---
title: "Financial Wellness Today: The Hidden Cost of Financial Stress: From Student Debt to Crisis Budgeting"
description: "Gordon Oliver on the hidden costs of financial stress, why people under money pressure turn to high-risk choices, and how to build a crisis budget."
url: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/podcast-financial-wellness-today-hidden-cost-of-financial-stress
publisher: "Cambridge Credit Counseling Corp"
updated: 2026-10-28
---
# Financial Wellness Today: The Hidden Cost of Financial Stress: From Student Debt to Crisis Budgeting
When financial pressure builds, even the most diligent individuals can find themselves making decisions out of anxiety rather than sound strategy. In this episode of Financial Wellness Today, host Gordon Oliver reacts to a startling CNBC report showing that healthcare students are increasingly turning to prediction markets and betting platforms like Kalshi and FanDuel just to cover tuition, rent, and daily living costs. Gordon dives deep into the root causes of financial desperation and breaks down: High-Risk Financial Behaviors: Why students and hard-working adults turn to prediction markets, credit cards, or speculative trends when standard options feel out of reach. The Psychology & Hidden Costs of Financial Stress: How money anxiety impacts mental health, physical well-being, personal relationships, sleep, and workplace productivity. Debunking Money Myths: Why debt problems are not a sign of low intelligence or irresponsibility, but rather a reflection of systemic economic pressures and lack of planning tools. Actionable Solutions & Crisis Planning: How to build a crisis budget, involve family in financial planning early, set realistic goals, and access trusted non-profit counseling resources. If you or someone you know is feeling overwhelmed by debt or struggling to see a path forward, this episode offers a compassionate, practical guide to regaining control and rebuilding financial confidence.

## About this episode

Financial Wellness Today is the podcast from Cambridge Credit Counseling Corp, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit credit counseling agency. Gordon Oliver hosts conversations about household money, debt, and financial stress. This episode runs 37:33.

## Listen

[Listen to this episode](https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8721108/8721108_2026-10-02-153808.128.mp3?rssID=6806) or [view the episode page](https://www.audacy.com/947wmas/podcasts/e7b51e8b598f2384876e938abc70bbbf/episodes/financial_wellness_today_the_h-8721108).

## Full transcript

Welcome to Financial Wellness Today, the podcast dedicated to helping you master your money and live your best life. This show is proudly powered by the experts at Cambridge Credit Counseling with your host, Gordon Oliver. Here's Gordon. Hello everyone and welcome to Financial Wellness Today. My name is Gordon Oliver and I am your humble host and also the director of business development with Cambridge Credit Counseling.

This show is brought to you to encompass all discussions around financial wellness, things that people deal with on a day to day basis, week to week, month to month, year to year, when it comes to bringing money in, spending money out, and even just what we spend money on in general. Because obviously right now these times have been tough with the economy and the show is designed to just bring on guests, talk about topics, bring things that make you aware of some things that are happening in the world that you might not be aware of. You can find me at Facebook at Gordon O'Cares. That's Gordon O'Cares and LinkedIn at Gordon O'Cares as well. Feel free to email the show at Gordon O'Cares at gmail.com and you can also call 888-656-4390 if you'd like to talk to a debt counselor.

So today's episode, I want to talk about financial stress. And here's one that I know that people are stressing with because we've helped people with these scenarios and I'm going to bring up what they are in a minute. But I read an article today. I basically stopped me in my tracks and what it's regarding is student loans and people taking out student debt. So CNBC recently reported that healthcare students are increasingly using betting and prediction market platforms like Cal, she and FanDuel as a way to help pay for tuition and living expenses.

According to the survey cited in the article, which I'll post on my social media pages, more than 70% use these platforms regularly and nearly 70% said they started using them to help cover school or living costs. Less than half reported positive gains. Now before anyone hears this and thinks today's show is about gambling, it's not. It's about something that's much, much bigger. It's about financial stress and I could speak to this because I've done workshops at colleges and most of them are standing room only.

