THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 56

You think it might be a myth if you live in the West Coast, but there’s truly, at this time of year, when you hit that right peak- Oh my gosh. Listen, it’s funny you should say that, because I wanted to run away last weekend, just run away from my house. And I thought, oh, I’m going to get a hotel for the weekend, and I’m just going to be alone and do my thing. And then I realized I live in Massachusetts, and I am not getting a good deal in Massachusetts in October. And I understand why.

It’s absolutely beautiful. It is. Yes. I actually drove to Atlantic City this week to a conference. And it was an HR conference for HR people.

And it’s amazing how, as you go further south, it’s less prevalent. It’s just green. Up here, it’s just everywhere. Green and brown. Right?

HR benefits and employee debt stress

It’s everywhere. Right. But interestingly enough, so talking about the sponsor of the program, Cambridge Credit Counseling, and talking to HR managers about benefits that employees need, what could possibly be needed more right now than an opportunity to get credit counseling and debt management with the economy the way it’s at, with credit card levels, we’re right before the holiday season? Yeah. What could be better than an HR manager adding a benefit for their employees if they’re struggling with debt problems?

It’s much needed. I was looking at our employee assistance programs at Cambridge Credit Counseling. And people that don’t really take advantage of it, I strongly suggest you look into it. We talked about this on the show, I believe it was either last week or the week before, about some of the benefits that the employers are giving their employees. The travel benefits.

Yeah. I didn’t even realize we had them. So it’s certainly something to look into, absolutely. Again, so benefits are important to employees, but it’s also important to look into benefits that you have, utilize them, and if there’s something that’s missing, you should alert your HR manager to try to get some more benefit. Because that’s what employers are trying to do.

They’re trying to give their employees as much as they can to retain them and keep them as happy employees. Of course. I can’t get into the major statistics, but look, $5 billion is lost to employers for employees that are distracted with financial problems. I’m not surprised. One in four in the building or in the employment will be struggling with debt problems.

I’m surprised that’s not higher. It probably is now. Right. That’s probably an older statistic, but it’s probably more like one in three now, right? Yeah, I would think.

Yeah. Especially with the economy the way it is. And like you said earlier, with the pandemic, how people lost income and relied on credit cards to just kind of get by, I’m getting a lot of that now where they’re still calling and it all stemmed from the pandemic. Losing income, not working, using credit cards to help get by, taking out personal loans. Taking out from your 401k loan, that’s what I heard this week at the HR conference as well.

They’re seeing a lot of it now. A lot of it, yeah. This is a time where you could take out, I want to say, $20,000 without penalties into 2020. Yeah. So I think a lot of consumers might have taken advantage of that, but didn’t realize they still have to pay taxes on it.

So much to unpack when it comes to debt problems. This show was important a year ago. It couldn’t be any more important now. We’re going to keep it real. We’re going to keep it live.

Guest cancels after hurricane disaster

We’re going to keep it positive, no doom and gloom. And actually, before we take a quick break, we have a guest today that was a victim of the hurricane in Florida. And we’re going to talk a little bit about what he learned through dealing with a catastrophe and maybe some recommendations we can all share for people. Whether it’s a hurricane that’s a catastrophe, a fire, a change in your life, whatever that would be, there are some things that you can do to try and plan the best that you can for something like that. We’re going to take a quick break.

This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back. If you’ve lost income during the pandemic and have fallen behind on your rent or mortgage payments, Cambridge Credit Counseling can help. Talk to one of our HUD-certified counselors at 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection.

I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie. And Tina, as you just witnessed, we had our guest that was going to be calling in, Dan Perkins from the Black & White Network, who had a home in Sanibel, Florida, which is where the hurricane hit most. It was a bridge that was just completely washed away. And he’s still dealing with some things to try to get back to his home, so he’s unable to attend as our special guest. Yeah, he sounded pretty frantic.

It’s concerning not seeing it live and just hearing firsthand what people are going through. It’s a reality check. And I’m going to kind of go out on a little diatribe, like a fake one right now. This is what drives me crazy with the news, right? What’s that?

