It's time for the b a q a a to b a q a, which.
Is said the ba q it would mandate the b a q a tiffin a the b a qa a.
Hey manjer how you doing?
I can't wait to get into these questions. I look forward to this Friday episode so so much. And y'all are so generous sending us in your questions. I feel like, while you're at it, why not go to iTunes and leave us the review because you know how much we charge to answer your questions.
Zero?
Do you know what I'm saying, So if you have a moment, go to iTunes, leave us a review or whatever they call it now Apple podcasts, leave us the review please do. We read them all and they matter so so much, and we just want to flood the review system in the Apple algorithm, so they just know that ba Faan is here and always.
Quick mandra Remember we said we're going to do.
That read oh reviews? Yeah, oh okay, yeah, absolutely.
Just tell the girls so we'd like you, you know, shop.
Why not let's do one right now?
Okay? This one?
Oh, it was just from this past week. Happy Listener two thousand and nine said, it's been an it's an inspiring conversation. It's been great to see this podcast evolve. I enjoy the I enjoy the current format of a longer topic covered Wednesday and shorter Q.
And a Friday. That's us right now.
I can't believe how much has happened from Mandy and Tiffany over time. Thank you both for being open, honest, and vulnerable through the good and not so good times. I've learned. I've learned so much from the podcast. In Tiffany's book, Keep Teaching. Wow, I needed to hear that little pep talk right before I buried my soul on this episode. So on this Wednesday episode and then another from last week as well. From the Willie thirty says,
I absolutely love my girls, Mandy and Tiffany. This podcast is very informative, fun and just real life.
Oh I love that woe. If you guys do reviews, who my regial here? Read it a good way? You know.
Not?
God keep remind us while we do this ba faan. But let's get into the questions because we do have some juicy money questions.
Quick disclaimer, right, Remember guys, we are not your attorney advisor, We're not your doctor.
Lawyer.
None of the we are too smart asorable, beautiful, even brown girls on the interwebs. You like answering business, career and money questions, so you gotta take it with the smallest grain of salt and lean into the people you pay.
Okay, okay, I love it. Thank you for that, Tiffany keeping us out of a courtroom drama every Friday. All right, let's start with listener who just wants to go buy tea houses sing Hello ladies. Tea says, it is such a pleasure writing you. I've been a listener for many years, and I look forward to hearing from y'all two times a week. From a fellow listener, Romla's question back in January on the BAQ and A made me think about my own financial situation. We got we should have looked
up Romo's question. Anyhow, A series of life events has taken my credit score from a forty five and twenty twenty one to six oh five today. Now that I'm in a position to pay off my debts and repair my credit score, I wonder do I pay off balances in one lump sum payment or spread them out so as to show a record of regular study. Payments. Thank you very much, looking forward to your advice and insights.
Do I know you all over this Tiffany.
Girl, because just last night remind them well and me and my friend the Tiva, the credit Nista, so you know, on the budget Budgetnissa and the credit Nista. She literally is the smartest person I know about credit. I mean she goes to like the government meetings, she goes to the trainings, all things credit is. She taught a class just last night, so it's fresh in the cranium, if you will, and.
In native is here. I feel very confident. She was, like put it off.
She said basically that yes, I understand having kind of like showing that, yoh, you're making your payments monthly. Although there's a benefit to that, that the bigger benefit is I'm assuming that if your score dropped that low is because you're carrying over thirty percent of like your utilization. Utilization is how much credit you could borrow versus how much credit you are borrowing. So let's just say you have a credit card one hundred dollars limit and you
have a ninety dollars balance. Your utilization is ninety percent on that card, and so utilization is thirty percent of your score and payment history is thirty five percent. And so what you're thinking about is like, oh, I can, I can pay off you know regularly, But the problem is it will keep your utilization. I'm assuming, based upon how far you dropped at such a high place that it offsets any benefit from paying regularly over the next
few months. So what I would do is and I'm assuming this is what in the tip would suggest as well, because she said it like last night on our course class together, is to pay that bad boy off. In doing so, you should see a lump a jump fairly quickly in doing so. That like having so, Nativa said something really interesting. I know you've heard that, I've said this rule before, and she said that it's a bit outdated, this thirty percent rule where you want to keep your
credit balance under thirty percent of the limit. And she said that actually that it came directly from the credit bureaus, that they weren't being so literal.