And in those groups we have people that are undergraduate students. We have people that are graduate students that are there taking a second degree or trying to get their master's and within that they all are spending money right to live and go to school. You obviously have to put a lot of time into getting your degree, doing your coursework. So either parents are funding that or individuals are funding it themselves, which brings along a lot of stress and credit card debt is one of those vehicles that's easy to utilize for everyday expenses, for food, groceries, gas for the car, whatever that looks like. So this episode is about what happens when hardworking people begin looking for high risk solutions because they don't see enough safe ones.

And honestly it's all about us because while that everyone is betting on a prediction market, many Americans are making financial decisions from a place of anxiety or uncertainty or desperation. And again, these betting markets, I just heard just off the cuff, I just heard that AOC is leading, uh, is the leading democratic candidate for, uh, the democratic party according to these prediction markets. So people are paying attention to them, they're utilizing them. And even when they are going to school, they are utilizing them to think that they can make extra money, risking the money that they already have leveraged to try to help them get through school. So today we're going to unpack what's really happening and what the show is going to expose on what people can do about when it comes to education.

We're really at that point and I am not suggesting that people don't go to college. I'm not suggesting people, um, stay away from college because of the cost. That's a decision that you or your family or your sphere of influences have to help you make your mentors. But college has gotten very expensive and so has borrowing. And in today's episode, we want to talk about this piece where you're risking things even further than just taking loans out to get through school.

So today, again, this is not a gambling story. This is about what people do when they go to school to try to get by. And more importantly, how they fund it and what they're going to owe at the end of it. So in this article, uh, the CEO quoted, uh, the students aren't betting for entertainment. So that's the first thing because when people see the gambling advertisements, they see, you know, people that are influencers, are sports stars, are actors.

They're promoting these sites about gambling. So when it comes to this specific topic and what I took from the article is that again, this isn't for fun. They are budgeting potential winnings into tuition plans. That's, that's how people are thinking. And I would, again, this, this threw me back when I read this article because I know there's problems out there.

We do student loan counseling at Cambridge credit counseling to help people navigate either the loans they already have or the repayment plans or the types of opportunities they have like public service loan forgiveness to get your loans forgiven. If you remember in the Biden administration, there were a lot of headlines about loan forgiveness and people got very confused. So now we, we pull it back into where we are today. And again, I, I, this is the first time I have heard that students are utilizing these prediction markets to try to make money to pay for their tuition. So think about that.

Imagine sitting down at the kitchen table and rent is due. Books need to be purchased. Classes are starting. This is all under the gun stuff and you're, and part of the financial plan depends on something that you don't control. Some people use credit cards, as I mentioned earlier, that's scary because the bigger issue is not the platform.

The bigger issue is why students feel they need to use something that is very high risk. I've been in financial wellness for over 20 years and people rarely seek solutions when they feel financially secure. They seek risky solutions when they're overwhelmed, when they feel trapped, when they feel behind. So this behavior isn't new. It's the underlying problem that is.

And again, this comes down to something we talk about a lot planning. It's very difficult to make decisions when you are in the middle of the process already. So if it's a student and the parents are paying, there's a different, a couple of different ways this could happen. But let's say the parents, so there's what's called an expected family contribution. Once you apply, you get what the cost of the college is, what the aid is going to be.

And then the student, if undergrad can borrow only a certain amount of money, which let's just use this. It's typically around 5,000 and then it goes up incrementally to a maximum of let's just say 7,500. So if the college costs 30,000, the family has to cover the rest or the individual doesn't. Usually that's via either a five 29 plan or lending, either by the direct federal loans through the government or through private banks. So just keep that in mind, right?

Planning has to happen so that we can figure out how we're paying for it and what it's going to cost to pay it back. So making these decisions in the middle of the senior high school year is a very bad idea. These are times where you should be planning if college looks like it's going to be happening. And again, just think about how kids grow. Things change.

They start in kindergarten K through 12 when they become in middle school, it's a different experience. They're growing. Then they get into high school. It's a whole new experience. You start as a freshman, then sophomore junior and then senior graduating, right?

