Could debt make you lose the Game of Thrones? Money lessons from your favourite TV shows By Melissa Leong While you binge-watch all five seasons of Breaking Bad in over the holidays, you can still learn some important financial lessons After all of the gift-buying, party-hosting and vacationing, personal finance might be one of the last things on your mind this holiday season. Instead, you're probably spending time catching up on television shows. Keep in mind, while you binge-watch all five seasons of Breaking Bad in two weeks, that you can still learn some important financial lessons. Here are a few key points to take away from some of your favourite primetime programs: 1 of 7 DOWNTON ABBEY You need a smart estate plan. People believed that the Titanic was unsinkable. But when the ship goes down, it causes a crisis of inheritance for the wealthy Crawley family in Downton Abbey. The male heir to Downton Abbey, the family's English countryside estate, has died in the shipwreck, leaving the family's home and fortune in jeopardy. If you don't want your loved ones to be stripped of their rightful riches, you need contingencies in your will (assuming you even have an up-to-date will). "Don't assume that because your beneficiary is young that he will outlive you," Les Kotzer, a Toronto-based wills and estate lawyer, says. Have a backup beneficiary and a backup executor. "If you don't specify, the law will decide where it goes." Also, consider setting up a trust if your assets are to go to a minor; this way the funds will be distributed for a specific purpose (such as post-secondary education) or when the beneficiary hits a certain age. GAME OF THRONES Your debts could bring down your kingdom. Take a look at the spending habits in Game of Thrones, where wars and weddings are as expensive as they are deadly. The King of Westeros is six million gold pieces in debt. His Master of Coin balanced the books by borrowing vast sums of money, which puts the realm in a dangerous position of owing to House Lannister, the land's wealthiest family, and the Iron Bank of Braavos. (The bank has a nasty tradition of funding the enemies of rulers who fail to repay their debts.) To keep debt from destroying your house, you need to count your coppers, as King Robert would say. You need to understand your cash flow and create a budget to see where you can free up money to pay down debt. List all of your debts: lines of credit, student debts, etc. and allocate funds to the highest-interest rate account (likely your credit card balance). Call your financial institution and work out an arrangement - they may forgive past punitive fees or lower your interest rate for a time; you might also consider consolidating your debts into one low payment or transferring the debt from a high interest account into one with a lower interest rate; but watch out for transfer fees and other caveats. Take a lesson from House Lannister - a Lannister always pays his debts. 2 of 7 BREAKING BAD Plan for illness or death. In Breaking Bad, when high school chemistry teacher Walter White gets diagnosed with lung cancer, he resorts to cooking crystal meth to pay for treatment as well as to amass enough money to care for his family when he dies. "Heisenberg" has insurance through work that would have covered his care even in the U.S.'s privatized medical system; but it doesn't cover the care of the pricey specialist that his family wants him to see. In Canada, though the government will pay for your treatment, drug coverage is spotty and varies per province. If you don't have coverage through your employee benefit program, oral cancer medications can cost you $6,000 per month, according to CanCertainty, a coalition that advocates for cancer patients. It might be wise to check if you have critical illness coverage through your employer; the coverage could get you money to cover treatment from specialists or foreign medical care – or cover your expenses if you're unable to work. "It would provide someone with a lump sum 30 days after a diagnosis of about two dozen illnesses," says Mark Halpern, a certified financial planner and president of illnessprotection.com. "Thirty days after [Walter White's] diagnosis, he could have gotten a cheque for up to $2 million tax-free." As for ensuring the financial security of your family in your absence, yes, you could build a drug empire and bury millions of dollars in a desert - or you could consider whether life insurance would cover your family's needs. "When I was 11, my father had a heart attack at the age of 50," Mr. Halpern says. "I appreciate that people don't love insurance. But if you love someone, you want to provide for them." 3 of 7 Will Hart/HBO A scene in The Sopranos with the late James Gandolfini playing Tony Soprano (left), Edie Falco as Carmela and Robert Iler as Anthony Jr. THE SOPRANOS Make your money work for you. The Sopranos, at least, diversify. Tony Soprano invests in a strip club and a racehorse named Pie-O-My, and saves money in a birdseed container in his backyard. Stashing cash around his property isn't the best idea. Besides the fact that it could be stolen (such as when his wife, Carmela, pilfers from his hideaway), the money isn't keeping up with inflation. Better to invest it – maybe in the stock market, as Carmela suggests. 4 of 7 THE WALKING DEAD Conserve your resources. Every episode of The Walking Dead is a lesson in rationing and resourcefulness. When someone comes across a stockpile of weapons or a pool of fresh water, he takes what he needs and saves some for later. You don't know what's ahead (whether it's a rotting corpse that's attacking you or a broken furnace that needs fixing) or how long you'll live (until the end of the season or after your 95th birthday), so it's important to amass a reserve. While you're regularly earning a paycheque, set up a separate account and have money automatically deducted into it every payday; some experts suggest you siphon off 10% of your take-home pay for savings. If you get a raise, increase your mortgage payments or savings so you don't get used to the higher amount in your account. And have accessible funds in case of emergency. Not in the crawl space beneath your home but in a high-interest savings account. Some financial planners suggest that your line of credit can double as your emergency fund and your money can be put to better use elsewhere; others say that adding debt in a tough situation will just add more stress. 5 of 7 Vision TV A money lesson from Downton Abbey: Before you invest a nickel, seek a second opinion; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. DOWNTON ABBEY Diversify. The patriarch of the Crawley family in Downton Abbey invests the bulk of his wife's fortune in a Canadian railroad company, which goes bankrupt. "Investing in one enterprise - wasn't that foolish?" Lady Crawley asks. Lord Grantham insists that: "Everyone said we couldn't lose." "An important investing idea is referred to as ‘confirmation bias. It is our desire to find facts, figures, data, trends, information, people and institutions that agree with our existing views. Then we proceed to ignore all the other people and data that contradict our beliefs and positions," says Adrian Mastracci, a portfolio manager with KCM Wealth Management Inc. in Vancouver. "Step away from all of the data and the headlines and dig deeper. Maybe work on the premise that one of your great horses might come in lame - what are you going to do? How will that affect you and your family? Obviously if you're 30 years old, you have more time to recover and learn lessons but if you're 60, God help you." Before you invest a nickel, seek a second opinion; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. "I've always said that diversification is your best free lunch," he says. "It doesn't always work - back in 2008, everything got tarred with the same brush - but if you do some diversification with some rebalancing, you're going to lose less often." THE SOPRANOS Take control. When Carmela Soprano sees a widow handing out samples at the supermarket, she approaches Tony about their financial future. You need to understand your household finances and take charge of your game plan. "As 6 of 7 a couple, you should be on the same page," Mr. Mastracci says. "Not everything is going to go your way, but at least take some control." Check in on your plan annually and with your money managers (to make sure they're up-to-date on your situation … and/or whether they're too busy murdering, gambling or snorting coke to focus on your portfolio). 7 of 7.