They basically were.
Like, well, you really don't want to go over thirty percent of what someone has lent to you. But that's not a hard and fast rule that if you're close to thirty percent, it is bringing down your score still, and so she was really like, you want to be in that five to ten percent and then paying it off every month in full and even lower. If you want to see your score moved, you want to be in the one to two percent, like one to three percent space. So really you want to be basically paid
off every month. Yes, go ahead, man, it's Tiffany.
Can I share? I think I talked about I out a zero percent balance transfer card for some credit card debt while I was launching the business. I was like, let me just move this over and keep my cash flow a little bit better. And I will attest to that, because my credit score did drop while I had that credit that balance transfer in the balance transfer promo period.
It is going to be up in this coming November, so next month, and I was so petrified because I knew there was a deferred interest clause and I was not petrified, but I'm just like, I'm going to pay it off.
I'm going to pay it off.
But because I wanted my cash flow to be fine, I was like, I'm going to do it in one limp sum, you know, when we get closer. And I finally did, and yeah, my credit score jumped like twenty five points.
That's huge.
I think I was still like I was at seven hundred, and I think it's back up to the high seven not even twenty five, maybe more it's back up into the high seven hundred. So for sure, when you pay it down that big lump sum, it is an instant boost to your.
To your credit score.
Yeah, and I just want to say, you know what, congratulations to you, because I know you probably took like an emotional hit from forty five, which is you're only five points away from literally like the top score as far as Freco is concerned, to six oh five, which you know is really considered a credit score that's not doing quite as well.
So to be able to get yourself.
And together to a position where you could pay it off in full, that's not a small thing. So I hope you take a moment to say, snaps all around for me. I did it, and my name's T That's what I did for you. Thanks for sharing tea. So we take a quick break. Oh, I want to do a little segment, but we're gonna talk about we come back called what do we say? Look, I forgot already, like, well, we're gonna when we come back, we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna Reremember.
She's gonna tell me, so I remember.
When we write back for a break, and we'll be back in a moment. Okay, we're back, but my memory is still on that back. Remember when we take them Wednesday episode, you and I were just kind of sharing all of our financial shenanigans, and we said, sometimes I don't need you to fix it.
I just want to be able to like say the thing.
Oh yes, yes, just like just say the thing out loud, and to do like a word vomit. And you don't you don't want a solution, You're just wanting to get it off your chest.
And it's a lighter share the burden. So like, what should we call that?
Because I think that would be nice every once in a while to do like get it off your chest.
Or okay, you be a confessional.
A journalist and whatever. I love that. So we're gonna start like a first of all, me and Madi would likely forget. But what are we going to read them?
I think so because so when no name is always anonymous, yeah, always anonymous, and so you know, don't put like well I live in New Jersey on and I have three.
Like, so Tiffany, stop that and Mony cut that out.
You did it again.
It's like the intrusive thought keeps coming.
It's like, okay, so make sure that you don't have any things in there. Like I work at IBM next to my friend Melissa and she gets on my no, Like, you want to make sure that whatever your confessional is in the it makes market be a confessional. So we know this means you just want us to read it out loud because you just want someone to tell you just want to bring it out, and we're not going to offer any feedback, any anything.
We're just going to read it without judgment, without comment. Okay.
Sometimes you just if you listen to our Wednesday episode prior me and Mandy, just like we had.
Our confessionals ourselves, So go ahead and listen.
And so sometimes you're in a shitty situation and even you know how to get out of it. Yeah, the thing is like I know how to get out. I know exactly what I need to do as far as my own business, financials and taxes and all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't make that going through it any less hard. And people don't know that you're going through it, so saying it out loud, it just it doesn't fix the problem, but it makes you feel lighter.
