# Why You Should NEVER Co-Sign Loans

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** MissBeHelpful
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nzUijfg0I0
- **Дата:** 21.08.2025
- **Длительность:** 1:14:14
- **Просмотры:** 372
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/53175

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

knows me pretty much already knows I'm in the middle of a challenge with my boyfriend. Um, we are doing what's called the 25 for 25 challenge, which is like a JetBlue Airlines promotion that they have um or like a challenge to get this promotional offer from them. But basically, they have the 25 year anniversary of the JetBlue Airlines brand. And to celebrate that, they offered anybody who reaches 25 airline destinations, unique individual destinations. Um, if you do that 25 of those flights between July 1st and December 31st of 2025, then you get Mosaic status with them for 25 years. So, that comes with a lot of different perks. Uh, if you fly JetBlue a lot, then it's probably worth it for you. If you don't really fly JetBlue that much, it probably doesn't seem like it's worth it. But, being that I am in Miami, uh, the Fort Lauderdale airport has a lot of JetBlue flights. My family is from Dominican Republic. So traveling to and from Dominican Republic or the Caribbean islands in general, JetBlue is very friendly to Caribbean travel. And also from going from east coast to west coast, like so going to San Francisco or going to LA, JetBlue is really nice for just straight one way with no connections. So there's definitely a lot of flights that I've taken which are JetBlue and I also have the JetBlue credit card. I have an old video on my YouTube channel where I talk about the different credit cards that I have and one of them that I got early was a JetBlue card. So, I definitely have flown enough to get to be able to like take advantage of that um promotion. So, basically, long story short, you have to do 25 destination individual airport destinations that are unique. So, if I fly to New York City, LaGuardia airport, that counts as one destination. But if I fly there again, I would have to fly to a different airport like JFK or Newark. I would not be able to go to LaGuardia again and count that as an airport because each airport can only count once. So, I've been doing a lot of travel because always I'm traveling either for work or personal travel, but then also specifically trying to squeeze in extra trips here and there where I can, especially if they're really low cost because I'm trying to hit 25 unique destinations with JetBlue so I could get this promotion. And the promotion is a big deal because it's not like two years, 5 years, 10 years. It's 25 years of Mosaic status. And if you travel a lot, you know that priority boarding is amazing. You know that free flights on board is free drinks while you're on board is really nice. Um all the all the perks that come with having status with an airline that you travel a lot is really nice. So I'm in the middle of that. It is a little bit exhausting to like travel so much. But I think the month of September I'll definitely have a chance to like slow down and not be traveling so much because um my birthday will have already passed. My birthday is the last day of August. So I do have some travel right before my birthday and throughout the last like two weeks of August. But then September is going to slow down and um and then October it'll pick up again. November of course with holidays and December of course with holidays. We're going to just do all of our holiday travel with JetBlue so we can hit those airlines. But I already have like seven or eight airports because um I had a trip to Puerto Rico when I went to um to my girlfriend's bachelorette party in Son, Puerto Rico. And I also went to see Bad Bunny while I was there. That was a JetBlue flight. Um it was from Chicago to San Huang because I was in Chicago for a conference. Um and then I also got New York one time. I got Hartford, Connecticut because I was out there for a conference for work. I got Fort Lauderdale airport. I got Los Angeles when I went to do a keynote presentation for the nonprofit called Twinspire that was in LA a couple weeks ago. So, there's a couple airports that I have already like checked the box. I already got them, but there's definitely still a long list of like maybe 15 more airports that I need to hit in order to get there. So, we shall see if I hit it. Um, wish me luck. I'm trying really hard to get all 25 airports before December 31st. Um, all right. So, let's talk about credit. Okay, I see some questions on Instagram already. I'm gonna get to y'all in a second. But actually, Instagram is the reason why I wanted to go live and talk about co-signing today because I posted a short from a YouTube live or a live that I did on a bunch of platforms a couple days ago. And during that live, somebody had talked about co-signing and I went on a little rant and I was like, "Don't cosign loans. " because I personally have made that mistake before and it ruined the relationship and also ruined my credit for a little bit and it took a long time for me to get it back. So, I kind of listed those two reasons, right? The credit damage that it could do to your situation and then also of course ruining the relationship. But I have gotten so many DMs and also a couple of comments under that reel where on Instagram specifically, people are like, "What? Why would you say that? It's okay to cosign loans. I don't understand. Maybe you're just saying that because you got burned. I just want to like I

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

didn't needed to talk about this. I don't think people truly fully understand the dangers of co-signing loans. So like that is literally all I'm going to talk about today. And we're going to go through pros that people think are pros, cons, and really just going through why it really does not make sense. Me personally, you will never catch me co-signing a loan for anyone ever again. I did it one time. I learned my lesson. I learned the hard way. And hopefully way so that you don't make that same mistake because cosigning is never worth it for you. Period. Like ever. There are other ways to achieve the goal that you're trying to achieve by helping someone by co-signing for them. There's other ways that you can achieve the same exact outcome, which means co-signing is just not worth it because there's other pathways to get to helping. So, I'll talk about that in a second, but um I want to go to the comment from this person on Instagram who said, "Who burned you? It is okay to cosign. " And then I responded and said, "Eh, I kind of said like I would why I wouldn't do it. " And then they said, "Well, I would cosign if it was for my children or for my spouse. " And you know, I understand where you're coming from. It feels different when it's your spouse or when it's your child, especially if you're a parent. It just it feels different when it's your son or your daughter. But let me tell you something. In the eyes of lenders, there's no difference. It might feel different to you because it's your daughter or your son. There's no difference in the eyes of those of these lenders. They're going to look at you and they're going to say, "You are exactly the same as that borrower. It's not like you are co-borrowers. That's completely different. Being co-borrowers means that you both benefit from the loan equally. You both access the money, the funding that was provided to you through this loan, and you get benefits just like accessing the loan on your own. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about co-signing a loan for someone else, which means that you do not get any of the benefits of getting that loan because you're not taking the loan out for yourself, but you get all of the negative cons of taking that loan out. Meaning that if there's one mispayment, it hurts your credit. Once that application goes through and you cosign, it's going to hurt your credit. debt to income ratio because their debt is now your debt. And that's what I don't think people understand that I know it says co- on there, co-signer, but it is actually not co-signing. It is you're just signing up for this loan. You're literally just borrowing this money yourself because if this person who you're co-signing for cannot or does not make a payment, you are 100% responsible. And I don't think people understand that. Like I really don't think people know that that's the factual actual way that co-signing works. And I went to the Experian website. On the Experian website, it says co-signing a loan means that the amount shows up on your credit report exactly as if it were your own loan account. If a payment is missed, both credit scores will take a hit. Okay? The co-signer and the primary borrower. So, the primary borrower is the person who came to you presumably and said, "Please, can you co-sign this loan for me? I'm not getting approved for any loans out here. I tried already and I'm not getting approved. Can you please cosign so that I can get approved? " You out of the kindness of your heart probably trying to do a good thing decide to cosign. And what and you don't end up realizing is that you are equally taking on that account. So, it's not like 50/50 or like, "Oh, this person is fully responsible and I'm only helping them like giving them like a referral or recommendation. " No, this is not a referral. recommendation. This is you 100% taking full accountability for this debt as if you were borrowing the money yourself. Cuz on paper, legally, and on your credit report history and on your in your credit utilization, you are taking the debt out and it directly affects your credit score. Now, maybe y'all out there understood that about cosigning. I'm going tell you right now, I did not understand that. and I signed up to cosign for someone student loan and I had no understanding of what I was doing. I had to go through a portal, submit my information and I had to like it was a bunch of fine print. I'm not going to lie to you. I was probably like 21 years 22 years old when I did this. I was young, naive, immature. I was not really taking it seriously. And so I scrolled past all the fine print. I did not read all the f four terms and conditions and look at the fact that this was equally my responsibility. I just kept scrolling down. I pressed sign here, put the date, scroll down more, put my name, put my address, put my social security number, put my date of birth, signed again, scroll down, signed again, and just did all the signing until I pressed submit. I didn't take it seriously because I didn't understand what it really meant. What was this girl asking me to do? Co-signing? What does that really mean? And now, obviously, the position that I'm in now with financial literacy, education, and knowledge and actually being a professional in financial education, I would never do that mistake. again. And anybody who asks me for anything financially now, first of all, I'm not going to give you an answer until I have done my full research. And most likely, I would say no. And if I change my mind

