 employment applications, housing rental options, and even now cell phone contracts. Next slide, please. So talking a little bit about your credit report, maybe like a hands up or showing if anyone has actually accessed their credit reports before, you know, just maybe like a hands up. So there are three credit reporting agencies. And I'm going to give you the names and the contact information for those. So we do have Equifax, and I'm going to have my co-worker put up the information, Experian and TransUnion. Now you might be wondering like what is a credit report? So like the name implies, your credit report tracks your credit activity. Now there are several types of credit, including credit cards, store cards, personal loans, car loans, mortgages, student loans, and lines of credit. Now your credit report does not generally show the payment history for non-credit expenses, such as utilities, insurance, and medical bills, unless they go unpaid and are sent to a collection agency. Now having said that, currently there is a program that's called Boost, and it's something that's done by the Experian Credit Reporting Agency. And you are able to, in certain circumstances, register like your credit card or your debit card if you're able to show that you're having like a utility expense taken out, you know, on a monthly basis. And if you go online, it can tell you a little bit more about the Experian Boost program that they have. And again, that's only for Experian for right now. Now credit reports are built and maintained by these three credit bureaus. And as I mentioned earlier, there's three major credit bureaus in the U.S., and again that's Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Now the creditors usually report to them monthly, and the data is also obtained from court records. Now since credit bureaus do not always collect the same information, your three credit reports can be different. So they could potentially report different information. So that's why I definitely recommend to my clients, you're going to want to make sure that you pull bureaus from all three of the reporting agencies to compare the information. Now the credit bureaus sell your reports to interested parties such as creditors, insurance companies, employers, and landlords who use the information to decide whether to lend or do business with you. Now once you actually request your credit reports, and in addition to contacting the credit bureaus directly from the information that we gave you earlier, you can also use this phone number to order a credit report. So for example, if you may not have access to the internet, you can also order a credit report by calling 888-397-3742. Now once you do get a copy of your credit report, the credit reports are typically divided into four sections. So if you're looking typically at the credit report, the first section is typically going to contain your personal information. So this is going to include things like your name, current and former addresses, and sometimes it may even have your employment history. Now keep in mind I've seen on people's credit reports that it may not have their most up-to-date employer, and that's because they may not have applied for credit recently because that's typically how the credit bureaus are able to update information, especially if you've recently applied for credit, and you put down your current employer on the credit application. Now the majority of your credit report is actually dedicated to the history of handling credit. So this is typically what we call trade lines, and what that will include, it will include things like the names of your creditors, the date the accounts were open, credit limits and original balances, and the balances and the payment history typically show for about 24 to 36 months, and they actually will give you the status of your accounts as well. And during the coaching session that you have with a smart money coach, we're going to actually have access to pulling one of your credit bureaus through experience. Now the third section of the credit report is what we call public record section, and this is where typically there's going to be, if you have any public records that might be related to your credit worthiness. Now this would be things such as if somebody had a lien against them, if you've maybe had a bankruptcy or filed bankruptcy, repossessions, judgments and foreclosures. So this is typically where you don't want to see anything under a public record section, because if there is anything listed then that's definitely something that you want to investigate further. Now the last part of the credit report has to do with an inquiry section, and this lists anyone who has access your credit report. So there's actually two types of inquiries. There's what we call a hard inquiry, and this is one that results from an application or a transaction that's initiated by you. So that means, for example, if you're applying for a new credit card, that's going to generate a hard inquiry on your credit report. Now a soft inquiry, on the other hand, occurs when you pull your credit report yourself, or it's checked for a reason not related to credit applications. And the only person that can see the soft inquiries on your credit report is you. So the other thing is, this would mean if you're pulling your own credit reports online and when we're pulling your credit report during the smart money coaching session, it does not impact your credit score because you're pulling it for educational purposes. One of the other things that I wanted to also just mention about the credit reports and when you pull copies of your credit reports, there are a couple of things that you can add to your credit report. So for example, clients can add what you call a fraud alert. And basically, if you put a fraud alert on your credit report, now this means that companies that you apply for credit have to identify you before granting any new sort of credit. So this means they would typically call you to verify in fact that it is you applying for this credit. Now, all you have to do to put a fraud alert on your credit report is you just have to contact one of the major credit bureaus, and they would actually notify the other two reporting agencies. Now it's free to put a fraud alert on your credit report, and it stays on there for one year. Now as an alternative to a fraud alert, you can also put a credit freeze on your credit report. Now a credit freeze, typically it's going to limit the access