Dr. Phil reminded me of Cut-Throat's "What are you saving for?" comment.
I'm impressed by Dr. Phil's way of getting people to confront their behavior (and by the way he reduces them to tears within 90 seconds). He manages to play that "Golly gee shucks, I'm just a bald-headed good ol' ball-playin' country boy" act while distracting all of us from the gazillion-dollar marketing machine that he & Oprah have created. I may not agree with everything he says but I admire his chutzpah.
One of his recurring themes is the "extreme behavior" of "guests" who've been turned in by their families with an appeal to "Help them before we kill them!" Usually he helps people who can't (or won't) help themselves, but this time he behaved as though he'd stumbled across an alien from another universe.
The woman had been turned in for "extreme frugality" by two of her five kids. The adult daughters, clearly not appreciating their potential inheritance, felt that their mother's frugality had crossed the line into self-denial & child abuse. Keep in mind that the woman has a good-paying job and has raised her five kids by herself. Yet to reward her self-sacrifice, the kids cited examples like rinsing & re-using plastic bags, a toilet paper five-square limit per application, and stopping the minivan by the side of the road to pick up cans & bottles. Her worst crime-- one year the neighborhood Hallowe'en kids toilet-papered the house so the mother rolled it all back onto a cardboard tube and made the family use it. All these heinous behaviors were documented on video flashbacks while the somewhat bemused accused sat in her chair onstage and smiled nervously. (I'd love to know what she said to her daughters during commercial breaks...)
Dr. Phil had no idea what to do with this "problem". IMO he would have been much more at ease with a psychotic serial killer whose motivations at least could be analyzed. But he couldn't understand why she would be frugal if she had a job, wasn't in debt, and wasn't donating it all to her favorite charity. He finally gave up and asked her "What are you saving it for?"
The question stopped her cold. Here he was focusing on a goal, and she was just living a life that-- by her standards-- was quite successful. It wasn't about goals, it was about the process. She had developed a whole repertoire of tricks that had enabled her to single-handedly raise, educate, & launch five kids-- but because she was no longer saving for an immediate goal then her lifelong behavior patterns were somehow deemed inappropriate. Her best riposte was "Well, I might need the money someday" but she withered upon further cross-examination. At least she didn't break down in tears like 95% of the other guests.
I suspect that during another commercial break she negotiated her release by agreeing to vacate the five-square rule. And then she probably went home and wrote her kids out of her will! Dr. Phil wished her well with an entire pallet of toilet paper (Charmin Quilted, the really expensive stuff) so the experience wasn't a total loss.
I can appreciate her logic. We spent over two decades getting to ER and there's no sense in vacating behavior that's not deprivation. It makes you feel good to be easier on the environment and you never know what resources you'll need to cope with some day. I've learned not to sweat any one-time purchases under $10 and occasionally I even fling a couple twenties at a charitable cause. But I still pick pennies up off the sidewalk and I still re-use plastic bags. (No, I just re-use them once. I don't have a good drying rack for rinsing them out.) At least I can claim that I'm passing my good habits on to my kid-- or at least the neighborhood kids.
FWIW, Cut-Throat, her habits were frugal but not that extreme. She wouldn't even have made Amy Dacyczyn's team.
I'm impressed by Dr. Phil's way of getting people to confront their behavior (and by the way he reduces them to tears within 90 seconds). He manages to play that "Golly gee shucks, I'm just a bald-headed good ol' ball-playin' country boy" act while distracting all of us from the gazillion-dollar marketing machine that he & Oprah have created. I may not agree with everything he says but I admire his chutzpah.
One of his recurring themes is the "extreme behavior" of "guests" who've been turned in by their families with an appeal to "Help them before we kill them!" Usually he helps people who can't (or won't) help themselves, but this time he behaved as though he'd stumbled across an alien from another universe.
The woman had been turned in for "extreme frugality" by two of her five kids. The adult daughters, clearly not appreciating their potential inheritance, felt that their mother's frugality had crossed the line into self-denial & child abuse. Keep in mind that the woman has a good-paying job and has raised her five kids by herself. Yet to reward her self-sacrifice, the kids cited examples like rinsing & re-using plastic bags, a toilet paper five-square limit per application, and stopping the minivan by the side of the road to pick up cans & bottles. Her worst crime-- one year the neighborhood Hallowe'en kids toilet-papered the house so the mother rolled it all back onto a cardboard tube and made the family use it. All these heinous behaviors were documented on video flashbacks while the somewhat bemused accused sat in her chair onstage and smiled nervously. (I'd love to know what she said to her daughters during commercial breaks...)
Dr. Phil had no idea what to do with this "problem". IMO he would have been much more at ease with a psychotic serial killer whose motivations at least could be analyzed. But he couldn't understand why she would be frugal if she had a job, wasn't in debt, and wasn't donating it all to her favorite charity. He finally gave up and asked her "What are you saving it for?"
The question stopped her cold. Here he was focusing on a goal, and she was just living a life that-- by her standards-- was quite successful. It wasn't about goals, it was about the process. She had developed a whole repertoire of tricks that had enabled her to single-handedly raise, educate, & launch five kids-- but because she was no longer saving for an immediate goal then her lifelong behavior patterns were somehow deemed inappropriate. Her best riposte was "Well, I might need the money someday" but she withered upon further cross-examination. At least she didn't break down in tears like 95% of the other guests.
I suspect that during another commercial break she negotiated her release by agreeing to vacate the five-square rule. And then she probably went home and wrote her kids out of her will! Dr. Phil wished her well with an entire pallet of toilet paper (Charmin Quilted, the really expensive stuff) so the experience wasn't a total loss.
I can appreciate her logic. We spent over two decades getting to ER and there's no sense in vacating behavior that's not deprivation. It makes you feel good to be easier on the environment and you never know what resources you'll need to cope with some day. I've learned not to sweat any one-time purchases under $10 and occasionally I even fling a couple twenties at a charitable cause. But I still pick pennies up off the sidewalk and I still re-use plastic bags. (No, I just re-use them once. I don't have a good drying rack for rinsing them out.) At least I can claim that I'm passing my good habits on to my kid-- or at least the neighborhood kids.
FWIW, Cut-Throat, her habits were frugal but not that extreme. She wouldn't even have made Amy Dacyczyn's team.
