THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 13

I know you love them. I know you love them. They’ve become more popular, but you need to proceed with caution. Retailers are making it easier than ever to make purchases with those buy now, pay later loans, also known as a point of sale installment loan. They’re the type of short-term financing that will allow you to divide your purchases into monthly installments.

Services offer them like Affirm, there’s Klarna, Afterpay, Quadpay. They’re becoming very popular as consumers look to spread out the payments in large acquisitions without using a credit card. S. grew 215% year over year in the first two months of 2021, according to Adobe analysis. The lenders partner with retailers like Macy’s, Walmart, Peloton, even Ticketmaster for their services.

Yet, before you sign up, proceed with caution. While you may be tempted to get the low or 0% interest rate, an easy application process, make sure you read the fine print. It’s important to take the time to at least understand the most important details of what you’re applying for before you apply, said Matt Schultz, chief industrial analyst at LendingTree. Tina, where can our listeners find this article? You can actually find it on the CNBC website.

Over the years that you’ve been counseling, we have seen this just with a different look. Absolutely. Consumers find it much easier to be able to buy now, pay later. The apps are all over the place. And even if you go to a website, they have after pay, where you can choose to book a vacation and make monthly payments on it and not even see an interest rate.

So what’s the big pitfall? The mere use of buy now, pay later loans could lead to overspending, obviously. It’s too easy to get into it. Two thirds of those that have used the financing said it caused them to spend more money than they would otherwise. A LendingTree survey of 1,040 Americans found almost half said they would have made their purchase if they didn’t have the option to finance.

I have a question for you. How many times when you do a budget with a consumer, have they had a line item that said, oh, this is my buy now, pay later payment? Actually it’s come up a lot lately, especially because when we’re doing the budget, they forget about it. And you’re looking through the finances and you’re saying, well, where is this money going? And just recently I spoke with somebody who said, oh, I forgot.

So her payments were over $500 spread out between five different retailers that she totally lost track of. And if she misses a payment? Well, that’s the other thing. If you do miss a payment, you obviously get the late fees. So buy now, pay later loans have interest rates similar to those of the retail credit cards, which means the APR could be as high as 30%.

However, some do offer promotional interest-free installments. What happens is there’s a lot of consumers that result to the buy now, pay later option because they’re not going to qualify for a credit card due to either bad credit or lack of credit. So these apps are just convenient for the consumer, but unfortunately end up costing you a lot in the long run. It’s really just another look for what a credit card is? Yeah, it’s exactly what it is.

A consumer may not get approved for a credit card, so they use these apps. There’s no credit application for these. Another thing is they don’t report to the credit reporting agencies. So it’s not helping your credit by using them. It’s not a stipulation where you can use it as a reference in the future.

It’s not on your credit report. So holiday tip number one, let’s change the name to save now, buy later. If you have items that you know are coming down the road that you are going to need to make a purchase on. Save now, buy later. Much better than buy now, pay later.

It’s just like the Christmas club, right? Start now for saving for next year so you plan and you have a budget and you have money to be able to spend, not money that you don’t have. Highly recommended, absolutely. If you’re not sure what we’re talking about, we’re talking about online shopping and a new opportunity to buy goods where you don’t have to pay now, you can get the goods and then pay for them later. 95 or four monthly installments to pay for the shirt.

Is that right, Tina? Exactly. That’s exactly what it is after pay. Some of them will actually just go into your account biweekly and take a payment out, others you may have to initiate the payment, but that’s exactly what it is right there. And this is one of the wisdom moments that we’ve seen over the years of people, furniture is a perfect example, where you can get furniture.

So if somebody had to move all of a sudden and they had to get furniture, they could get the furniture and have 12 or 18 months to pay the balance off. And if they didn’t, the penalties were severe. All the interest retros back from the beginning of the loan and gets tacked on. So that’s why we’re asking people to be cautious when you do these types of deals for goods, when you’re getting the good before paying for it. You just have to be very careful and make sure you get it paid in the time that they allot.