to even yourself. So you won't even be able to access your credit reports either. So you wouldn't be able to open up any accounts until you lift the freeze. And in this circumstance, if you wanted to put a freeze on your credit report, you would in this circumstance have to contact all three of the credit bureaus. And then once you do contact them to put a freeze on your credit report, you typically are going to get a pin or a password, and you would need that each time you want to lift the freeze and place it back on your credit report. Now credit freezes typically last until you lift it off. And one of the things that I do tell my clients is if we are going to attempt to pull your credit report and you have some sort of a credit freeze on it, I typically let the clients know if it's possible for them to temporarily lift the freeze so that I will have access to pulling their credit report during that time and then they can put the freeze back on so that again your credit would be frozen at that time. Do we have any questions yet before I go on to the next slide? No questions yet. Okay. Next slide please. So it's important to know that negative information like things like missed payments or collection accounts, they're not going to stay on the credit report forever. So most negative information like lawsuits, judgments, leans, foreclosures, in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, if you completed and late payments remain on your credit report for about seven years. So I would say seven years. And if you file for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, that's going to remain on your credit report from 10 years from the date that you filed the bankruptcy. So it's a little bit different between the Chapter 13 and the Chapter 7. So they usually will take it off in seven for the Chapter 13 if you complete it. Whereas if you file the Chapter 7, it can remain on there typically for 10 years. Now when it comes to collection accounts, the longest it can stay on your record would be from the first date of the first delinquency with the original creditor. Now no matter how many times the collection account passes from one agency to the next, because a lot of the time collection agencies may sell your account back and forth, the delinquency date remains the same. And therefore the seven-year time frame does as well. Now positive information can be reported indefinitely as long as your account is still open. Otherwise a positive account that was closed, for example, if you purchased and had a car loan and you paid it off without ever missing a payment, is typically going to remain on your credit report from 10 years from the date it was closed. Now the most popular credit scoring models emphasize recent payment information. So typically older negative information won't affect you as much as what has been happening recently. So the more recent a late payment is, the higher weight it's going to carry on your credit score compared to let's say if you missed a payment from seven years ago. The FICO score usually emphasizes the last two years of your payment history. Next slide. So let's talk a little bit about credit scoring. So you may wonder, well, what is a credit score? All it is is a numeric summary of information in your credit report. So it's formulated to predict your risk or the likelihood you will pay back what you borrowed and to make sure that you've stuck to your contract like an apartment lease agreement. Now the most commonly used scoring model is the FICO score and that stands for the fair Isaac and company score and the range for scores range from 300 to 850. Now there's also the possibility of not having a FICO score and that's usually for someone who has not made any payments on any open and active accounts for an extended period of time or someone who hasn't applied for credit at all. Now most lenders do use this FICO score when approving for credit and besides the FICO score there are other models out there like the Vantage score and that's usually I think with credit karma uses for example. So if a lot of you maybe like register and have credit karma that monitors your credit you may see something like what they use the Vantage score. So now the higher your credit score the less risk to the lender so generally people with higher credit scores will have an easier time getting approved for credit and usually get better interest rates. Now you may ask well what's a good credit score so there really is no standard for what constitutes a good credit score but usually once you get into about a 620 that's what's considered to be a good score and the national average right now is about 690 and typically you're going to get the best interest rates if you have a score of 760 or higher. Now looking at ways of how your FICO score is calculated so and this is something you know that we talk about also during your coaching session. So the main factor in determining your FICO score is your payment history that's about 35% they look at your payment history. So making your payments on time is going to boost your score. Now if you make a late payment your score is going to take a hit so the more recent frequent and severe the lateness the lower your score and it's going to impact your your credit score. Now collection accounts and legal actions have a more serious negative impact so as I talked about earlier some of the things that stay on your credit report so like filing a bankruptcy is typically going to have the most impact on your credit score but again even if you filed for bankruptcy you can still re-establish credit and still improve your credit score so filing for bankruptcy is not the end of the world. Now another large chunk of determining factor in your FICO score is the amounts owed. So what that means is if you carry large balances on things like personal loans and revolving debt like credit cards meaning that if you're close to your limits on those accounts that would be potentially impacting your credit score. So if you have open accounts like credit cards and personal loans keeping your balances very low in comparison with your credit limit is definitely what you want to do and what they recommend I would say is no more than 30 percent of your balance in relation to your credit limit is what you should carry and if somebody has no credit and they're just starting to establish credit I would even recommend less. So less is always more and again that accounts for about 30 percent of your credit score. Now