Financial Wellness Today - Episode 1

Every day is a new day. And bringing on guests in our future episodes, people that we can trust, people that give good information, people that that can coach people in the times that we’re in. It’s so needed. And I’m really, really excited about it. financial strife and not really knowing where to get help.

So I think this this show is going to be tremendous for us to really get to know each other and get to know each other and to get to know each other. And I’m really, really excited. because there’s nothing more important than people dealing with financial struggles, financial strife and not really knowing where to get help. So I think this this show is going to be tremendous for us to really spread the word about how we can help. I completely agree.

I’m really looking forward to today being our first podcast and then going forward and bringing in some incredible guests to interview. Yeah, man, I’m really, really excited. So a couple of things, a couple again, we have one for each day. I’m just going to mention a couple because that was six months ago. Right.

So according to recent data, 43 percent of American households are carrying credit card debt. That’s 43 percent in those homes. Credit card balances average seven thousand nine fifty one, which is a clear indication that Americans are still relying on credit to meet some portion of their everyday expenses. We talk about this, you and I, when we’re working together and you hear you hear the words, but it’s not being communicated as much as it should be. People, everything costs more right now.

And of course, we’re in an election year. So that’s not going to change much now. And who knows how much is going to change regardless of who gets into the presidency. But everything costs more. People aren’t necessarily making more.

And that means that they’re going to use lines of credit until they run out of those lines of credit to pay for things that they may not be able to afford. And that’s why we’re going to get into plans and why it’s an important service to help deal with this. We’re going to get into Cambridge credit counseling with the credit counseling and with debt management and how that all works. So we’re going to get into that in the middle of the show. But these statistics are real.

According to Bankrate, 68% of young people between 26 and 41 who took on student loan debt for their own education postponed a major financial decision because their debt had overwhelmed their budget. Again, getting into Cambridge’s services in a little bit, student loan counseling is something we’ve been doing since 2014. And it is certainly a backbreaker for many people as it relates to financial wellness. These are just two stats from six months ago that I wanted to highlight. And you can go on to our social media pages and let me share how you can contact me.

LinkedIn is at GordonOCares as well as Facebook is at GordonOCares. And then Twitter is at GordonOCares as well. Randy, what are your handles for people to reach out to you on social media? So mine would be Facebook forward slash Perk Plans, LinkedIn forward slash Perk Plans and Twitter forward slash Perk Plans. Awesome.

com. And Randy, what email can they reach out for you with questions? com. Awesome. Okay.

We’ll repeat those at the end of the show as well. So those are just two statistics, Randy. I’m going to read a couple of headlines to you and then let’s dig in. These were just this first headline is from Credit and Collections News on October 7th, 2024. S.

credit card debt declines for the second time in the past three months signaling a plateau in borrowing. The reason for that is because people are getting to being maxed out on their lines of credit. Second, nearly one third of drivers behind on car loan payments, new report shows. Car loans now are starting to suffer from people not being able to make their payments. Next one, more young people are falling behind in their credit card and vehicle payments.

A double whammy just of the two headlines I read now combined. So those are the types of headlines that are coming out because if you just look at the simple numbers, right, two years ago I was giving presentations where 840 billion was the number of outstanding credit card debt alone. 15 trillion. And we’re heading into the holidays, which means all of the things that I just laid out. People are going to go into the holidays.

They’re going to overspend. They’re going to put a lot of things on credit card debt because they feel like they have to give, give. And, you know, this is when is it going to end is the question. And, again, I love that you and I are working together on this show because we’re going to bring resources for people to make sure they go to trusted sources of places that really want to help people when they’re struggling. I completely agree.

Trust, advertising, and finding partners

I mean, I’ve been in the real estate industry now for I can’t believe I’m going to say this over 20 years. And I realized in the very beginning that I wanted to try and create a way of separating myself from all the other real estate agents, loan officers, because we’re basically just a commodity. There are hundreds to thousands of real estate agents or loan officers trying to get that one deal. And back in 2005 is when I first created Perk Plans as a way of really generating mortgage leads, but as a way of also helping out the consumer by offering some type of an incentive as a lender credit. And over the years, it’s evolved into a full blown out national affinity program where we now have millions of members around the entire country taking advantage of being able to save on things that they’re buying every single day.

