"Downsized"-- Breeders On A Budget

This show is on WE (Manhater) TV. I caught it last night and I was mesmerized enough to watch three episodes. It's about a Moo and Dud with SEVEN kyds and how they are living in a downsized economy in Arizona.

Dud is a general contractor. In 2007 his company grossed 1.5 million, in 2008 $500,000 and in 2009 he essentially had no income. Right now he is working as a day laborer and picking up what he can and he grosses about $2,000 a month. Moo is a teacher and she makes $39,500 per year.

They are a blended family, Dud had two kyds and Moo had FIVE, which includes 15 year old TRIPLETS. (I wonder where Duddy from the first marriage is--I guess having five kyds with someone is no guarantee your marriage is gong to last, what a shocker I know. But I digress.)

They were living high on the hog and have come to a rude awakening. They lost their house and are living in a rented house. They are on food stamps. Their credit cards are maxed out. They have even borrowed money from their kids, I presume from any college funds and savings they set up for them. (Moo is still wearing her Chanel earrings and her silver Tiffany necklace, although they could be knock-offs. )

They went to a financial counselor. I really liked the counselor...low key and very logical, even in the face of Moo's histronics. He had some good ideas about how Dud can generate some business. He pointed out some of their (ridiculous, given their desperate situation) expenses, like $600 a month for restaurants and eating out, $165 for one daughter's cheerleading. About the eating out, Moo said stuff like, but we are really under stresssssssssssssss, we need that family time. Hello, Broke Bitch, how about making dinner at home? The counselor had to point out the obvious, such as: Make a big dinner one night and take the leftovers for lunch the next day, buy in bulk and freeze. The counselor also pointed out they really can't afford to have Princess Golden Child in cheerleading because $145 a month is 8% of Moo's income.

But the funniest thing was when he took on Moo's Sacred Cow.....her $10/day Starbucks habit. He asked her, what if you saw someone on food stamps who was in Starbucks buying coffee? Is that a good financial move? Moo got all weepy and defensive....but she NEEDS her coffee because she has early stage MS and she says she's so sleepy sometimes she wants to fall asleep standing up. (As an aside, isn't pumping yourself with sugar and caffeine bad for any chronic condition?) The FC said, look, you'd be better off making coffee at home and taking that $5 and giving it back to your KIDS, whom you've borrowed money from. Moo said she was offended by this because....wait for it....how dare he say she was a baaaad Mommy! Of course, it escapes her that she'd be a Worse Mommy if she doesn't cut back now and they are all living out of a car. The counselor really pounded that home...he said, you've got to make having a roof over your head your top priority.

I normally can't watch shows like that for my blood pressure, but they don't spend much time on Moo. I have to say, with the exception of Princess Golden Child, and one of the boys, I am actually impressed by the kids. They see the writing on the wall, even though Moo doesn't want to. The eldest girl told Moo she wasn't going to the prom. Moo was insisting on her going. The girl finally said, look, I'm not going because we can't afford $300. Two of the boys were discussing giving up baseball for the Summer. One of them said, look, we might not be able to afford camp, but we can still go out and practice and throw the ball to each other. One of the bunch has a brain! Dud seems to get it as well, now, and he's already riding Moo's ass.

All the kyds see PGC as The Favored One and they all agreed she needs to give up cheerleading because they were ALL making sacrifices. It looks like that's going to happen, even though some previews showed Moo crying hysterically that her kyds weren't living as well as she, Moo, did and Moo had all the advantages while growing up. Why am I not surprised? Moo seems like an aged pampered princess with no concept of reality.

Still, I'll probably catch it again. Has anybody else seen this show? Why would anyone be stupid enough to have FIVE KYDS? They're kind of expensive, you know?

My "suggestions":

1)Moo needs to cut out the Starbucks ASAP. If she is spending $300 a month on designer coffee then she is likely ALSO eating out or going out for "drinks and wings with the girls" too and God knows what all else.
2)The kids shouldn't have to forfeit any activities, but they could ALL be earning the money for their clubs and whatnot. That cheerleader could babysit on the weekends or work at a fast food restaurant 15 hours a week and make enough for her cheerleading AND prom accessories. The boys could find plenty of ways to earn money as well. When I was 13-14 years of age I made $2100 one year (I recently noticed it on my SS statement) by working as a part time clerk in a medical office and this was in the 1970's. I earned plenty of UN taxed income during my teens from baybee sitting too.
3)They need to stop living like they still are in an upper tax bracket and get rid of their senses of entitlement and delusions that it will ever be the same again. The commentary about how she "needs" this or that only proves that she is in DEEP denial, so it's not surprising that some of the kids are as well.

