It's time for the b a q a A the b a q a, which is saying the b a q a with Manda, the b a q a with a A.
I finished my mantra. Y now, so this show is going to be a lot zippier than the.
First show.
This week it is Brad a vision Question and answer. You have questions, We have answers, but we're not sure an attorney. We're not your to financial advisory. Why not your mama. But we are two smart brown girls on the interwebs with a podcast, I mean like or two. Yeah, we do, we do, but take it with the grain of salt.
Rational best selling authors in the house. Come on now, career expert coaches in the house.
Let's go.
That's some respect on our names.
Uh. So we're gonna answer some money questions this week.
All right. First one's from Shana.
Hello, my husband and I had My husband had a stint of medical issues in twenty twenty one. He's better, we are grateful for that, and has insurance to them, but at the time he had no insurance. We are now drowning in medical bills. His credit score has gone from good to fair. Do you have any recommendations on how to handle them. Well, we don't have enough cash flow to pay them all, right now.
Yeah, that's so tough. And I mean the thing is like it sounds like his medical condition, his medical issues happened before he had insurance. And I think that that's just like yay America, just putting our citizens into debt by no fault of their own. But yeah, I think that medical debt, especially when it's from a hospital, I would say before anything, just be aware of your rights and be aware of your options. I have had family members successfully get on the phone with their hospital and
be put through. If they're super low income, they have like charity care options for potentially you may have some of your debt forgiven or if not all, or be reduced or be put on a payment plan. But I think the worst thing you can do is just ignore it and let it accrue and then you feel like you're drowning. But actually, like contact the hospital and say, here's the situation. I do not have the cash flow, I cannot afford these payments. What can I do?
Yeah?
No, absolutely, Like there's as specifically if they have a financial assistance policy. I know for a fact I don't know what is in other states, but I know because a friend of mine used this back when we were in college in New Jersey. They call it charity care. To Mandy's point, so ask they might have that even if you're not eligible, people, can you can still negotiate your bills that I did this, so I did not know I was aglergic a black hair dyed.
But now I know.
And my face blew up like the movie The Mask, Google the Mask movie, not with Jim Carrey, like the one would share, and my face literally all this liquid formed underneath my skin, and it was it was scary. I'm not gonna lie. So I luckily lived down the street from the hospital. I actually was born on Saint Michael's in Newark. And I walked up the street. My mom was like, go to the emergency room, and I did, and because I had no money, so I was scared to go.
I was.
She said, so you'd rather just pass away in your sleep? Okay, gotcha? So I walked up the street. They basically it was an alluxury action. They gave me the equivalent equivalent of benadrill in liquid form and then sent me to the to the pharmacy with a subscription a prescription in Meanwhile, it was literally for benajul Off the shelf. I was pissed because that prescription cost me a couple hundred bucks.
So all together it was like I want to say, I owed like maybe twelve hundred dollars in that one visit, which I was like freaked out about. I didn't have any money, so I called them and I was like, and they got it down to eight hundred dollars, which I didn't have, but I was able to at least start paying on it. So I say all that to say, you know, the truth is I probably did qualify for charity Care, but I didn't know at the time to apply for him. I just called the hospital directly that
I don't have it, can you help me? And they were like, well, we can do this, and I said, okay.
You know that's the.
Key is like using that phrase charity care.
Yes, you know.
There was this like viral TikTok. I remember at the beginning of the I keep saying the recession, the pandemic, there was this TikToker I think his name was Jared something, and he was going viral because he himself had gone through a lot of medical issues and had so many bills and now it's his whole mission, Like he has a nonprofit or he started one helping people, helping advocate for patients to apply for charity care and actually help
them apply and that there sometimes is an application, and like how to navigate that process. And so I quickly found his website that he started. It's called dollar four like the word dollar and then for and right on his site, you know, we crush medical bills. You can click get help and go through the little tool the last where the bill came from. It's not a bad place to start, you know, but at least knowing what
your options may be. And you know, if you're truly financial, this is I mean, bank medical debt is like the cause of the majority of bankruptcies personal bankruptcies in the US, right. But it's a shame because you may not have to let it get to that point if you have these other options out there.
Yeah, for one thing, don't do, Shane, Please don't put it on your credit card because then it goes from medical debt to credit card debt.
So just keep that in mind.
