 Thank you for joining me on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Shayna Park, your host for Money Talks. With the higher cost of living and increasing number of individuals find themselves in debt and have difficulty managing it. My guest is someone who has been on the show before, Brandon Loresco, and he will be sharing tips on how to get out of debt. Hey, Brandon, welcome to the show. Hey, how's it? How are you doing, Shayna? Doing swell, how about you? It's awesome to be back and it's always great to be on your show, so I'm so excited for today. Thank you, me too. So, you know, tell me what you've been up to lately. Yeah, so, you know, I just been out there continuing sharing the financial campaign that we're on. You know, I'm actually very happy that we came back from our company trip. We went to Thailand, right, together, and there was how many of us again on that trip? Gosh, I can't even give an exact amount, but there was a lot of us. 3,000 of us at least. It was really amazing, our second trip since the pandemic and being able to go to another country with family, friends, colleagues. So amazing, and it's just the power of, you know, being able to control our wealth and how to manage it. So I'm just excited to share about where we're at. So I actually do have some slides I want to share with you guys, you know, where we have been on our campaign, helping educate families. So actually in the next slide, you know, I want to talk about more of where we are. I want to talk more about where we're at. So we have actually educated more than 2 million individuals since we started this campaign and since the pandemic, we actually doubled in size. So it's pretty funny that we grew from now 600 plus financial centers all across North America. And we are, you know, very excited to teach our financial workshops at No Charge. So we make sure it's available in different languages, Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, and working on other languages so that we can reach out to the masses. Yeah, that's incredible that, you know, our campaign and our mission were able to reach out to all walks of life and make sure we're educating everyone out there. Yes, yeah, I'm just excited because, you know, we can spend more time on certain topics such as managing debt, you know, because you mentioned a lot of people, especially since the pandemic, they fell into debt and we're having a harder time getting out of it. So, you know, it's important that we can analyze strategies that, you know, we don't make huge changes to our life, but we can still have big money, big amount of savings, save a lot of interest, and, you know, that money can be used for so many different avenues and ways to control your financial life. Yeah, and I totally agree with you and I know you have some statistics for us. So can you tell us where we're at as a society? Yes, we are at a point where the average family spends about a quarter of their income on taxes and another 10% on servicing debt. So, you know, more than a third of our money is gone, you know, servicing income and tax, using our income to pay off our taxes and debt and that doesn't even consider the 20% of Americans who use more than half of their income to pay back their debt. So it's crazy to see, you know, how much are we spending to pay the minimum every month or even the interest, the high amount of interest that we're paying over time, but the biggest debt that we do have is student loans. You know, that's pretty huge because the average student may have about $40,000 in debt. I know you do have your own story to share about that as well, Shayna. Yeah, I mean, for me too, I went the traditional route when to college right after high school and it was fantastic. However, you know, after doing two terms, I ended up in $14,000 in student debt and by not being financially educated, I just brushed it off to the side, let my mail stack up and finally when I opened up my mail again, lo and behold, my student loan is around a little over $25,000 and that's a lot for an 18 year olds or anyone for that matter to see that all that money you owe, but you know, fortunately from, you know, the campaign that we're in and learning some of the strategies that you'll be teaching us a little later, I was able to pay off my debt in full. So I'm very, very grateful with the power of education, right? Yes, right, and there's so many different types of debt that we may accumulate, but let's look at the average student scenario. So when we go to college and graduate college, let's say the average we have is about $32,000 in debt. You know, if you just pay off, you know, that 32,000 at the beginning, that doesn't consider the amount of interest that we're gonna pay as well. And that's about $8,000, which is showing on the screen. So that's another quarter or third of your money being spent on top of your original loan amount. So that's nearly $40,000 in money you're spending for debt and interest. And it's just crazy to see, you know, how big our interest can grow. Yeah, yeah. And like I said, for me too, right? From $14,000, $12,000 for going all the way to $25,000, that was a lot of extra money I had to pay. And it was just unfortunate because I just wasn't educated. So there was nothing I could do. I had to pay that money back. And that's why knowing less can definitely cost more. But, you know, I know you have two methods that can reduce the amount of time to pay off debt. So can you explain more and the differences between these two methods? Yeah, the first one I wanna show you guys is the debt avalanche. So this is where you're actually paying the highest interest first. So let's say we have different amount of loans from all the years that you attended college, but we're gonna sort it from highest interest first on top all the way to the lowest interest loan. Now, again, we talk about the standard plan. If you go with FAFSA or you go with whatever is computed from your student loans, they tell you 10 years. Well, if you did the same thing, the 10-year plan, but add just $100 a month to the highest interest first then you can actually save yourself some time. You'll see yourself paying off your debt in seven years and you can actually save yourself $3,000 in interest. And so instead of paying about $8,000, you're paying about $5,600. So, you