Luksusfellen (on behalf of Kenneth)
Kenneth wrote this post. He's having a bit of trouble accessing his English-language blog at the moment, so I agreed to post it for him.
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For reference: one Norwegian krone is valued to roughly 6,3 USD at the time of writing.
Scandinavians love a good reality show. At any given time, three or four will be airing on TV. They are widely varied as well - we started with Big Brother, have also gone through all the big talent competitions, and have at this point also created an imperial butt load (larger than a metric butt load) of lifestyle reality programs. Today’s blog post will describe the only reason the author still watches TV3: Luksusfellen - translated as “The Luxury Trap”. This program was created in Sweden (under the name Lyxfällan) in 2006, and has since been spun off both Norway and Denmark. It is massively popular in all three countries and has survived for fifteen seasons - which is noteworthy for a reality show. The author, as an amateur economist, thinks the concept of the show is brilliant and should be spread worldwide as quickly as possible for the common good.
The basic premise of Luksusfellen is helping people get out of massive debts and financial problems that have been incurred by overspending on luxury goods, and abusing credit cards beyond belief. To do this, the show enlists the help of economists and psychologists. In the Swedish version, the same two economists are featured in every episode; while in the Danish and Norwegian versions, there is a certain amount of rotation between different specialists. There is for the most part a rule, though, that one of the specialists must be an exceptionally boring, cold-hearted number cruncher who says what needs to be said.
Each episode usually starts with the narrator making a presentation of the participants that need help - the “case”. Usually, they fall within three categories:
• Family living in the countryside, house that they’re renovating/restoring, sometimes a nice car and several animals as well
• Young, single person living in the city, expensive apartment, lots of partying and expensive purchases.
• Single male, underpaying job, multiple cars, expensive stereos, frequently is divorced with child(ren).
In almost all cases, the case is doing well on the outside! In the Norwegian version, almost all have well-paying jobs. In the Swedish version, there are generally more cases of working class country bumpkins, but a common factor in most episodes is that their friends and family have no idea how big trouble they are in! Which is alright, because…well, the cases themselves rarely have the slightest clue either. They rarely even open their bills, and have several credit cards and consumer loans with exorbitant interest rates.
After the presentation of the case, the experts go to their home and split up. The number cruncher goes inside and speaks to the main problem, usually the husband of the family, or the young and single city dweller/underpaid male - about their financial situation, what they are in debt for, and how their system for paying bills works (or doesn’t). The other expert goes for a wal with the other adult in the family, or a friend of the case, and they talk about how they think things are going. Usually, for obvious reasons, the second opinion is less optimistic than the first.
After gathering opinions from the cases, the experts confer. Off camera, they create a clear picture of the situation. Afterward, they present it to the cases. The case is usually given the chance during the initial talk to estimate how much they owe. Frequently, this estimate turns out to be around half of the true figure. The experts will give them an example of the seriousness of the situation, and then take them to the most feared element of the show: THE BUDGET BOARD.
The Dreaded Budget Board
The budget board is a chalkboard that is placed in the contestants’ living room. On the far left, large bank notes will be arranged - typically the two largest units (500 and 1000 kr - roughly $80 and $160 respectively) - to represent the average income for the household over the past three or six months. The rest of the board is divided into seven expense categories: housing, grocery, transport, clothing, savings, “other”, and loan payments. The participants are again asked to guess how much they spend per month in each category, and are again usually laughably wrong. It should be noted, the “grocery” expenses only include expenses at the actual grocery store, which means that restaurants, kiosks, convenience stores and similar are not included. The “other” category tends to end up by far the largest one, while “savings” and “loan payments” are often empty. To prove a point, if the budget ends up running a deficit, they have to borrow money from the experts to account for the shortfall.
This is where the main part of the show begins. The experts now focus on four things, spread out in no particular order:
1. Trying to show the contestants what sort of scale they have been wasting money. If the cases are heavy smokers, for example, they will add up how much they spend on cigarettes a year, and give an example of what they could have spent that money on instead (say, a new car…). This is usually done physically - by displaying an absurd amount of empty cigarette cartons and adding a price tag on top.