So financial wellness today, I think you and I have been talking about this for quite a while, and it’s nice to get this on track. You know, this being our first podcast and just being able to help as many consumers, but also importantly, all the organizations that we’re currently working with to be able to set up individual financial wellness webinars directly for them, for all their employees or their members. Yeah, and we both know, and this is the interesting part of the parallels that we work in, employers typically struggle with offering benefits like credit counseling and debt management because they’re not in an EAP. And as we dig into Perk Plans today, we’re going to show the value of what an employer can offer by having both of our services and our networks of trusted professionals. You know, I want to take a hot minute to talk about advertising.

It’s a very tricky game, and it’s very expensive, and we’re a 501c3 nonprofit, and we’re national, and we don’t have the budget to be able to be on the national TV airwaves to let people know that there are trusted credit counseling sources that work directly with credit card companies to give benefits when people are struggling. And again, I’ll dig deep into this in a bit, but advertising-wise, there are companies advertising things in the financial world that aren’t good for people in many ways. If they’re only offering one solution by tapping into people’s desperation and the purpose of this show and using the network and bringing on trusted professionals is so that when it comes to your finances, this show can be a one-stop shop of how to be put in touch with trusted professionals that have a consumer’s best interest in mind. Yeah, I know you and I have been speaking with organizations for years at this point, and what we’ve done is we’ve come to find what we feel is the best of the best in all the different categories. You know, as we start out, you know, we might think that the first company that we work with is the best at what they do, and then we find out that they’re not.

Right. So, you know, we’ve already gone through the mistakes that we, you know, most businesses make in the beginning, and I think that as of now, you know, our network has grown to be what we consider the best of the best that are out there. Look, and to all the partners out there that will want to come on this show, it doesn’t matter if there’s multiple companies in the same industry. We want to offer options for people, at least that they know are trusted and people that have a great track record of dealing with consumers and getting testimonials and ratings and being top of class. Because when it comes to finances, and I’ll quickly give a correlation, reverse mortgages for people that are senior citizens, 62 and over.

HUD had put a stopgap to prevent people from listening to a loan officer when they’re at that age about what a reverse mortgage is, and then signing up and not really knowing the pros and cons. And at 62, it’s really late to try and recover from a financial mistake. So they offer this opportunity for HUD-certified counseling agencies like Cambridge to do counseling outside the transaction that they have to get certified that they know and understand the pros and cons. And even sometimes family members get involved because they want to know what’s going on, too, if their loved one, if their elder is going to borrow off the home. And I think it’s an incredible process so that people at that age are getting in there, having to get certified, and then knowing what they’re getting themselves into.

And I’m not suggesting that loan officers don’t do that, but it has happened. There’s a reason that HUD put it in place, and that’s what I look at this show as. Let’s be that overview for people when they’re trying to get their finances together. They’re trying to set financial goals. They’re trying to have a place to turn to to be motivated about it.

And that’s what this show is going to bring. I completely agree. I mean, I know that, you know, in the financial world and especially in the mortgage world that I’ve been involved in for over 20 years, you need to be able to specialize in specific things, especially reverse mortgage. So it’s nice to speak to somebody that works only in reverse mortgages that can then work directly with a team that can do everything else. Absolutely.

You know, that specialized piece that a loan officer has for specific things that consumers can do, I think, really makes you stand out from the others. Listen, we’re going to dig in, my friend. It’s so important for people, and I’m really, really excited. So the next part I think that we need to do is I want to give you the opportunity to talk about your history, how Perk Plans was developed, why it’s an incredible platform, and then, of course, even equally as incredible as the Hero Benefits Network. That’s great.