We hear about it when it’s this big disaster, catastrophe, watching everybody, all the pictures, the boats all piled up. And now here we are. We have someone that we work with to try to help consumers with factual information on financial wisdom. Three weeks later. Three weeks later.

And he’s still in the middle of figuring out where he and his family stand. As he said, he hasn’t even been back to his house yet. Wow. What a wake up call. You know, you’re right.

You’re right. Right? Yeah. I got it when the hurricane was happening. We saw the waves crashing and the boats piled up.

But now time has gone on and now there’s other things to talk about. And here we are talking to somebody who can’t take the time to be on as a guest because he’s going through all of these things. day-to-day questions, I’m sure, about what’s the next step? When is he going to find out? Is his home habitable?

Is it going to be condemned? I mean, this is the kind of stuff. Can he find it? We don’t even know if he can find it. That’s crazy.

So as the great Bill O’Reilly once said, we’re going to do it live today, right? We’re going to kind of work our way through this. Had a bunch of things. And this is why Dan’s a great guy. One of the reasons he wanted to come on was he wanted to be able to tell what he’s going through to help people that may not have to deal with the catastrophe right now.

But if one hits, what is he learning through the process? Live, what is he learning? All the more reason, when he comes back, the more he’s going to be able to tell us. So this is this educational experience here. Yeah, and I actually am a guest on his podcast on the Black and White Network.

And he’ll have a chance to come on and talk about that. But it’s a network that’s created to try to help our society come to find some common ground in these areas that we’re so divided on, to have some just general dialogue. So again, for him to want to come on going through this disaster to try to tell what he’s going through, to try to teach people how to potentially prepare, I mean, just incredible that he would want to take the time out to even do that. It makes me feel a little selfish crying about the flood in my basement at the beginning of the year. That’s not laughing because I get it.

I’m like, oh, what am I going to do? I have a flood in my basement. You know what? I have a house. The bright side, I have a house.

Isn’t that what happens, right? Sometimes, and again, I would even, just to reflect on society right now, it always seems like it takes a catastrophe for everybody to kumbaya and come together, 9-11, just when you’re next to somebody and catastrophes are happening, you’re pretty much locked in arms, brothers and sisters, trying to get through and survive. I mean, that’s what happens when a catastrophe hits. But when we’re in regular life, sometimes either we take things for granted or we’re just going through life because life is somewhat of a grind, going to work every day, making income. We’re talking on this show about financial wisdom and financial wellness.

And all of that said, when it ends and you’re gone, you don’t have any more attachment to that. Does that mean you shouldn’t plan properly? No. But what’s the real value here, right? We’re seeing somebody go through some crisis right now.

With a family. With a family, right. So to kind of work through that, I’m going to post these articles up on my Twitter account, at GordonNoCares, and of course, Facebook. But NerdWallet had an article about where to turn to when a natural disaster upends your finances. And you, as a certified counselor, before we kind of go through some of the bullet points, this is kind of what you do.

Because in a small catastrophe, families, when they start getting upside down with their finances, it causes all kinds of problems in the family life. Quality of life, relationships. We talk about in the workplace. One in three or four are struggling with debt problems, which, when they’re working around other people and they’re not happy and morale is low, it affects other people. Right.

And it’s going to affect their own performance as well. And once one performance is affected, it could trickle around to the next person and to the next person. So it affects us all in different ways that we might not even look at. We might not even realize. What is being talked about more than ever these days?

Mental health. Yes. So again, our friend, Dan, is going through this. What’s his mental health right now? I can’t even imagine.

What’s he going through? And he welcomed that he’s going to eventually come on the show to really talk about the experience. And I really commend him for even wanting to do it. But really, I’m eager to have that interview with him to learn and to have people learn through someone’s viewpoint, vantage point, what they go through that is completely unplanned. Right.

Or that none of us could even fathom. How do you, what do they have these food kits, right? The MREs? Are we talking about the MREs? Yeah, right.

So you have this food kit where you have all this powdered food that’ll last 700 years, right? That you can use when there’s a food shortage, right? So you can plan for that, right? Sure. How do you plan for something like this?

Right. You don’t. You don’t, but you do the best you can. Taping the windows? I mean, come on.