That’s actually a really good point. A lot of consumers get wrapped into the 0% financing for a year, don’t realize that if they don’t have it paid off within the year, again, all that interest is accrued and tacked on to the balance. Surprise! Yep, surprise is right. This is Gordon Oliver and you’re listening to The Cambridge Connection right here, right now on WHMP.

Introducing the Christina’s House guest

Welcome back to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver. And as I mentioned earlier, we’re here chatting today with Shannon Mumblo, Executive Director of Christina’s House in Springfield. So Shannon, welcome to the show. We’re so glad to have you.

Such important. Important information we’re going to talk about today. Thank you, Gordon and Tina. And thank you for having me here today. It’s an honor.

Absolutely. Honor on our part as well. So can you tell us a little about yourself? Sure. I have been volunteering with Christina’s House since its inception in 2010 and actually had the honor of coming on as executive director in October of 2017.

I bring a social work. I’m a licensed independent clinical social worker and a registered nurse, and I have a little bit of a background in marketing and business development as well. I’m a mom of two beautiful children. I have a daughter, Abigail, age 10, and a son, Evan, age 13, and my husband, Keith, goes along for all the wild rides of my career and all the things that we do together as a family. And you sleep when?

I don’t know. Sleep? What’s sleep? Absolutely. We don’t need sleep, right?

We don’t need any of that. So can you give us a brief history on Christina’s House? Sure. So like I said, it was established in 2010 when my mother-in-law was just sitting in church one day, Linda Mumblo. She had the seed planted on her heart to start a ministry for mothers and children in our community who were homeless or near homeless, and it was because she was watching the amazing connections that the men from the Springfield Rescue Missions were making in the church community and how their lives were changing, strongholds were being broken, and just kind of seeing the incredible change.

So she was a nurse manager for over 30 years. She retired in 2011. We formed a board in 2012. She wrote the 501c3 bylaws, articles of incorporation, all those things herself. Really a grassroots effort, something that I wanted to be behind for my own personal reasons and investment in wanting to help children be able to be stable with their moms.

2013, we purchased our first home in Springfield, opened our doors in late 2014, and in 2020, we purchased a second location and opened those doors in October of 2020 as well. So I’ve been working there, like I said, for about a little over four years, but in it from the beginning, it’s been a beautiful process. So what does the name mean? I get asked that all the time. My mother-in-law, when we were forming Christina’s House, I was actually pregnant with my daughter and I had a baby book on my coffee table.

So she came over one day and she’s like, we need a name for this ministry. And she opened it to the letter C and the name Christina, which means follower of Christ. So we are a faith-based, Christ-centered ministry. And so that just was the perfect name for the house. And it has nothing to do with the fact that her middle name is also Christine.

I was going to ask that, I was wondering about that. So no, it really is a literal sense of followers of Christ. Incredible. Again, this is just amazing what you do. And we had a conversation and you had made a distinction about a significant difference of the journey that someone goes through when they come into the program.

Program structure and funding

Can you elaborate on that? Absolutely. Well, the program is an educational and transitional home. It’s not a shelter. We don’t like to use the word house.

It feels a little sterile to me. I love the word home because it represents family and the work that we do. So 18 to 24 months, we give the mothers and the children an opportunity to set SMART goals. The program is participant-led. So they come in from a place of homelessness or near homelessness, which could be doubled up situations, living out of cars, whatever the situation is for them.

But all the time, there is a financial component that has kept them in the place that they were in. So helping them through financial counseling every month, building goals for financial success, having a financial syllabus that they walk through during their time there with the goal of helping them transition out of the place they were in and into independent, self-sufficient living environments when they’re ready to transition out of our home. May I ask how you’re funded? I would love for you to ask that. So we are primarily funded through our community, local churches, businesses, and individuals who support either monthly, one-time donations.

We partner with our community through businesses like the Thrive Program, like Cambridge Credit Counseling to provide educational resources for our moms. Because I know the old saying, you can’t be all things to all people at all times. So I know when we need to pull other resources in to give these moms and the children the educational resources they need to meet the syllabus goals and their goals as they work through the program. A perfect example of community coming together. So what’s the vision of Christina’s House moving forward?