So it's very bad to plan in the senior year. It's a very good idea to start planning, believe it or not, in middle school. And there are documents that go over these planning timelines. And if you want a copy of that, just reach out to me at, uh, Gordon O'Kares at gmail.com and I'll be happy to send you a copy of it. But you've got to plan early and things will change.

It doesn't mean that you're going to plan in middle school and all of a sudden your child is saying they want to go to Notre Dame. And by the time they get to the senior year, many things could have changed from that. Maybe even not going to college. So this is all about planning. And you know, you need to include your children in the discussion.

They need to understand that there's a cost. They need to understand that money is going to be borrowed. If it's not paid for in full, they need to understand how much it's going to cost for four years to go to school. So this is all about planning. And the reason, again, I'm covering that right now is because I would probably gather that if an undergrad student was either using a, one of these prediction platforms, they're not telling their parents most likely not.

Because do you think they would go, Hey, mom and dad, guess what? I'm going to use a prediction platform to help pay for school. What do you think the parents are probably going to say? Uh, what, that's probably sounds like a bad idea, but so this is something that it seems to come from desperation on using another vehicle to try to make money to make ends meet while you're going to school. Or if there's a full understanding about what the cost is going to be over time.

I mean, for those of you that don't know, there are payment repayment programs with the federal government that can last 30 years. And if you don't think that for 30 years of paying a bill with interest is going to cost you a lot of money of what you borrowed, it's going to cost you a ton of money. So again, these prediction markets, very risky. It's a, it's a form of betting. It's a form of risk.

And again, reading this article, I could not believe what I heard, what I read. And now what I'm trying to share with you so that you can have some open dialogue with people. And it doesn't have to just be school, right? This is just what this article brought. Maybe people are doing this to pay the rent.

Like I said earlier, maybe they're doing this to cover a bill. Maybe they're behind on their bills and they don't know what to do. So they're trying to double or triple their money so they can get caught up. So these are the things that we see as being in this business that many people can make mistakes on because they don't know any better or nobody told them any better. And again, that's the spirit of this show to bring up these things to share information that people can talk about around the kitchen table while they're trying to make decisions, going to take a quick break.

And when I come back, I'm going to go over the psychology of financial stress. This is Gordon Oliver with financial wellness today. Hello everybody. Welcome back. This is Gordon Oliver, the host of financial wellness today.

And in our first segment, we talked about healthcare students from an article from CNBC in general that are using prediction markets to try and make extra money, to make ends meet, to pay their tuition, to just pay to live while they're in school. So in what I want to talk about now is the psychology of financial stress. And I want you to just for a minute, just think about something that you were going to do that right before the event was stressful. You were stressed out. You had butterflies in your stomach, the adrenaline's flowing, your heart rates up.

That was, we've all been there, right? And those are good moments, right? So in my previous life, I guess if we'll say that I used to bowl competitively and you know, one of the benchmarks was bowling a 300 game, perfect game. And when you get into the 10th frame, for those of you that know what bowling is, you got, if you had the first nine strike, you got to get the next three and that's a perfect 300 game. Well, when you get there, it's a little nerve wracking.

You've got to have a routine to try to get past the stress of it all. Maybe your hands get a little clammy or maybe your feet get a little fast where you're going to throw the ball. Those are things that happen in all types of situations in life. I want you to think about now the psychology of stress when you are having money problems. So let's just talk about human behavior.

Financial stress can change decision-making. I've talked about budgeting all of my career with Cambridge because that's one of the key things that we educate on. It's one of the key things that we work with a consumer with to see why they might be struggling. And when things are tight, you obviously have to make some decisions. More importantly, we talk about what a crisis budget is.

And you'll hear that on this show. A lot of crisis budget is a budget that you develop for when a crisis happens. You don't want to be as an example, losing a family member and then having to worry about what bill you're going to pay. So you do a crisis budget after your initial budget, so that if a crisis happens, you turn immediately to that budget that you created in sound mind, right? Not under crisis, not under grief, not under pressure.