No where on any medical literature is Starbuck's coffee recommended or prescribed for the treatment of MS either. No one "needs" to eat out and pay five prices for the same food that they could have prepared at home. They need to learn to live within their means and stop living like they have money to burn. I would also be willing to bet that when they had the 1.5 million dollar income that they never put back any substantial amount and were probably actually living beyond their means then as well! I have seen plenty of financial statements-portfolios of homeowners when in the real estate appraisal business and you would be SHOCKED at the number of people with outrageous incomes who are upside down on their mortgages, have ten credit cards maxed out up to 20+k each, and who have loans and liens on everything of value from houseboats, beach condos, to RV's.

MANY Americans who appear to live "high on the hog" with massive incomes have a negative net worth and are living in nothing more than a house of cards. There are people residing in mansions on estate types of property and driving new Mercedes who if they lost their income for ONE MONTH would soon be facing foreclosure, repossessions, and bankruptcy.:Violin

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If YOU are the "exception" to what I am saying, then why does my commentary bother you so much?
I don't hate your kids, I HATE YOU!

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kidlesskim
No where on any medical literature is Starbuck's coffee recommended or prescribed for the treatment of MS either. No one "needs" to eat out and pay five prices for the same food that they could have prepared at home. They need to learn to live within their means and stop living like they have money to burn. I would also be willing to bet that when they had the 1.5 million dollar income that they never put back any substantial amount and were probably actually living beyond their means then as well! I have seen plenty of financial statements-portfolios of homeowners when in the real estate appraisal business and you would be SHOCKED at the number of people with outrageous incomes who are upside down on their mortgages, have ten credit cards maxed out up to 20+k each, and who have loans and liens on everything of value from houseboats, beach condos, to RV's.

What makes this even worse is that they are facing a future where one of the earners will be disabled with MS...this is not even some sort of imaginary exercise, it is an almost certain future...and yet they still aren't setting some aside for this entirely predictable outcome. They should also have engaged in the guessing game of "What if DH is injured and can't work for a year" or "What if the house needs expensive repairs"--possible unknown future scenarios--and made their financial plans accordingly. But clearly they couldn't even plan for the problems that were hurtling toward them like an Amtrak train, let alone those which remain hypothetical. Thus it is no surprise that they have been flattened like a distracted teenager by the downturn in the economy.

I think we should start a betting pool on how long this marriage is going to last.

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Sorceress
I think we should start a betting pool on how long this marriage is going to last.

Once upon a time I would have said that the possible embarrassment from being seen acting like a ass on television would have reigned in this bint's behavior, but this has not been true since the advent of 'reality' TV (nothing like my reality, more like an encouragement for bad behavior).

Let me see if I understand this correctly. They spend $600 per month on meals in restaurants and moo spends another $300 per month on bad overpriced coffee, and yet they are on FOOD STAMPS? F.T.S. If you can afford to eat in a restaurant, MOO, you don't need MY assistance in feeding your fucking faaaammmilllleeeee

Bad financial move my ass. It's theft. They should be cut off completely and permanently. They also should be sterilized.

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Q
Let me see if I understand this correctly. They spend $600 per month on meals in restaurants and moo spends another $300 per month on bad overpriced coffee, and yet they are on FOOD STAMPS? F.T.S. If you can afford to eat in a restaurant, MOO, you don't need MY assistance in feeding your fucking faaaammmilllleeeee

Bad financial move my ass. It's theft. They should be cut off completely and permanently. They also should be sterilized.

Oh and they have a Mercedes.

Their suffering is delicious.

What amazes me is that these clueless breeders with multiple brats didn't think to SAVE some of the oodles of money they were grubbing in the boom years. I would have stashed cash so fast I would look like a squirrel on meth.

Dumb fucks. That's what saving money is all about. "Something for a rainy day", ya' know? Especially when you have FIVE goddamn brats.

Stupid fucks. I don't feel sorry for Moo and Dud. I DO feel sorry for their kids, four of whom seem pretty smart.

Save money folks. Save money.

We could live far more luxuriously than we do; but we choose to invest our cash in real property. Oh yeah, go ahead and make fun of my 15-year old Subaru and my thrift store clothes. Make fun of the fact I bring a lunch to work every. Damn. Day. Go ahead and laugh.

You will stop laughing when you see my home valued at over a half million.

Not too fucking bad for a graphic artist and a part-time bus driver.

I saw one episode of this show and did not see more than 10 minutes of it. I find breeder shows are boring. But I would be excited if they had a show where they would follow the father when he makes an appointment with a urologist to get neutered!

It amazes me how much money breeders spend. Corporate advertisers have convinced them that they need stuff to ensure their sprogs safety and make them feel like they have a life - well they already do.