know, this is one of the best ways to save money on interest with a plan to pay off your debt. So again, you know, you just, you sort it out from that order and you do just $100. You know, what does $100 that can do for our debt repayment schedule? And that's just $3 a day, right? I think that's pretty. That's like a coffee, Starbucks. So it's kind of a snack. Yeah, a snack, drinking maybe, someone's shopping maybe an outfit a month and that's how much $100 can save you. It can save you $3,000 in interest for this particular scenario, but we do have another strategy and I think we're all familiar with this one. And what is that scenario? This is a debt roll-up plan. This is actually what had helped me pay off my debt faster. And I love this strategy. And please explain more because I know there's a great reason why we both love this strategy so much. Yeah, so, you know, we do teach our free financial workshops. We want to offer at no charge because the power of learning how to manage your debt is so crazy that we can see, you know, fear to approach this differently going from the lowest balance first. So if we tackle the lowest balance loan and we add $100 into that loan first, you know, we actually paid off our winner. So instead of 2025, you actually paid off in 2024. So that's one year from now, less than one year. And then you still save on interest, not as much as the highest interest first, but you still paid a total of $5,900 an interest. So it's crazy to see that, hey, another $100, this is how much sooner yourself being out of debt. And this is a great strategy for many people because, you know, I think we're all emotional human beings. And if we go on, you know, how we're feeling, imagine if you see, you get, you become debt-free much sooner. You become debt-free instead of, you know, three, four years seeing your first loan paid off, it takes you just one year. Imagine it just takes one year to pay off your first loan. Crazy, right? It's amazing. You'll feel so good. You end up going again. We go to the next time. We're so excited to keep going that, you know, this is emotionally invigorating and we're just so happy to continue on. So, you know, that's why we do push out the debt roll-up plan. But if you are someone who wants to see the most man interest and you are very patient, then you can go ahead and use the debt avalanche, which is the highest interest first. Yeah. And I think both strategies are fantastic. However you are right, you know, the psychology behind money, and we as human beings are emotional creatures. But these two different strategies are making little to no changes in someone's lifestyle. And, you know, they have a choice between the two. Do they want less interest or, you know, like the psychology behind it, being able to pay down one debt faster and, you know, feeling encouraged to want to keep going. But yeah, these are some awesome tips, Brandon, for someone paying off their student loan. But can you tell me about how this can work for an average American who has a mortgage or a car loan and, you know, maybe some credit card debt too? Yeah. So, you know, I just shared a little bit about paying off our student loans, but the next slide I want to share is maybe an average American or, you know, what many people could relate to. So we will have showing is different loans and lines of credits that we have from our mortgage for our home, right? That could be our personal loan, your car loan, and all your other credit cards from your favorite stores, maybe like a Home Depot, Macy's, I mean, it just says like home improvement or your shopping. So let's say this person, they have $400,000 in debt. Maybe this is not someone in Hawaii because that's not our mortgage, but let's just say, you know, national average. $400,000 in different types of loans and lines of credit. Well, if it takes you $2,800 a month to pay off at minimum, what could $100 do? So if you look at that scenario, $100 first, that first smallest loan, you know, you end up spending less time and money paying it off. So you can see here in the last line on the bottom credit card, $100 added to your plan, instead of 19 months to pay it off, you take two months. So instead of about two years, two months to pay off your debt, and then you live within your means and you move that $100 to the next, the next Mars one. And we got to live within our means because, you know, we don't wanna spend that $110 somewhere. We wanna be used to put it back into the strategy so that over time, instead of 19 months to pay off one line of credit, it takes 19 months to pay off three. So you're already reaching your plan and your dream much sooner. With this plan, the debt rollup, you can actually become debt-free and 40% less of the time. You're able to save much more on interest. And you can only imagine what, what if not just a $3 a day, $100 a month, what about $6 a day or a lunch pay a day, $10 a day? How could that go back to your debt rollup and how much sooner can we be debt-free? So I think it's just crazy to see that it just takes little to no change in our finances. We spend the time and looking at, okay, you know, if I could save money on eating out every day and maybe eating out once or twice a week instead, then let's not spend about a coffee this morning. So if we can do something like that, you know, how much could we save on paying back interest and how could that money be used to pay off our other areas, our bills, use it to grow our money, grow our wealth. So I think it's, it's amazing to see this. And, you know, like you said, Sue, after you wipe off one debt, you wanna have that control, right? Of not wanting to spend elsewhere or look at it as like an extra $100 something more that you can spend a month since you paid off one credit card debt. And, you know, for me at least, I love Boba. So I'm kind of shocked at how expensive it is now. I think it was like $8 last time I went back to Hawaii. But $8, if you just rounded up, okay, what tip? $10 a day, that's $300 a month that I'd be spending on Boba tea. And that could be applied towards debt. Or, you know, like you said, little to no changes in your lifestyle and really getting here with your wants versus needs. So yeah, I really like those strategies that you just shared, but can you tell me more tips that can help people control their debt? Yeah, so