BBC2 Programme looking for you

[DomBBC]

Hello all

We're making a second series of the BBC 2 programme "Bank of Mum and Dad" - a programme that looks at personal finances and more specifically debt. The programme takes a detailed look at the finances of the people who take part & plots the quickest route back into the black.

We're particularly interested in featuring people between the ages of 21 and 35 who have possibly got themselves into debt through their passion for flying.

Has gettting into aviation meant that your bank account has gone into the red?

I'd be really grateful if you could get in touch or forward on the details below.

Alternatively, if you've got a query then please post it here & I'll do my best to answer it.

To find out more contact us today on:
Freephone 0800 032 7032
Email [email protected]
Text BOMAD & your full name to 83199
(standard text rates apply)

or visit our website:
www.bbc.co.uk/bankofmumanddad


Best wishes.

HILARY EASTER JONES
BBC TELEVISION

[wubalaj]

Not sure how much the beeb are aware of how the financial turmoil and implications that such a large loan has on young people in pursuit of their dreams.....Suffice to say that having your own personal documentary to remind you everytime you look at the home video shelf of the financial trauma it takes is not too appealing.

Still I am sure that there will be some wannabe egos that will need massaging. If the Mum's and Dad's were rich they sure as hell won't be anymore. I look forward to watching.

[DomBBC]

Still here to answer any queries you may have.
Dominic

[ikea]

better still, how about a show on people who are 100% self funded (ie not getting a sub from mummy and daddy). Far more interesting, as training is even more difficult for people in this situation-and people getting in to 30,000GBP debt, which they will ahve to cover (not mummyand daddy) will make for much better television

[DomBBC]

The show is not about people who get money from their Mum and Dad. It's a financial makeover show that helps people who've got into huge debt, through what ever process, by bringing in a top financial advisor AND their parents to take control of their finances.

Ideally, the parents wouldn't know the level of debt the son or daughter was in.

[CRAZYBROADSWORD]

How much is a large dept mines 26 grand and thats after being a full time heli pilot for the last 3 years.

[wubalaj]

Dom, Sorry mate you are cluching at straws, Everyone has taken a big risk to do this. Rogé

[DomBBC]

We've had about 6 good responses so far from this board. It appears there are pilots out there who need help with their finances. It's a fantastic opportunity not to be missed. You'd pay an arm and a leg to get a financial advisor to go through all of your figures.

If you want to know more abou the show look at www.bbc.co.uk/bankofmumanddad

and please remember it's not wifeswap!

Dominic

[Maude Charlee]

Given it was my oldies who remortgaged their house in order to loan me the dosh to do the training, they are aleady perfectly well aware of how much debt I have as I owe it to them! Unless I pop my clogs and they can take their stake of my life assurance, I doubt they're going to see any of it anytime soon. :D

[Fergal20]

Eddie Hobbs is your man for the job;)

[pipergirl]

would be a great thing to do if u don't mind ur dirty washing being aired in public, so to speak!!

personally, i'd be a tad embarrassed about it:O

[Snigs]

Jafo33, a little radical don't you think?

Now, what I think would be a good idea would be to lobby the politicians (who, after all spend a lot of their travelling time in aeroplanes, and hence benefit from the dedication of pilots, whatever they have done to raise the finances for their training) to make them reduce, or eradicate the tax on avgas, this would make the cost of GA flying, and hence training significantly less. What do you think?

<edited to add a question mark!!>

[Solid Rust Twotter]

Of course, if any foreign airlines reciprocated the favour after having their nationals thrown out of the UK for occupying pilot's seats, you may find even more jobless pilots than is currently the case.

Paying to have your CV looked at can't be right, though. Sounds like an unfair labour practice.

[Spike001]

I'm financing it myself and keeping out of debt, working within the industry while gaining my flying qualifications - best option!

Stress free, and no worries about finances.

Why put yourself in a risky stressful situation when you have no one to bale you out.


Better to avoid getting into debt in the first place and work your socks off and save! .. that's my advice :ok:

[WX Man]

Sounds like a marvellous idea. Get yourself a financial makeover by professionals, plus a load of publicity to show "here I am, I'm a decent sort worthy of an airline job".

I'm pretty fortunate in that having got a CPL/IR and a FI(R) I'm 'only' £5200 in debt (oh, plus £1200 on a student loan and £3K still to pay on my car), so probably not the best person for the show. Someone with a £50K debt and a remortgage would make for MUCH better TV!!!

Good on you, BBC for doing the show, and whichever lucky bugger it is who gets to go on the show.

[Global Pilot]

jafo33
"If you want to help us clear our debts, tell the government to put British pilots first when job vacancies arise. Kick out all the foreign pilots (that would open up half of Easyjet at least), reform the old boy network and get rid of the situation where we have to pay airlines to READ our job applications!"