For example - I saved a full page ad for a Jeep Grand Cherokee (starting MSRP $30K) that read:

"having kids and still having a life. being able to hear my thoughts and actually listen to them. i live, i ride. i am. JEEP"

Why does every 10 year old have to have a cell phone?
Why are there famblies sitting in restaurants every time I go out to eat?
Why do kids have to have every second of their life scheduled and be driven to these events?
Why are there no kids anymore asking to mow my lawn or shovel snow?
Why are airliners chock full of toddlers every time I travel?
Why does every sprog have a private bedroom and bathroom?
Why do famblies live way out in the middle of fuck so that they have to drive the SUV everytime they need anything?
Why is the wife the breadwinner now - don't men work anymore?

Oddly, the guys I usually work with in engineering that have sprogs are always scrimping - they make good money but drive old boring cars, never go out to lunch and don't seem to know how to cook and always look stressed out because the last thing they can imagine is to lose their job. But their kids have everything they want or think they need.

Tools.

Funny that people are willing to allow their train wreck existence be put on display for entertainment value. (I'm sure the folks producing this show justify it as a "cautionary tale", but - face it - it's for the ratings) In times past, falling so far from prosperity made people hide themselves away from society in shame.

Back in the early 70s, my father was critically injured and couldn't work for nearly a year. We had to go on food stamps (I had a SAHM so there was no income there). When Mom did the grocery shopping, she'd take at least two of us kids with her, hand the stamps to us, and make us hand them over to the cashier. And we always went shopping early-early in the morning to avoid anyone who might know us. Dad, even though he nearly had his arm severed in the accident and went through half a dozen surgeries in that year, still conjured up odd jobs that would pay cash.

That experience left its mark on my siblings and I, though I notice, going into the next generation, my nieces and nephews can be spendthrifts. All I get is an ::eyeroll:: from them when I cluck in disapproval at their spending. I guess they'll just have to learn by hard knocks.

I've been to Starbucks maybe 3 times in my life, once out of curiosity, 2 other times because I was traveling. I thought it was expensive and not very good, that's why I prefer to brew my own coffee. The same with their pastries.

I also don't eat out much either, and bring my lunch to work daily. I make large dinners and package stuff up for the freezer and just heat it up in microwave. I also drive an older, low end car. Since I don't live out in the middle of nowhere, I don't even put 10K a year on it, so it's lasting longer than some of the people I work with who live in the middle of nowhere and have to drive 20 miles and more for everything. If people want to laugh at me for it, I say let them.

I also know people who have their kids in a bunch of activities and I wonder if that's for the parents' benefit as opposed to the kids. I was in volleyball in 8th grade, but had to quit when my parents grounded me for the remainder of the school year and most of the summer(long story), got back into it when I went to high school, then got cut 2 years later when a transfer student beat me out for a position on the team. My parents didn't go raise hell at the school and act like it was an attack on them like some parents I know do, they just consoled me and I got over it and moved on. I didn't get to go to volleyball camp either, I spent summers working when I could find a job.

As for going to the prom, I never got to do that. My parents sent me to Christian fundie high school that had neither school dances or a prom. They had Junior-Senior banquet instead, which I didn't attend. People I know who went to schools where they had prom thought it was a big deal until it came along, then realized it wasn't anything special after all. The only people it was special to are those who reached their peak in high school.

I'm glad I don't get that channel, I cut back on cable package because I got tired of the high cost, I only keep it now because there area couple of channels I don't get very well, so the cable cleans them up, another way I've saved money. Now it seems all the cable channels are pretty much offering the same thing as broadcast, so why bother?

Donna Four Eleven

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bell_flower
even though some previews showed Moo crying hysterically that her kyds weren't living as well as she, Moo, did

And there's the rub. Maybe if moo didn't equate "living well" with "having stuff" -- and didn't instill such rampant materialism on her kids in the first place -- she'd find that living humbly can actually be a good thing. But if you've set out to live by the life script that one must have children and a McMansion and soccer and cell phones and cable and an X-box and 2 SmooVs and a sports car and a big-screen TV and weekly dinners in expensive restaurants and Starbucks and and and and, you've set yourself up. Too bad, so sad. BML.

She's a teacher, so that must mean she was smart enough to earn a college degree, and yet she needs a financial counselor to tell her she can't afford to eat out or buy ready-made coffee? I don't get it.

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gymrat
She's a teacher, so that must mean she was smart enough to earn a college degree, and yet she needs a financial counselor to tell her she can't afford to eat out or buy ready-made coffee? I don't get it.

college degrees don't give you brains. i have one and cannot balance a check book

but i can look at my account online


the kids at least have a clue.