some tips that we do have on screen for you guys is, of course, living within your means, but how do we control our debt? You know, if you can control our debt, you know, we can control our money. So, you know, some tips I do have is, number one, making sure that you can live it within your means. And if I could have you guys watch the next slide, you'll have some other tips which are, you know, using debt or debit or cash. So it's one thing to not get into more debt and that could be through habits that we have. You know, if we can use cash, cash is king, that's what we live by. So try not to use your credit card. I know we love using our, our passive cards, our friends. If you can perform that passive surgery, stop using it as often and buying what is, you know, necessary instead, you know, we can see how amazing it is, how much money we'll save. And just in general, trying to pay off your debt with the strategy, you know, with the strategy like debt roll-up or debt avalanche, you can save yourself 40% of the time, save yourself an interest. But, you know, other than the tips on the screen, you know, I think let's just talk more about, you know, paying what is necessary. I think it's so funny what you brought up, right? Buber is so expensive. Not just coffee that we spend is the other different habits that we have, eating out a lot, taking a late night snack. Maybe some people, it's the amount of drinks that they have and the smokes that they do throughout the day. You know, that can be crazy amount of spending. And I think it reminds me of a time when I was teaching a class at a local middle school. Do you, did you get an allowance when you were in middle school, Shayna? No, I actually didn't. I actually did start working at a really young age, but with that came learning how to manage my money at a young age too, because if I wasn't getting paid for the next, if I blew all my money the first day I got paid, then I'd have to wait, you know, another two weeks to get paid for whatever I wanted. And it really taught me how to manage my spending and making sure, you know, buying what I wanted, but mostly buying what I needed. Yeah, it's buying what we need, but you know, I didn't get allowance either when I was growing up, but I remember teaching a local middle school and, you know, it was crazy to see how much kids are spending, even themselves, because Starbucks is so close to their school. I had this one girl, she checked her expenses for one week just, you know, eating out maybe once, and then all the coffees every day, you know, kids were drinking their cappuccino, that was $50. And I was like, what kind of kids are spending $20, $50 a week on, you know, food, on specialty drinks and desserts? And how could that be used to say, if we can save maybe $100 a month for them, you know, that could, that would go so crazy with the compounding interest, but. With what you're saying too, is that how easy it is to spend $50 at Starbucks, but if we look at debt too, I know, you know, the number can be really scary, $25,000 when I looked at it was very scary, but if we kind of look at paying it off as how much you spend, it could be really fun. And, you know, it does really, at least speaking on my behalf, it really did encourage me to wanna keep going at it because I mean, if I could spend $50 on say shoes, why not apply it towards something where I won't have to pay interest for anymore? Interest is money, and I don't think, you know, I took that into account at the time when I was letting my mail sit on the side for a really long time. Yes, I know, and I do have one last slide I wanna share with everyone. It's about how could we take action? So that would be, you know, taking the time to watch one of our financial workshops that we offer at No Charge, you know, cause we offer this nationally and locally. So whether it's coming in through an in-person workshop or watching one of our Zoom workshops offered five days a week, three times a day nearly, you know, we can help you learn about budgeting, you know, growing and increasing your cash flow, not just manage your debt, you can also learn how to protect yourself, you know, your health and wealth as well as protecting your wealth and estate preservation and growing that money and investing. So, you know, there's so many things that we wanna teach and share with others and, you know, how these workshops, you know, this is not like just a crash course for dummies, it's like something that we gotta take our time and it's just an hour a day, you can finish this in one week, you can finish our whole workshop series and that's just the start to understanding, building awareness and being able to take time to maybe the first time in our lives, sit down as a family and say, hey, you know, what can we do to budget our money better? What can I do to manage my wealth better and taking the time to analyze because, you know, there's so many times that if I forget to watch what I've been spending, you know, I end up buying more things, I started spending more than my budget from last month, end up buying subscriptions and then it starts to add up and it's just crazy how, you know, life can take a turn in how we spend and the direction that we go. And I like how you shared, you know, that we can really take action and for ourselves to learn about, you know, different ways to pay off our debt or even to learn more about finances for ourselves, for the future generations to come and, you know, maybe start that conversation that wasn't talked a lot about in our household but I know right now we're talking about taking action for ourselves but how do you feel about paying someone to, you know, help you get out of debt? Hmm, very question. Having paying someone else to help you get out of debt, you know, I actually came across some of those people, one of my colleagues at the campaign, they said that, hey, you know, before watching these workshops, I actually paid someone to pay off my debt and it's great for them that they became debt free but they told me that they just paid the money to them and everything was handled. They didn't learn anything, didn't learn any concepts or strategies, how to do it themselves. So imagine what happens if you end up falling back into debt, you know, then what do we do? And the best part is that, you know, knowing that