2. Trying to show the contestants what consequences their high living has had and will have in the future. This includes such things as showing them bills from the public collection office (which is not an office you want to mess with in the Scandinavian countries), telling them that they have such a massive debt to the power companies that they will lose power soon, or showing them what their retirement will look like.
3. Trying to give the participants tips on how to save money: make fewer, larger shopping trips, spend less money on gas. Pay bills on time! Frequently this part also includes a basic lesson on the concept of compound interest. Many participants have let parking tickets roll on for months.
4. Collecting enough money to pay off the most immediate debt (through, say, selling off excess merchandise and furniture at a flea market), as well as negotiating with creditors to get a more feasible payment plan and lower interest rates. Frequently the participants are asked to call the creditors themselves and ask for a renegotiation.
Over the course of a workweek, the idea is to get the case’s financial situation under control. The “lessons” that they are taught can often be very hard to swallow, particularly in the Swedish version. At the end of the week, a new budget board is presented with a budget that the case will have to follow for the next few months/years to get their situation under control again. This budget often leaves some room for leisure, but will shave away unnecessary and wasteful costs, increase loan payments and as often as possible include some money for saving. The episode ends with a “revisit” four weeks later, where the experts return to the case and see how well they have followed the plan. For the most part, things have gone surprisingly well. The occasional exception mostly involves a couple that has broken up over their financial situation.
In many episodes the cases involved are pretty straightforward: people have wasted money on cigarettes, cars, houses…but there are some episodes which leave audiences feeling stunned, suicidal, homicidal, and most of all like the smartest people ever to grace this wonderful planet:
- A road worker in his mid-20s who lived and worked on site five days a week, and had the option of staying there for the weekend as well - but rented a room for 7200 kr ($1150) per month, and spent tens of thousands of kroner a month partying in downtown Oslo. His already excellent income had to be supplemented by consumer loans. Despite living and eating for free most of the week, his budget was thousands of kroner in the negative every month!
- A man who had worked as a truck driver for most of his life, but was now on disability leave due to a brain hemorrhage. His disability payments were pitiful due to useless employers, whose inability to pay him on time had also resulted in him living in his truck for a year. He spent truckloads of money on cigarettes (20-30 a day) and milk! He drank seven to eight liters of milk every single day. The weirdest addiction the author has ever encountered.
- A former debt collector who was two days away from getting evicted from his apartment, having acquired hundreds of thousands of kroner in debt clubbing in Stockholm and buying expensive designer clothes.
- A family of three in southern Sweden who had bought a house to restore…without a water heater. They had to drive 40 kilometers to their nearest relatives to shower, the gasoline costs of which soon amounted to the price of a water heater.
- A couple in their early 60s who had an extremely low and irregular income, running a bed&breakfast in Croatia during the summer, tuning pianos and cleaning hotel rooms during the winter. The husband still created more smoke than the entire city of Pittsburgh did in 1890.
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As a bonus to this post, here’s a short piece about a uniquely Norwegian reality show, called “Hellstrøm rydder opp - hjemme” (Hellstrøm Cleans Up - At Home).
Eyvind Hellstrøm is Norway’s most famous (and infamous) chef. His high-profile feuds with restaurant staff and rather arrogant personality have given him a reputation as Norway’s Gordon Ramsay (sans the swearing). He was also given the lead role in the Norwegian spinoff of “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”, called “Hellstrøm rydder opp” (Hellstrøm Cleans Up). In this show, he fixed Norwegian restaurants as best he could. Eventually, he progressed to creating a spinoff of this show, which was considerably more successful - adding “at home” to the title. Basically, he goes to people’s homes, assesses their dining habits, and tries to teach them recipes that are both healthier, and most of all, tastier. Here are some highlights:
- A man who had not eaten anything but slices of bread with Nugatti (the Norwegian version of Nutella) for twenty years. Hellstrøm realized he was dealing with a 33-year old man whose taste buds had never gotten older than 6. The man had a physiological age of 71, and was having a hard time getting through his workdays, but had refused to admit that this was due to his bad diet.
- A man who ate nothing but ground beef for dinner, due to a food poisoning incident some years previously.
- The crew of a fishing boat that ate nothing but cookies and drank nothing but the cheapest coffee while at sea, and also lived on canned and freeze-dried meals on land.
