 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining. We're going to go ahead and get started in just a minute. We're going to give everybody another minute or two to get logged on. So tight. We'll start in a minute. Thanks. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining this important webinar today. I am Jose so guard deputy director for the office of nightlife at the mayor's office media and entertainment. For those of you who don't know, we are a liaison between the city and the nightlife industry of businesses workers performers and patrons. We work to support the nightlife community navigating city bureaucracy, improve quality of life and community relations, promote safety and harm reduction and elevate nightlife culture. If you have any questions or issues about matters related to this webinar or anything else related to nightlife, please always feel free to reach out to us at nightlife at media.nyc.gov, or you can follow us on socials at NYC nightlife. So today's webinar is part of a new series of courses we created called night school or nightlife industry training and education, which will be held both virtually and in person. This is a series to share resources and trainings for owners workers and patrons addressing how to best engage with city agencies while opening and operating nightlife businesses proactive harm reduction and bystander intervention, quality of life issues and much, much more. You can find out more information at nyc.gov slash night school. That's n i t e school and we will put that link in the chat. Today we're very happy to share with you some financial management resources and services from our partners at the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and their Office of Financial Empowerment, as well as their partners at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. And we know that so many New Yorkers working and performing in nightlife that can be challenging to find time between your gigs and shifts to manage and make sense of your finances. And so today we're very excited to connect you with our partners who are providing free one on one professional counseling to help you do just that. And in just a moment they'll be sharing a presentation with an overview of tools and tips that can help you get started. Before I introduce my colleagues to conduct the training, just a few quick housekeeping notes. First, please use the Q&A feature in zoom to let us know your questions throughout the meeting. And after the presentation, we will have some additional time for Q&A. There will also be some questions for you to answer in during the presentation, when we welcome you to use the chat feature for that as well. This is also being recorded and live streamed to Facebook and a recording will be available to share with your staff or other colleagues who would like to view the training in a later time so please share with anyone else you know who might be interested in this information. And again, you can always visit nyc.gov slash night school that's NITE school to find information on other scheduled trainings and webinars as part of this series. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce my colleague first from the city's Office of Financial Empowerment. Arielle Munchek-Eleman is a program officer of financial counseling and coaching there and will kick us off with some additional background before our colleague Erlene Green, the manager of financial counseling and coaching programs at Bed-Stuy Restoration, gives today's presentation. Thank you both so much for being with us today. Arielle, take it away. Thank you so much Jose. I'm really excited to be here and excited to see so many attendees. One of the reasons that I'm really excited about this webinar is I actually was a nightlife worker myself before I joined the Office of Financial Empowerment for several years I was a drag performer and a barista. And unfortunately I wasn't in New York City so I didn't have access to some of the really awesome free public resources that exist here, which we'll learn about in just a minute. But yeah, if you have any questions about financial empowerment services in the city, feel free to put them in the Q&A. And I'm really excited to turn it over to Erlene Green, who as Jose mentioned is a manager of financial counseling programs at Bedford-Sivison Restoration Corporation and actually a financial counselor herself as well. So Erlene, I'm going to share my screen here with the presentation and turn it over to you. Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much, Arielle. And welcome everyone to today's webinar on financial management. I'm excited to be with you today so let us just get started but let me just give you a little more information about restoration. The first community development organization with a 56-year track record serving residents in the borough of Brooklyn and our Center for Personal Financial Health is like a one-stop multi-service hub where we promote economic self-sufficiency and financial stability for families while providing for them an opportunity to move upward in their finances. And, you know, we are like a pipeline sort of of services, including workforce readiness, training, job placement, benefits, screening and enrollment, and of course, financial counseling, employment and home ownership services. And we help our clients to develop assets, right. And so I'd like to say that our services help our customers along their financial journey where we meet clients where they are and we help them to navigate