The same thing holds true here. When people get to a point where they're financially stressed out, there's a psychology piece that's involved. Think about being up at two o'clock at night and people thinking, I'm going to make a terrible financial decision today. That's probably not what they're thinking, right? Because that's not what the goal is.

The goal is they're waking up at two 30 at night because they're stressed. They need relief. They need help. They don't know where to turn to. They just need to get through the time that they're in.

And then that stress begins influencing decisions from desperation. This is why people overuse credit cards, take predatory loans, skip saving money, ignore debt, chase investment trends. The crypto industry is obviously classic for that because that was, that is the new get rich quick scheme, which doesn't work either. They also fall for scams. We'll talk about scams a lot on this show to try to make people aware that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I don't remember what movie it was, but I remember somebody defending themselves for answering to the King of a country that they had this big purse of money for them. And of course he got scammed and that was the point of the movie, but it was, it was part of a comedy, but it's, it's the same thing. We've all seen them. We have, we've all gotten the texts that look too good to be true. And this all comes from desperation.

If, because in your mind when you're stressed, you would love for those things to be true. And maybe that will make you make that step to make a mistake. It's not because people are responsible. Let's get that out of the way. This is the myth.

I'm going to do myths on this show. A lot to the myth. People that go to credit counseling are irresponsible because all they do is just overspend, overspend, overspend. That is a myth. Most of the people that seek out credit counseling and debt counseling have gotten to a point where they're trying to uphold the fort, trying to keep the house intact.

They're trying to pay the bills, put food on the table, um, get their kids educated or in sports or all kinds of things that cost a lot of money. If you've been a sports parent, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't yet, maybe you start planning for that too because putting your children through sports is a very expensive endeavor. But in today's world, with all these electronic devices in everyone's hand, every minute of the day, real good idea to have your kids in sports so that they're out on the field, communicating with people, seeing what teamwork's about. Um, just a great experience in general.

And again, part of the financial part of that, maybe people don't put their kids in sports because of the cost of it. So again, the people that come to us are not irresponsible. It's because they're stressed. One of the biggest myths in personal finance is that financial problems are caused by a lack of intelligence. That also is not true.

Many highly educated professionals struggle financially and many people that make over a hundred thousand dollars struggle financially just because you make a hundred thousand or $200,000 doesn't mean that you won't have a spending problem. Doesn't mean that you want finer things and you overpay for them. So financial wellness isn't about IQ. It's all about behavior. It's about having systems.

It's about habits. And most importantly, it's about having a plan. Now think about, let's bring it back to a healthcare student in college. A lot of times, you know, healthcare, uh, education, especially the second round is very intense. And depending on what you're studying for, and I'm not suggesting that anything isn't more important or more rigorous than others.

But I think we can define that some degrees are just more difficult than others. So first of all, there's stress in that, right? There's stress in having to do the work, having to get your degree. And within that, most people aren't making a ton of money while they're going through school. And even to some extent, some people aren't working.

They're just focusing on their studies and that's fine too. That's a decision. Hopefully you saved enough money, um, over time to be able to shoulder that. Or maybe your parents have put away enough money to give you allowances while you're in school so you can focus on your grades. But a lot of people don't do it that way.

A lot of people are doing their degree and working at the same time, which brings more stress because then you have to worry about your studies. You have to worry about the papers you have to write, the exams that are coming up, the midterms, the finals. And then you also have to worry about your responsibility at work and then your responsibility to be a human being. And if you're an individual, it's taking care of yourself. If you're an individual that has other people that you're taking care of, maybe you're a caregiver, maybe you have children, you have to take care of them too.

So you think about all of these things that accumulate and over time, stress can lead to bad decisions. So think about coming back to these prediction markets, right? It's a gamble. No matter how you look at it, if everybody could do it, they wouldn't exist. So people are taking chances to be able to make more money.

And this is a perfect example of when you are stressed out. Maybe you're not making the best financial decisions. And again, coming back to it, if you're an undergrad student and your parents are paying, it's highly unlikely that you're going to have that conversation with them. So think about financial wellness and think about it in the vein of if you're, if someone is in your life and they are in school and we're, we're at that time where everybody's back to school and colleges back in session, there's people that are stressed out. So one very important piece, don't forget to reach out to those that are in school and make sure they're doing okay.