Immediate steps after a disaster

Right. I did that at my home back in, what was it, 1990? What was it, Hurricane Gloria? I remember Gloria. Oh, yeah.

Big time. I remember taping the windows, too. Yes. Absolutely, we did. I actually went up to a parking lot like an idiot because I was young and dumb.

And I rode the grocery carts in a parking lot. Not really realizing the severity of the storm back then, but. Well, we’re glad you’re here to talk about it. Yeah, I can talk about it. That’s excellent.

And you probably learned a little something from that, I would assume. Yes, yeah, don’t do that. All right, so let’s get to some of the things that are important, right? So you have to imagine, people evacuated. They’ve been displaced, right?

They’ve got to find somewhere to stay. So when a catastrophe happens and you’re displaced, the first thing that they recommend is to deal with immediate needs first. So contacting a federal emergency management agency for a disaster recovery, hopefully you have access to. That’s the beauty of cell phones, right? In a catastrophe like that, in the old days, the phones wouldn’t be working.

And it would be hard to reach out and contact. But at least if internet is up or you have cell service, you can find ways to just Google the zip code that you’re in. And it says DRC to text to 43362. And texting Apple or Android to that number will give a download of a link to where FEMA might have additional resources to provide help. You know, that’s interesting that you would even bring that up, because that just kind of reminds me of the tornado in 2011.

I remember leaving work that day. And like you just said, before cell phones, there was no way to contact family members to make sure they were OK. And the only way I was able to contact my daughter was through Facebook, a message on Facebook. So we really are lucky with the technology nowadays that we do have the ability to do these things and to reach out. People laugh, oh, when I was young, I didn’t have that.

Those that walked a mile to school in the snow with no shoes on, you know what I mean? I have to remind my mother all the time. We don’t have to do that anymore. So let’s go with the times, and let’s appreciate what we do have and the ability that we have to communicate right now. Let’s appreciate that.

The show’s about financial wisdom. You gain wisdom from experience, right? So you’re speaking from a place of experience, right? So again, just to repeat that, if you need help via a disaster recovery center, you text your zip code and DRC to 43362. org for the Red Cross to get help as well.

So those are good things to have in your phone in case something ever happens. Obviously, that’s the best you can do to be prepared to reach out to somebody that you know can provide resources. Secondary, guess what? Next, tend to financial issues. Why do you think that one’s the second bullet?

Well, because you have to have money. You need money for repairs. You need money for anything. Again, just in the news the other day in Springfield, Massachusetts, a building was condemned without warning, and 14 families were without homes. And they interviewed one girl on the.

on the news and she had mentioned that she didn’t have family and she didn’t have too much of a savings and she was on her way to a shelter and prayed for the best. This is live. That’s live. Exactly. Dealing with it live, right?

Right. Just not financially prepared. Didn’t have the means to call a family member with two children, I believe, and just one day went home and there was a letter on the door. The building was condemned. I’m so excited to talk about this because this is stuff we don’t get into regularly and we’re up against a hard break, so we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll continue this dialogue.

Creditors, insurance, and emergency budgeting

This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back. Are you having trouble paying down credit card debt? Cambridge has been helping people safely pay down their debts for more than 25 years without settlements or bankruptcy. Call us at 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.

Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection here with my co-host, Tina Marie. This is Gordon Oliver and we’re having a very impromptu, off-the-cuff dialogue because obviously we just had a major hurricane and we have somebody that is close to us that has been displaced and is dealing with it as we speak three weeks later, so no better opportunity to try to give consumers some advice about how to deal with catastrophes. Exactly. Doesn’t have to be a hurricane, doesn’t have to be a tornado, could be a house fire, could be a bunch of things. Could be just a complete loss in income, could be anything that happens where you are in trouble.

There are certain things that you have to try to tend to right away. So we’ve covered, obviously, the basic important ones on who to call for to find aid or relief, which would be Red Cross, FEMA. But more importantly, when you’re trying to uphold your financial situations, there are certain things you can do to not have more problems when you start getting settled. Right. There’s a protocol.