Anybody who's listening, but Shane especially and remember that it's not as urgent as of your other bills. And to Mandy's point, there's nonprofit help, so there's also a dollar four. And also consider it's called the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. It's a nonprofit and you can share with them what you're going through and they can help you navigate that process as well. And these are nonprofits, so you're not by yourself. This is a really good question. I don't
know we've ever answered a medical that question. So I'm glad you asked it, Shane, And so we wish you well. We're glad that your husband is better now. You know, we want to make sure your finances are better now too.
Do you want to mention really quick too? You mentioned credit or just like putting it on credit, But medical debt it's not that in terms of like, because you know, she mentions her husband's credit how it's gone from good to fair. But haven't there been some recent changes to how credit scores are calculated that medical debt or unpaid medical debt or paid off medical debt is not as big of a factor in your credit score anymore.
Absolutely, according to c NBC as of July first of this year, your medical debt may no longer hurt your credit score anymore. So it's not unpaid medical debt, because certainly if you're behind, you will have to pay, But if you've paid off medical debt, that was sometimes weighing down your score. So if you've paid off medical debt, the three largest credit briuros, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experience are removing cleared medical debt from consumer credit reports beginning July first,
twenty twenty two. So we've passed that time, which is you know, which is good news.
I guess. I mean, you know you.
Paid it off, which is great. But yeah, so if you you'll have more time before. Unpaid medical debt also is reported on your credit report, so typically it's increased from let me see, what does it say, unpaid medical debt that is currently in collections for one year were reported, so before it used to be six months, like twenty seventeen, the law was six months. You know it's going to be reported now they're going to give you a whole
year to be behind. So that's actually really good too, because they understand that medical debt is not as a result of you being financially irresponsible. Yeah, and then starting in twenty twenty three, according to CNBC Equifax Experience, TransUnion will also no longer include medical debt and collections under five hundred dollars on your credit report.
So that's good too.
I'm going to say that this is definitely those things where you should be on top of it. You know, if you know that you have paid off some debt and it's still like, check your credit reports once a year,
speaking of which isrobody check mine. I haven't done in a minute, But check your credit reports and if you still have medical debt there, then I would say, get some records and keep the records of it, like ask your hospital or whoever the debt collector whatever the age and see is get that letter that says that it's
been settled or paid off or whatnot. And then you know, show that to the credit reporting agencies and see if they can expedite or you know, if they haven't actually taken it off your records yet, be like, hey, here's a CNBC article and you're supposed to do this, here's my proof what's happening. Because I think that's some of that. That's sometimes what happens is like the there's like a lag between when something should be happening and when it's
actually happening. Definitely be on top of that, and Shana please keep us, you know, updated on what happens, what you guys decide to do. Feel free to send us another email and you guys, if you want to send your questions and reminder, you can go to Brandambition podcast dot com and senmit your question through the website. You can also dm us directly. We are at Brand Ambition Podcast on Instagram. Take a quick break, yeah, and come right back with a question from a listener who wants
to know about private student loan debt. Let's do it all right, va fan, We are back with another one of your questions. This question comes from listener Kim, who hit us up on ig. Kim says, Hey, Mandy and Tiffany, I'm a new listener to your podcast. Thank you for all you do. Your podcast is everything.
Thank you, Kim.
My dilemma is with Navian shake my head. I've been paying five hundred and twenty five dollars a month on a twenty one thousand dollars loan from two thousand and seven that is now has a current balance of thirty seven thousand dollars. My balance isn't going anywhere. Can you guys recommend a great company that I can refinance my private loans with? When she said private, it made sense.
Yes, because I was like, well, she said refinance, I was gonna say, we don't recommend around these parts.
We don't talk.
About ruh, no, no, no, we don't recommend over around here refinancing your federal student loans, especially you know, like that moratorium save plenty of lives.
You know, when you have federal loans.
That means when things happen with the economy at large or whatever, you know, you.
Potentially can have assistance. It's an aid.
You know, we'll know by August thirty first whether or not there's going to be an erasure of some student loan private I mean federal student loan debt by the federal government. So there are protections that are in place for federal student loans, and you cannot refinance with the federal government. So if you were finance a federal student loan, you were financed out of federal protection into a private loan.
But that's not what's happening here. Like this is great, So we just want to make sure that like you're under Like what advice for giving to Kim is because she's going from private to private, not private to federal.