Everyone's make sure they're doing fine. If they're stressed out, you asking, making sure you're taking care of them is a good thing to just give them an opportunity to tell you what's going on and maybe get some things off their chest. When it comes to financial wellness, this is a very difficult topic when people are in school because they're already accumulating debt and many people are not paying their loans while they're in school. And if they're not subsidized loans, if they're unsubsidized or they're private loans, interest is accruing. So not only did you pay borrow the money to pay for the tuition and school room and board maybe, but you're also paying interest as you're in school because you don't really have the money to make payments on those loans at that time because you're in school.

So there's so many reasons why stress can cause problems for people, especially when it comes to decision making. So if you know somebody that's in school every once in a while, check out with them, make sure they're doing okay. Make sure that they're, they're everything in their process is going well. And if not, give them the opportunity to get some things off their chest because again, credit card usage, these prediction markets, desperation plays are going to cost people money. And if not cost them, losing money, which is a terrible, we're going to take another quick break on our next segment.

We're going to talk about the real cost of financial stress. This is Gordon Oliver with financial wellness today. Welcome back to financial wellness today. This is Gordon Oliver, your hosts. And here we are talking about an article I read about healthcare students utilizing prediction markets to try and make money to fund either their lifestyle while they're in school or pay for tuition.

And I just, I, again, I couldn't believe it. So I immediately thought about making this episode to talk about the stress that people go through and some decisions that they make as a result of that might not be the best decisions. And it's not a judgment. It's really just a fact. Think about that of being under pressure in school, trying to get your nurse or doctoral degree or whatever you're in.

That, um, education for, to make an eventual good living. And that comes with great stress just by doing the coursework, just by getting through school. And then you bring in things like that are always in our face through advertisements, like gambling websites, prediction markets like CalShe, and it's not a criticism to them either. It's, it is what it is. They're allowed to put the product out there.

Then it's up to us to decide if we want to engage with the product. Now, before I get into it, if you want to ask questions to the show, you can email me at Gordon O cares at gmail.com. You can find me on Facebook at Gordon O cares and LinkedIn at Gordon O cares as well. Please communicate. Tell me what you want to hear about on the show.

God knows I have more than enough to talk about each and every week. We bring this podcast to you, but hearing from the listeners and getting some activity that you'd like to hear about that will help me invite special guests on to come on and talk about some of the information that you might need that I'm not an expert on. So please feel free to communicate with the show. And if you are looking to speak to a counselor, if you have any problems with credit card debt, you can call 888-656-4390. That's 888-656-4390.

Okay. So the hidden cost of financial stress. I want you to think about these things because again, when you are stressed, you're not always making the best decisions, right? So when people are financial, financially stressed, it impacts mental health. One of the things about our business that we do in helping people with debt problems, if people have financial debt problems, they have financial stress problems and they have mental health problems in almost all cases as a result of it, because they're stressed out when you can't pay the bills or when the bills are getting tight and when your paycheck comes in and it's already gone, there's a great amount of stress in that.

So number one, taking care of your mental health and even physical health. So when you get stressed out financially, that can be greatly impacted. And if you know how they say on the airplane, you put the oxygen mask on first so you can help take care of others. And if you don't put the oxygen mask on and you try to help others, then eventually you're going to run out of oxygen and not be able to help anybody. It's the same thing.

You got to take care of yourself first and be in a good way yourself before working on helping others. Financial stress can also impact relationships. So relationships are what they are. You're in a relationship. Maybe it's a friendship, maybe it's a romantic relationship, but it's very hard to have successful relationships if you yourself are not in a good way.

So if you are stressed out financially, it can affect your relationships with your family, with your friends, with a loved one, with someone that you are romantically involved. It also can affect sleep. I mentioned in an earlier segment, waking up at two 30 wondering how are you going to pay the bill that's coming So sleep gets greatly impacted because it's hard to be settled when you're stressed out productivity. One of the things that we do is the debt counseling and debt management opportunities. We have many, many employer partners because employees in the workplace, one in four, it's worse than that, but I'm going to use one in four struggle inside the workplace.