Perk plans history and platform overview

So let’s talk about it. Talk about your history, your background, Perk Plans, and then Hero. All right. So Perk Plans for me started back in 2005. I was trying to find a way of generating mortgage leads, being in the industry only for a year or two.

That was just different than what all the other loan officers in the country are doing, which is basically trying to create relationships with real estate agents. Now, again, I’m not saying that you don’t create those relationships because they’re extremely important. And we have thousands and thousands of real estate agents that we work with at this particular point. But I decided to create a mortgage benefit program back in 2005. I’m going to offer some type of a lender credit.

And I guess I got very lucky because the first company I ever signed up was the union for Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin, even today, is still one of my most important clients. I started writing mortgages almost immediately with this particular program. I then did a mortgage for the head of the legal department at Toys R Us. I told them what I was doing for Lockheed.

And they said, why don’t you bring your program in here? We have 10,000 employees. Like, OK, this is kind of easy. So at that point, I decided to build out a whole real estate portal, mortgage title, home inspection, credit repair, insurance. And where we were allowed to by law, we offered some type of a discount.

Over the years, the platform just started to evolve. We started adding thousands of national retailers, local retailers, travel, entertainment, health and wellness. And we had built it up to about 50,000 regional members just in New Jersey, Philadelphia. Because at that point, I was just working for a regional mortgage company. And I remember getting a call one day from my web designer who said, Rand, I’ve got some bad news.

Your website’s dead. It crashed. I’m like, really, what happened? I was basically getting too much traffic for what it was originally built for. Because what I did, I just kept putting building block on top of building block on top of building block as I was adding all these new things.

And it turned out that it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. PERC plans is an employee benefit. We work directly with through organizations, directly with HR. And for those that aren’t familiar with the organization called SHRM, SHRM is the National Association for HR. And I’ve actually built the PERC platform for the whole state of New Jersey.

I called up some of my partners and I said, listen, I need to rebuild the platform. But before rebuilding it, number one, I might as well do it nationally. Number two, I might as well rebuild it exactly how you want me to do it. So if you can tell me what you like and don’t like about some of the other national programs that are out there. So here’s what they said.

Number one, we don’t like the fact that our employees have to visit someone else’s Web site in order to access the perks. We want them to come to our Web site or our intranet in order to access them. Number two, they said they wanted to make sure it was completely customizable. So this way, if I go to a law firm and I have legal shield or I go to a car dealer and I have true car or I go to a real estate agent. But the real estate agent wants to build in their own title company or home inspector, even local restaurants or entertainment venues.

They can do that. And then lastly, they said, we don’t want to have to give you our database. Our database is kind of private. So what we do is we build every organization from an individual realtor to a brokerage to a company, a union, a national association. We build in their own customized white label PERC platform.

They get to pick and choose the perks. They get to build in whatever they want to build in. I build it in 24 hours, send it to them. They plug it into their Web site or intranet with or without a password. But very important, we then brand it and promote it in their name.

People out there, you know, consumers don’t know the name PERC plans. They know the name Cambridge Perks. They know the name Garden State Sherm Perks. They know the name Cross Country Perks. It’s their PERC platform.

So we brand it and we promote it in their particular name. OK, so we launched the platform. We now have millions of members around the entire country. Yeah. So a couple of things.

Number one, obviously, Lockheed Martin being your first client and still your client today shows credibility. I mean, that’s that’s incredible. Number two, you broke my heart because I miss walking into Toys R Us because that always used to be fun. Right. That wasn’t my fault.

That’s not your fault. I get it. But one important distinction I think that you need to make. What separates you from all the benefit programs out there? What what separates PERC plans from the rest?

Well, real simple, it’s the fact that we brand it and promote it in that company’s name. It’s completely customizable. And again, most companies don’t want to share their database. So we can still create the marketing pieces for those organizations and then they just can forward them to their own database. You know, as our audience gets to know us, Randy, one of the most important parts about that is that you vet the products that are in the platform as well.

And we’re going to have those people come on and talk about their benefit and talk about the same thing. Why are they trustworthy? Why are they better? Why would you turn to them? And I think you’ve done an incredible job building a product base that people have a variety of areas to get savings.