"Why do famblies live way out in the middle of fuck so that they have to drive the SUV everytime they need anything?"

they don't really. they like to think they do. hint: plowing up a potato farm or cedar marsh to put in a mcmansion hive is NOT living in the country. you only took a rural area and turned it into a suburb spawn. when they do buy a farm house, they tear it down and build a cookie cutter mansion out of termite spit, styrofoam and tyvek mold wrap. they like to think it is "country living" to justify the suv. i have an suv. i don't need kids or a house in the country to justify it. in fact, i won't justify it. justify to me why you need to obsess on my ownership of an suv.

"Why is the wife the breadwinner now - don't men work anymore?

in some cases, such as my parents, it was a set of circumstances. my father encouraged my mom to go to college. he did this because he had seen wives left destitute and alone to raise kids when a husband died early. he did not want my mom in that position and he was ragged on for it, but he was happy letting her get her degree. he was the breadwinner, working in a glass plant. then he got laid off and the plant closed. she also had been laid off, but because she had her degree, she was able to land a manager position in a casino, then at a financial institution. she is currently a ceo. my dad worked in the casinos, then in the federal government before retiring.

as far as people such as my mooch of a cousin, he is fucking hopeless. he fancies himself a great father and a "mr. mom", but he is a grave robbing, lying breeder.

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revbarky
Why is the wife the breadwinner now - don't men work anymore?

Why shouldn't a woman be able to support herself (and her kids, if she's going to have them)? Personally I think it is damn foolish for a person of either sex to get themselves in a situation where they are dependent on another person for money because they lack the skills to earn it themselves.

If a couple jointly chooses to have one person not work, that's a personal matter to be decided between them (but I still think they're not being smart if the person not working doesn't keep up her/his skills). And if a person chooses to stay with a leech that won't work, it's stupid of them to accept that.

Being dependent on someone else for money is usually a bad idea - if the wallet decides to up and leave, you're fucked. If the wallet gets too hurt to work, you're fucked. If the wallet dies, you're fucked. Sometimes it works out for someone to be a homemaker - if the breadwinner makes enough to support you both and you're both alright with the arrangement and you're not fucking flat broke, then alright. But if you are financially dying on $2000 a month plus food stamps, you need to take a look at what you're doing and re-evaluate your priorities.

Cook at home rather than going out - if you can't cook, make sandwiches. Stir-fry is easy shit too. Coffee addict (like myself)? Brew at home or get some instant coffee; personally, my favorite coffee is instant and one bottle lasts me a month for $6. Hell, if you get a second-hand blender and some cocoa powder or powdered milk and what-not, you could make your own goddamn Frappuccinos at home and it'd still be cheaper. Nobody needs 500-channel cable, nobody needs super-fast internet, nobody needs a smart phone, nobody needs designer jeans, nobody needs a designer purse or jewelry...those are luxuries, not necessities. Cut out everything you don't need and, if you can afford to, indulge in something once in a while. Of course, since these misfits have seven kids, there will be no indulging for them since they need to begin repaying their children. So there won't be any eating out or expensive coffees until their income is notably higher than their outcome.

And it's great to see the kids at least know what's going on. Having a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs is more important to them than the prom (they're not missing much) or sports. They need entertainment? They can do what my cousin and I did as kids when we got bored...played in the dirt, drew on the driveway with sidewalk chalk, draw with anything we could find, or make up games. Some of these kids might be beyond that age of pretending - go to the library, hit up yard sales for cheap junk, get a prom dress from the thrift store if it's that fucking important.

If you continuously live beyond your means, you'll be in some deep shit and it'll take a long time to get yourself out of it. But breeders figure they deserve to do this because they're doing TMIJITW. Then they wonder why, after spending all their money on restaurants and stupid shit they need to be on food stamps to afford to live.

Yet another reason why I love this site. I just looked up this show in IMDB yesterday. There were several posts about how they could be saving more money, but none about having too many kids. I didn't watch too much of the show, all I needed to see was the gaggle of kids and the claim to be broke. Oh well, you should have saved your money and not squeezed out so many brats. I love that in the scene I did see, the dud and his younger daughter were at the Coinstar machine in the grocery store - why wouldn't they roll change instead? Coinstar takes a percentage of everything put in! Anyhow, they had about $100 put in, meanwhile the older daughter was having her Bridge card denied while being rung up. How about you GET YOUR MONEY from Coinstar FIRST and then pay for your groceries?!

These people spend 160 per month on Cheerleading and 600 on eating out at restaurants, but the taxpayer is supposed to pay the bill for this family to eat? Something is wrong with this picture.. very wrong.