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

later, I'll come back and say yes. But I'm definitely not going to say yes and then go research. I think we make these big mistakes because we make these decisions based off of like trying to be as helpful as we can. And again, it might feel different when it's your kids or your husband or your wife. I'm going to tell you right now, in the eyes of the lender, it's no different. There ain't no difference between you and the primary borrower. Y'all are the same. Y'all are both borrowing this money. You're both 100% responsible for the payments. In the event that this person does not or cannot pay, you have to start paying. Which means if we're talking about student loans, these are the types of debt that you cannot write off. You cannot go file bankruptcy and remove your student loans. You have to pay student loans back. it can't be wiped away in a bankruptcy. So, because of that, if this person doesn't pay back student loans that you co-signed for, you could literally get to the point where you face a lawsuit. You're being sued over these student loans or worse, they are garnishing your wages. What that wage garnishment means that they will take your paycheck before you can even use the money. So, it's not like the money hits your account and then they take it. Because some people go, "Oh, I'll just use the money before they can take it out of my account. " No, the heck you won't. Because what they do is they contact your employer. If you yourself or nobody that you know has ever dealt with wage garnishment, let me tell you how it works because I know a couple people who unfortunately had to go through this. They contact your job. Whoever is doing payroll at your place of work, that payroll person gets in touch gets somebody gets in touch with them and says this money is owed whether it's to the department of education, if it's student loans, whether it's to the IRS, if it's taxes that you're being that are being garnished from your wages, whatever it is, the debt that you can't wipe off, that money, they will contact your job, your employer, and they'll tell them this amount of money needs to come out of their paycheck before you can give them any of their paycheck. So, you get your payroll, they'll take the taxes out, send it to the IRS. They'll send out payroll taxes, FICO, whatever other little deductions and things, and then whatever's left, they'll take whatever amount they need to send to the Department of Vet or to whoever your student loan serer is, or to the IRS, whoever's taking that money because you owe them that debt. And whatever is left, if there's anything left, that's what will get direct deposited into your checking account if you signed up for direct deposit at your job. So people don't realize that is the worst case scenario, right? So what I would say, I had so many people telling me, "Oh, but what if it's somebody that I trust? " Somebody slid in my DM and said, "What if it's someone that I really, really trust that I know that I can trust them and that they'll pay it back? " Let me tell you something. Everyone thinks they can trust the person they co-sign a loan for. Otherwise, you would not be co-signing a loan for this person. You obviously trust this person and you believe in your mind and in your heart that this person is going to pay it back. Obviously, you are not going into this believing off the bat that they're not going to pay it back because then why the heck would you sign cosign for them? You believe that they're going to do everything in their power to pay it back, that they're going to be responsible, and that you can trust them, right? But let me tell you a little statistic here from data that came out from the CFPB. It says about three out of four co-signers are asked to step in and make some or all of the payments which can wreck their credit and their financial flexibility. Three out of every four. What makes you think you the one? that you are the one out of four? The one that is not going to be in this situation? Three out of four. That's 75% of cases where there's a co-signer involved. That cosigner has to end up stepping in and making some payments or all of the payments. Basically, meaning they're taking on the debt themselves. Case in point, this happened to me. I literally co-signed a student loan for this girl. I was like, "Oh, she's going to she's on track with premed. She's going to make the money when she becomes a, you know, medical professional, whatever she chooses to do. She I'm sure she's very responsible. She's very smart. She wouldn't be able to do premed if she wasn't smart. I trust her. Love her. we're good family, friends. I'm going to do this for her. And I'm I believed in my heart of hearts that she was going to pay. But what ended up happening, she got off the pre-med track. She didn't finish couldn't graduate on time. She ended up graduating late. And then she couldn't get a job. She ended up working retail. Her retail paycheck was really small. She couldn't handle managing all of her bills, everything she had to pay for, plus all of these different student loans, let alone the one that I co-signed. So, guess what happened? She skipped a payment. My credit score took a hit. She couldn't pay. Who ends up getting letters at that time? The letters were from Sally May. Who was getting letters to their apartment from Sally May saying that I owe payments? Me. I was the one getting those letters. And so I had to step in and pay. At first it was only like $225 or $250 a month, but then this the amount started

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

going up over time, of course, because of these interest fees. So even if you don't think it can happen to you, stop thinking about you and look at the data because data drives decisions. Data should be driving your decisions. If you look at the data and you see that 75% of people who co-sign loans end up having to pay up some or all of the payments and take on the debt for the as their own, that is a red flag. Red flag, red flag. So I just feel like when people come to me and go like, "Oh no, you just got burned. this is different. I can trust this person. This is my son. This is my daughter. They would never do that. Or this is my husband. This is what my baby daddy. They wouldn't do that to me. You are not thinking above your own situation and removing yourself emotionally from who this is or how much you love them or trust them. Erase all of that because that's not data. Look at the actual data. 75% of cases. You think you're going to be in the one out of four that does not have to deal with these problems. And let me tell you, it's very unlikely. Okay? One out of four chance that you'll be golden. Three you're going to have to pay up. So, I would say the only one case that would be an exception, there was actually a woman who DM'd me, and I'm not going to call her. put her Instagram handle because obviously business out there. But she DM'd me and basically long story short, her DM said my husband and I had already made a deal, a family agreement that no matter what, once my ton my son turned 18, we give him $500 every two weeks. And that is basically like she made it seem like it was indefinite. Like they were always going to be giving him $500 every two weeks 18 on. There was no like until he turns 21 or until he turns 35 or until he graduates college. like there was no stipulation. Basically, she was just saying once he turns 18, he unlocks the $500 every two weeks from us no matter what. In that case, she said, "Would it do you think it would make sense for me to cosign for him then? " Because then he can get the car, get the student loans to go to college, whatever it is that she was going to cosign. And in the event that he can't make the payments himself, she would just use the $500 every two weeks that she had already put us earmarked in their family budget to give him and say, "Actually, since you haven't paid those bills, I'm just going to use this money to pay the bills and not give it to you. " In that case, I would say, "Fine. Look, she's already prepared to come out of pocket $500 every two weeks, no matter what. " So in that case, she's essentially agreeing to pay the debt up to $1,000 a month if she's talking about 500 every two weeks, right? So the one exception to never signing co never co-signing loans for anyone, the one exception to this is if you are fully 100% willing and able to pay this debt yourself. Period. Full stop. like not if or only when or no, it's you are willing at any given point to step in and start making these payments yourself. If you're cool with that and you're willing to do that, well then, you know, you're signing on to this debt for yourself. You're basically taking down this debt yourself. And if you're cool with that, then I would say sure, go ahead and cosign. But I would venture to say a large majority of people who cosign loans are not willing. They're not able. They don't understand that what they're doing is taking on debt themselves. They constantly put it on the primary borrower like, "Oh, no. This is not me. This is them. This is her loan. I'm just helping her get approved. " No, it is equally 100% their loan and 100% your loan. It is no 50/50 in this situation. It's 100. Whatever they do that hurts their credit will hurt your credit, too. late payments, missed payments, if they get collections, if they anything that has to do with that loan, if they end up getting leans, all of that will end up directly affecting you, too. So, I really think if more people understood this, there wouldn't have been so many people sliding in my DMs or commenting on my video saying, "What do you mean? Why not? Why can't we cosign? But what if you love your husband? child and that's they want to go to college and or they need a car and you want to help them? I understand that. I totally do. So, in a minute, I'm gonna get to what you could do if you really want to help somebody instead of cosigning. Don't cosign. Do other things to help them. But, of course, you know, people just I just really think that like they think that might be the only option. Freddy set go on Instagram said, "I have lost friendships for not co-signing. " Look, let me tell you something. If there's a person in your life who is not willing to be friends with you unless you pay with your credit or your money or your financial reputation, that is not a friend, baby. That is not your friend. Because friendships should not be transactional. Your friendship with me should not be dependent upon me being willing to give you money or use my credit to give you access to credit. If that's all this is, honey, that's not