And again, getting back to the start of this program today, I put some statistics out there and I could go off forever on statistics right now on why people struggle. But no time more important than right now to have a trusted place to go to get discounted services and or products on a platform when people are working a tight budget and they need to save. But yet they still need to live. There’s no question about it. I mean, I knew when I was first starting to build PERC plans as a national affinity platform.

And again, I never tried to do that in the very beginning. It just sort of happened. But we are very financial heavy in a lot of the offerings that we have from our real estate to our insurance, to our credit counseling, to our student loan refinancing, to our other financial partners that we offer with inside the platform. On top of that, you know, we do have all the fun stuff, the travel, the entertainment, the health and wellness, the national local retailers. That’s all that’s all a given.

But we like to promote, especially in today’s world, the financial wellness piece. I think that’s a surprise for you, my friend. I have a surprise. Sorry to cut you off there. I have a surprise.

I’m bringing up the site. I want the people watching this show to see what we’re talking about, because we’re going to have guests on and that will take up a lot of time of the show. But because we have this availability to highlight just a few things of what the platform looks like, I want you to just quickly run through it as if you were a consumer. And we’ll just quickly highlight some of the areas where people can get savings. So I’m going to pull it up and I’ll click on a few things and you can help me walk through what you’d like to show.

You got it. All right. Here it is. OK, so the first thing I want you to remember, this is a customized platform that would sit directly on your Web site as an organization. But when you’re looking at the platform itself and we’ll talk about Hero Benefits Network afterwards, because what we’re creating for our heroes out there, I think is just is just amazing.

But what you’re looking at at the top are icons of all the different categories that we offer. Now, we use per plan site as sort of like a demo site where we have everything built into it. But when you go to organization site, they’re not going to take things that might conflict with them. So we have a lot of home services sites, homes and especially real estate professionals. We have an entire insurance marketplace, which I also think is important.

And financial wellness education is also a big piece where we offer discounts that are completely amazing. Now, when you get into all the fun stuff, the travel, the tickets, the national local retailers, the flowers and gifts, the health and wellness. We’re even building an entire resource section for mental health and addiction. And then we even have something called HR Corner, which are actually perks directly for the company itself. Yeah, talk about the shop local, too.

I think that’s an important one to highlight. No question. So we partner with national companies for that, that basically when you log in, you can search by zip code. And then what happens is, is that after getting into it, you can pick the category that you want to shop for, whether it be restaurants, entertainment venues, all in the local area that you’re looking at. So if you want to discount at a museum, you can get it.

If you want to discount at thousands of dining places, you can get it. So even the little things, if you can say $5 here, $20 here, it all helps in the budgeting today. So that’s incredible. Obviously, the local ability to be able to get savings when you’re using local products. I think that’s incredible.

Where can people reach out to you to get more information? Real simple. com. com. OK, so now let’s pivot and talk about the Hero Benefits Network.

Hero benefits network for service members

I mean, again, incredible work. Take it away. OK, so Hero Benefits Network is near and dear to my heart and a lot of the heroes out in today’s world. What I’ve done is I partnered me being in the mortgage industry. I partnered with people that I worked with for a very long time in the mortgage industry.

They come from the real estate industry. And what they’ve done, they used to own one of the largest brokerages in Florida. They had over 600 agents working for them at one time. But what they did was they pivoted after selling that into just educating real estate agents. So what we did is we created a new company called Hero Benefits Network, which is actually the DBA for Fraternal Benefits Network.

My partners actually started doing this about 35, 40 years ago and working with heroes through the real estate company. And the way it works is really simple. If you’re in the military or veteran, if you’re in law enforcement, firefighter, EMS, if you work in education. And what I mean by education is you could be a teacher at a high school or college. You could be a teacher at a golf course.

You could be working behind the desk at a college. You qualify for our program. Health care providers. You could be working in a hospital. You could be a chiropractor, a physical therapist.