I feel lighter having told Tiffany and you know, thousands of y'all who are listening, it didn't mean to know my business, but here you are. And that's the promise I made you when I heard this show. Yeah, so we hope that that will, you know, give you a place to just whisper your little dirty financial secrets. Yeah, tell us about the debt that you got. You don't have to be perfect for us, you know, be vulnerable, like show us.
Out that because that like that thing you bought that your your partner is like what that they don't know?
We want to know that you want to know or you know, did you hide something from your partner that you bought. I might have decreased the price of that pottery pottery barn bedding by about two hundred dollars. One husband asked me how much it was. Why does it matter?
We need it?
Yes, I love that be a confessional.
One of the things I learned from my business coach Zion and even my therapist doctor Green, is that one of the ways to release shame is to give voice to it. And so we want to just get provide a space so you can give voice to some of the things that you might be ashamed of.
Because we're not going to judge you here.
We're going to read it and be like, well, I hope you take a USA and a and a breather, and I hope that hearing your confession out loud gave you a little bit of like, because sometimes hearing it out like you like, it's actually not as it's not as crazy as I thought. So yeah, so be a confessional. We don't have one this week, but you know, we want to start to add that in every once in a while when you guys, you know, just make sure you market be a confessional so we know that you're
not wanting solutions. You just want to you want to give voice to something that's happening to you.
Yes, I love that, all right, next question, Next question, you're gonna read this one.
Yes, this is from Okay. This doesn't say but I was like, I think I cased her name. Hey Robin, she says, Hey, ladies, question for you. I'm in the process of signing up with a new internet provider Kai, I'm being offered ten dollars off my monthly bill if I set up direct debit from a bank account. I've noticed this is becoming a trend. It is, and I'm tempted to set up checking a checking account specifically for only these types of transactions to take advantage of the discounts.
Okay, thoughts, PS, This.
Comes from a place of being super freaked out about information and identity theft.
Thank you you guys. Hear heart, heart heart. So what you say, Mandy, Well.
I think it's interesting and kind of strange that they are incentivizing a debit transaction. I'm guessing it's because they don't want the processing fees that credit card issuers charge them, and they're trying to think about their bottom line and what's best for them. And you know, ten bucks honestly is a lot of money when you think about it. I mean it could be like ten I feel like that's ten percent of the average credit I mean, not credit card cable bill in hundred.
Dollars eighty seven or eighty.
Yeah, and if you want premium channels, you want Telemundo, that's cost extra.
That's my in laws. Yeah.
So I can see how that could be tempting. I think in this case, if you have a bank account, that will just allow you to create for free an extra bank account. You could always sorry, I created like if you have a checking account, for example, you could create another sub checking account and it wouldn't cost anything, but you get a new account number and a separate thing.
And then as far as like if you're worried about identity theft and then getting or taking your identity and then emptying your checking account, which is a real thing that can happen, and unfortunately when they take your cash, it's like you may have some protection through your you know, checking account as far as like identity theft and fraud for taking the money out, but you have to catch
it mostly to get the whole benefit. You have to catch it within like sixty days if you want all the money back, and it can be a little bit more challenging then if it worked. See insurance for taking accounts so FD I see insurance is like if the bank loses your money, oh that's ft I C insurance isn't for like fraud, so yeah, and I need I don't have. I used to know this verbata because as as you know, when I was running a content team for personal finance sits, we would update this language all
the time. But so I would say, I know, I know generally that credit cards they have the zero liability fraud insurance. That's like a very standard benefit now, which means if you're defrauded, you're like, you're not going to owe us the money. With a checking account, if you're defrauded, you may not owe back the money.
Sorry, you may not.
You know, you may be able to get your money back, but you have to typically catch it sometimes within sixty days or thirty days, and it may not be all of it and maybe just more of a workaround to get it. So it's a little bit trickier. That's why typically they'll advise you to like, you know, will advise you to use your credit card for that type of thing.
But I feel like to get around it, you could open a sub checking account, just tie the payment to that one account and make sure you got the money in there each month for your payment. Yeah, that's what I'll say. And then what do you think you looking at the latest on the identity theft for checking accounts, I think we should.