through the process of becoming or through the process of being financially vulnerable to financially coping to eventually being financially stable. So that's just a little bit about who we are in terms of restoration. So we can now go to that third slide and get started. And you will see that, you know, nightlife has a unique sort of circumstances or opportunities and challenges I should say as the slide says. So I'd like to just take a moment to ask you to respond to the questions on the slide. Ariel talked about his experience and now I'd like you to kind of just share a little bit about your experience in terms of some of the challenges that you may have faced. And also, please share with us any of the, any financial topics that you feel would be helpful to you moving forward. Okay, you could type that in the chat. Thank you. So, while we talk about while you may be putting some information in the chat about some of the challenges that you face as a nightlife worker. I just want to also talk about the fact that there are some chat opportunities also that exist in nightlife I was just reading some information from the mayor's office of entertainment and media, and they did an economic impact on nightlife. And it revealed that nightlife supports over 299,000 jobs, resulting in 13.1 billion dollars in employee compensation so that was good news for me, because clearly, nightlife workers are growing faster, or if not as fast as the rest of the economy in New York City so you know there's the data to support that. And in doing that we know that such as because it's a growing economy that we can dedicate more time and support to manage this industry and help nightlife workers to overcome some of those challenges. So, let us go to slide five. So, this is what we are going to cover today, understanding your relationship with money financial management strategies how to make the most out of your asset, how to minimize your liabilities. And then you will also learn how to access access the confidential free one on one financial counseling session at the financial empowerment centers. Okay. So personal financial management what it is. Okay, so personal financial management. I think we are on the slide before this one, Ariel. Yes, there you go. Thank you. So personal financial management, as you see is the process of planning and budgeting for how your money is saved or spent. It's managing your personal finances in a way that will help us to set goals to save save for various reasons like retirement. And it is a crucial, it's critical and our ability to effectively manage exactly what it's coming in in terms of our income and what is going out in terms of our expenses, and how to save and how to invest as well. And so this is especially important when we have variable income, as many of us do in nightlife work right because if you are a nightlife business owner without sound sound financial management you're likely to make the kind of mistakes that can cost you your business. Or that can cause you to even mismanage your finances resulting in minimal and not maximum profits. It can also cause you to mismanage your finances and cause you to not be able to pay your employees on time I have been in situations like that as well. But if you are an employee practicing financial management principles enables you to take control of your finances to save and to plan for the future. So we're going to go to the next slide which depicts three major components of personal financial management and the first one is a budget. The second one is goals and the third one is savings. So when we talk about budgeting budgeting is simply a spending plan to help us to balance our income, our expenses, and our financial goals for a specific period of time. And so a budget will help us to track our spending and ensure that we are living within our means. It's a way of helping us to keep control of our money so that our money doesn't control us. When we look at budgeting, we look at, again, the need to total up all of our income right, many of us have income from various sources so you total up all of your income from various sources, whether it's from a full time job part time job, whether it's portfolio income or interest income, or even tips that you receive right, you total all of those up for the month, and then you minus all of your expenses, your fixed expenses, your variable expenses, and even periodic expenses and so what's left over after you deduct your expenses total income is known as cash flow right so in the end you can have a negative cash flow which means that your expenses exceeds your income, or you can have a positive cash flow which means that your income exceeds your expenses, and you have some money left over to do some other things right. But depending on how much you have left over, you know you could create a plan to, you know, to save or to invest or to make some kind of major purchase right, but I want to also mention that when you do your budget, you can also find yourself at a place where you are breaking even right so to break even means that you are spending everything that you actually earn, and that there is nothing left over. And so you just have enough money to meet your expenses and this is really the epitome of what is known as living from paycheck to paycheck right, or living on an earn and spend treadmill and I don't know about you, but I have definitely been there and done that right and not looking forward to, to going back to that place. Okay, so that sums it up for the budget. So let's look at smart