these strategies are out there for the taking and we're not charging people to take advantage of them, we wanna make sure that we can offer it, make sure that the resources is there because knowledge is power and if we can help people become their own money managers, then we are all at a better financial state, we can all be in a better direction as a whole state, country and just helping people alongside one another and that's why we deeply care about others, they can show that we can have that knowledge available to them. Yes, so in short, you know, like you said Sue, taking control of our finances, that is so important, especially for our DNA, when we look at inflation and I mean, the cost of living in Hawaii, I mean, that is just definitely out of our control but what is in our control is education and that is something when we learn on our own and seek the education out there, that's something no one can take away from us because like you said, knowledge is power but I wanted to move into the direction of, I know that there's good debt and bad debt, so can you please elaborate more on the differences between the two because like I said, good debt, bad debt and I think there's a fine line and sometimes people can get a little confused about the two. Yes, and I think it's just knowing to be American in a way, you gotta have that credit score and you be almost like passionate in a way that we have to get some kind of debt to be able to show people that we are reliable. So building your credit score comes from having that mortgage, getting a car loan but starting with some good debts, like they still know. Still known as a great debt in a way that if you are on plan and on strategy to pay it off, you can still save yourself, not paying too much into interest but you're using this money to invest in your education but if I were to look at a personal aspect, I think many people our age are afraid of getting a credit card or maybe have not even gotten a credit card yet. Oh yes, yes, definitely. I know a lot of friends of mine or like you said, people our age that are fearful because of all the stories, sometimes people project debt to be a really, really bad thing but like you said, you need a good credit score, you need debt in order to purchase a house or say you wanna buy a car too, right? In order to have a lower interest or paying down your car loan, you need good debt. So yeah, just elaborate a little bit more on that. Yeah, so when you try to develop your good debt, I didn't have a lot of loans. The best part is preparing how to go out for future debt, prepare for future debt and pay off your own debt but I was young, I had maybe one or two student loans and I still need to build up my credit score. So what I did is I went to a local bank and I asked them, hey, can I get a secure card? And that secure card, you put down a collateral, you put down a certain amount of money to build and set your own credit limit. And that was a way for me to start building that score and it could be a great way for people who want to rebuild their credit. Maybe they went to bankruptcy or they already paid off all their debt and they're trying to rebuild their score. Getting a secured card can be one way for someone to start rebuilding it. So I got my first secure card, then it moved down the line after a year into an unsecured card and I started to get another credit card and that's when I started to watch the interest, make sure that I was paying everything in full and then we get that magical raise in our credit limit. Our credit score also goes up. And of course, like you said, we gotta make sure we build up our credit score so that we can get the best rates on maybe mortgages, car loans. And it's just a way to show people and companies how reliable and trustworthy they are with money. And I know this is a little off topic but can you share what people should look for in credit cards? I know there's different APRs or if there's an annual fee but can you share about that? Because for some people who haven't applied for a credit card yet, what are some basics that they can look for maybe? Just maybe a brief answer on that. Yeah, so based on my personal experience, if you are brand new, you are having hard time qualifying for the credit card, especially if you're older. I had people in their 20s apply for one and they did not get accepted because they just did not have enough credit history. So I would go for a secured card first, which is you put a collateral, your own money down, like a security deposit and you get it back maybe six, 12 months later. You can get a secured card. You can look at any local credit union would be even better. They would probably have better interest rates. And then you can start taking advantage of different cards that have perks and benefits such as for us, we travel a lot. So I look for a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees. I look for one that can give me and build me miles for citizen airline companies and loyalty. I mean, it depends on what you guys want to be able to use it for. If you're like a heavy Costco or a Sam's Club user, maybe get a card for them. But you try to stray away from credit cards for certain smaller companies or those who only offer one type of line of products like maybe like a clothing or a retail store, you would want to try to stay away from a credit card from a retail store. Yeah, yeah. I loved everything that you shared, Brandon, especially, I thank you for elaborating more about different credit cards because I think it is important. Especially for me when I started looking out what I should get into and all these different, there's so many different resources out there when it comes to finances. So thank you for narrowing it down and being a little bit more specific about that. And thank you in general for being on the show again. I always learn so much from you and we are so happy to discuss methods to help people eliminate their debt. And I think it's crazy how a strategy like these can eliminate your debt in nearly half the time while making little to no changes in your lifestyle. So yes, thank you again for being on the show, Brandon. Thank you. Hope to see you all at the next episode of Money Talks. I'm Sheena Park, a Gen Z inspiring lives of liberties. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.