a smaller portion of your FICO score has to do with the length of your credit history so the longer you've had accounts the better and this is where I don't recommend clients close accounts especially if you had an account open you know for a long period of time so it's not recommended that you close the account and even if you're not using the account I do recommend to my clients that you make a charge every now and then so that way you keep the the credit history going because the other thing is is if you don't use an account for maybe several months the credit company may decide to close your account due to inactivity and again I'm not saying and again I'm not saying that's going to happen and I can't tell you at what point it may if you don't make a charge so I would just recommend like every now and then making a purchase and then paying it off you know every month. About 10 percent of your credit score has to do with new credit so this factor looks at the number and proportion of recently opened accounts and the number of increase that you had. So many increase on your credit report may lower your credit score so if you were trying to open up or you opened up a lot of accounts at the same time potentially this could negatively impact your credit score but for things if you apply for like a mortgage or let's say an auto loan that occur within a 45 day period it's only considered to be one inquiry for scoring purposes and the reason that is is because if you apply for a mortgage or let's say an auto loan they may actually pull your credit report from several companies to try to get you the best interest rate possible but again the credit bureau is only going to look at that as one one inquiry for scoring purposes again if you do that within a 45 day period and accessing your own credit report does not impact your credit score nor do inquiries for pre-approval offers so you may see like on your credit report when you pull it you may see soft inquiries where companies have accessed your credit report to see if they're going to offer you credit or if you're credit worthy so again these types of inquiries are not going to impact your credit score and in addition if we when we pull your credit report during a coaching session that also is not going to impact your credit score and if you pull yours on your own as well so if you have ever as I mentioned received you know like a pre-approval offer in the mail or via email that's only going to create a soft inquiry on your credit report now the other 10 percent of your FICO score has to do with the types of credit that you have open so they may look to see if you have like a variety of of accounts so do you have credit cards retail accounts maybe auto loans mortgage so having different types of credit can also help to boost your credit score now I'm not recommending that somebody go out and just get yourself an auto loan or an installment loan just to have a loan you know that's not something that I would typically recommend especially if it's not something you necessarily need unless you're maybe like trying to establish credit or maybe like for another purpose so we're going to look at you know they're going to look at the overall makeup of the different types of credit that you have and again that's going to account for typically about 10 percent of your FICO score so let's pause here for a minute any questions that we might have in the chat so far somebody with their hand raised Jen do you want to mute yourself and ask your question okay can you hear me yeah great hi thanks for being here this has been very informative um my question is is I recently am trying to re-establish my credit I paid off a bunch of bad debt and my credit score obviously dropped and my question is is I just recently got a couple of credit cards so I could start re-establishing my credit and I gotta I used my credit card a lot I didn't realize the 30% um issue but um they even though I paid it before my time uh that that it was due and I paid it in full um they dropped my score 20 points how do I rebuild that and how long does that take to come back because I wasn't late on my payments and if my bill wasn't even due yet so that was a big blow yeah and Howard we can't hear you can you hear me now yeah okay so when you applied or got these credit cards because you paid off old debts are these secured accounts secure credit cards I have one secured and one unsecured okay and so one of the things as you just mentioned that you want to look at as far as trying to rebuild the credit after paying you know past your old debts you definitely want to make sure that you're making your payments on time with these new accounts and typically what I've seen with my clients is on time payment history for about three to six months you will start seeing an increase in your score you know basically time is the most important thing and you know as I mentioned making sure that you're not charging up to the max you know um on your credit card because that potentially is going to lower your credit score so you know as I mentioned keeping it at 30% or less even though you're paying it off you know before the before the statement is due it may be that just at that moment they're evaluating your credit score and it looks like you may have a larger balance and closer to your you know credit limit so again secured credit cards is a good way to establish and improve your credit score and I'll talk a little bit more about um in a few slides coming up about other ways to help you either establish or you know days to start bringing up your credit score so I'm not sure does that answer your question well it answers part of it but the other part is do you know how I mean 20 points is a big hit considering I wasn't late and it was only in the middle of the month um so once again I paid it in full but do you know how long it takes for that 20 points to re-establish because that's huge hit yeah I mean I would probably myself have to take a look at the credit report so I wouldn't necessarily want to make any guesses because I would want to look specifically at the credit report and see because again I would kind of look at you know where you were at previously when you got a credit score and then in between what may have happened to like lower your credit score it could be did you apply for any maybe new credit like during the time you last got your score versus when you're getting your score now no not at all I've just had my new credit cards for like