And again, you can be working behind a desk at one of these organizations. If you’re a government employee, if you’re associated with a nonprofit or even a union worker, you qualify for this program. And the way it works is we have a national network of real estate agents, mortgage companies and title companies. If you use our network, we will reward that hero with an average of three to ten thousand dollars that we just give to the arrow. Each of our partners donates a percentage of their commission.

That we give directly back to the hero themselves, and they can use this for anything. They can use the money and go to Home Depot. They can use it for travel. They can even have it incorporated directly at the closing table in some cases. So the money is just given to them.

It’s just another way of giving back to make buying a house or selling a house that much more affordable. In a turbulent, costly housing market. Exactly. I mean, if we if we do if one of our clients happens to be a nurse at a hospital. How cool is it to be able to stand in front of that hospital afterwards?

The realtor of the mortgage company and title company with a check for six thousand dollars say we just donated six thousand dollars back to the hero. Because they are part of hero benefit, hero benefits network. That’s an incredible, incredible feeling. But better yet, on top of that, we also offer our hero hero perks, which means we’re in contact with those heroes all year round. This isn’t just buy a house for me and we never see you again.

And then on top of that, we’re going to be creating financial wellness webinars directly for a lot of these hero groups where we can start educating the heroes on financial wellness. So it’s a hands on approach that we feel is going to separate us for all of the mortgage title and real estate agents that work in our network. It’s going to separate them from other agents that don’t do things like this. Look, I think as we have been talking about, we will continue to discuss trust and credibility. The fact that the realtors that sign on in the mortgage companies that sign on to offer this benefit, it shows that they care about taking care of our heroes.

I completely agree. I mean, you know, it’s funny when you talk to some realtors that are not interested in your program. They’re just interested in doing a couple of deals here and there. And they’re not giving back to the consumer. OK, with the realtors that are and the mortgage companies and the title companies that are a part of our platform, you know, the reward that they give back.

And first, you know, also let me mention here, a benefits network is also a 501C3. We’re a nonprofit also. So the donations that are made to us through these real estate professionals that’s given back to the hero is is just another way of giving back to the people that are doing things for us every single day. Hey, listen, we’ve all seen it a lot of times, the people that that donate their time and that focus their time on helping people in general. It’s a broad brush, huge scale.

But nonprofits, there’s so many nonprofits out there that what a nonprofit is, is basically offering a service and providing jobs. That’s that’s pretty much what nonprofits do. And, you know, it gets to a point where when you’re building a trusted network of people, they kind of have to be in right. They have to be in when they know that they’re promoting something that’s for the greater good. And that’s what that project is all about.

And I’m excited to work with you on that, too, to spread that word and get more people on board and let more organizations that have eligible employees know that that this great benefit exists. Yeah, I mean, it’s a philanthropy. You know, I want to do and I know you because I’ve known you for a long time. We want to do our part to give back as much as we possibly can. Well, at the same time, making sure that we have the right products and services for all of our members and all the people we work with.

Again, great work. And I throughout this show every week that we’re bringing people on, we’re going to continue to highlight this. We’re going to continue to highlight services that are credible and available and offered for people in need. One more time, is it the same email address to reach out to you? com.

Cambridge credit counseling and debt management

It’s real simple. com. All right. Great. So I’m going to pivot a little bit now to talk a little bit about the organization that I work for, which is Cambridge Credit Counseling.

And we are a 501C3, as I’ve mentioned. We’ve been in business since 1996, coming on our, what’s that, 27th anniversary of being in business. And across that time frame, there’s been a lot that’s changed in economy up, down, left, right. We had a housing crash in 2008, which caused, obviously, great strife for people in many ways, losing investment dollars when the stock market crashed. So being in business for this long, we have services that we provide when people are struggling in their financial world.

And one of the main services that we have is credit counseling. And I want to talk about what credit counseling is. When you reach out to Cambridge, you get placed with a certified credit counselor. The certifications that are in the industry that are recognized by the banks and the regulators and the trade associations, that we have 63 employees that are cross-trained in being a certified credit counselor, a HUD counselor, student loan counselor, et cetera. So the staff that we have is available so that when people are struggling and getting to that tipping point where they’re having trouble paying their bills, they could speak to a certified counselor.