goals. When you create a viable budget, we, we give ourselves the best chance of being able to save and achieve our goals. So let's just look at the smart goal component and exactly what it is. So we know that a goal is a destination or something that we want or need, which will require us to take some kind of action to achieve it. And I, I always indicate when I tell that people always say that it is definitely different than a dream. People use dreams and goals, synonymously, but they are really different goals is an object of effort is something you have to work toward a dream images and thoughts and visions and you can have them but you don't have to put any effort toward achieving them right. So, when we talk about a goal we think about and we, we think about it providing goals providing a sense of direction, motivation, and in some kind of clear focus. And it helps us to kind of clarify our importance in terms of not an importance but our priorities, I should say, okay. And so when we think about smart goals, it is used to help us to set goals in a way that is viable right. So it's an acronym smart is an acronym, it means specific measurable attainable realistic and timely. And we incorporate these criterias to help us to focus our efforts and increase the chances of us achieving our goals and so I would what I want to do now is just really just give you some idea of what the the acronym stand for, because it's important when you sit down and write these smart goals. So the specific is when your goal is well defined. It's clear is on the ambiguous. For instance, when you sit down and write your goal, saying I want to spend my spring break at Daytona Beach versus I want to do something over the spring break right. The first one is more specific is clear. It tells you where you want to spend your spring break because knowing where you want to spend your spring break is going to inform all of your following decisions measurable the M is when your goal is capable of being measured it answers the question of how much do you need to accomplish this goal. For example, I need $120 for my share of the gas hotel and food for the week versus I'm going to need some money for the trip right. So you want your goal to be measurable. You want to understand how much is going to cost achievable. The goal has the ability to be achieved it's not something that is impossible right. So for instance, I'll say $15 a week from Thanksgiving until spring break or, or I should say versus, I'll win a weekly radio talk show contest to get the money to pay for the trip right. With that second one there are no guarantees it's a long shot right so because of that it may not be achievable, and it's unlikely that it will be achievable right so your goal has to be achievable. Realistic it has to be real to life it has to be relevant, and within your reach it has to be real practical, right. So for example, I plan to drive from New York to Miami, Florida. 20 hours using for drivers versus I want to drive from New York to Miami in eight hours right that is not possible realistically that is not possible right. Unless you're going in the airplane of course but it's going to take you a lot less time but I'm talking about driving specifically. And then we have time bound right which is a clearly defined timeline, including a start date and a target date. The purpose of the timeline is really to help you to create a period of duration, because a period of duration will give you a sense of urgency, so that you don't prolong your, your goals so that you start working toward it and the goals can be short term within six to one year it can be long term one to five years, and it can be five years right. And so, often individuals, or businesses will set themselves up for failure by setting general and unrealistic goals right goals that are vague and have no sense of direction so we want to avoid doing that. And so, you know, again the smart goals set us up for success by making our goals focus right it helps push us further in the direction that we want to go and it helps us to organize and to be able to reach our goals. And then we have savings right and this is another component or a principle of financial management and when it comes to saving there's no one thing that that we should, when it comes to saving there is one thing that we should acknowledge about ourselves and that is whether or not we are or we consider ourselves to be a saver or a spender. So that's a good question that you can ask yourself which one am I am I a saver, or am I a spender you can put that in the chat to are you are you a spender are you a saver. And knowing the answer to this question is important for several reasons. The first reason is because it gives us a good way to determine our relationship with money. The second is that it speaks to our attitudes in our actions regarding money, and it can also help us to change some bad habits and to replace them with with some good ones right. And so here's what we know about a spender. If you are a spender. You know, we we love money for the things that it can buy right. And we would also prefer to have something concrete intangible, like a car or trendy gadgets or technology over having something as abstract, such as savings right. And so, and we know that that savers are life savers really right. Because, you know, they, they are the ones that we borrow from from the most part right and savers create a fortune in the bank very quickly. But while still living a comfortable life. You know, and while still being on a tight budget. My