And if you think about this, no one's going around telling their coworkers, Hey, I can't pay my bills, not happening. So they keep it close to the vest. They don't want people knowing their business. So in the workplace, a lot of times things are measured by what's called a KPI, a key performance indicator that could be productivity. It could be quality.

It could be morale. It could be delivery. So when people are stressed out, they're not exactly productive at work either, which impacts others, not just yourself. I brought physical health up, right? If you're stressed out mentally, it can definitely have a physical impact.

We talked earlier about being in school. Those of you that have gone to school, whether it be K through 12, college, education, where you have to pass by reducing papers and exams and finals midterms, there's stress in that no matter how prepared you are is to be prepared, but no matter how prepared you are, it's still a nervous event and you feel differently in your physicality, in your body because it's stressful. Imagine every single day waking up and being stressed out about paying your bills and it's happening. This economy has made things very difficult for people. Why do I know that?

We have $1.2 trillion outstanding in credit card debt. Go ahead and Google it. Look it up. Whatever search engine you use, look up how much credit card debt does this country owe? And it's 1.2 trillion.

About right before COVID or even around COVID times, the figure was 840 billion. So you figure it out. Here's another thing. Do you think it stressed people out when they were tight on their budget and gas went up a dollar in a month? Do you think that that stresses people out?

This is the point. This is the point of this show. It's about talking about these things so people can know that there are safe places to turn. You can go to cambridgecredit.org forward slash debt if you need to speak to a counselor or you can call 1-888-656-4390. In our work that we do, we do a debt counseling, debt management, housing counseling, um, bankruptcy counseling, student loan counseling.

Those are all things that we're doing to help people come up with answers when they're stressed about money. And if you think about 1.2 trillion, just in credit cards alone, that stresses people out. How about this? People that were paying a low interest rate mortgage right around COVID, if they had an adjustable rate mortgage, maybe their rate went up because the rates have gone up and that stresses them out because their payment goes up and they have more expenses as a result. That's what happens in an economy like this.

And people, we, I typically go to events a lot to do exhibiting to be there for people that want to ask questions. I do workshops talking about all of these things. And you know, people don't love to share with the world that they're having problems. And this is one of the fears in the mental health space. Like when people aren't doing well mentally, sometimes people have no idea and then a bad event happens and then they find out.

Again, in this economy, people are tight and usually what happens when people are tight is either they make unwarranted decisions because they are stressed or they overextend themselves because they figure an answer will come eventually. That's all the reasons why when you know people are stressed out with their finances, they have to know that there's answers. And I can tell you very confidently in speaking to people for the many years that I've been in this business, one of my favorite things to say to people is there is always an answer. Maybe it's not the best answer. Maybe it's not the answer you wanted, but there's always an answer.

And if you are feeling stressed, make sure you reach out and talk to somebody. And that doesn't mean, it doesn't mean you have to talk to Cambridge credit counseling. You could just talk to a family member or a loved one, but it's not good to carry that stress. It's not good not to talk about it. And it certainly isn't good to not have a plan to just keep doing what you're doing.

So when I speak to people, they can have great jobs. They can made a great living from the outside. Everything looks wonderful. But when you dig deep and we get these calls all the time and you have that big house and those big, beautiful, wonderful cars, they come with a big, beautiful insurance bill on both sides. Then obviously you have other things to maintain in your life.

So a lot of this is about having a good game plan and having an answer and knowing that you can turn to someone for answers. If you need, we want to make sure that everybody understands that inside when people are stressed, they're carrying an enormous amount of anxiety and they don't necessarily share it with anybody. So they're just trapped in that stress, not because they were failing, but because they lack confidence in the financial future. And I hear this a lot right now. Like an employers are hearing this a lot right now.

Like I'm not confident. I'm going to be able to retire. I'm not confident in my financial future. And that's an important distinction about financial wellness. It's not just about money.

