Personal finance maven on small screen Wednesdays
Yesterday, January 4, Washington Post syndicated personal finance columnist and NPR commentator Michelle Singletary premiered her new TV One series, Singletary Says, bringing a straightforward, personal approach to “financial serenity” for fiscally challenged consumers.
Starting next week, Singletary Says will settle into the Wednesday 6:30 p.m. Central time slot, following Turn Up the Heat with G. Garvin. Singletary Says will repeat Wednesday nights at 11:30 p.m., Saturdays at 9 a.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m.
Singletary Says capitalizes on the host’s simple, common-sense approach to building wealth and financial security, in which making decisions about money are as much a part of everyday life as deciding what’s for breakfast.
Each week, she wades into the lives of those anxious to put their financial houses in order to help them correct and/or avoid common financial mistakes – and in many cases, repair fiscally challenged relationships.
Each half-hour episode features the lives of two individuals or families who face similar types of challenges that Michelle helps them address based on one or more of her “Money Mantras.”
In the premiere episode, the theme was “Sweat the Small Stuff,” where Michelle worked with Maria, a college student with student loans, $1,000 in outstanding parking tickets, and a serious nicotine, caffeine and shoe shopping habit; and Cecily, a single mother anxious to buy a home and save for her son’s education but who spends a little more each month than she brings home.
Using the plain-spoken but humorous touch that has characterize her columns and her book, The 7 Money Mantras, Singletary helps individuals and families under financial strain find answers to the issues that confront almost every household, such as how to teach children the value of money or how to address money issues in a relationship or marriage.
Singletary has a new book debuting at the end of January, Your Money or Your Man, published by Random House.
A mother of three who knows something about living on a household budget, Singletary and her four brothers were raised by her grandmother on a salary that never exceeded $13,000 a year. Yet at her death, Big Mama owned her own home and her own car loan-free. This upbringing not only helped shaped her own approach to financial security, it helped instill in her a missionary zeal to help others recognize how to live better with the money they have.