brother is that way. And we used to call him a penny pincher we used to call him cheap but as I learned more about finances, I learned that he is frugal and he is responsible with his money. So, so, and, and you may very well be someone who is not a spender or saver but you can be both right. And because you're both you may have, or you may do a really great job balancing between the two right balancing between being a spender and a saver but the balance here is really for us to acknowledge where we fit in, and then determine if where we are is where we really want to be right because the question is, wherever I am, is it working for me or is it working against me is it moving me towards my goal towards my desires and plans for the future or is it moving me away from it right. Am I able to say for that house that pension, my children's education that vacation, my children education that vacation or even medical expenses right so I think for for nightlife workers. You may be faced with the challenge of inconsistent income and maybe lie more heavily on tips and other compensations but I, and that might be a reason why you may not put so much effort into savings but I want to encourage you to to really save savings a priority because it's not really how much you save from every paycheck that makes a difference it's really how consistent you are with saving right. And consistent helps us to develop good habits of savings therefore when you are able to save more, you will be more willing to do so because you have already developed the habit of saving and remember, you know, responsible spending and to live within our means and to live within our means in order to do that we must spend less and and then make and save as much as we can right. Okay, so we're going to go to the next slide slide seven and this kind of ties everything together as a way for us to really understand and control our finances right. So, here we have a list of things that we can do. And one of them I'm just going to put a little emphasis on some of them not all of them reduce monthly spending and really this is about budgeting right what we already talked about because in order to reduce our expenses. We need to track them and to determine what we can reduce and or eliminate from our budget, in order to put more money back into our budget, so that we can use that money for other priorities right. So, then we have paying off debt and this is also related to spending right because when we have little to no debt, we get to keep more of what we earn, then we'll be able to do more with our earnings so this is a really important step to take to help us to control our finances and then exploring ways to invest our money right. This is related more to setting smart goals right understanding our destination or or plans for the future and making our money work for us and not against us and so this is really about allowing our money to grow and to get a good return on our investment. It will allow us to to buy assets or financial products that will eventually appreciate and not depreciate right. And so I want to just take a minute to to to talk more about investing because it's we are in a time now. Where the idea of investing is is it's called it's it's closely correlated to our eye to what will will we like experiencing right now right, and that's inflation. So when we invest, we believe that we are buying an asset that will generate a return over a period of time so the main reason we invest is really to to grow our money. And of course with with investing there are no guarantees and most investors are better suited for the long term, rather than the short term and when I say the long term I mean for retirement or purchasing a home. Something like that right, but there are no guarantees. So why do people choose to invest in addition to not at the exclusion of but in addition to savings right. And so the answer it has to do with the increase really of the cost of living over a period of time and this is known as inflation right and. And again we are really feeling the sting of that these days. So while savings is is good for the short term they typically don't generate the return beyond the level of inflation right. In fact, they often lag inflation. Excuse me so that can mean that our money is not just standing still and in our savings but it can also be losing its purchasing power over a period of time and so the goal of every investor should be to outpace inflation so that our money can generate a solid real return. And that's the return after inflation right so while most investments again don't guarantee. Don't make any guarantees they generally offer the potential to beat inflation and that's what we're looking for the kind of investments that will be inflation so saving and investing really go hand in hand and they can. And they both have their place in our financial management plan. Okay. Another important aspect of financial management is understanding our relationship with money. And so this particular slide. Ariel you can move to the next slide please. Okay thank you. So when we took when we talk about relationship with money. We're looking at and this is interesting that I want to preface this slide by saying that when we think of relationship. We often think of interactions with people right. Our life experiences teaches us that relationships can be healthy. It can be unhealthy and it can be toxic right and and usually when we think of it in terms of that we think about it when we are in relationship with each other. However, we