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

a friendship. That's not. So, I honestly and truly think that you are better off without people like that in your life. And I know it hurts in the moment because you're losing somebody that you had a relationship and you invested a lot of time getting to know that person and building this bond and trust and friendship, but at the end of the day, they revealed their true colors when they said to you, "Oh, I'm not being friends with you anymore unless you co-sign this loan. " Okay. Thank you so much for doing me the huge favor of showing me who you really are. Deuces. um ain't doing much on Instagram said, "How long have you been teaching and how did you get into financial literacy? " Oh, I love this question. So, I started teaching in 2011. I graduated college in June of 2011. I became a teacher pretty much two months later. Literally August of 2011, I started teaching and I taught for three years in the traditional classroom. So, third grade, fourth grade teacher. And then I decided to go to a wraparound services program and I started doing afterchool programming around math reading um tutoring after school. And then I started doing reading intervention and literacy intervention. So I worked at a nonprofit where um we would recruit community members to become volunteers that would come into the school and help the kids that were really behind in reading. So a lot of third and fourth graders who were still reading like first grade level or kindergarten level. And so they would get pulled out of class to get extra reading tutoring with these volunteers that we would train them on how to use the curriculum, how to teach them vocabulary and comprehension and fluency and how to get them reading. Hopefully by the end of the year they would catch up to like another two years of reading in one year so that you know in a couple years of getting extra tutoring they could catch up and be on grade level or above grade level. That would be the goal. So, I did a lot of early literacy intervention work and then I realized like you know what I could do all the literacy intervention that I want but I I'm going tell you when I was in the fourth grade I was already reading like high school level books and when I was in eighth grade I had already taken high school courses and high school regent exams in the state of New York. You have to take like regents. I took a whole bunch of regent exams when I was already in middle school. And when I was in high school I took a bunch of AP classes. So, I basically got out I like basically was able to like opt out and skip a whole bunch of freshman year courses like first year math and all those types of classes. I had already taken them in high school. So, because I've always been like ahead with reading, I thought like at first like reading is so important because like reading was, you know, I was always good at reading and it helped me learn and helped me go to college and helped me do well. But I still made a whole bunch of mistakes with credit cards, with my credit, with not understanding budgeting, investments. I didn't know any of this stuff. So reading alone is not just going to solve all of the problems around understanding the financial systems in this country and giving you a fair shot at moving up in the world in terms of like being in a better socioeconomic situation when you're an adult than your family was when you were a kid, right? In order to move up the socioeconomic ladder and actually access what's called social mobility, like you moving up socially in your social economic class, the only way to really do that is to know about finance, to know about money, to be able to make more invest that money wisely, to not be able to um to not wreck your credit, to not take on too much debt and rely too much on debt, especially high interest rate debt. These are all things that need to be explicitly taught because only some lucky kids are going to pick up a book about personal finance and financial literacy randomly and read it before they sign up for credit cards and student loans and car loans and cosign for stuff before they make all these mistakes. It's very unlikely that they're going to pick up a book about personal finance and read it from cover to cover. So because it's very rare, we have to make sure it's rare that you don't learn about money. In order to do that, you have to require financial literacy. So I knew right away after a few years of working in literacy intervention and being a teacher, I knew there was a missing piece in the public education system, which is financial literacy. So I basically pivoted my career and I just started doing it by creating social media content. I was reading a lot of books about money, blogs, newsletters, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, soaking in all this information and then I started hosting workshops and then basically I parlayed like content on social media into like a career now where I actually work in financial education. Um, we actually work at an organization that offers curriculum for financial literacy. I work with teacher training. So I actually provide the training for teachers so that they know what to teach and how to teach it to students. And then I also have another position where I work as an advocate. And in that work, I get to actually work with state lawmakers like senators and representatives to get the governor to sign a bill into law that requires every single public high school in a state in a specific state to teach a whole semester for financial literacy before students graduate high school and they have to take it. It's a requirement. So we've done that in like 17 18 different states over the past couple years. So

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

when I first started all of this work, there were only like five states that required financial literacy as a high school requirement. And now in 2025, there's 29 states that require a semester long course in personal finance. That going from 5 to 29 was every single one of those states we were my team was involved in. So that is like truly why I started teaching financial literacy and became so into it because I know that it's a place where a lot of change can be done that will make a big difference in the lives of pretty much every everybody in the US. And it's sad because the people who already graduated high school kind of missed the boat. We we're not lucky enough to like be in high school when the laws changed. But now from now moving forward, all of these incoming freshman, sophomore, junior, seniors in high school, they are going to be in a place where they have to take a class about financial literacy to graduate. So, we're going to start to see a shift in the next decade or so. We're going to see a huge shift where you're never going to really hear adults saying, "Oh man, I wish we learned about taxes in school. budgeting and banking and investing instead of learning about parallelograms. " No, we're not going to see those memes anymore. hear people saying that anymore. Instead, we're saying, "Damn, that was the best class I got in high school. I'm so glad I learned about interest rates and loans and interest and investing and stocks and 401ks and Roth IRA. I'm so glad I understand difference between a regular savings account and a high yield savings account. I'm so glad I know how to compare loans and look at the terms and conditions and decide which one is the smarter financial move to make. I'm so glad I learned that co-signing loans is really bad. " Like, all of these things have to be explicitly taught. Otherwise, you're it's not just going to magically pop up into your head and you're not just going to randomly know about finance unless someone teaches it to you. So, that is all the work that I'm doing. That's how I got into financial literacy. And it's been a few years already because I started at the organization that I'm with now in 2018, but I started making videos on YouTube um in 2015 around personal finance. So, it's been over 10 years now already. All right, let's see. Um, credit can help if the person is making great money after tax. I agree with that. Tony Valley put that on Instagram. I totally agree with that. Um I just think you have to it really is more of a matter of discipline and being careful about what you do take on and understanding the ratio between how much you're generating in income and how much you owe in debt because if once you owe more in debt than you're generating in income, that's a really bad uh situation. It's really it becomes basically unhealthy at that point. Um all right, let's see. Um YouTube, we have a couple of questions. Thanks so much for this information. XL, thank you for joining the live. Sam, hey, nice to see you again, Sam. Sam says, "Too much risk is basically the same as if you have authorized user added to your credit card. You're responsible for their charges. " It is and it isn't. And this is why I would say I kind of agree and disagree, Sam. It's the same because you are taking full responsibility for that person's using the credit card. However, you are not creating a brand new loan in their name and adding that debt to your total amount of debt on your credit history. You're not. When you add an authorized user to your credit card, all you're doing is keeping that exact same credit card with the exact same credit limit that it already has and you're giving someone access to it. So, you're not increasing your debt amount or available credit. you're not increasing that which you do increase your debt when you take when you co-sign a new loan for someone. So authorized user status I would say I prefer that. So let's talk about it before I said I'll come back to it and talk about what I would do instead of co-signing. This is co-signing a loan for anyone. Not for my spouse, not for my child, not for anyone. I don't care how much I love or trust them. Instead of co-signing alone, I would add them as an authorized user to my very first credit card. earliest credit card that I ever had in my name because all those years that I've had credit in good standing on that card are now going to go on that person's credit. They'll be able to piggyback off of all my good strong years of credit history, making payments on time, age of credit, utilization being low, all the good things about my credit situation. They'll be able to piggy back off of that and it will add positive payment history and positive utilization usage low. all those things, it will be added to their credit and help them boost their credit a little bit. Now, after a few months, after like six months, 8, nine months, they could then go ahead and apply for a card on their own without needing me to add them as an authorized user to my card. And that would obviously give them an opportunity to build their own credit without piggybacking off of me. But the good thing is going back into the past and giving age of credit that has been around for five, seven, 10, 15 years. That's really nice because basically they can copy and paste my all those years of me making payments on time onto their credit report. So I would add authorized user be way any 100% better than co-signing a loan. You don't increase your debt amount. You just give