It's about confidence. I'm going to take another quick break and get to our final segment. This is Gordon Oliver with financial wellness today. Welcome back. This is Gordon Oliver, your host with financial wellness today.

Today we're talking about using prediction markets to fund things in your life financially, and more importantly, financial stress. And that could be whether you're in school, it could be just trying to uphold your own life individually. It could be running a family. It could be taking care of others. There's so many reasons why people get financially stressed today.

And obviously the economy has a lot to do with that, where everything costs more, uh, in, in our individual lives. But the point I wanted to make, and I started this episode around those prediction markets from an article I read. So I have a question that I want you to think about. If someone offered you a chance to double your tuition money this afternoon, would you take it? Answer?

I want you to think about it because thousands of the healthcare students, as I mentioned in this article, are effectively saying, yes, that's, that 70% number is in the article. And again, that article will be posted on my Facebook account at Gordon no cares on my LinkedIn account at Gordon no cares. So you can go see the article for yourself, um, for the key words of this discussion, which is basically healthcare students are funding their or trying, excuse me, to fund their education using prediction markets to try and make money to pay for their tuition. So think about it when you're making financial decisions, have some kind of inner voice, write some things down on paper, ask yourself, is this a really good decision before you do it? Because as I have mentioned, when people get stressed, they may not make the best decisions because they're under fire.

I brought up crisis budgets. Why? When you make a budget, the very next thing you should do is create a crisis budget. So you're creating it of sound mind, not in crisis. The worst time to make a crisis budget is when you're in crisis, you lost a loved one or you're in grief or you've lost income or somebody got hurt.

Those are the worst times to make those decisions. And if I bring up crisis budgets, just as a piece of advice, the reasoning will be is that it's one less thing you have to worry about when you are in grief. So a couple of takeaways from the article that I'm sharing and the points that I'm sharing with you. Again, 70% of healthcare students use betting prediction market platforms at least a few times a week. According to a report from workforce infrastructure company called class, less than half reported positive gains.

Think about that. Half half the people that use these prediction markers, um, lost their money. So that's terrible because if you're already in a stressful position, now it's even worse. So think about how this could cascade the wrong way. You use a prediction market to try to make money and the money that you use, you lost.

Now you're in a worse position than you were before you tried this prediction market to try to make money. Another thing about two thirds of the healthcare students using prediction markets and betting sites believe those platforms can help finance their education. And that's just, again, a mindset, right? What kind of frame of mind are you in when you think all you have to do? And again, this is, let's use the crisis budget.

If you're not in school yet, and I'm bringing up these prediction markets, why don't you research on the internet or use AI? How many people make money on prediction websites or gambling websites? How many people make money on those such sites? You're going to find that it is not a very good number and it's probably even more evidence for you to prepare yourself to not do something like that when you are in financial stress. So financial wellness, when people hear financial wellness, they all always think about am I stressed out or am I not stressed out?

And in today's world we know a lot of people are stressed because everything is costing more financial wellness as an overall terminology is just about where do you want to be with your finances? And again, if you're young, it is, what's the future, right? Am I going to be a homeowner? Am I going to buy a new vehicle? What's that going to cost?

What payment am I comfortable with? That's financial wellness in a nutshell. If you're mid-aged, you're maybe bringing up children, you're trying to get them successfully through their young lives to eventually have them become successful. And maybe that means creating a fund so that when it's time to pay for college, instead of borrowing from banks, you have your own fund. That's something that you should talk to a financial advisor about.

Even some of the student aid offices in the colleges, they can make recommendations for you to try to find grant ways. But again, that decision, that question to a financial aid rep means that you're at the time of borrowing. So if you're a parent in the middle ages, financial wellness making sure that you and your children don't get into debt going into college. So how much of your budget can you dedicate towards putting a fund together or saving to pay for that education outright? And again, very expensive.