really consider whether our relationship with money can have the same effect or impact or could be the same right. So why is having a good relationship with money important. It's important because it's really a part of our overall well being right. Being financially well includes having a relationship with money that makes us feel satisfied and content and not stressed out all the time you know. I've read so many reports that said money is the leading cause of stress for adults right and an unhealthy relationship with money can cause to. It can result in depression, divorce, bankruptcy, and so on right so what we want to do is now let's just look at the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationship. So under unhealthy relationship we see an example of that would be when you spend more money when you when you when you're spending money because it but when you're spending money it makes you feel guilty. Sorry. So, when you spend money it makes you feel guilty. When you spend money. You spend more than what you make. And then you have to borrow money to take care of your responsibilities on healthy relationship is when you spend money carelessly without giving any thought to how you're spending your money. And without even planning to spend your money. It's when you're overwhelmed with credit card debt. And, and although that is the case you just keep digging and digging yourself deeper and deeper and dead. It's when you feel that you have to spend your money in order to enjoy life and then you find yourself overspending, because you don't really have any control. You feel the need to spend as much as people around you. Right. And so that's that that has to do with keeping up with the Joneses and we'll talk more about that later. So when we're talking about a healthy relationship with money. An example of that would be when you monitor your spending and have control over it. So can you go to the next slide please thank you. And then you use money to achieve your goals. You save regularly even a little and have an emergency fun. You build assets and you minimize your expenses you use credit as leverage and not as a clutch right so in summary, unhealthy relationship can be detrimental right and an unhealthy relationship will more than likely land you in trouble and even cause you some English right but a healthy relationship with money means that earning and spending and managing it will will not cause financial difficulties for you and. And that we are reasonably content with our relationship, because we feel in control of it, and we feel that it's doing for us, what we desire for it to do. And the good thing is that when we can learn to focus on changing unhealthy money habits or relationships with money. We can reinforce a healthy one as well with our money right. So, where we are today is not necessarily where we have to be tomorrow, we can make choices to be in a healthy relationship with our money, and to effectively manage our money and the way that will help us to plan the kind of future for ourselves that we want to have. Okay. Let's go to slide 11. And so we're going to talk about values and how that impacts our relationship with money. And so our upbringing and experiences and values are often what determines the kind of relationship that we're going to have with our money. And so a question that I like for you to answer in the chat is, what are your values when it comes to your finances, and how do your values factor into your decisions around money. These questions are really important. So I would really urge you to, to answer that if you can't do it now, then just think about it and see what you come up with right. So our relationship with money is formed in many ways right it's formed by our observations and the messages that we see and hear that is related to money. And according to a PBS report, children can understand basic concepts about money, starting as early as three years old and by seven definitely. And I can attest to this because I used to do investing and financial training with young people in junior high in public school, and they were able to get those concepts and understand them right. But our early experiences with money, such as witnessing arguing in the household about money or being defined by money. It can trigger a range of emotions such as anxiety, resentment or feelings of elitism right that we may carry with us through life. And those experiences and those emotions can help shape and they usually do help shape our relationship with money. And based on our values. Many can make us money can make us feel insecure. It can make us feel secure to right. And as we provide not only for ourselves but for our family, and even our joy can come from the sacrifices that we make with money and money can also, you know, make us feel insecure when we don't have it right. When we don't have the things that we want. It can affect us negatively and it may encourage some envy or maybe even corruption or maybe even some resentment toward those who may have a little more than we do. And it can also position us to be overly socially competitive right by feeling the need to really keep up with the Joneses. I had a pastor that and I love the way he put this when he talked about keeping up with the Joneses. And he says we spend money that we don't have to impress people that we don't even like right so given people a full sense of impression of ourselves, and it only serves to keep us deep in debt and causes us to, to keep less of what we earn right. So, let's let's be real about our