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00) [30:00]

them access to your credit account, your credit card. So, if your credit card has a $5,000 limit on it, that person now has access to that $5,000 credit card and they have a credit card with their own name on it and they can go buy $5,000 worth of stuff and charge it on that card, but they can't spend more than $5,000. They can't add new debt to your credit that you don't already have access to through your credit lines. And so, that's why I would add an authorized user. That's the first reason. The second reason also is because if you know this person, you love this person, and you trust this person, then you should be able to say to them, I want to help you build your credit. So, I'm going to add you as an authorized user, which means you're going to get a credit card with your name on it that's going to be connected to my account. I don't want you to have that card with your name on it. I don't want it around. I don't want it, god forbid, to get stolen or to get fraud on it or whatever. So, what I'm going to do is once you get it, give it to me. I want to hold that card because it's directly connected to my $5,000 credit limit. So, I want to hold it. I'll use it, you know, we'll use it once in a while my account so that we can, you know, use the credit, pay it off in time in full. That will add payment history. After a few months, you can go ahead and apply for your own card, but I'm basically giving you a boost. I'm not giving you access to my credit card all the time. So there's some control with authorized user status that you don't get when you co-sign for somebody on a loan. And then the third thing I would say, so first of all, it's not adding more debt to your account. It's the existing account that you already have. Second of all, you can take the card and hold it. You don't have to let them have the card, the physical card. This is what I do with my niece, with my brothers who all I have added all of them as authorized users on my first credit card, but I have the credit cards. I don't let them keep it. And then the third thing I would say is you also have the ability to change it at any time. All you have to do is contact the same exact credit card issuer, the bank, and just say to them, I want to remove this authorized user from my account. Now, if they racked up any debt on it, you are still responsible for paying it if they don't pay it. But you can cut them from your credit card at any time. You could just end that relationship and they won't be able to access your credit anymore. With cosigning, it's the reverse. The only person who can remove the co-signer is the primary borrower. Why would the primary borrower want to remove you when you're the reason why they even got the loan in the first place? It helps them to have you as a co-signer even though it hurts you. So, when I was co-signed on this girl's loan that I co-signed many years ago, I remember there was a time where I was looking it up. I was like, "How do I get removed? How do I get released as a co-signer? " The only way I could get released was if she submitted an application saying, "I want to release this co-signer. " Me as the co-signer, I had no ability to say, "Can you please remove me as a co-signer? " Nuhuh. uh uh only the primary borrower could do that. Whereas with authorized user status, you're the primary account holder, the credit card holder. So if you add an authorized user, you can remove them at any time. So, me personally, I would rank authorized user status up here really high as a great way to help anyone in your family, your nieces, your nephews, your kids, your husband, your wife, whoever. You can add them as authorized users and help them piggy back off of your good credit without taking on a new credit card or a new account, without going into debt. You don't necessarily have to, and while keeping a lot of control over the situation, which is something that you don't have. You don't get control over the situation when you cosign. So that's what I would say, Sam. I know it is a responsibility, but it is way better than co-signing. Um, all right. Let's see. Ray Omega on YouTube said, "So, are they teaching financial literacy in high school? " Now, in 29 states, it is required. Um, in 21 other states, it's not yet required. So we are at about a point where 75% of the students who attend public high school in America are guaranteed to get a financial literacy class in high school. About another 25% unfortunately they happen to attend public schools in those 21 states that have not yet required by law that financial literacy be taught. So, a lot of those students, they might have it as an option to take that elective class at their school, but it won't necessarily be a requirement like algebra, biology, English language arts. Those are classes that you have to take. You don't have a choice. Those are not electives. Whereas, in the 29 states that did pass laws, financial literacy is one of those required classes. So, biology, algebra, financial literacy, English language arts, those are all classes that you have to take in 29 states. So, to your question, it depends on what state you live in. If you live in one of the 29 states that requires it, then yes, students are learning it. If you live in a state that doesn't require it, then some lucky students are getting it