Number one, where it starts is empathy, right? We want to learn why a person got into the position that they’re in so we can figure out, if we’re going to put a game plan together with the consumer, how they got there. And it could be, you know, there’s some stigma, Randy, that when people are in debt, that they’re just irresponsible. And I can tell you from the many years of doing workshops, presentations, outreach, people talking to us, a lot of times it has nothing to do with that. A lot of times it has to do with life changes, a medical problem, a family medical problem, a change in job, a change in overtime, not knowing how to deal with uneven income when they had the overtime.

How do they save? What’s an appropriate amount of savings versus appropriate amount of investing? So all of the stories that we understand, and when you go to our site, there’s a ton of testimonials that talk about where people were and where they got to, because all it is about credit counseling is figuring out what are the options, narrow them down. A lot of times, I’m sure you know this in the world that you have been in, in the mortgage industry, people make mistakes when they’re desperate and they don’t know where to turn to have a conversation to see what’s real and what isn’t real, what can I do and what can I not do. So in counseling, it is find out what got the person to where they are, and then the first thing we do, Randy, is a budget, right?

People don’t love the word, but in the mortgage realm, you have to have a budget. When you take on this major investment, you have responsibilities as a homeowner, so you have to know what that is, and a budget is one of those cornerstone pieces as a tool, if you will, that people need to put effort into. It almost is a worthwhile hobby to be able to really control spending. So we take a look at the budget, and then after the budget, we know how much do they have left over for savings, because one of the stats we do in the April financial literacy, and I share it in a lot of workshops, is 65% of people living paycheck to paycheck. So that typically means they don’t have much money to save, and they don’t have much in savings.

In counseling, we recommend anywhere from three to six months of all of your bill payments in savings, so that if something does happen that changes the way that life is being lived, a medical problem, you have to step down at work for a little while, whatever that is, you have something to lean on. So that’s what credit counseling is about. And then, you know, real quick, the debt management program, and I will share this continuously throughout the episodes that we do. A debt management program is a tremendous way to pay back credit card debt when there’s no alternatives, like going to the bank for a competitive interest loan, taking equity out of the home. If that’s already been done, or someone owes too much money and they can’t get approved, a debt management program is a good solution, because what that is, is we have relationships with every single credit card company there is to gain benefits for a consumer.

Lower payments, we’re typically able to get the payments down to 25%, and we consolidate those payments into one easy payment to make it easy on the consumer. Number two, interest rates. The average interest rate is around 25% now, and people that are high risk are dealing with 29%, 30%, 31% interest. We get the interest down to an average of 8%, and when we do the counseling, we put this all in front of the consumer to show them how the plan would work, where their interest rates will go, and we do have fees in that program that are very minimal as a nonprofit. So we break all this down for the consumer, and then the plan puts them debt-free in 44 to 48 months, paying the balance in full at a lower interest rate.

So if they’re stuck and they’re just paying monthly minimum payments every month, and the balance isn’t coming down, statistically that could take over 300 payments to follow that schedule, and that’s why it’s a life game changer for people when they’re stuck in that area. And one of the best benefits, those headlines I read you about people falling behind, if someone comes into the debt management program, we’re able to get them back to a good standing after two or three good faith payments without them making up the back payments and lay fees, which if they’re already overextended, once they fall behind, it’s next to impossible to get caught back up. And you know we’ve helped so many PERC plan members that have come through, that have dealt with the credit counseling, that have joined the debt management program, and over our lifetime, you can imagine over 27 years, we’ve helped a ton of people deal with debt problems or put a game plan together so they can do things on their own. Yeah, I mean very important what you said that stuck out to me was the words paid in full. Okay, opposed to settled for less than full amount.