The airline that charges you to send in an application is an Irish company employing plenty of British pilots.

If your views on "foreigners" working in your country(all of whom have a right to do so) don't come accross in an interview, I am afraid you won't get very far.

[Woof etc]

jafo33: With all due respect - you have no idea what you are talking about.

As I am sure Solid Rust Twotter will confirm, there are many European pilots flying South African registered aircraft in Africa on validated South African Licences when there are plenty of unemployed pilots back in SA desperate for a break.

In fact, more than half of my colleagues that fly our ZS registered aircraft do not hold SA licences, but validated licences that can be obtained in less than a week in most cases.

Even though I am a British Citizen what are my chances of validating my SA ATPL to fly in Europe??? Pretty slim.

[Future Pundit]

DomBBC

I can see the benefit of such a programme and how it would make interesting viewing, however:

Any prospective employer will be interested in many aspects of a candidates character; managerial expertise, leadership, organisation skills to name but a few. Financial (in)competance could be assessed alongside managerial competetance and many other attributes.

A person appearing on a national TV programme will expose themselves in advance to all HR managers who may be watching. I would be reluctant to tell a future employer how much I had let myself slide into the red.

Anybody thinking of taking part - think very carefully because once it has been made you can not go back!

[DomBBC]

Hi there,

Just to answer a few of the questions and points raised.

We cannot pay the people who take part in the show as it's actuality television. As soon as we start paying people it becomes drama. We would cover any expenses incurred as a result of being in the programme. ie. Loss of earnings

The benefit of being on the show is the financial advice which should turn your finances and life around. People who are in debt of 50K+ tend not to sleep very well at night and knowing that you are finally tackling the source of worry is good for your health as well as your bank balance.

The decision to be on television and talk about your debt is yours alone. It would be an opportunity to highlight the amount of debt pilots have to take on in order to pursue their careers. As for informing HR managers that you are unable to manage your finances, I'd assume if they know anything about pilots, they know they have debt. I've been on the site for 2 days and I already know how the average debt you guys have.

Thanks and keep phoning in. Some of the calls have been facinating.

Dominic

[pipergirl]

i suppose the fact that they are paying for a finaancial advvisor that would normally cost a lot of money would be payment in itself

had a look at the website...do people's parents have to take part?
i thought that was hilarious, if not a tad scary lol

[Dr Pepper670]

DomBBC

Ideally, the parents wouldn't know the level of debt the son or daughter was in.
Bank of Mum & Dad uses a novel way of dealing with the debt problems of twenty and thirty somethings whose wayward spending is out of control.
Listen DomBBC, stay away from Pilots following their early career paths. No one here is a credit card junkie who's spending is out of control.

No pilot goes into training hiding from parents or banks. Your website ONLY implies this.

Pilot training is a thought out descision that involves all family members and no one goes into it with a hidden spending agenda.

This is not the place for a Beeb hungry exec looking for promotion using pilots in training as a career path. You come across like Ryanair.

Unless your Financial Advisor can secure a structured career path with a well paid Airline, stay away and target proper "wayward" spenders or else change your ENTIRE tone.

[High Wing Drifter]

I dunno Pepper,

Putting to one side the non-issue of ineptitude that caused the debt (not the case for people here), I think a programme such as this is an opportunity to educate on the borrowing options. I'm sure many pilots have made use of 0% credit cards and have been severely bitten when thay overran the 'free' period (on some cards). After all the process of managing debt is the process of understanding how to understand what is on offer...it is also sometime necessary to put pride to one side :ugh:

[VisaGeeza]

What an absolutely fantastic offer! Heaven knows how much debt wannabees get into in persuit of their dream career!Pilot training is a thought out descision that involves all family members and no one goes into it with a hidden spending agenda. Errrrrr don't agree! stand up all those who started off that way and then went that "bridge too far" often in complete secrecy!

I wonder how many of those who respond will be the unfortunates who after spending vast fortunes building equally vast debts didn't secure a RHS and now find due to debt that their IR and currency is slipping into the horizon together with their hopes and aspirations?

[Rote 8]

There are a couple of aspects to this that I find unusual -

Dom has stated that he is looking for people in their twenties and thirties that have accrued significant debt that the individuals parents know nothing about and then to bring in the individuals parents, along with a financial advisor to help them to resolve this debt issue.

As someone in Dom’s target age range I find the implication that my parents should have any knowledge of my financial situation absurd. Am I the only one to hold this view? I have been managing my own money for many years and the idea that my parents should have some awareness of how I manage my finances now that I am in my late twenties is ridiculous.