two to three months and I just was using them to build my credit and then all of a sudden I had maybe I got close to my limit but again it was only I mean it's due on the 25th it was only the 9th of the month and then I saw credit karma showed me that it went down 20 points I was not late on any of my payments and it was the middle of the month so I paid it off immediately I mean I was that was my intention anyway but I paid it off immediately but the hit was was shocking yeah and again that's credit karma so they have their own scoring model because I believe they use advantage so I really can't talk too much about experience it also did the 20 yeah yeah I mean based on what you're telling me the only thing that I could probably think of is that most likely there was a point where you are approaching your credit limits or getting close to them and you know as I mentioned that's about 30 percent of your score so you know moving forward my recommendation would be is just be mindful of how much you're carrying at any time you know on your credit cards and I think hopefully that should you know bring the score back up assuming that you're making your payments on time moving forward right again do you know how long it takes or is that indicative to each individual person I think it's going to be indicative but I would say I would say give it about three months okay thank you that's a big ouch but thank you yeah thank you doctor okay hello yeah can you hear me okay yeah I was just going to add that yeah Jen everything that Howard stated is correct but one of the things we have to remember is that the reporting agencies they report every 30 days so they have a reporting cycle that they usually go by so you're not going to see any changes it's going to take at least at the very least a month to see any changes up or down on your credit report so as Howard mentioned I would probably just give it a little bit of time maybe a month or two to see the changes but the the the most important thing that you can do for yourself is continue to make your payments on time and keep your your your usage down to the 30% as you mentioned and that's probably the quickest way for you to actually improve your credit score oh thank you very much I appreciate your input absolutely um next slide Leah please so something we may have you know talked a little bit about before but improving your FICO score now the score changes with credit activity not only month to month but each day so if you're not satisfied with the way it looks today you can change it by following credit wise actions and making them have it so here's some ways to help your credit score this goes without saying but always pay you know on time and as I talked about earlier your payment history makes up the largest chunk of your credit score so making your payments on time is extremely important pay down your existing debt so even if you've never missed a payment a large debt load will lower your score so you want to kind of explore ways you can lower your interest rates and free up cash to make more than the minimum payments so that you're not carrying large balances another way is to avoid taking on additional debt so besides paying down existing debt you want to make an effort to not take on more debt in the future so I would say for revolving credit ideally you should not charge more than you can pay off in full the next month but at the very least try to keep the balance well under they say half of the credit limit but I'm going to say even less than that so about 30% or less and also you want to check your credit report for errors because a lot of the times your report may contain score lowering errors so check your credit report from the three bureaus at least annually and typically before you used to be able to pull it free once every 12 months but now due to the pandemic if you wanted to pull it and again I don't recommend it you could actually pull it weekly if you wanted to free of charge now they're not required to provide you free of charge a credit score so if you wanted to get a credit score there's going to be an additional fee that they would charge for asking for a credit score now if you notice any errors on your credit reports you are able to dispute it directly online if you pull your credit reports online or you can also send dispute by mail or by phone you can do it as well I recommend you go to annualcreditreport.com so if you want to jot that down annualcreditreport.com that's the website that I recommend to all my clients you know pulling their credit reports and what's going to happen it's going to ask you what reports do you want to pull from so I would recommend checking all three of them and you're going to have to go through an identification process so they are going to ask security questions so in order for you to get access to it you're going to have to answer those questions correctly otherwise if they're not able to verify your identity then you are going to have to most likely request it by mail and they're going to request that you send in certain identifying information such as your ID or other types of identification that they would let you know at that time and again there are also you know third parties like credit karma that actually provide their own credit report for free for individuals who actually subscribe to that agency and there are other things like personally for myself if you have I know for example AAA they also have their own program where you can sign up for that where you will actually get notices from them and you can access it and it's kind of like a credit monitoring so if they do notice any sort of new activity you will get notified so you know if you do like I said belong to AAA I know that they also have like a credit monitoring that you could subscribe to you know in addition like I said to places that a lot of you probably already subscribed to like credit karma and things like that and as I mentioned earlier keeping your old accounts active so again if you have an account maybe that you haven't used for an extended period of time you know making a charge on it to keep the activity going is definitely recommended again I don't recommend closing the account even if you're not using it because if you close it it's going to stop your credit history and your trade line at that point that you close it so yeah make a charge on an account that you may not have been using for an extended period of time also it's a good idea to limit your balance