Yep. And for those that understand credit, you know, what’s written on your credit report is very important because it affects your scores, and it affects what interest rate you’re going to pay for a car, for a home, or even credit cards down the road. So those words paid in full with the counseling that they get through Cambridge is one of the things that stand out about your program. An important indicator because, again, there’s a whole industry out there, which is the debt settlement industry, and you look on some of these websites on ratings. I just ask a simple question when people want to debate good, bad, or indifferent, because I could explain very easily why debt settlement is a solution, but it is not the solution always, right?

Most of the time it’s not. If settlement is something that you have to do where you don’t pay your balances in full and you stop paying your bills for a while so that you can settle them, that for some people has to happen because maybe they can’t file for bankruptcy because they’re not eligible, and maybe they’ve just gotten so overextended where they can’t afford their bills. But the majority of the people, that’s not the answer. And I just ask our audience when we talk about this, and I’ll bring this up again when we talk about safe places and good things for consumers. If you were a bank, would you want a company out there promoting to stop paying you?

Would you want that to be the promotion? Or if you were a bank, would you want to work with a nonprofit that has certified counselors that are working with people and not selling anything but counseling them on what their alternatives are, and that’s why the banks work with the credit counseling industry to give benefits to vetted companies that do that. And important, too, what you just said, these are certified counselors. Right. These are people that actually know what they’re doing.

So when you’re talking to one of your counselors that know what they’re doing, it makes the entire process a lot easier. So just what you said, right? In counseling, this is what happens. We do a budget. We create an action plan.

Three out of four people get sent away with that to do things on their own with the advice of a counselor. So free counseling, they go away. They have an action plan. They’re thankful, grateful. Now they can start working on it.

One or two of those people may come back because they tried doing it on their own. They know what the alternatives are, so then they can always come back to us and say, hey, you know what? I tried everything you offered, and I just can’t do it on my own. I’d like to look at the debt management program again. And then they know that that’s the alternative.

When you’re getting sold things, and that’s the only alternative in a world where people have to deal with a household of finances, whether it’s a family of two, four, five, seven, they’ve got a lot of challenges. So that’s what the counseling is about. You know how many people lose sleep at night because they – and I bring these statistics to employers just like you do. They lose sleep at night because they don’t know what to do. Right?

And they’re just going on and going on. In the workplace, people go to work. If they don’t have a place to turn to when they’re dealing with debt problems, they’re not celebrating it with all their co-employees saying, I’m in debt. Isn’t that great? Woo-hoo.

No, they’re not like that at all. They’re actually, like, miserable. And it causes mental health problems. There’s a cost to an employer for that. And in all of that situation, once somebody gets to talk to a trusted counselor and they can narrow down the options, it takes away all the guessing games.

And like the reverse mortgage, talk to a credit counselor to know the pros and cons. It prevents people going to PERC plans, right? We’re on your platform for a reason in financial wellness. It prevents people from jumping on the Internet or listening to an advertisement because they’re desperate and not really knowing what all of their options are. Between our two platforms and services and HERO, I think it’s going to be obvious to the people that are listening that our intentions of this show, Financial Wellness Today, are to offer information to help people make decisions on trusted areas to turn to, whether it’s getting a mortgage, buying tickets to a show, or going to a sports, maybe a Mets game to get some discounts on those tickets.

Purpose of the show and trusted professionals

Yeah, I’m not going to go to any more Phillies games this year, unfortunately. I don’t think they’re going to be available. So, you know, this is the purpose of the show. And the good news is that we have a plethora of trusted professionals to bring on each week to talk about their industry, their product, what’s good, what’s bad, why are they trusted? I’m always going to ask, always, why you?

Why are you better? Why are you on the show? Why are you a trusted professional? Because I want the audience to hear it. We’re going to give people also that are in sales, right?

Sales can be tricky, right? People, there’s stigma in a lot of the industries, mortgage, car loans, used car sales. There are many good salespeople out there, and maybe there’s some salespeople out there that are not as good or their intentions are not in the right place. And that’s what we’re going to do on this show. We’re going to bring people on, give them an opportunity and a platform to celebrate who they are and what they do, and have people reach out to them if they want services from a trusted professional.