What is even more absurd however is the idea that I should take financial advice from them. Surely most people in their twenties and thirties are finding that the opposite situation is more prevalent and that they need to offer financial advice to their parents.

I am also somewhat surprised that someone with the sort of debts that I assume that Dom is looking for (circa £50,000) will not already have a financial advisor?

Are there really people out there of similar age to myself - with enough about them to independently arrange finance and complete a CPL/IR who need to receive advice from their mum and dad?

[cumulus]

I would be extremely wary of having anything to do with this.

It is reality TV, and one of the conventions of reality TV is to make it's participants seem like utter freaks, not that it is too difficult most of the time....

I strongly suspect that were you to become the subject of this particular Docusoap, you would find that it would be edited and scripted (if that is the right word) to make you look like a feckless Walter Mitty, running back to Mummy and Daddy to bail you out.

There are plenty of places to get good financial advice for dealing with debt, without being used to further the career of some Beeb bottom feeding luvvy.

:suspect:

[Genghis the Engineer]

What is even more absurd however is the idea that I should take financial advice from them. Surely most people in their twenties and thirties are finding that the opposite situation is more prevalent and that they need to offer financial advice to their parents.

Comparing my lifestyle and available ready cash to my parents at that stage in life, no way would I have ventured to offer financial advice to my parents in any way shape or form - they were far better at it than I was.

Genghis Sr. is now working 2 days a week as an Engineering consultant, living well, driving a Merc, and (apart from a bit of work for charity) spending much of the rest of his time on a golf course - he and Mrs.G.Sr. have no debts and seem to go ona foreign holiday every other month. Whatever my personal views may be of X-country hockey, they need no financial advice from me and never have. (As to whether I've ever needed advice from them, possibly - but I never asked and they rarely volunteered.)


Having bounced off a few TV shows I find the sanctimonious "we don't pay because..." nothing but irritating and self serving. A good friend of mine has appeared on two editions of Scrapheap Challenge, on one occasion leading the team that thrashed France and the USA soundly, and never got anything but expenses for it - whilst simultaneously the far more replaceable cameramen are on around £200/day. (I spent 2 weeks as technical advisor on one of those episodes and only by sheer bloodymindedness saw a miserly £400 - that's in total!.)

On another occasion I was part of a major amateur rocketry event in Scotland that some TV station or another decided to make a "reality TV" show about. The organisers never saw a penny, these fellows completely disrupted what we were trying to do, bossed people around posing and positioning them, whilst having us constantly running after them before they got killed (putting a camera team in the middle of an area designated for dropping rockets that didn't carry parachutes was a particular favourite), and were a plain nuisance.

Hold out for some money folks ! The subject may well make good useful TV, but without you they have no programme - and trust me, being on TV ain't that special (mind you my first appearance on TV was being interviewed about a crash, so it can get better after that).

G

[Whirlygig]

will not already have a financial advisor?
...yes, your local, friendly Chartered Accountant should do it!!

As the wife of BBC employee and programme maker, I cannot take part in the programme - shoud I wish to!!!








which I don't



Cheers

Whirlygig



Actually, Rote8, anyone who hs a good relationship with their parents will share the information regardig their debt with them; not to get extra support but simply to impart imformation - I'm surprised you find that unusual or abnormal!!

[High Wing Drifter]

The Spendaholics BBC show doing the rounds ATM is pretty good if you ask me. I don't see any freaks and loosers on it. Just people who hadn't realised that there was another option or three.

[silverknapper]

The can give graham norton millions a year for doing nothing!!!

[DomBBC]

The genre of reality tv has many pros and cons. Most of the criticism leveled at this type of tv has come around from programmes like wifeswap. The point of the programme is to educate the person involved and the general public. This is the central ethos of the programme.

But we also want to entertain, otherwise who would watch an hour of finance help?

The show will not make you out to be an idiot. If you are an idiot, please don't apply, you won't get on the show. We need people who need help and we can provide the help in the form of financial advice and a week filled with interventions designed to make you understand money. It will be an experience like no other and at the end of it you'll be on the road to recovery. I understand that the majority of pilots take the debt on board and see it as a separate issue. They're responsible with their money and don't need this show.

But, 3500 have read this post and if it's possible that one of them needs help then it has to be worth it. THey might be drowning in debt, worried, not telling their partner, need someone to show them the way out of the enormous hole they're in. Yes, it's a tv show. Yes, we get something out of it but if this is you and the debt is piling up, what are your options? Remortgage? Put the debt onto your house and threaten yours and your family's future?
Credit cards? Consolidation loans? Borrow from parents or friends? None of these will actually get you out of the hole you are in.

For the people reading the post that need help. Please apply.