money at least to ourselves and let's respond to what we have accordingly right. So, let's see. I think we can go to the next slide. Okay. So, when we have a healthy relationship with our money we are willing to be honest with ourselves and to fully understand our financial position right so some of us don't want to know what our financial position is really because we have a, a, a, although we have a good sense of it. We really don't want to look at the true reality of where we stand, because we may not be in such a good place right. Sometimes we ignore the financial numbers, which really tells us about our financial well being. And so it's important to know our numbers. And when we talk about knowing our numbers, we're talking about knowing your cash flow we talked about that your work, your FICO score, your credit utilization and your income to debt ratio right. And so, when we're talking about cash flow we can go to the next slide. This is simply, we're going to go. Yes, thank you. So we're going to go to, so we're talking about when we talk about cash flow. Again we're talking about money coming in and out, not only of our household but out of our business as well right for month to month. And whatever's left over is our net cash flow just like on the budget sheet right. So we look at what's coming in and we look at what's going on and we look at what's what's left over. And if you have a business the best way to keep track of your cash flow in your business is to run a cash flow report. And this report shows the cash you receive, and the cash paid out to show your, your, your businesses cash position at the end of every month. It's not going to be a need for a business not only to do this at the end of every month, but to keep track of your cash flow on a weekly basis or even on a daily basis to really stay on top of it and to track it to help you to make day to day decisions right. Next slide is our net worth. And this is the combination of what you own your assets and what you owe, which are your liabilities. Right. And so, in our financial counseling sessions, we use a balance sheet to help clients to determine their network. And so as you see in this graphic here it reflects an unbalanced scale. And in this case the person has more assets than liabilities which is where we should all strive to be right, we want to have more assets than our liability. So, our network is just the value of all of our assets minus the total of all of our liability so knowing this number again can help us to make financial decisions about our future and about our financial stability. Right. It's helpful to help us to stay on track. And I'll just talk about briefly just ways that we can increase our network on that work we can pay off our debt, our credit card debt. This is the best way to grow our assets right and increase our network. Because it will eliminate all of those high interest credit card debts and loans that we have right. Another way is to build an emergency fund. This is going to also help us to grow our assets and increase our network because creating an emergency fund is going to help us to stay financially afloat without having to rely on other money. And especially high interest accumulating high interest debt from credit cards or expensive personal loans when we have an emergency fund, we can go to that to that fund to pay for the emergency as opposed to putting it again on a high interest credit card. Or take out a personal loan for that. And we know the interest rate today on both are extremely high right so we want to stay away from that. And then another way is to consider maxing out maxing out our retirement contributions taking advantage of these accounts and keeping as much invested in our retirement as possible especially when your employee, your employer is contributing. You want to at least max out on your specific contributions and another way is paying off your student loans and invest as well okay paying off your student loans and get into whatever investment opportunities you can. The next one is your FICO score we know that this is an important number because it helped lenders to assess how well you manage your financial obligations and this number is determined by credit agencies based on the information from my credit report. And it's made up of five different components, 35% is based on our payment history. So that's why we want to make sure that we pay as much as we can, and always pay on time, 30% is our total amount that is old, and that is reflective of our debt to credit ratio and or credit utilization ratio. They're both the same but this is a reflection of how much credit we are using for example, if you have $2,000 and outstanding debt, but you have $10,000 and available credit line right. That's only a 20% debt to credit ratio or credit utilization ratio, you divide the, the, the 20 the 2000 by by 10,000, and you get the percentage right, and we will show you more about that toward the end but using. This in mind that when you are using your available credit, if you use more than 30% of your available credit limit, it is going to cause a reduction in your FICO score is going to decrease it right. So whenever you're using your credit, try to use less than 30% of it so that you can get the maximum FICO score right, and we know that our FICO score ranges from 300 to 850. And this is really an important number for our financial success right so if you have a very good to excellent score it can open up doors to loans at the best rates. You can get higher credit limits, you can it