So that’s exciting to me. We’re also going to work on segments of education for financial wellness. We’re going to work on celebrating heroes. We’re going to work on understanding how discounts on Perks platform, as an example, are good, especially when you have a budget in place and you’re planning properly for entertainment, expenses, insurances, et cetera. Yeah, I think our audience is going to see how good of a job we’ve done by vetting out the best of the best out there, talking to many, many people that do the same exact thing to make sure that we bring the best to our membership.

How do you make a choice? How do you make a choice, right? Come listen to the show each week because you’ll have access to all the people that come on board, that are already on board, that are going to educate you in their industry, in their company, with their services, the good, the bad, the ugly. This way you don’t have to rely on advertisements that may or may not be what you think they are. Case being, I was just laughing about this one, Randy.

We’re probably the only country that does advertisements for pharmaceutical products, right? And then when you see those commercials, the disclaimer at the bottom, once you take a look at that and read it, it’s almost frightening to see what you might be needing or getting yourself into. And we want to make this the place to turn to, to find trusted professionals. And again, I want you to give your contact information. We’re going to wrap this show up.

I want you to give your contact information. I want the people listening to know you can reach out to us at any time. If you have questions, if you want topics discussed on the show, if you want to be placed with a trusted professional, that’s another key piece of listening to this show and being engaged in it. And everything that has to do with financial wellness, everything that you can think of, we can help you with on this show. So, Randy, how can they get in touch with you again?

Closing contacts and next episode preview

com. Awesome. And your social media handles? Would be Facebook forward slash PERCplans and for LinkedIn, LinkedIn forward slash PERCplans and the same for Twitter. com.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter forward slash GordonOCares, just like the email address. That’s how you can get in touch with me. And before we wrap this up, Randy, this is really great today working with you on this. And I’m just so excited and looking forward to the next episode. I know you’re going to be bringing on a guest for our next show, so why don’t you tee that up for us?

Good. So our guest for the next show will be Jay Talasano from Cross Country Mortgage. Cross Country right now is rated as the number one mortgage company in the country. So this is the company that I’m personally licensed with. So we look forward to having Jay to talk about all the different offerings that he can help all of his clients save money on.

Yeah, and I wanted to avoid getting into the mortgage conundrum right now because the last couple of years have been a little rough. I think no one better than Jay to come on the show to talk about the current climate, the industry, where we see things going, what consumers can do when they’re trying to figure out different scenarios of selling their home and buying another one at the type of rate that they have today on their first home and what rate they’re going to have on the next one. A bunch of really, really good things that we can discuss with Jay and no better information needed in today’s day than dealing with that. From first-time homebuyers, people that might be struggling or in foreclosure, we have services for that. So it’s going to be a great discussion, and I’m totally looking forward to it.

Yeah, I definitely am also looking forward to it. And kicking this podcast off with you today has been something in the works. I’ve been working on for now for a long time, and it makes me very happy that we’re finally getting it off the ground and being able to push this out to all the organizations and our audience going forward. Yeah, and look, we put this together with no funding, right? This is me and you getting it off the ground.

We’re going to have a website created eventually. We’re going to have more resources that we can provide. We’re even going to have a portal to go to if you want to put an inquiry in for some of the services that are offered on PERC plans or even the credit counseling, the housing counseling, the student loan counseling that we offer. Those are all going to get created eventually. So we’re that story.

We’re not starting in our garage, Randy, building a product and eventually becoming this mega company. We already have tremendous organizations that we work with, and it just got to the point where we know people need this dialogue, and it’s going to be great. So I’m looking forward to working with you in the next episode. I hope it comes quick because I can’t wait. Thank you, my friend.

Yeah, this is a very enjoyable morning so far. All right, Randy Nemiroff from PERC plans, Gordon Oliver from Cambridge Credit Counseling. We’ll see you on the next show. Talk to you soon, Gordon. You got it, Randy.