I love that question. So my vision is to use our past experiences to inform us, not define us, but to allow us to stand in the presence of today and the things that need to get done for our current and graduate and community people that we serve, and a vision to understand that God’s going to grow this ministry in His time. I see more houses. I see a great need. We get calls every day.

I’ve got about three calls in the last two hours for people that need housing and need our support. But I want to stand strong in where we’re at today, providing the resources that our current families need and continuing to have that vision for growth as we move forward to tomorrow. So I know you just did a major fundraiser. We’ll get to that in a moment. Can you tell our listeners what your organization needs?

So we need the constant support of our community. As you mentioned, our fundraiser, the theme, and we’ll talk about it a little more, was unity. We can’t do this without, you know, that’s one of the big foundations of that word community is unity. So doing it together. I have not done this in any way, shape or form by myself.

It’s all because of people coming together because they want to help literally save lives. This saves lives and it helps people, women get the encouragement and empowerment they need to get a step up in life to where they really want to go and to have the hope that they can realize their goals. So you can get involved through in-kind donations, giving of your time, if you’re a business and you want to support events through gifts, but really monthly giving is where we find the foundation and support because we know we can depend on it from month to month. How many families are you able to house at one time? So up to 16 individuals in each location.

So four to five families in each house. So we’re constantly, we have one family graduate, another family moves in. We have a family moving in this Thursday, one moving in, in a couple of weeks to our Union Street location. So it’s a constant cycle of people graduating and coming in and community people that we work with as well. And what’s the average time that they’re with you?

18 to 24 months. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Nice.

So tell me, what does support in the house look like? So that is a wonderful question. Up until about a year ago, we had two people on staff. So I was doing the one-on-one case management and social work with our moms. We now have a human services professional that meets weekly with each mom.

Each mom is paired with a financial counselor that they meet with once a week. We have people who give nutritional classes. So we have volunteers that come in every week to provide childcare so that moms can go to class. Some people come in and cook dinner. So moms don’t need to cook that night.

They could just focus on getting to their classes. We provide boundaries class in-house, parenting classes, so many things to help the moms meet the syllabus that we created in-house to do. So like I said, partnering with outside resources like the Thrive Program at United Way and building those into a calendar. It’s like going to college almost. I tell the moms when they come in, you’re going to have this syllabus and courses that you take.

One course is over, the next one starts. If there’s a need in the house, we will literally stop what we’re doing to bring in a class or a course to teach the moms on what they want. And it’s at no cost to the mothers. No cost to the mothers. There is a program fee of $250 a month that goes to the general funding and it’s built into their budget.

When they come into the program, we give them about three months to transition in and they know coming into the program that one of the expectations is that they begin to work. And so we help them again with the help of our community, find a job that works for them. We help them get their GED. If they’re in college, we help them finish their college courses. But that program fee starts in month three after they’re done.

They’ve got an established job to be able to pay that fee. That also helps when they’re ready to transition out of the house. If you’re looking to buy a home, and many of our moms have purchased homes, or if they’re going into an apartment, people, the landlords want to see that you’ve got this history of being on time with your payments. So some of our moms come in credit invisible and they leave with credit scores in the high 600s, 700s. Awesome.

Amazing. That’s incredible. Amazing. So that program fee helps them have, okay, well, they’ve paid this fee for 18 months and have never been late. So that’s just part of their credit history as well, helps build that.

Annual fundraiser and a success story

Truly amazing, amazing work that you do. So community, getting funds for the organization. You just wrapped up your fundraiser for this year. Can you tell us how that went and what it’s about? Yeah.

So every year we host an annual ball. It was actually started as a fundraiser to help us raise funds to purchase our first home. So we didn’t even have the first house, but it was a friend of mine and I said, we want to have this big Cinderella gala. And so in three months we put together our first annual ball. We held it at the Marriott.

We raised $8,000 and that was part of what we used to put a down payment on our first house. So fast forward to 2021, we just celebrated our ninth annual ball. And I feel like every year God gives me a word, which is the theme that kind of ties together the entire year in our house, house as now and for the event. And so this year it was unity. I woke up in January of this year with the word unity on my heart.