So you'd have to start that relatively early in life because once you have a family and a house and vehicles to get to work, the expenses build up. As I mentioned earlier, getting your children into other programs and activities like sports, you want to be planning ahead for those things to make sure you have the money and you're not utilizing lines of credit like credit cards that will charge you very high interest to borrow that money. So financial wellness is all about helping people be comfortable with the situation that they're in. Maybe you're facing retirement and you're concerned that you don't have enough money for retirement because of the way the economy is. And people are uncertain that that's going to get better.

Maybe you are retired and on fixed income. And of course, when people are on fixed income, they don't necessarily have the means to be able to afford when gas goes up a dollar. So what's financial wellness mean to them? All in general, throughout life financial wellness typically means understanding credit, managing debt, creating spending plans, building emergency savings, a heavy recommendation to have at least a month of all of your bill payments in savings. And the recommendations are even more aggressive than that.

If you can do it, you should work on having three months to six months of all of your bills. Because if a crisis happens, you have that money to fall back on with your crisis budget to pay the things that need to get paid early in life. Get kids to know what the cost of money is. Understand what student loans are, how much they're going to cost. I can't tell you how many times I've heard.

Number one, parents borrowed parent plus loans and thought that when the child graduated, that those loans were going to get transferred to the student. Well, that's not the way it works, which means they didn't do enough research to understand it. Now the family has to have an argument maybe with each other saying, Hey, well, we thought these loans were going to go in your name and now they're not, but you still need to pay for them. And maybe the student says, I'm not paying for them. You guys borrowed it.

So it can cause relationship problems. So you got to understand student loans. You got to understand the cost of the money. You got to understand the cost to go get your education and also understand the cost of how that's going to return the investment on the salary that might be generated from the school that you're going to or the degree that you're trying to apply for. Another thing you want to set goals.

One thing important in life regardless of financial wellness is trying to set reasonable goals. If you're doing weight loss, setting reasonable goals. If you're saving for a television, set reasonable goals and how much you can put away for that to buy that television outright instead of using a line of credit. Goals are important. When it comes to financial wellness and you're in your twenties, your goals might be different than if you're in your thirties and then your thirties might be different than if you're in your forties, forties in the fifties, obviously it's different because now you're coming around to retirement.

So you've got to put some goals in place and then you've got to figure out how you're going to reach and achieve those goals. Most importantly, again, we've all heard the saying, you're nothing without your health. Well being in financial difficulty will have impact on your health, your physical health, your mental health, your relationships. And we want to make sure that we can offer information that helps people get through it. And if you're in financial stress today, remember, I'm always say there always is an answer.

If you feel like you've been going and going and going for months and haven't tried to put a goal together or a plan together to try to change that dynamic, eventually that burnout will have impacts on you. It'll have impacts on your children. It'll have impacts on your family. It'll have impacts on your relationships. It'll have, most importantly, a very big impact on you.

Eventually. Remember when it comes to not being in the way you want to be financially, it's about setting goals. It's about putting a plan together. And again, I'm going to say it again. You'll hear me say it a lot on this show.

There is always an answer. Doesn't matter how bad things look. There's always an answer. If you need to speak to somebody again, uh, before we close the show here, Cambridge credit.org forward slash debt is the website where you can fill out a quick, simple name, address, email, um, and a counselor will reach out to you. You can call eight, eight, eight, six, five, six, four, three, nine, zero.

That'll put you in touch with a call center representative that will learn and understand what you're looking for help with, and then get you in touch with somebody that can assist you. Again, the show, you can find me on Facebook at Gordon. No cares. LinkedIn at Gordon. No cares.

I'll give the number out again, eight, eight, eight, six, five, six, four, three, nine, zero. Please email the show at Gordon. Oh cares at gmail.com. Let me know what you want us to talk about. Again, I'm here by myself today, but I'm going to have experts and guests coming on the show at different times for different topics.

So if you want something discussed on the show, please feel free to reach out. I'll be happy to set something up and get a guest on here that might be able to talk about what it is that you want to learn about, or if it's just specific to managing debt, we can talk about those topics and we will continue to. It's all about the show, helping people with ideas about how to get where they want to financially. That's why the show is called financial wellness today. This is Gordon Oliver.

See you next time.

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