks I was seriously reducing my exposure to the media. The thing was that after the initial period my enthusiasm began to wane. By having my favorite websites blocked I felt that I was missing out. Missing out on what I’m not sure but I just felt that I was isolating myself in some way.

One by one I removed the block on the websites so that I could access them ‘just this one time’. I don’t feel isolated anymore and I am up to date with all the current affairs and sports results but at the same time my media exposure is right back where it was when I started this exercise. I have even fallen back into the habit of watching my favorite TV shows in the evenings instead of at the weekends. Not good.

When I am trying to be productive – either at work or trying to write this Blog – I’m back in the habit of jumping from website to website and back to writing. This leads to incredible frustration as I know what I am doing wrong but I am finding it hard to break this habit.

But Mike – what were you trying to achieve anyway?

It was easy to lose sight of the original reason for going on a media diet. My prime motivation was to reduce the negative influence of the media on my bank balance. Simple as that. As a side benefit I was hoping that my productivity would increase as a direct result of my free time.

While now it looks like my media diet was unsuccessful in a way I have achieved what I originally intended to do. Now I find that whenever I am confronted with a purchase I ask myself how much of my purchasing decision was influenced by the media. I probably won’t ever be able to give an accurate answer but at least it gets me thinking about my buying behavior.

No longer do I go blindly about my shopping. Often I find myself asking the question “Is this generic product as good as a branded one?” To me this is what going on a media diet is all about.

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Is your mortgage a debt? Mmmm that’s a tough one!

May 072008

If you own your home or want to buy one at some stage then it is important that you consider a number of factors. Now unless you have won the lottery or have a rich aunt who just left you a bucket of cash then you’re going to have to get a mortgage. The trouble with a mortgage is that when you sit down and look at your monthly expenses it stands out like a sore thumb – taunting you.

In recent conversations that I have had with friends the discussion turned to mortgages and whether or not they are true debt. Ok I know you going to be scratching your head but bear with me on this one.

The general argument goes that a mortgage is a debt. The word mortgage itself comes from the Latin word “mort” and mortgage essentially means “until death”. Basically back in the old days when you took out a mortgage you had it until you died. Nowadays you usually have a mortgage for 30 years which is a lifetime but you expect to still be standing at the end of it. When you look at it from a historical perspective you were in debt until you died. It’s as simple as that.

Today it seems to be the case that everyone has a mortgage or is in the process of getting a mortgage – credit crunch aside. Most of my friends seem to think that a mortgage is a debt and ask any accountant and he will define your home as a liability given that it is costing you money ever month. I have a problem with this. Ok I agree with the accounting definition and agree with the historical perspective but I want you think about it in another way.

Let’s lay it on the table. In the last few years there has been a mania about buying houses. I’m not going to start discussing who is to blame – not here anyway that will come in another article. No what I want to point out is that there has been a madness of the crowd that had been driving property prices through the roof. If you didn’t flip properties in your spare time you were a nobody. It got to be ridiculous. There was a complete change in the way people thought about their homes.

You see people not longer talked about homes – they talked about houses and apartments and flipping and rental yield. I can’t emphasise enough how out of hand it got. The thing that got lost in the haze for many of us is that we were thinking about our homes in the wrong way. We began to think about our homes as assets and as cash machines. If they went up in value then great! But what we failed to see is the simple truth that they were our homes.

These are the places where we bring up our families, where we create all those memories. Ok this may sound sentimental and a bit naïve but you have to see your mortgage from the point of view of a necessary evil. I would never put mortgage debt in the same category as credit card debt for the simple reason that we will always need a roof over our heads. We will always need a place to keep our family safe. We don’t always need that new 32inch plasma screen TV.

Some may argue that renting is cheaper and there is some truth to that. The thing is with a mortgage is that you are acquiring ownership of the property. You know that some day you will own that property outright. When you rent you are on a never ending treadmill of monthly payments that lead nowhere.

What you have to ask yourself is this. What is my attitude towards my mortgage? Do I look on it as a monthly burden that it depresses me to even think about? Or do I look on it as an enabler – something that allows me to enjoy the comfort and security of my own home safe in the knowledge that one day I will own it outright?

You see a mortgage is a debt in the technical sense but in reality it is one of those facts of life like death and taxes that we need to embrace and accept. We need to get over our obsession with buy to let property or property flipping and we need to focus on building a home on the foundation of our mortgage. If you want to be happy with your mortgage then you need to change your attitude towards it. See it as a means to an end rather than something that is holding you back financially. Otherwise you are in for a lot of pain and mental anguish as your mortgage continues to come out of your bank account for the next 30 years. My advice? Get over it.

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