- A Dutch family that had moved to Norway, but refused to adapt to Norwegian food customs, and therefore survived on canned Dutch food.
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For reference: one Norwegian krone is valued to roughly 6,3 USD at the time of writing.
Scandinavians love a good reality show. At any given time, three or four will be airing on TV. They are widely varied as well - we started with Big Brother, have also gone through all the big talent competitions, and have at this point also created an imperial butt load (larger than a metric butt load) of lifestyle reality programs. Today’s blog post will describe the only reason the author still watches TV3: Luksusfellen - translated as “The Luxury Trap”. This program was created in Sweden (under the name Lyxfällan) in 2006, and has since been spun off both Norway and Denmark. It is massively popular in all three countries and has survived for fifteen seasons - which is noteworthy for a reality show. The author, as an amateur economist, thinks the concept of the show is brilliant and should be spread worldwide as quickly as possible for the common good.
The basic premise of Luksusfellen is helping people get out of massive debts and financial problems that have been incurred by overspending on luxury goods, and abusing credit cards beyond belief. To do this, the show enlists the help of economists and psychologists. In the Swedish version, the same two economists are featured in every episode; while in the Danish and Norwegian versions, there is a certain amount of rotation between different specialists. There is for the most part a rule, though, that one of the specialists must be an exceptionally boring, cold-hearted number cruncher who says what needs to be said.
Each episode usually starts with the narrator making a presentation of the participants that need help - the “case”. Usually, they fall within three categories:
• Family living in the countryside, house that they’re renovating/restoring, sometimes a nice car and several animals as well
• Young, single person living in the city, expensive apartment, lots of partying and expensive purchases.
• Single male, underpaying job, multiple cars, expensive stereos, frequently is divorced with child(ren).
In almost all cases, the case is doing well on the outside! In the Norwegian version, almost all have well-paying jobs. In the Swedish version, there are generally more cases of working class country bumpkins, but a common factor in most episodes is that their friends and family have no idea how big trouble they are in! Which is alright, because…well, the cases themselves rarely have the slightest clue either. They rarely even open their bills, and have several credit cards and consumer loans with exorbitant interest rates.
After the presentation of the case, the experts go to their home and split up. The number cruncher goes inside and speaks to the main problem, usually the husband of the family, or the young and single city dweller/underpaid male - about their financial situation, what they are in debt for, and how their system for paying bills works (or doesn’t). The other expert goes for a wal with the other adult in the family, or a friend of the case, and they talk about how they think things are going. Usually, for obvious reasons, the second opinion is less optimistic than the first.
After gathering opinions from the cases, the experts confer. Off camera, they create a clear picture of the situation. Afterward, they present it to the cases. The case is usually given the chance during the initial talk to estimate how much they owe. Frequently, this estimate turns out to be around half of the true figure. The experts will give them an example of the seriousness of the situation, and then take them to the most feared element of the show: THE BUDGET BOARD.
The Dreaded Budget Board
The budget board is a chalkboard that is placed in the contestants’ living room. On the far left, large bank notes will be arranged - typically the two largest units (500 and 1000 kr - roughly $80 and $160 respectively) - to represent the average income for the household over the past three or six months. The rest of the board is divided into seven expense categories: housing, grocery, transport, clothing, savings, “other”, and loan payments. The participants are again asked to guess how much they spend per month in each category, and are again usually laughably wrong. It should be noted, the “grocery” expenses only include expenses at the actual grocery store, which means that restaurants, kiosks, convenience stores and similar are not included. The “other” category tends to end up by far the largest one, while “savings” and “loan payments” are often empty. To prove a point, if the budget ends up running a deficit, they have to borrow money from the experts to account for the shortfall.
This is where the main part of the show begins. The experts now focus on four things, spread out in no particular order:
1. Trying to show the contestants what sort of scale they have been wasting money. If the cases are heavy smokers, for example, they will add up how much they spend on cigarettes a year, and give an example of what they could have spent that money on instead (say, a new car…). This is usually done physically - by displaying an absurd amount of empty cigarette cartons and adding a price tag on top.
2. Trying to show the contestants what consequences their high living has had and will have in the future. This includes such things as showing them bills from the public collection office (which is not an office you want to mess with in the Scandinavian countries), telling them that they have such a massive debt to the power companies that they will lose power soon, or showing them what their retirement will look like.