And I think it was just very instrumental in coming out of COVID and the divisiveness and you know, all that did to kind of tear us apart and really brought us back together in the quilt of diversity, love, lifting up our moms in community together. And so we don’t have the final numbers yet. Our goal is to raise $100,000 and we definitely did that. I think we actually exceeded it, but we’re still kind of coming out of Saturday’s event and just basking in just the other utter success that it was to be back in person and see all our friends and supporters. It just was amazing.

The testimonies given by some of our moms, our new video for the year was premiered. It was wonderful. Very rewarding, huh? Yes. And I’m glad you brought that up because each week we do a conversation called Real People, Real Problems.

And we usually use a case from Cambridge Credit Council to show when you’re struggling financially that things can be turned around. But the work you do is so incredible. I think we want to make that conversation this week about a success story that you can tell our listeners about. Yeah. And I think what my work at Christina’s house has taught me is that success comes in so many different packages and not to put any of my expectations on the table for what our families bring to us.

And early on in my time as executive director, we had a family who left the program early and it was devastating to me because I had expectations and saw the potential of what this mom could do. And unfortunately that didn’t happen. And so when her time in the program ended, again, it was a really difficult experience for me. And she actually had a granddaughter that she was caring for and came to us because they were about to be homeless. And so for reasons that I won’t get into, they left the program and I stayed in touch with her through like Facebook communication.

And two years later, she reached out and asked me if they could come back to Christina’s house. They had donations that they wanted to bring. And so I met her at our Madison Avenue location with her beautiful and very gifted granddaughter. And we talked for over an hour. And in that moment, she talked about the fact that she wanted to come back and give back and tell the moms who were there not to leave because she thought that it was going to be okay.

And each day she remembered the words and the seeds that were planted, especially around the financial education. And she just never lost hope that she really wanted to continue on the path to buy a home and to be financially successful. And so she thanked us for that. And she felt like this was the one area where she needed healing and to have closure and wished that she had stayed and to thank us for what we did give her during her time there. And so she is continuing to work with us on the outside and is meeting with one of our staff members every week.

And just yesterday found out that she got an apartment and she is working and saving and working with our financial counselor to save money to buy a house too. So we’re just going to continue to support and give those resources. And that’s like a beautiful story about what we do both inside and outside of our walls. And just don’t ever give up on the seeds that we plant as individuals and all the things that you do for the people and the lives that you touch financially. It’s just amazing the work that we do as a community.

I think the distinction that you’ve made from a shelter, not suggesting that those aren’t needed, but the actual education that you provide to walk someone into the path of success, that is just incredibly important. Yes. That’s our lane. It’s the educational tools they need. Amazing.

Transition to the success moment segment

Hang tight. We’ll be right back with the Cambridge Credit Success Moment with Tina Marie. This is Gordon Oliver and you’re listening to The Cambridge Connection on WHMP. You know, Gordie, I was thinking, now that it’s just you and me hosting The Cambridge Connection each week, we’re sort of like, I don’t know, one of those famous radio teams. You know who I mean.

You mean like Bonnie and Clyde? We aren’t that famous yet, but what we get to share every week with our listeners is expert knowledge from a community of people who are making a difference every day by helping others achieve financial independence and freedom. And that includes your day job as a rockstar counselor at Cambridge Credit Counseling. One of the reasons I love being a part of The Cambridge Connection is that we have the opportunity to share real stories of people and organizations that make a difference across all aspects of financial wellness. And we also get to share stories of real people with real financial problems and offer possible options they can follow to turn a negative financial situation into a positive one because everyone’s situation is different.

So folks, join myself, Tina Marie, and our special guests and experts each and every week right here on The Cambridge Connection on WHMP. Welcome back. This is Gordon Oliver, the host of The Cambridge Connection, here having an amazing conversation with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, and Shannon Mumbleau, executive director from Christina’s House. So Shannon, where can people find you? That’s easy.

org. Our website is a wonderful place filled with resources. You can learn about our team. We’ve got blogs up there. We’ve had some amazing interns that created some parenting blogs and things for you to see.

org. Awesome. And I know there’s an events tab on the site, and you have some events planned for the next year. Is that correct? Yeah.

