The ‘Marriage or Mortgage’ Trap
In a new Netflix show, couples decide whether to spend their savings on a wedding or a home. We asked personal finance experts how much reality TV reflects actual reality.
Once they tried on the dresses, it was all over.
Image from Netflix’s “Marriage or Mortgage”
In each episode of Netflix’s “Marriage or Mortgage,” a different couple from Nashville meets with a real estate agent, Nichole Holmes, and a wedding planner, Sarah Miller, who convince them to blow their nest egg on one of the show’s eponymous options. The show is in turn mind-numbing, heart-wrenching, and infuriating. (Also addictive.)
Filmed before the pandemic, the couples on the show are operating in a lukewarm housing market, and without the hindsight that would tell them not to risk it all on a big spring 2020 wedding. Their dilemmas are complex nonetheless: A couple is still living in the house one of the women once shared with her ex; another pair is abstaining from sex until marriage, but they’re also over living with roommates. Lost fathers, fertility challenges, heirloom-destroying fires — whatever the trauma, there is only one way to move forward. But which is it? A marriage or a mortgage?!