http://www.tfd.com/frippery
I saw a bit of it and thought that it was pretty poor.
Eddie initially stated that the loan to mortgage consolidation would represent a saving of c. €7K a year. Later he correctly qualified this by saying that it represented a
cashflow saving of €7K a year. A subtle but important distinction since over the term of the mortgage it would most likely actually end up costing significantly more than the original debts for the sake of lower monthly repayments. I wondered why he didn't suggest scheduling the top-up over a shorter term than the full mortgage term? I also wondered why we got a glimpse of the
IIB logo on the mortgage consolidation application form? Surely this is product placement advertising in breach of (general or
RTÉ's own) broadcasting guidelines? If she was with
IIB for her home loan then perhaps there was scope for switching to a more competitive lender/rate but this was not mentioned?
At least we didn't get the usual
CU panacea since she was already maxed out with two loans from them already. I thought that Eddie's rant about private childcare costs in Ireland and the inappopriateness of the recent €1K p.a. supplement to parents of under 6's was a bit misplaced/out of place to be honest and should have been on
Rip-off Republic rather than
SMTM. I also disagreed with
Eddie's analysis that the subject's financial problems were not of her own making and largely attributable to childcare costs out of her control. More
Rip-off Republic style polemics in my opnion.
It was never pointed out that, after being diagnosed with asthma and having to buy c. €100+ worth of drugs each month, she would probably qualify for the
Drug Payment/Refund scheme which would cap her expenditure on prescription drugs. Obviously an asthma sufferer should give up the fags as a first step but I guess it's not a medical/health advice programme.
I am surprised that the multi-national for whom she worked presumably (since it was never mentioned) didn't have any
Employee Assistance Programme to help employees with financial and other problems. It's not that unusual for larger companies to do this.
In short - neither entertaining nor educational in the financial sense. 4/10 at most.