4 Money Lessons from Your Favorite Sitcoms

Those comedies that you binge on your Netflix account could be teaching you some valuable lessons about money. It’s true! Here are four important money lessons that you can learn from your favorite sitcoms:

1. Parks and Recreation: Prepare for Emergencies

In Season 4 of Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson detects that his ex-wife Tammy is coming to town, and he decides to go into hiding. Before he flees to a cabin in the woods, he collects a bag of emergency supplies and informs his colleague that he is using his accumulated personal days immediately. He later reveals that he has buried stashes of gold around town, including decoys to throw off thieves.

What lesson can you learn from Ron? Prepare for emergency situations so that you can handle them right away. You probably won’t have to worry about your ex-wife coming after you and your secret gold stashes, but you should prepare for more practical problems like car trouble and urgent medical appointments.

How? Start by making an emergency fund so that you can pay for these expenses right away without disrupting your everyday routine. If you don’t have enough savings in the moment to deal with an emergency, you could use your credit card or an emergency loan to take care of it. You can click here to learn what are emergency loans and what are the qualifications you need to apply for them. This information could come in handy when you have an emergency expense. 

2. Brooklyn 99: Pay Back Your IOUs

In Season 2, Jake Peralta comes to terms with the fact that he has a lot of outstanding IOUs. He repays his colleague Terry with funds from his checking account. When his other colleagues find out, they demand that he needs to repay them too. Since he doesn’t have enough cash, he tries to make good on his debts by doing chores and errands.  

What lesson can you take away from this? Don’t ask your friends for loans when you’re not sure that you can pay them back quickly. If you make this mistake, follow in Jake’s footsteps and talk to your friends to find other ways to repay them.

3. The Office: Follow a Budget

In Season 4, Michael Scott starts to worry about how much credit card debt he is in and tries to “declare” bankruptcy. Michael’s employee, Oscar, decides to help and goes over Michael’s bank statements. Quickly, he discovers that Michael has impulsively spent the majority of his credit on non-essentials like professional bass-fishing equipment and magic sets.

What lesson can you take away from this? You should follow a budget! If you don’t have one already, download one of the best budgeting apps and follow the instructions. This will stop you from spending beyond your means.

4. Broad City: Use Coupons

In Season 1, Abbi yells at her roommate’s boyfriend because he threw out her expired coupons to Bed, Bath & Beyond. She tells him that Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons never really expire, and she lost out on tons of saving opportunities because of him.

What lesson can you learn from this show? Abbi is right to collect and use coupons to save money. You should do the same! However, you should think about using digital coupons and discount codes — your roommates can’t toss these in the garbage. 

Your finances are no laughing matter! So, take these four money lessons from your favorite comedies to heart and follow them vudu com start.