So we have a golf tournament coming up in June of this year, June 17th. And then we’ll be scheduling events as we go. We hope to get back to designer purse bingo this year, which is always a fun one to come to. And so yeah, just visit the website to stay up to date on all the amazing events that we have planned. Awesome.

Client success story and payday loans

So Tina Marie, the Cambridge Credit Success Moment. What do you got for us today? Well, today I want to talk about Carol from Massachusetts. She actually had a gambling addiction, and because of that, she did suffer from anxiety and depression on top of it. Ended up with $28,000 in credit card debt just by- Gambling?

Gambling. She had a combination of payday loans and credit cards. The payday loan payments were a loan of $500 a month. Overall to credit card companies, $1,300 a month, bringing a grand total of monthly payments at $1,800 in unsecured debt repayment. So after speaking with her, she had told me she entered into a gambling addiction program and finally got the treatment she so desperately needed to cover that aspect of it.

She wanted further to discipline herself and close all her accounts. However, she was also concerned she had upcoming medical expenses. She didn’t know how she was going to be able to cover that. So what we did is we went through her budget and we were able to keep one of her accounts off the program so she could still have that for activity. We reduced her overall payments from $1,800 a month to $975, saving her $825 per month.

So, this story is incredible because you hear statements like, it’ll take you 30 years to pay your credit cards off, and we’ve done the models where we simulate what a credit card company would charge at 22% interest. And if you follow the monthly minimum payments that’s on your bill, which when people are tight with their budget, most of them do, they’re just stuck paying mostly interest and very little to the balance. And that’s why a program like this completely changes that dynamic by making it simple. Affordable. Lowering fees, lowering interest.

Now, some people don’t know payday loans. Can you explain what a payday loan is? A payday loan is where a consumer would go and take out, say, $500 because they’re desperate, typically desperate when they do this. And unfortunately, you’re taking out $500, but they don’t understand you’re paying back 715% in interest. It’s incredible.

That’s even allowed as incredible. It’s not allowed in all states, but it is allowed. And what the company typically does is ask you to give your checking account information so that they can go ahead and each pay period, take money out of your account to pay them back. High, high rates. You know, those with gambling addictions, they become desperate.

And without the proper help, without the proper education, this is what they would resort to. Two amazing companies, Cambridge Credit Counseling, Christina’s House, helping people that are struggling with many things. So in closing, Shannon, what do you want to leave as a message to our listeners? That to never give up hope on a dream. That when a seed is planted and we water it and nurture it, it will grow.

And that we all make an impact on everybody’s lives. So don’t ever underestimate what your impact can be on one person’s life. And no shocker that you were Business West 2021 Women of Impact as part of that group. So congratulations to that and well-deserved. Thank you so much for what you do for people.

And thank you so much for having me here today. It’s been wonderful. We’ll be right back to close up the show. This is Gordon Oliver and you’re listening to The Cambridge Connection right here, right now. WHMP.

Closing announcements and sign off

Hi, this is Shannon Mumblo and I have the honor and privilege of being the executive director of Christina’s House. I just wanted to take a brief moment to share a little bit about this incredible ministry and the major impact it’s making in our community. Christina’s House was established in 2012 with a mission to educate, embrace, and encourage mothers and their children who are homeless or near homeless through the love of Jesus Christ. We have two beautiful historic homes located in Springfield, Massachusetts that can serve up to five families in each home. We help the families we serve transition out of homelessness or near homelessness and into self-sufficiency.

Our program is funded primarily with the support of our community. org. Welcome back. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. What an incredible show we had today and a big thank you to my new co-pilot, Tina Marie, for helping me carry the show this week.

It takes a team to collect all the information we bring you each week, just like the team at Cambridge Credit Counseling who is there to answer your questions. It’s a free call and there’s no obligation. Again, a big thank you to Shannon Mumblo, Executive Director of Christina’s House in Springfield. org for more information about giving or receiving help. m.

m. com, SoundCloud, or anywhere you can listen to your favorite podcasts. org, and we’d love to hear from you, and who knows, your question might get featured here in our Real People, Real Problem conversation. And remember, friends, it’s always a free call to 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.