transfers so even though transferring balances let's say to a teaser rate and it could be an effective way to get out of debt but it also could negatively impact your credit score because typically what will happen is number one you're opening up a new account so you're applying for a new account which is going to cause a hard inquiry on your credit report typically you're going to see about three to five points lower for your credit score for opening up a new account and typically when someone is trying to transfer balances from credit cards they're going to usually try to transfer the maximum that they're given for credit so what that means they're going to be probably close to or at their credit limit when they open up this new account to try to get you know as much transferred over as possible so that's something you want to just kind of be mindful of you know doing balance transfers although it could inevitably save you on interest it could potentially still impact the credit score avoid you know excess credit applications so again when you apply for credit your score will decrease just a bit typically I've seen about three to five points and if you're applying for credit frequently a creditor can see that as a sign that someone is needing to rely on credit to pay their bills so again you know not applying for too many credit applications and last but not least you have to be patient so one of the biggest factors in credit is time so you may feel like credit mistakes are going to haunt you forever but remember your payment history from the past two years is much more important than what happened before that so keep in mind that most negative information is removed from your credit report after seven years typically again with the exception of a chapter seven bankruptcy and potentially it could be if you have a judgment and that could be renewed for an additional 10 years so those are some ways to improve your FICO score so for those of you who maybe have had some challenges with your credit score these are some suggestions that you can look at to improve the FICO score next slide one of the other things that I see for people who are looking to maybe establish credit who have never had credit before or they're looking to re-establish credit one of the participants mentioned you know that they were looking to re-establish their credit so there are steps that you can take to establish or re-establish your credit so a quick fix to any damage report is to pay off your old debts so pay in full make payment arrangements offer a settlement and a settlement a lump sum payment that will satisfy the debt but you're paying less than the amount that you owed typically it's going to look better on your credit report for paying an old debt or a collection especially if you're looking for things like applying for an apartment rental because they're going to look at that and they're going to see that you at least attempted to pay the debt versus leaving it unpaid you also want to look at applying for a secured credit card so this is one way to eliminate the risk of a lender's willingness for you to establish an account with them so unlike with a regular credit card a secured credit card requires you to make a deposit with the creditor which they will keep in the event that you stop making payments now with a secured credit card it's typically easier for you to get one of these accounts than a regular credit card now the credit limits on these secured cards are usually low and the fees on them can be high so it's definitely something you want to research when you're looking at secured credit cards you want to look at do they charge me an annual fee what are they requesting for an upfront deposit and another thing that I recommend is if you currently have a bank that you're working with check with them to see if they do offer secured credit cards because a lot of the times you already have a relationship established with that bank there's also another good website you want to put this in the chat box it's nerd wallet and nerd wallet is another good resource you can go on there and they will have a tab for secured credit cards that you can look at and it gives some good secured credit cards to also look at you know a lot of my clients have had a lot of success in getting secured credit cards from that website so I would say nerd wallet would be another good resource some other ways to help establish or re-establish credit is to ask for a family member or friend to cosign for you make sure though they have a good credit history now it's also important to be careful because with this type of an arrangement you know if this person would make late payments it's going to reflect poorly on your cosigners report as well so that's something you want to be careful about is cosigning the other thing is sometimes you can be an authorized user on someone's account so what that would mean for example my mother has an account and she's going to put me on her account as an authorized user so when I pull up my credit report I'm going to be able to see that on my credit report but I'm not responsible for making the payments but it will sometimes help to establish or improve your credit score but again you have to really be confident that this person is going to not only make payments on time but they're not carrying large balances on the account that they put you on as an authorized user and again many credit reports may contain mistakes so that's why you want to review them at least annually to make sure that all the information that's on your credit reports is accurate and that's where disputing any sort of mistakes is going to be very important. Next slide but I think we might have had a question I saw something pop up in the chat box. Akeel's been answering the questions in the chat. Oh thank you Akeel. Now have any of you come across like an ad online or an advertisement on tv or even gotten like a personal email saying the company can increase your credit score by lots of points now if these advertisements seem too good to be true it probably are so these companies that you see they claim to repair consumer's credit reports but they often charge high fees. Now typically they go the way they go about doing this is they may dispute any sort of negative information on your credit report even though it may be accurate information so once the information is disputed if the credit bureau is unable to investigate the claim within 30 days the information will get removed