Yeah, and let's be clear too, people who have private loans, and whether that's credit card debt or a personal loan that's not being or an unsecure loan that's not a fixed it doesn't have a fixed rate, or a private student loan, you know you're susceptible to those variable interest rates. And with the Fed increasing rates, debt is getting so
much more expensive. So I think this question is really timely, Kim, because if people out there you have private student loan debt and you haven't refinanced it yet because rates are increasing, I mean, check your rate and see how much more it is, and then definitely shopping around to see if you are eligible to refinance. So just in a nutshell, when you refinance, you are basically getting another lender to cut you a check for the debt that you owe, and now you owe a new debt to that lender.
And the idea is that you're going to have a lower interest rate, so it's going to be less expensive debt than what you had before. Sometimes you can negotiate other terms like maybe if the term of your loan you to have it paid back and I don't know, twelve years, maybe you can refinance it and they'll give
you twenty years, which will make your payments smaller. That being said, when it comes to student loan refinancing, I think the important thing is to understand you can shop around and compare rates, So, just like any other kind of loan, that's my first thing. I would recommend you can go to a website called student loan Hero. There's also credible dot com. These are two student loan marketplaces. Full disclosure, I used to work for I managed the
content team behind student loan Hero. But they are one of the best. Okay, But they have a marketplace where you can search for especially lenders that'll let you get pre approved or pre qualify, which means they'll do like a soft pull which won't go on your credit report, and then they'll give you like an example of a rate that you may get that could help you Just shop and compare different lenders and just make sure that you know exactly what you're getting into.
Yeah, yeah, I mean so, yes, refinancing is probably going to be I don't know what Navviance interest rate is. Obviously, the number one rule with refinancing is make sure you get a lower interest rate, but make sure it also makes sense. I would also compare because Naviant should have some sort of statement that says, this is how much you end up paying in the end if you if
you continue to pay whatever your minimum payment is. So I would also compare, like how much more because Samanda's point, you might go from twelve years to thirty years, but does that mean you're going to attack on another ten
thousand dollars on your loan? So first and foremost, can you get a lower interest rate, but then what it's going to cost you overall, and then you just decide whether or not it's worth the cost and then mosey on over Also too, make sure you're not trying to buy a house or a car anytime soon, because this is going to be your hard pull when you finally decide to move forward with whatever. So make sure you don't have any other need for your credit in the
next few months, like major need like a house. You know you don't want to you know, you know you you're I don't want your realtor cussing us out, like, what.
The hell, that's the one.
I don't think they excuse me. My name is Becky, I'm Kim's realtor, and on August fifteenth, you gave some shitty advice.
So just be mindful of that because sometimes people don't think. Because oftentimes people are trying to get their student loans together because they want to purchase like a home or something, which is great. So if you're six months to a year out or whatever, fine, But if it's in a few months or a few days, not fine.
So just keep that in mind too.
Yeah, I'm trying to think what else she should look out for. You know, be clear on whether or not you want to fixed rate or a variable rate. Variable means that can go up and down. Right now, fix is probably the way to go because of the fact that the FED is continuing to raise rates or it looks like they may. What else, you know, starting I know that right now you're feeling like thirty seven thousand dollars.
You know, this balance is not going anywhere. If you can, if you can get to a place where you can start, you know, contributing more to the loan, looking for additional sources of income. I mean that's the way to chip away at a much faster I know it feels overwhelming, but increasing income or finding additional streams of income, it's going to be like the real That and being able to reduce your your rate obviously, those are the two best ways to tackle that student loan debt, the private
student loan debt as soon as possible. But you're not alone, miss Kim, and thank you so much for sending your question in.
So that's our show for today.
Hit us up on all of our socials, brand Vision podcasts on its, the BA podcast on Twitter, and brandibisionpodcast dot com.
You can ask us.
Anything, anything, anything, and I can't probably gonna get to all of them, but we will get to as many as possible. We like to switch between like money questions, career questions, your financial questions.
Or at large.
Yeah, business questions for sure are like answering those. So yeah, if you have business, career, money question, life question chat, we can even do some of them.
Just be anonymous. We won't put all your business out there, but do a fun name.
I you're gonna be anonymous, say sassy and Seattle something. You know. We like to do those.
All right, TIF We'll go get some rest rest the Vocal Cords thank you for making it through the show on the men from COVID and all but still looking fabulous than you, and we will see y'all next week. By ba Fam, Hey, ba Fam, we could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown Emission Podcast is produced by Cumulus Podcast Network. It's edited by the wonderful Emani
Crosby and produced by Tanya Bustos. Dennis Timplinsky is our in house tech guru, and I am Bandy Woodard Santos, your co host, and I will see y'all next week.