Herman: John L. Herman Jr., Author

Financial Emergency Preparedness

Brooke Halpin, our PR guru, booked me for my third appearance on the television station CN8. They do a morning segment on finances on the COMCAST network, so if you have COMCAST look for me at 6:30AM, next Thursday, February 7th. Because the hot topic of today is the financial condition of Americans, they wanted me to do a Financial Emergency Preparedness Kit that people should have ready to take with them if they had to leave their homes in a hurry, or if they suddenly found themselves in a financial crisis, as many people are.

Now, this isn’t radio where you just talk about items, this is TV and they wanted “props” so viewers could actually see the items in my kit. This is what you will see if you watch the piece next week.

First I showed my life insurance policy and stated you want to know your cash-in value and the amount you can borrow against your policy, if it has those provisions. Then I showed 401(K) documents with the same loan/cash-in values. I showed a credit card in my kit with no balance due so I could use it during the emergency. There was two hundred dollars in cash in my kit. There was my savings passbook from the bank, which I said should have between one thousand and fifteen hundred dollars in it for the emergency time period use. And then I looked at the host interviewing me and said, “But you know, not many people have any of these things handy…because in fact they are in debt up to their eyeballs.” The host said even he was stretched thin financially, so what could people do about it.

This part of the interview was fun for me. I wasn’t the stuffed shirt, tight-assed, conservative banker type who was scolding his customers for not saving for a rainy day. I was the smart-assed wise-cracking realistic Herman that you know and hopefully love…who sticks my advice right between your eyes because I know you need some tough love.

After stating the obvious, that everyone out there in viewer land is in trouble, I pulled a can opener out of my jacket pocket and held it up to the host and said he needed to eat at home more and stop running up his credit cards at restaurants…then from another pocket I pulled out cut up credit cards and threw them on the table in front of me and told him to do this to his cards…and call his bank to lower his interest rates…next came out of my shirt pocket my NETFLIX mailing envelope and I told the viewers to stay home and watch a movie on the home theater they probably put on their credit cards and save themselves from paying ten dollars for popcorn and a coke at the Ciniplex…then out from under one of the earlier props I rolled a small VW Bug and said people should buy smaller cars, or maybe hold off one year and have no car payment at all which means they could save five thousand dollars instead of always being in car debt. And the last prop was me showing the small bank I put my pocket change in at the end of the day…which adds up to several hundred dollars in about a year…the host held up the bank and shook it to hear the change rattle, and he said he should at least try that. It was fun, not stuffy and boring.

So, check me out on TV if you get the chance…and start doing at least one of these ideas please.

• Posted: 30 January 2008
• Comments: 1
• Category: Business success

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