### Segment 8 (35:00 - 40:00) [35:00]

because they got into the elective class, but a bunch of students either did not sign up for the elective either because they didn't want to because they didn't know what it was or because they chose a different elective or they didn't have space on their schedule. But ultimately, the reason is because it's not required. So, that's the that's where we're at. Um, Ray said, "Do you know which states approve these high school classes? " Yes, I do. There's 29. So, I'm not going to list them all, but I will tell you the most recent ones backwards. So, the most recent was Texas. Right before Texas was Colorado, right before Colorado was Kentucky. Um, then before Kentucky last year, we got California. Um, before California, what did we get? Oh, there was um Rhode Island, Connecticut, there was Florida, Georgia, there was Oh man, I'm blanking on a few of the other ones. Indiana. Yeah, there's been a couple of new states over the past few years, but the original first few states that did it were Utah, Virginia, Louisiana, um I want to say Alabama and did I say Virginia already? There were five states that like were the first ones early and actually the very first state was Utah and it was because the lawmakers in Utah were looking at data from 2008 and they were like, "Oh my goodness, there were so many families filing for bankruptcy. So many people filing for bankruptcy in Utah from 2008 from the financial crash in the real estate market. " And so they realized that a lot of people they had all of their net worth, all the money that they have, their entire financial situation was all tied up in one real estate property, which was the home, the home that they live in. And when the real estate market crashed and their home lost a ton of value, their entire net worth went down and a lot of people who couldn't afford to keep paying for their home had to go into foreclosure. unfortunately lost their home and ended up without a home which was the only source of wealth that they had. So they ended up filing for bankruptcy. So that is really an unfortunate reason as to why the first state ever which was Utah to required financial literacy education. But it was a direct response to how desperate Americans are to like understand how to prevent bankruptcy. Well, you have to budget. Okay. What are you going to budget with income? You have to earn income. You have to understand how much income you need to generate to live the lifestyle you want to live. If you want a fancier lifestyle, you need to generate more income. If you can't generate more income, then you need to cut back your spending and have a tighter budget. Either way, you need to understand banking, investing, budgeting, credit. earning income, taxes, all of these things. Like no matter what, you need these fundamentals. So that's why they decided a financial literacy class had to be required. And then a bunch of other states started doing the same thing. Ray says that is amazing. I agree. Sam says, "True. " Yes, Sam agrees with me. I'm telling you, there's so many pros and cons. So, there was somebody else who messaged me. Let me see what it is that they said. Let me pull up my DMs and see. Okay. Yeah. So, this person said, "But what about getting access to credit for my niece or nephews or even my kids? Oftentimes, these younger adults do not have as much credit history. They need a co-signer in order to help them qualify for a loan or to even get a better interest rate. " 100% I agree with you. Yes, they do oftentimes need a co-signer. Why? Because they don't have enough income to qualify for the loan. So, if a loan from the bank, why should they you? Why should you still go ahead and allow them to get that loan? The bank is clearly saying they don't have enough income to sustain this amount of debt. So, if you want to help a young person in your family get access to a car or get a student loan, the better way to do it is instead of saying, "I'm willing to pay this amount. " Just give them the loan. Just say, "Oh, you can't get approved for a car loan for $4,000. You need $4,000. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and give you $4,000 and you can start paying me back slowly every month. " And what happens if they don't pay you back? Well, then you're gonna be mad, but at least your credit ain't bad. If you lend them cash from your savings because you want to help them so bad, right? out of the kindness of your heart. You love them. So, take money from your savings and give it to them so they can get the used car that they need or so they can get a car and h be able to get from place A to B. And then they can start paying you back. If they make payments back to you, good. You'll get the money back that you lent them and everything's great. and then later on they'll build up their credit, get more income, and they can qualify for their own for their next loan on their own. But if they don't pay you back, at least your credit won't be ruined because they didn't pay you back. Like the whole point I want people to understand is you are putting your credit on the line for someone else's behavior, someone else's future behavior. Their current behavior might

### Segment 9 (40:00 - 45:00) [40:00]

be responsible, paying everything on time, working hard, but what happens if they get into a tragic car accident and they end up in the hospital for nine months and they can't pay you? You're going to pay every month for nine months while they're in the hospital. If you're okay with that, then cosign. If you're not okay with that scenario, then you should not be co-signing. That's the whole point of me telling people, do not cosign. There's only one exception, which is if you are willing and able to sign on the dotted line for that debt yourself. you're willing to pay every single payment on that loan, fine. Including the original amount borrowed plus the interest fees. If you're willing to do that and you're down financially to take that on, then go ahead and cosign. But understand that that's what you're getting yourself into, which I don't think most people do. So, when I say don't cosign, I'm not trying to say don't help anyone in your family. Don't help your kids. Don't help your spouse. Don't hear that. That you're hearing the wrong thing. If when I say don't cosign a loan for anyone, I don't care who it is. That's not the same as don't help anyone financially because you can provide financial support in other ways. You can straight up give them a loan in cash and in your head you're like, you know what, this is just a gift. If they pay it back to me, great. If they don't, whatever. It's not going to make or break me and it certainly ain't going to ruin my credit. Right? Second of all, you can add them as an authorized user on your credit to help them start building good credit and piggyback off of your credit without creating any new loan accounts in your name. Like that, that's huge. Creating a new loan account in your name increases your debt to income ratio, which is bad. And also increases the amount of accounts in your name, increases how many um different uh payments you have to make, and like all of these things now affect the five factors of your credit, right? It lowers your age of credit, it increases how much debt is available to you, which is not good. It creates a hard inquiry, which means your credit's going to go down by a couple of points because you now have a hard inquiry on your credit. All of these things are not good things. So, there's really nothing good that comes from co-signing a loan for someone else, except you feel good about yourself. If you have a Jesus complex and you think you're going to save everybody, you stroke your own ego a little bit by helping someone and you feel good about yourself, but the repercussions, the negative possible outcomes are way worse than you might even realize. And there's really not a lot of positives that come from it except for you feeling good about yourself. So, I would definitely say I don't care about helping them qualify for a loan or helping them get a lower interest rate because there's other ways to do that don't involve you co-signing. Um, okay. Let's see. Yeah, I just I don't Somebody said, "Wait, is it really an equal legal responsibility? " I thought they're the primary borrower. That's the thing I really don't think a lot of people understand. From the lender's perspective, you are just as responsible for making the payments on that loan as the primary borrower when you cosign. I really don't think people understand that. That's from the lender's perspective. You got to not look at it from this person's perspective, your perspective, that person's perspective. Only think about it from the lender's perspective. They're the ones putting the money down for the loan and requiring you to pay them back. So, you have to think about it from the lender's perspective. you, even if it's your son or your daughter, you are just as responsible as your child. So, if you're okay with that, if they miss a payment, you're on the hook. Again, I I don't know how many times, like different ways I can say it because I don't think people really understand that it's a risk to your credit score. It can strain the relationship. It can create financial burden. You might think that this person is good for it. They're not going to, you know, betray me. They're going to pay everything. But you don't know what's going to happen in the future. Maybe they lose their job. Maybe they get divorced and have a really hard financial hardship and can't pay. Maybe they go into a medical situation where they have to be in the hospital or they can't work anymore. They're disabled. Whatever happens to people, life happens. Literally, life happens. So, you can't predict what's going to happen, which is why you have to do the best you possibly can to protect yourself financially while finding other more reasonable ways that are more fair to help people financially. So, for example, I'll sit down with you, help you go through and create a budget. I will help you research loans for people who are new to credit or who have poor credit. I will help you um find a credit counselor that can help you. I'll help you look to see if there's nonprofits or local government agencies that might give you a grant to help you rather than taking out a loan. Look, I can devote time and helping you find resources, but giving you access to a new loan that I co-sign for you means I am literally signing on that loan, adding it to my credit, creating a new account in my name as well, taking on responsibility for those payments, and all of those things negatively impact your credit. So, at the end of the day, it's just not worth it. All right, let's see what y'all got for me on Instagram. I don't think there were any other questions that I missed. Ain't doing too much. Said, "I'm trying to spread the knowledge of financial literacy throughout my school and