temporarily. Now this rarely works since they are generally able to respond in time to address the dispute now even if the information is removed due to a backlog of requests it will be re-reported by the creditor or it could be at a later date so you really want to be cautious of you know these places that say we can improve your credit score and then another way that I've seen that these companies work is they sometimes can issue consumers a new identity and this is something that I you know just had found some information about so they may issue consumers a new identity with a tax identification number to use like a social security number this is illegal so this is something that I heard you know was a new thing by trying to issue consumers a new identity now there really is no legal way to remove accurate and timely information from a credit report now I recommend it's better to take steps yourself to dispute any incorrect or outdated information or that's why we're here as financial coaches to assist you and guide you through the dispute process and again you can do it on your own free of charge so you don't need to go to the company to do it for you you can do it on your own Howard you're kind of fading in and out okay is this better yes so as I was mentioning it's always better to dispute something yourself or get the advice of a financial coach because it is free of charge to make disputes as opposed to going to a company that's going to say you know we can do it for you we can boost your score all these points because again these companies are typically not really reputable or they're going to charge high fees and also I would recommend you look at the better business website because you may find that they have a lot of complaints levied against them so be aware of these credit credit repair places that say they can repair your credit next slide so learning to manage your money is really vital so by designing a realistic spending plan or a budget and this is something that we work with you know with clients during a coaching session you will be able to avoid using credit to supplement your income now this is going to inevitably reduce your credit score even if you're making your payments on time so you really want to you know stay clear of having a reliant credit card to pay your expenses on a monthly basis now since so much of your score is based on your payment history part of every good money management system is knowing when your bills are due and never making late payments now if you have excess cash and I know that may be difficult for a lot of us it really should be used to try to make good on paying off old debts now if there's not enough money to pay the debt in full with your current income and expenses see if you can cut down on some of your spending or increase your income because those are definitely some ways to help look at you know balancing your budget and again you know those are things that we we typically recommend during a coaching session if we're looking at a situation where let's say you're coming up with a deficit every month meaning that you're spending more than what you're making we really want to have you look at your budget or spending plan and see where you might be able to make some reductions in expenses how are you cutting out quite a bit now is that better yeah okay so yeah so maybe working with your financial coach and looking at areas where you might be able to cut down on some of your expenses or looking at are there ways to increase my income work overtime supplement my income maybe with a part-time job so these are some other ways that you can look to better manage your money also having a healthy money management plan can include things like emergency savings account and typically what we recommend is three to six months worth of your essential living expenses is recommended that you save for emergency so that way if you have a crisis you you know lose your job you become sick and you're not able to have a source of income coming in instead of using a credit card or taking out a loan which would inevitably lower your credit score you would have this emergency all back on can you repeat that because you cut out and we miss it that last bit of your last sentence about saving for emergencies okay so when you're saving for emergencies we definitely recommend trying to look at what your essential living expenses are my rents my utilities my groceries and you really want to work towards a goal of having at least three to six months saved for emergencies because if something was to happen like you lost your job or you got sick and you couldn't put it work you want to know that you could at least cover those essential expenses things like rent utilities groceries for a minimum of three to six months so you don't have to rely on taking out a credit card or a loan or you know having to go to let's say like a payday loan company that charges really high interest rates or even I've seen some clients get a title loan on their paid-off vehicle so you know having a savings for emergencies is definitely something if you don't have you really want to work towards um work towards um having that next slide now how many of us track our expenses a lot of us may go to the ATM take $40 out fast cash from the ATM and it disappears really quickly we don't really keep track of where it's going so tracking expenses is really important because it can provide an understanding of where your money is going each month so in the beginning what I would recommend is spend as normal and you can then look at your tracking at a later date and make adjustments as needed so there are some ways to kind of like effectively you know track your expenses and I recommend you may want to kind of consider these options but again you want to look at the one that's going to work best for you so that that way you keep utilizing that way um to keep tracking your expenses one of the ways that you can track your expenses and this may be old school but a lot of you know clients still do this where I recommend maybe having a notebook and just writing every purchase down that you've made keep receipts for like any purchases that you make you can maybe put them in an envelope and you know tally them up at the end of the month typically what I like to do is organize my receipts so I may have different envelopes for different things also one of the other things that I found that's a good thing is you know when you go to the ATM and you're pulling