can open you up to drop opportunities it can give you access to additional credit for major purchases. And so your credit worthiness is an advantage to you and it can save you thousands and thousands of dollars in the end credit utilization ratio that's what we just spoke about. So again, your total credit utilization is the sum of all of your balances divided by the sum of your credit card limits, and you again want to keep it below 30% below 30% because anything above will negatively affected. Okay, so it's the 800 which is your balance in your 4000 that's your credit limit so you're using 20% and vice versa, you would be using for 40% in the other example, right. So, let's go on to the next slide. And here we talk about. Let's see, let's talk about ways to manage our assets ways to manage our assets. Okay, there was another slide in there and didn't see that one. Okay. So here's a deck to income ratio, which is the same as the credit utilization so that side didn't necessarily have to be in there so forgive me for that. So we're going to go to ways to manage assets and there are several ways. First of all, identify your assets know what your assets are. You know, keep them written in the book keep them on a spreadsheet know how to access access them immediately when you need to assign value to your assets what are your value your what are the what are the values. That your assets carry at this point and even look at an appreciation value as well. Ensure and or protect your assets you don't want anything to get in the way of, of you losing your assets or it not being protected so that's important that you do that. Understand your assets and your taxes right your liability and create a plan to leverage your assets so when we when we manage assets well. We can we can use it to accumulate more assets right which will bring us greater value and add to our growth portfolio right now. Expanding access assets, expanding assets is important right and we can expand it. For instance, if you are really wanting to put $20,000 to work investing in real estate right. You can put all of that in one basket but we've learned right how important it is to diversify right so we could instead use the $20,000 put 20% down on five different properties of the same value. And at the same time $10,000 profit per house but we can actually use again that $20,000 to leverage that money and purchase more assets right and so this is just something to think about when you are considering. Managing your assets not considering hopefully you will right but when you're considering creating a plan to manage your assets and again this is a way for you to leverage your assets use what you have and capitalize on it so that it can create more assets for you. Okay. And then the other slide is ways to manage your liabilities and these are just several ways that we already discussed, but minimizing our liabilities simply means increasing our numbers right making sure that our numbers are financial numbers are working for us. So, we want to increase our cash flow, our FICO score and network, and, and we want to be in a position to increase our assets so all around if we are managing our liabilities. Effectively it's going to be a win-win situation, and it's going to create the road of financial stability and wealth for us right. So the one point I do want to emphasize here is for, I would, I would encourage you to seek the advice and help from a financial counselor right we're here to support you and to help you to develop strategies for savings, increasing your FICO score, paying down your debt, addressing collection accounts and your student loan debt, and all of this is at no cost to you. We also have community partners who we can refer you to who also free of charge will support you in other ways such as our partnership with the foundation for financial planning where you can meet with a certified financial planner to discuss investment opportunities, retirement planning, insurance, taxes, estate planning, and etc. We also have a partnership with the New York legal assistant group and they help our clients to navigate consumer debt collection accounts and especially when it's in civil court. So, you know, speaking with the financial counselor can can really benefit you and we can definitely help support you to support you on your journey to financial freedom or financial stability whatever the goal is for you is different for everyone. So, I think that is it for us. I'm going to turn it over to Arielle at this point. Arielle, you can take it away. Thank you so much, Arlene. It was really fantastic. We have here just a few highlights of the various consumer protection and consumer support agencies that are available to you as residents of New York City. There is the statewide, the Department of Financial Services, there is the federal FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has tons of resources that are extremely useful. And then of course we have the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection where I work and restoration where Arlene works. One thing I want to highlight here is the Financial Empowerment Centers which Arlene mentioned a number of times. These centers offer free professional, confidential and one-on-one financial counseling to anyone who is 18 or older and lives or works in New York City. There's no income restrictions. There's no immigration status restrictions. We have services both in person and over the phone. We have over 30 sites right now operating across the city. So if you want that face-to-face