### Segment 10 (45:00 - 50:00) [45:00]

neighborhood as a project. What would you say is the most important factor to start and make that information stick? " Honestly, I think if you look at all the research, what it shows is that the two most important topics are credit and investing. Investing is a little bit more like a higher level one to teach because there's so much vocabulary with it. the different accounts, the different types of investments. There's so much vocabulary, but credit is a really good first way to start because it's the number one biggest mistake people make is they take on debt that they're they really don't need. Whether that's through credit cards, whether that's through student loans or personal loans that they take on that they really did not need to take on that much. So helping people understand what is your credit score, why does it matter, what are the five factors of your credit score, what are the dos and don'ts to like things to help you build credit, things that you should never do because it hurts your credit. And the reason why I say this is because if you have a really good credit score from early on in your life, that's going to save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your life. Because having a better credit score means you pay less interest fees when you do borrow. Just lower interest fees on a mortgage could be a million or more dollars that you pay on that home mortgage or hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the cost of the home and the mortgage that you take out. Credit card interest. Think about those double-digit interest rates on credit cards. How much money people would save if they cut interest rates in half just because they have a better credit score out the gate. Student loans, personal loans, car loans, all the interest rates attached to those types of debt. If they're lower interest rates, then you pay less dollars in interest fees. That means you save more dollars by not giving it away to all these lenders and keeping it to save it or invest it yourself. And the other thing to keep in mind is when you teach people about credit, it allows them to actually start thinking about what they want to accomplish. If you want to get a home at one day, at some point in your life, you have to have good credit in order to qualify for a home loan. So, you're going to have to start planning ahead and thinking ahead. Okay, like financial planning is best when you do it over the long run. Like, okay, in three years, in five years, in 10 years, in 20, in 30 years, but most people don't think like that unless you start presenting them with an opportunity to really think big, do I want to have a house? car one day? What kind of do I want to open a business? Am I going to need to take out business credit? How do I do that? All of these things start making them really think about their life much further into the future than just this year, next year, or next month. So, I think credit is the best way to start. And you could also just um connect it to banking because most credit cards you're going to get it from a bank like a Chase card, a City Bank card, a Bank of America credit card, a Wells Fargo credit card. So, because most banks issue the credit cards that people use, it's a nice connection to say, "Hey, set up a bank account with uh you know, a bank or a credit union. " Then that same institution who knows you as a customer from your bank account will then very likely be willing to extend you a line of credit through a credit card to help you build credit because they already have your information on file. They already know you as a customer. And then you can teach them about bank accounts, checking accounts, savings accounts, high yield savings accounts and you know automating um payments, bill payments to your credit card bills directly in your checking account. Making sure everything is auto autopay so you don't miss payments and ruin your credit. So, I think like credit cards and debit cards could be one where you teach them the difference between a debit card and a credit card. They look the same. If you're 14 years old and you look at a debit card and a credit card, they look exactly the same unless someone teaches you the difference between a debit card and a credit card, you can move through life assuming that they're the exact same thing. And a lot of young people do. So, I would say start with credit connected to banking. Teach them banking and credit and then investing. Those three right there so powerful. Those three alone I would say for average income earning Americans. So we're not talking about people who make you know 500,000 a million dollars a year. Those people at that level now you also need to start learning about taxes because tax strategizing can really help you invest more and be smarter about your wealth and your income. But average everyday earning people, credit, banking, investing, most important topics that you can teach if you were going to start doing a project or a workshop series or community events and things like that. And if you want to do a book club, my book, Mind Your Money, you can grab copies at mindyourmoneybook. com. Comes with a free guide as well, and it's an audio book that I narrate with my own voice. So, you have a lot of options for how you might engage them. And um I personally do think like having people come together is great for workshops or to teach them stuff, but it is really nice when you actually have a book that you guys can like, okay, today we're reading chapters one and two, next week we're going to come back and talk about it. It just gives it a little bit of structure and gets everybody on the same page. So having a book is great. My book is one option. It's really good for the basics of financial literacy, but

### Segment 11 (50:00 - 55:00) [50:00]

there's a lot of really good financial literacy and personal finance books out there that I mean, you just can't go wrong. If you go online and like just do a web search of like the best personal finance books for beginners, you can find so many books about money management and financial literacy. Um, hey Miss Stephanie, that's my girl Stephanie says, "My aunt added me and just never requested a card. " You know what? That's smart because at the end of the day, all you need is the credit history. You don't need the actual credit card. And that will really help you to just boost that credit, right? To start getting all your aunt's age of credit, especially if you have an older auntie. if she's had credit for 20 years, 30 years, that is amazing to your credit because the age of credit factor on your credit score and your credit is only worth 15% of your score. But it's really hard to get all 15% of those points unless you've had credit for more than 15 years. So even if somebody adds you as an authorized user and they just had that credit for like that credit card for like five years, it's not really going to do much. it give you a little boost, but somebody who's had a credit card for 20 years, that's going to give you a way higher boost to your credit than someone who's had a credit card for two years or five years. So really, the goal is to try to find people who are like OGs in the credit game. They've had credit cards for more than 15 years and they add you to one of those early cards that they had. That's really the secret to using authorized status the best way. All right. Yep. Miss Stephanie said, "Yep, it was super helpful for me. " I bet it was because having an auntie add you really I mean truly creates so much age of credit for you and a whole bunch of really good positive payments that probably she was making all those years. Now it looks like you were making all those payments. Um all right, Briana says, "Well, student loans, what's the way to go? " Personally, I would say if a student cannot qualify for the student loans on their own, that is a red flag that they're taking on too much student debt. So, I talked about this before, but the ratio of how much debt you should take on to um total for all four years of undergrad if you're going to a traditional four-year college, it should be equal to one year of the starting salary when you graduate. So, if you know that you're going to study education, you want to look at the starting salary for a first year out of college in education, whether that's teaching or, you know, whether whatever type of job specifically it is. What is the starting salary? That number is the maximum amount of money that you can borrow for all four years of getting your degree of your bachelor's. Okay? So, let's say that's, you know, $60,000. Well, if it's $60,000, you cannot borrow more than 15K per year. Freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year. 15K is the max per year to borrow in order to graduate with 60K, which is equal to the starting salary. So, you're good at 1x the starting salary. But the moment you take on 70, 80k, 100k, now the loan amount that you've taken out through student loans over the four years of college is higher, much higher than the starting salary. So you're going to be trapped in student loan debt for 30 plus years to come because that ratio is just too high. You went above your starting salary. So you really have to keep it at that starting salary. Now, if you think about it, federal student loans are available to students. They do not need a co-signer for a federal student loan. And they're capped at a certain amount every single semester. Why do you think the federal government would cap federal student loans every semester? Because they understand that at a certain point, it's too unhealthy. We can't just be giving students $25,000 every year to go to college. It depends whether they'll even be able to pay that back or not. Is that too risky? So the federal government caps federal student loan amounts every semester and they also set the interest rate at a fixed interest rate. So you know your interest rate will never change when you take out a federal student loan. Now if this person who's doing student loans is trying to apply to school, they get accepted, they take all the federal student loan amount that is available to them, they exhaust the maximum federal student loan amount that they can get for their entire freshman year and they still have a big gap. lot more money to go. That means they probably chose to go to a college that is not affordable for them. So, the reality is they got to change schools. And I know that is so hard to hear, but there's no reason why you should not be able to reasonably pay for your tuition for a year if you go to an instate college and you end up getting your federal student um f loans. If you qualify for any other grants or scholarships, great. That's even better, more, you know, icing on the cake. But that plus family support or you working doing work study, you should be able to cover, right? When you look at instate schools like in Florida or like in North Carolina, like