So you have insurance, obviously, if there’s a- Hopefully you have insurance. Make sure you have insurance. Yeah. You know something, you say that and I heard- Yeah. Because when you have a mortgage, you have to carry insurance, but there are people down there that own the homes and did not have insurance.

So that’s just a whole other discussion. Again, not sure why. That’s not even part of the dialogue, but that’s where we question insurance, but there are times when it absolutely takes care of business. And this is obviously one of them, whether it’s your car, whether it’s your home. Obviously insurers, you’ve got to be in contact with them when you have a catastrophe because there may be time limits.

Who knows what the rules in the contract say. So the bottom line is as quickly as possible. Right. I wouldn’t even wait until you have a catastrophe. It’s a good idea right now if everyone just checks your insurance, check your policies, see what it holds, what it doesn’t hold.

Why wait until a catastrophe to find out that something’s not covered? To all my insurance friends, that was Tina Marie’s advice, not mine. So when your phone rings off the hook, no, you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. That’s what you pay for.

Exactly. And when you see things happen to other people and your heart goes out to them, it’s also a wake up call that you have to maybe do some things or be a little bit more in the know about what you would do when something like this happens. Another piece of advice, and actually a friend of the show, Bruce McCrary from the National Foundation of Credit Counseling, call your mortgage company and other creditors. This is advice that you give. All the time.

All the time. Right. So you hear, so I don’t want to go too far with this, debt settlement companies, what do they do? They tell you not to pay your bills and they send cease and desist letters so the creditors can’t contact their consumer to be able to make a work out or try to get them assistance. The very worst thing you can do.

The worst. Especially if you’re current. I mean, even now, Bank of America, I know, working with Cambridge Credit Counseling, we already know if a consumer that was affected by the hurricane has a Bank of America account, we tell them, contact Bank of America directly. They’re willing to work with you. They understand, you know, natural disaster, even, you know, during COVID it happened.

So you certainly have the option. Talk to your creditors. Never. Don’t run away. Ever avoid your creditors.

Do not be afraid of them because you don’t have a payment. Right. What are you going to do? Worst case, you can’t pay it. You can’t.

That’s why you’re calling them. You’re calling them because you can’t pay it. Worst case. Just like you should know what insurance you have and what coverage you have if something happens, you need to now find out with the creditor. Again, all the advice that the sponsor of the show gave out during COVID, right?

There were things that people may not have known were options to get assistance during a pandemic. Right. So creditors, it’s a relationship. Yes, it is. And even because you’re maybe not upholding your part of the relationship because of a catastrophe or even just a change in your own family dynamic, call your creditor, tell them what’s going on, find out what’s available to get you some help in the term that you’re in transition.

And if you find that you’re not getting anywhere, call Cambridge Credit Counseling. That’s what you’re there for. That’s what we’re there for. 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. How long have you been a certified counselor now?

It’ll be 25 years this coming Thursday. Ladies and gentlemen, my co-host experience has helped so many people. And again, to talk about this personally, to have someone that’s going through this catastrophe right now, it’s really great to share this important information. So another one, student loans. So student loans have forbearance, right?

They have forbearance where you can call and basically just say, I can’t make my payment this month. We don’t advise using it more than you have to, but there is that opportunity where for each student loan, you get 36 months of forbearance to basically call and say, I’m just having a little trouble right now. Can I use a few months of forbearance while I’m going through this catastrophe that I just went through, the hurricane? Maybe there’s something special that they offer for a hurricane where the interest can get subsidized. So that’s why you call your creditor.

You got to find out what’s available. They also have deferment where you have to do a little bit more for deferment, where you have to apply for it. But that’s why you contact the creditor. Find out what’s there to help you while you’re in transition. A lot of these car loan companies will even allow you to skip a month and they just tack it on at the end of the loan.

There are a few that will allow you to do it at least once a year. So just call them. You have to have communication. Communication is definitely the key within everything, every aspect of life. But certainly don’t run away from your financial obligations if you can’t pay them.

Face them and just be realistic about it. One thing we always tell people, don’t agree to something you know you can’t handle. A lot of times people feel their backs against a wall and a creditor will say, oh, well, can you afford X amount of dollars on the 25th? Knowing darn well the consumer can’t, they may agree just because they want to satisfy until the 25th comes. Now the 25th comes and you don’t have the payment, you’re back in the same wagon.