interaction that can be so helpful, there's lots of options to do that. And collectively, over time, we've helped New Yorkers reduce their debt by, I actually believe this is almost at 100 million right now if it hasn't already passed that and build more than 11 million in savings. So as you can see, you can schedule an appointment by going to nyc.gov slash talkmoney and then you click the book and appointment button. Or if you're more comfortable scheduling via the phone, you can call 311 and schedule that way. Just say that you're looking for financial counseling. Thank you so much. We do have time for just a few minutes for questions now. One thing I do want to highlight is Erlene's contact information. Erlene is one of our most experienced managers and counselors. If you would like to meet with Erlene specifically, you can give her a call or email here. But because Erlene works for Bedford-Seifers in Restoration, you know, their services are only in Brooklyn. So we have, you know, other services across the city as well. So if you have any questions, you can feel free to put those in the Q&A. I answered one already. Erlene, I guess, do you have any regarding the question that was asked? Do you have any particular advice on managing a budget with multiple streams of income? I personally will say is, you know, obviously a budget with multiple streams of income or with variable income month to month is definitely more complex than a budget where, you know, if you have a salary job where you're getting a consistent amount every month, but it's still really helpful to create kind of a budget perhaps like with several ranges. So, you know, if you know that the there's like a lower limit to how much you might make in a month and upper limit based on say how many tips you get or how many gigs you have that month, you know, adjusting kind of having several different versions of that budget with the same items is one way that you can, you know, manage that kind of variability or multiple sources. Thanks so much, Ariel. I while we're waiting for any last questions to come in. I'm wondering if I can just ask you to read out the other answer you gave about the other resources your agencies providing just for the benefit of folks who might be viewing the webinar at a later time. Absolutely. So there was a question asked about tax preparation and about advocating for untimely pay or rather against untimely pay. So there are, I'm, I do not work in the Office of Labor Policy, but there are a number of laws that are New York City specific regarding, you know, what your, your pay schedule has to be how quickly you can be paid, or you have to be paid after particularly a freelance gig. I put the link in the Q&A but I'll put it in the chat as well. If you search, if you're watching this and you don't have the chat, you can just search DCWP, that's the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and Labor, or DCWP and taxes, and those will bring you to the agency pages on those topics. And what I will say is that they're, the laws are very industry specific so depending on what kind of workplace you work at, the rules around timely pay around, you know, at what kind of threshold of freelance gig, certain kinds of protections kick in on will vary. So I definitely recommend looking at those web pages to figure out what applies for your specific, you know, employment situation. That's really terrific and because we are just about a month out from the tax filing deadline for those of you who are still looking to fire your taxes, please do check out DCWP's free resources for helping many New Yorkers prepare and file their taxes. You may be eligible so we really encourage you to check that out. Next thing I'll also add about taxes, the New York City specific free tax program, the income, there is an income cut off, unlike the financial empowerment centers. I believe that cut off is $56,000 a year. But if you make up to $73,000 a year. You will be eligible for the IRS's free tax prep program. That's kind of unlike these private tax prep quote unquote free tax prep applications that you know companies. I probably shouldn't say any specific names but certain companies advertises free that actually hit you with fees after you like enter all your information. So if you make up to $73,000 a year, there are fully free publicly available programs for you. You know, if only only use those other private companies if you make over that limit. That's really helpful advice thank you and we do encourage everyone to to check out both of those links and I'm seeing no additional questions in the q amp a and we're just over. One PM cut off time so I would like to thank both Ariel and early so very much for putting together this really helpful and informative webinar. And for everyone who has joined us today we really hope you've been able to take some helpful information away from this session, and that you will be able to take advantage of the resources and services from the financial centers as well as some of the other offerings by the Department of Consumer Worker Protection and their partners. So thank you very much, everyone for attending today. As always feel free to contact the Office of Nightlife via email or social media. That's nightlifeimedia.nyc.gov or at NYC nightlife gov on social media. We will leave the meeting up just for another couple of minutes for you to be able to grab any links or other items from the chat that you may need. So, thank you very much everyone and have a wonderful day. Thank you all take care. Bye bye.