### Segment 12 (55:00 - 60:00) [55:00]

you know, states where there's a lot of pride for state schools, the average tuition for a year is usually like 10 to $15,000 a year, which means that you should graduate with something like 40 to 60K of student loans. If you go to an instate school and you stay for all four years, that is comparable to how much income the average American earns with a college degree. But the problem is people take on too much student loan debt. They end up taking 80 $90,000 of student loans. And part of it, the part of the reason why they end up with 80K or 90K, we talked about this on my live a couple days ago, is because they don't realize that the interest acrru, right? So they think, oh, I borrowed 20K, I'm going to owe back 20K. No, you're 20K plus the interest on top of that. So I again it's a little bit of like that education and making sure we understand how to run the numbers and how to make this decision. But I truly do believe the large majority of people that I talk to who have a lot of student loan debt or have really bad student loan situations, they did not choose a college or university that was actually affordable for them. They chose one that was way unaffordable for their situation. And I know that most colleges and universities are unaffordable, but there are plenty of state schools that are affordable. And we just don't have a culture of like celebrating students graduating and going to state school. So we honor, you know, like going to prestigious colleges and universities or going to your dream school, which is, you know, five states away or traveling across the country to go to college. And while we celebrate those things and only talk about the good things related to those experiences, we rarely talk about the bad outcome of that, which is it was unaffordable for you since you went out of state and now you're paying not just the federal student loan back, but you had to go out and get private student loans, which are the worst type of way to borrow for student loans because now the interest rate is not fixed and it's not capped. A lot of these private student lenders get away with lending crazy amounts of money to 18 19 year olds because this 18 and 19 year old is like, "Oh, I already took out the maximum cap that I could take out from the federal government. They won't give me any more federal student loans and I still owe another 10 15,000 so I'm going to go take it from a private loan. " And that oftentimes is the biggest mistake we can make because instead of saying, "Wait a minute, why can I not afford college with all of the federal student loans that I've already taken, I've already taken a whole bunch of debt, the maximum debt allowed from the federal government for federal student loans. So with that plus any savings or work study, I still can't afford my tuition. Maybe I chose a university or a college that is way too expensive. " And this is similar to people who like when they go to get their first house or when they just go to buy a house, they'll go to a loan officer, they'll go to the bank and they're like, "Hey, I want to get pre-approved. qualified for a mortgage. " And the bank will tell them, "Oh yeah, you are approved for $500,000 home for a $500,000 mortgage. " That does not mean that you should go and take a $500,000 mortgage because what you're doing is taking the maximum amount you qualify for. Meaning, if anything were to change about your financial situation or if property taxes were to increase or if anything were to go wrong with the house and you have to now invest money into fixing the roof or the HVAC or the pipes or whatever, now you can't afford it anymore. So when whenever you get an amount from the bank like oh your mortgage is your mortgage loan amount that is allowed for you to borrow is up to 500k. You should actually take way less than that because that way you give yourself a lot of wiggle room and you're never going to put yourself in a situation where you took a home that was unaffordable for you. Same thing with student loans. You have to have a limit. You have to come in with a calculation, a formula of like this is how much is healthy for me. I'm not taking more than this because then I'm putting myself in an unhealthy situation with debt and I'm going into a school that is not affordable for me. So I just I honestly I think you know we don't really talk about like the reality of not being able to afford something and wanting it so bad because when it comes to college it's like it's so many of us are it's so many for it's our dream you know like it's the American dream for a lot of especially a lot of children of immigrants they come to this country they're like they didn't get to go to school in their home country and I speak from experience my parents didn't get to go to elementary they probably dropped out in third or fourth grade because they had to work on farms they didn't go to middle school. high school. They never let alone college. So for me to be able to come to the US and go to college is huge. And so that puts this like very celebratory positive kind of pressure on me that like when I get there and I achieve this and I get the degree like this is what my parents sacrificed for me to be able to achieve. But at what cost, right? If I chose to go to a state school and graduate with

### Segment 13 (60:00 - 65:00) [1:00:00]

very little or no debt, that would be a very different situation financially than if I chose to go to my dream school, which is some private university or college that's charging way too much tuition that I can't afford to pay. And yet, we would still be like, "Okay, we'll just I'll just cosign or we'll just do a parent plus loan or we'll just figure it out. We'll get the money somehow and you'll pay back later. " and what you're doing is actually just irresponsible and not really a smart financial um decision-making process. But because we're so emotional and celebratory and we're so committed to our passion of going to college and we have this dream school in our mind, it's a really hard conversation to navigate. So, I just don't think we have had the right kind of conversation about this and that's why it's really hard for the next generation because they see this crisis that the millennials and older Americans have with so much student loan debt and all of this interest that has accured and all these payments that they can't afford anymore. So many people desperate for government to forgive their student loans and it didn't really happen in a widespread way. And so now they're kind of scared like, "Wait, maybe I shouldn't go to college cuz student loans, it's a crisis and it's college is not affordable. " Instead of, "Is the way that we're approaching college broken? Is it wrong? " Instead of like pushing kids to try to go to the most prestigious universities, we should be saying only go to a prestigious university if you got enough money to cover all the tuition so you can graduate with very little or no loans. You know, and again, I speak from experience. The with less than 10k in student loans and abroad. So, I really do think like the conversation and the narrative about college decision-making process and what it looks like, it needs to change because so many times I meet young people that are like, "My dream school is you, you know, Duke. My dream school is Harvard. Howard. My dream school is UCLA. My dream school is this. And it's like, let's stop like fantasizing about dream schools. And let's stop pretending that this decision is not hugely financial just as much as it is about your academic future and your social life. And it's very much financial. That's one of the top ways you should make the decision is about the finances. Are you getting enough aid? Are you getting any scholarships or grants? Is the tuition reasonable even if you max out the federal student loans every single year and take those every year for four years? Do you still have a bunch of gaps in like you that you still owe money? If so, that's a little red flag. Like we need to be talking about this in a realistic way instead of like in a f like fantasizing so much about it. And I really do think it's hard though because we've done it for so long and once people are ingrained doing things a certain way and talking about things in a certain narrative, it's really hard to reverse it. So it's going to take I think a few generations of us correcting the conversation around college in the US because that's why you see so many people saying, "Oh, I don't want to go to college anymore. " That's why you have so many young people saying, "I don't need college anymore. College is not necessary. " is because we've turned them away from college by making them think college is equal to student loan debt. And that's not necessarily the case. There's so many people that go to college and graduate with little to no debt. But those are not the stories that make the news because that's not clickbait. Clickbait is this person owes $110,000 from their college loans. That's the kind of stuff that gets, you know, a negative attention in the media. Uh underscorein love with Bbonnie said, "Is it mindyourmoney. com? is mindyoumoneybook. com. So when you go to the website, make sure you type book after the title. Mindyoumoneybook. com. All right, let's see. Proficient staffing. Wow, never thought about it that way, but that makes sense. I hope it does make sense to y'all because these are the kinds of things we need to be talking about. Kar Reya says, "Tell me about it. I owe $180,000 and I don't have a doctorate. " It breaks my heart, honestly. There's so many like you. It's not just you. you are not alone. But truly, it's probably because you didn't have a lot of guidance or mentorship or anybody really holding your hand through the process of student loans. You probably figured this stuff out on your own or maybe the people around you were just like, "Yeah, this is what you're supposed to do, girl. Yeah, take more loans. What are you going to do? You got to go to college. " And the conversation is just is broken. Like, we really need to fix that conversation. And I think there is a way to create a balanced approach just like we need to tell people you can't just buy your dream home. You have to buy a house that's realistic, that's in your budget if you want to own your home. And just like we tell people, like you shouldn't be taking vacations that you can't afford. You shouldn't buy a car Try to find things within your budget. There's different prices for different things for a reason. Because some prices are affordable for this bracket. Those