money out of the ATM we may not necessarily know where that money is going to so what I've done in the past and other people have done is maybe you know ask for the receipt when you're pulling money out of the ATM and just physically write on the ATM what you're using that $20 for and then put it aside and that's going to be another good way to kind of track your ATM withdrawals or you know if you're using a debit card or a credit card those are awesome. Hey man. Howard I can't we can't hear you if you could just face your microphone then it usually works. I am doing that okay so I'll try the best I can now there's also like online computer tracking programs that some people are currently using so these may be things like mints maybe a program I've heard that clients use now a lot of banks and credit unions they also have their own computer software tracking programs so if this is something that you want to look at you may want to look at online when you're doing online banking with your financial institution and see if they have any tools that will maybe assist you to track your monthly expenses so that would also be something else that I would recommend that you look at as well and this could be another way to more effectively track your monthly expenses. Next slide now it goes without saying but living within your means it seems like the most common sense idea to do but you know this can be actually challenging now increasing your income is another way to kind of increase your cash flow but it's usually the one we have the least amount of control over now things you can do to maybe look at increasing your income working overtime maybe getting a part-time job if that's possible apply for a promotion or maybe selling some assets that you have you know I have some clients that maybe they have storage units and they have items in the them that they might be able to sell you know there's ways now even you know I've seen on Facebook marketplace maybe items that you have that you're not using you can put them up for sale so these might be some other ways to increase your income although it's not always easy something that we should look at is prioritizing our spending now most of us may have expenses that we're not able to reduce or eliminate in our budget you know it's very challenging to you know reduce or eliminate your debt I mean it's possible if you want to maybe look for a less expensive rent but you may currently be in a lease so you know that may be you know difficult you could consider maybe looking at moving into a family member's you know home or you know you know a friend that may have a room that's available to rent you know these might be some ways to kind of reduce and again these are typically fixed expenses that we look at a monthly basis so again those may be some areas that may be more difficult to reduce you also want to kind of look at your budget and maybe think about areas again that you might be able to reduce things that maybe you can postpone or you can maybe substitute other things maybe things like for example you know there are a lot of resources out there in San Francisco where museums may offer you know like a free you know entrance on certain days of the week so you know I would try to take advantage of anything that there might be you know in San Francisco where they might have you know things that are free you know offered to the public and the library has a lot of you know free things as well I think they have story time and Leah can probably you know go over some of those or you can look on the website you know so these are you know a good way to kind of substituting for maybe things in your budget that you may have previously spent money on using coupons you know I even use coupons you know when I'm buying things um you know um that's also another way to try to cut down on your expenses um Howard I like Akil would like to um say something perfect Akil um I think you're muted I'm sorry I would just give me a time check it's 310 um I let me show you um the way to cover all the slides there so just give me a time check great I think we're almost done so a few more minutes next slide so really excessive debt can derail any budget so you should try living on a cash only you know lifestyle um really look at you know keeping emergency cards at home rather than in your wallet try to increase your monthly payments paying more than your monthly minimum amount and you know try to reduce your interest rates so these are definitely some ways to try to um work on you know reducing your debt um more aggressively next slide now do you think it's wise to repay debt and build credit while saving for other goals you not only can but you should you know not only paying down your debt more aggressively but also you know trying to save as much as possible so that you don't rely on credit for emergencies and then you may have cash available later for um down payments things like maybe renting an apartment next slide so what are you going to do now think about what can you do today what can I do in the next three months and what can I do this year next slide now a smart money coach can help you to create a realistic and workable budget that will help you to determine how much you can effectively contribute to savings develop a spending plan to eliminate your debt more effectively help you improve your credit score and also review your credit report so you can make sense about what's on there and we do provide a lot of other assistance next slide okay so I've put down here do we have another slide can you go back from this slide yeah I think you missed one the one previous to this please um yeah that one yep so if you're ready to make an appointment with a smart money coach it is free it's confidential the phone number is there feel free to give us a call to make an appointment to speak with one of us and then on the last slide next slide we'll actually give you some information about the company that I work for balance and the main number and the website are there as well so I know we went over a little bit of our time but you know I hope that you've found this meeting informational and that you've gotten something out of it more than what you came into um and I think that's all I have all right thank you so much Howard we'll have to end this program as we have other things to move on to but thank you all for joining us today and thank you Howard and Akeel for your expert um advice and we'll see everyone at the next program bye bye