An interesting day. I’m sitting in the back of the cab from Woking, rather happy it was just 10 1/2 hours of filming, rather than the usual 13 or 14 (thank you Gregor and Charlotte the production team for fab planning).
Now I’m going to let you into a wee secret. The premise of Make Me Rich is that I go in completely unawares and save the family as much money as possible. Now this isn’t strictly true. While that’s what I wanted, we need to plan some stunts so the production team goes through a questionnaire first and does a rough appraisal so I know ‘the story’. While I have no problem doing a makeover off the cuff, it isn’t possible to film a TV programme that way and make it visually interesting.
So today the brief I’d been given was “a family that doesn’t overspend. The aim’s for you to free them up enough money to move to a much bigger house as they now have three kids.” So I thought it’d be my favourite programme – all pain-free savings (MoneySaving) and no painful (cutting back) ones.
So suffice to say it was a wee bit gobsmacking when the Budget Planner (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/budgeting) flagged up a £10,000 plus annual overspend. This turned the plans on their head and it was time to push hard to cut back just to get a balanced family budget, never mind to move house….
As to whether I managed it…. well you’ll have to watch the programme.