### Segment 14 (65:00 - 70:00) [1:05:00]

higher prices are affordable for the higher bracket. But if you're in the lower bracket and you're looking at the higher bracket prices, you're going to put yourself in a really tough financial spot. And I don't think we talk enough about that. It's such a privilege to be in a high financial bracket of income, high income, and to just put yourself in a situation where you're always looking at the prices for things that are generally meant to be available to people of lower income. That's a privilege to be able to have a really high income and purposefully buy things that are cost-saving. you know, specifically take cheaper vacations or don't vacation, specifically save a bunch of your income and either throw it into investments or savings so that you can either retire early or like create generational wealth. That is such a privilege. Most people, they're in a situation where they don't have a lot of income and they're trying to budget with what they have or they're looking up to a more expensive lifestyle and trying to get that. And the like the math ain't math. So like at the end of the day, I think we need to redirect the kind of conversations that we have about planning for your lifestyle, including college decisions, car decisions, home buying decisions, all of these big decisions. Like we have to make sure that one of the top things that you consider is the finances of that decision. It can't just be like, "What does your heart say? How does your gut feel when you visit the college campus or when you get in the car? What how do you feel? Test drive it. See if you love it. " Like no, those are not those are nice and all that, but that's not what drives the decision. Like I said before, data drives decisions. Data should be driving the decisions. Yes, Kar Reyes said, "My moneybook. com. " Thank you for correcting it. My daughter is now going to college and I really want to be wiser for her. Good. The fact that you have learned through your own experience is going to be such a huge help for her, for your daughter, just like for me, I made a whole bunch of mistakes with my credit, but now I'm able to put my little brothers, my nieces and nephews on because I'm teaching them all the mistakes that they need to avoid, the things that I wish I never did. And I'm also adding them as authorized user on my credit card to help boost their credit. Like, I'm able to be there to like hold their hand in a way like I didn't have anybody to hold my hand through any of this. I figured out on my own, but let's pay it forward. Let's now like start a new cycle and be the person that we wish we had. We wish we had a mentor. somebody guiding us. So, let's be that mentor and that guide for the next generation because if not, we're just going to keep perpetuating these negative cycles of like figure it out yourself through trial and error. And it's like that's so harsh and that doesn't make any kind of sense. We need to be looking out for our family. We really have to. So, even if you can't give them money, spend time with them. help them understand the decision. Help them make a chart, a spreadsheet, you know, how much is it going to cost? What does that look like? What are the, you know, how do I feel about it? What are all the different factors of the decision? Not just this is what I want, right? Because everybody can't always get what they want. Um, what is mindyoumoneybook. com? Sorry, I came in late. Oh, that's just a website where you could get a copy of my book if you want to grab it. My book is called Mind Your Money and um, it's available on that website to buy and also comes with a free guide. So you could download the free guide and it has like a budget template and it has a spreadsheet with like 200 plus financial content creators that I really love content that you can just literally click on them and follow them on social media. So you have a bunch of people creating content about financial literacy and personal finance and money management and investing all these topics under financial education. So there's a bunch of free stuff in the guide and then of course my book um which is also an audible audio book that I recorded in my own voice also. So, if you rather like listen to it in the car on the drive to work or listen to it while you do laundry or whatever, you can also get it on the Libby app if you have um the Libby app from the library. Or if you pay for like audio books, you can, you know, get it as an audiobook version, too. All right, last one from Miss Stephanie and then I'm out cuz I'm getting hot and it's getting late. I think it's also important for college students to use data to choose a major. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but it's real. Choose something that will make you money and be easier to jump into sooner. Steph, I 100% agree, girl. Because my problem is when I got to college, my family didn't really like my parents didn't go to college, so they didn't have a way to guide me to say when you get to college, this is what you should do. They were just like go to college and that was the end. So when I got to college, I was like, I did it. I got to college. That's what I was supposed to do. But what's next? Like I did not have any idea what to choose as a major, how to choose a major. Like, so what I did was I just started taking classes and things I was interested in. I started learning languages. I started taking French classes. I started taking art classes because I've always been an artsy kid. I started taking different classes about topics that I was interested in, but I didn't really know how to like think strategically like long term after college when I'm done with school, what is the degree going to do for me? It's going to help me get a job. Okay. Well, what kinds of jobs can I get with this degree? If I get a degree in art, in art history, architecture, if I get a

### Segment 15 (70:00 - 74:00) [1:10:00]

a degree in architecture, if I get a degree in mathematics, biology or in engineering, what like what different jobs would be available to me based on these majors? I never thought like that. I was just like, oh, I'm just going to do the classes. I'm going to take classes that I love and enjoy and do things that I like. And I really wish I had somebody to guide me better because I literally I had like three majors or at Brown we call it concentrations but I had um visual arts, history of art and architecture. So both of them very artheavy and then urban studies because I was really interested in like urban development, community workshops, planning. I wanted to like go work in a museum and be like a museum programming person to like help with tours and like be a tour guide and eventually maybe like a curator. But once I started interning at museums, I realized I don't really like this. It's kind of boring. It's real quiet. Very rarely do they even have events and a lot of people don't even like to go to the museums because it's very stuffy and you have to be quiet. And so I realized right away like I was studying something that I thought I was really interested in, but in the future I wasn't going to use it for my career path. So I ended up completely doing something very not related, which was going into teaching. And that ended up parlaying into teaching financial education. So it worked out. But I really wish I had mapped a path strategically by thinking where what kind of stuff do I want to do when I'm an adult? What are the stuff that I want to do? What are the projects types of work do I want to do? You know, where do kind of what kind of companies do I want to work at? What do I want to do with my time as an adult? And then backwards plan from there. If I really want to work with animals, should I be a veterinarian? Oh, no. I don't like animals. Okay. Do I like working with babies? Maybe I should be a pediatrician. Oh, I don't really like babies. Oh, maybe I like I want to be a dentist or like I really should have started thinking backwards instead of like going into college and just forward planning by taking classes that I like and hoping that it like created a major that made sense. It did not make sense and I got lucky. Fortunately for me, things worked out. But I, you know, if I had a kid, I would 100% be helping guide them by, you know, doing looking and researching at different careers. One of the best ways to do this, matter of fact, if you are on YouTube, go and look at Millennial Money. It's a series from CNBC and they basically show you all of these different people, their budget, where they live, the lifestyle, their income, what job they have. And the more episodes of that you watch when you're like a teenager, the more you start to see like, oh, like these you could really create like an endless number of different pathways for how you can live your life, what you can study, what you can do, what kind of job you might have, how much income you might make, where you could live. Like it really needs to be exposure, early exposure because tr truthfully, I had really I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea. Steph said, "Me, too. I try my best to guide my students. I try to be what I didn't have. Exactly. That's all That's the best. That's all we can do. I love that. All right, y'all. I am going to wrap this up because it's hot. I'm wrapping late. Um, life is ups and downs. Yes, Sam. I agree. Lenders don't care what your situation is when the going gets rough. You sign the contract and you got to take responsibility. Yep. I'm attending Janelli University right now. Yes. Soaking up all the knowledge. Yes. I'm about to create a Yanelli University, Yanelli Academy, and drop all the gems in there. Um, all right y'all. Well, thank you for joining me for the live today. Um, hopefully there are some clips from here that I can take and turn into shorts and post on other channels as well on my reels and on my shorts. I really do think we need to like spread the word. I think a lot of young people especially don't realize the negative implications of cosigning. So, don't cosign. Long story short, don't cosign unless you are willing and able and comfortable to pay back the full debt amount as if it were your own because it is your own debt when you cosign. That's what it is. All right, y'all. If you have a question, a comment, a theme that you want me to cover, a topic or something, drop a comment in my recent video or you can email me at msbehelp@gmail. com and just tell me the situation, the question, the topic, and I will bring it up in my future live.