3. Trying to give the participants tips on how to save money: make fewer, larger shopping trips, spend less money on gas. Pay bills on time! Frequently this part also includes a basic lesson on the concept of compound interest. Many participants have let parking tickets roll on for months.
4. Collecting enough money to pay off the most immediate debt (through, say, selling off excess merchandise and furniture at a flea market), as well as negotiating with creditors to get a more feasible payment plan and lower interest rates. Frequently the participants are asked to call the creditors themselves and ask for a renegotiation.
Over the course of a workweek, the idea is to get the case’s financial situation under control. The “lessons” that they are taught can often be very hard to swallow, particularly in the Swedish version. At the end of the week, a new budget board is presented with a budget that the case will have to follow for the next few months/years to get their situation under control again. This budget often leaves some room for leisure, but will shave away unnecessary and wasteful costs, increase loan payments and as often as possible include some money for saving. The episode ends with a “revisit” four weeks later, where the experts return to the case and see how well they have followed the plan. For the most part, things have gone surprisingly well. The occasional exception mostly involves a couple that has broken up over their financial situation.
In many episodes the cases involved are pretty straightforward: people have wasted money on cigarettes, cars, houses…but there are some episodes which leave audiences feeling stunned, suicidal, homicidal, and most of all like the smartest people ever to grace this wonderful planet:
- A road worker in his mid-20s who lived and worked on site five days a week, and had the option of staying there for the weekend as well - but rented a room for 7200 kr ($1150) per month, and spent tens of thousands of kroner a month partying in downtown Oslo. His already excellent income had to be supplemented by consumer loans. Despite living and eating for free most of the week, his budget was thousands of kroner in the negative every month!
- A man who had worked as a truck driver for most of his life, but was now on disability leave due to a brain hemorrhage. His disability payments were pitiful due to useless employers, whose inability to pay him on time had also resulted in him living in his truck for a year. He spent truckloads of money on cigarettes (20-30 a day) and milk! He drank seven to eight liters of milk every single day. The weirdest addiction the author has ever encountered.
- A former debt collector who was two days away from getting evicted from his apartment, having acquired hundreds of thousands of kroner in debt clubbing in Stockholm and buying expensive designer clothes.
- A family of three in southern Sweden who had bought a house to restore…without a water heater. They had to drive 40 kilometers to their nearest relatives to shower, the gasoline costs of which soon amounted to the price of a water heater.
- A couple in their early 60s who had an extremely low and irregular income, running a bed&breakfast in Croatia during the summer, tuning pianos and cleaning hotel rooms during the winter. The husband still created more smoke than the entire city of Pittsburgh did in 1890.
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As a bonus to this post, here’s a short piece about a uniquely Norwegian reality show, called “Hellstrøm rydder opp - hjemme” (Hellstrøm Cleans Up - At Home).
Eyvind Hellstrøm is Norway’s most famous (and infamous) chef. His high-profile feuds with restaurant staff and rather arrogant personality have given him a reputation as Norway’s Gordon Ramsay (sans the swearing). He was also given the lead role in the Norwegian spinoff of “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”, called “Hellstrøm rydder opp” (Hellstrøm Cleans Up). In this show, he fixed Norwegian restaurants as best he could. Eventually, he progressed to creating a spinoff of this show, which was considerably more successful - adding “at home” to the title. Basically, he goes to people’s homes, assesses their dining habits, and tries to teach them recipes that are both healthier, and most of all, tastier. Here are some highlights:
- A man who had not eaten anything but slices of bread with Nugatti (the Norwegian version of Nutella) for twenty years. Hellstrøm realized he was dealing with a 33-year old man whose taste buds had never gotten older than 6. The man had a physiological age of 71, and was having a hard time getting through his workdays, but had refused to admit that this was due to his bad diet.
- A man who ate nothing but ground beef for dinner, due to a food poisoning incident some years previously.
- The crew of a fishing boat that ate nothing but cookies and drank nothing but the cheapest coffee while at sea, and also lived on canned and freeze-dried meals on land.
- A Dutch family that had moved to Norway, but refused to adapt to Norwegian food customs, and therefore survived on canned Dutch food.