So certainly take a look at your financial obligations and just be realistic with them. That’s all you can do. The best you can do is just be realistic with what’s going on. This brings back tips that I know you give people when you are doing a budget, right? There’s a crisis budget, so that when things go bad you have a budget that you shift to or you cut some things out.

More importantly, there’s different schools of thought about how many months of your expenses you should have in savings. Why? Because when you go through a situation like this, if you don’t have six months worth of your bills and savings, what happens? If you have credit cards... And you have expenses, you’re going to need to use the credit cards to cover the expenses when you are in transition.

So this is why, while it may seem difficult, you should be working a budget that has six months minimum of your expenses in savings to fall back on if you go through something like this. And I mean, right now, that does seem extremely unrealistic with the way the economy is. So even if six months worth of income in savings is unrealistic, I mean, anything at this point helps. Anything. You’ve got to learn to cut back.

Even right now, if things are going really well for you, and you’re saying, oh, I don’t have to cut back. I’m doing well. Well, you might not predict a hurricane coming. Yeah. And look, Dan’s three weeks in, and he’s still trying to figure things out.

Oh, and he’s got a ways to go, I can just imagine. So we’re running out of time, of course. We could talk about this more and more. And again, this is the purpose of the show, Tina. This is why we’re here.

We’re going to talk about topics that aren’t always front of mind to try and give people the best information we can to try to help them preserve financial wellness, financial wisdom, financial security, et cetera. My grandmother, again, to your point about the six months, if you can’t do six months, she always would say, start with $5 a week. Start somewhere. Somewhere. Just start.

You start to build momentum, and then you start to see it grow. Yes. And you feel good about it. And then when something like this happens, you have something to turn to. Something.

Something is better than nothing. Yes, indeed. All right, we’re going to take a quick break to close the show. We’ll be right back. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection.

Closing remarks and inspirational quote

This January, payments on student loans start up again. If your budget or other bills are making things tight, Cambridge is a nonprofit agency that helps people regain control of their debt. Call us at 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. All right, everyone, we’re back. This is The Cambridge Connection.

I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie. We did it live today. Yeah. You know what, though? I’m really looking forward to having Dan on the show.

Absolutely. I’m really interested in seeing and hearing how things are going for him. Yeah. My prayers are out to you, Dan. And our prayers, I’ve sent them to him, and I’ve tried to touch base with him.

And again, we’re going through every day of life doing what we have to do, but you know there are just people out there hurting and struggling as a result of another catastrophe. So hopefully things will start to get better for him, and we’ll catch up with him on the show to learn some things that he’s learned along the way that will add to some of the information we gave today. OK. It’s a hard time to want to celebrate, but I just want to tell you on the way out, don’t be jealous. I’m going to the Outer Banks.

And I’ll be back next week for the show, though. Don’t get nervous. I’ll be back. But I’m going to go to the Outer Banks for a couple days and just kind of be a little bit. I didn’t know about this.

Yes. And I’m pretty sure there’s not pumpkin madness going on in the Outer Banks, because there’s probably no foliage. Right? No. Yeah.

You’re not worried about the New England pressure right now. I’m not going to be worried about anything. Yeah, nothing. How about that? Good for you.

Good for you. Thank you. And obviously to close the show, as we always do, with a quote. Are you surrendering to who you’re called to be in this season? Are you rising to the occasion?

You’ve grown too much and come too far to fold or play small now. Remember your vision and your prayers for being here. Trust in your higher capacity. Your elevation will see you through. May you finish what you start.

May you succeed. May you go through to victory. May nothing turn you around or trick you into quitting. May you understand the assignment. That’s Lala Dahlia from Vibrate Higher Daily.

Huge thanks to our producers, Leah and Lisa, even though she brought pumpkin munchkins. Leah enjoyed them. Major prayers out to our friend Dan Perkins and anybody that’s going through difficulty through catastrophic times. m. com, click on podcasts and listen to any of our current or previous shows.

org or feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.