Know what I did I'm looking at it. I'm not sure if this is still because I remember a few years ago, Credit sests Me actually launched this first totally free credit and identity protection service. I remember because they reached out to me and I work with them. I'm
trying to see credit Me. Yeah, I'm trying to see if it's still there, if they still have it, because they had it, and I remember it was up to fifty thousand dollars, which is great, and this was free, so you signed up for a free credit sez to Me account.
I don't know, Tiff, it's credit sized me even around anymore.
I That's why i'm looking it up now to because you know.
These platforms, I mean, I feel old.
It still is around, but I'm just wondering if they still have the oh my gosh, the identity theft protection because it used to be free.
Like I said, that was some years ago. I'm just looking to see.
I'm trying to see on their site because I remember I thought that was really great. It was, like I said, it was up to fifty thousand dollars that you could you get free. They do have free credit monitoring, and so I will say that about credits as me. That still is true and they are still around. I'm looking on here now. I just don't know if they have the identity theft protection, but they do have credit monitors take guard your credit. Credit monitoring helps protect your identity.
I'm looking here. Support your finances can help you. Okay? Is our credit monitoring really free? Yes?
With your credit test me account, you get TransUnion credit monitoring for free. You also get free daily credit credit score refreshes, so you always know where you stand. Okay, well, at the very at the very least. With credit test Me you get free credit monitoring. A lot of places offer that, but I, you know, dig a little deeper to see if they not only offer credit monitoring but the identity theft protection, because they had that before and it was incredible.
I just don't know if they still have.
Two factor authentication. Let's not under like, if you're talking about how to prevent someone from like logging into your account, they get your account details. Two factor authentication goes a long way to protecting even your passwords and things like that. It sounds simple, but if you don't have two factors authentication authentication turned on for your banks, get that turned on even face ID, you know, log in something like that.
But I love, I love how easy it is when you do the two factor authentication and then it like texts your phone. And with the iPhone, now you got this feature.
Do they have that with the Android?
I don't know. But when you're in the app, it'll already read your text message and just give you the number. It's like, do you want to copy and paste this numbers? You don't have to like go to the text, remember the number, come back to the page and type it in you just like automatically. So it's so easy and it's such a simple thing to do too.
Oh and and just so word because I found it.
So I I'm on securities dot security dot org and they reviewed credits to me.
I think as of this year, this is what they like.
Basic credit and identity identity monitoring, multi factor authentication that you're just talking about, Mandy.
And they do have identity theft insurance what I love.
Even if you don't pay for a plant, because they do have a plan, you can be eligible for up to one million dollars in reimbursement if your identity gets stolen. Yeah, and so they don't like is that shaky privacy poly and privacy policy and jurisdiction. Let's see, credits Me isn't a good choice for the for the privacy concern. Oh don't there you go, chunky sign up and limited customer support. So this is their bottom up, yeah, meaning like it's
probably like weird to sign hard to sign up. They gave it the rating of eight point seven out of ten. It says, not only did credits as Me give us monthly credit updates from all three bureaus, we also got identity theft insurance. If our identities were stolen, we could have gotten rembursed up to one million dollars. So that's just something to take a look at, you know, potentially, Like they also have LifeLock as one of those ones. If you don't have LifeLock, chot.
I have LifeLock. Okay, I love LifeLock.
It has helped me so many times because LifeLock, I mean, but you do pay for LifeLock. I think I paid like ten or twenty bucks a month, and because people have tried to sell my identity before, and LifeLock be like, girl, is is you send me a text?
I'm like it's not.
And so if you're concerned in general, Like I wouldn't much worry about this bank account. I would be thinking if I'm worried in general that I would be, I would have signed up. Maybe that ten dollars you're saving, you put it toward like a LifeLock or like to pay for identity theft you know program. Quite honestly, to me, it's worth it because at one point it was happening a lot. Someone was trying and once since I got LifeLock,
that that completely stopped. With LifeLock, I'm able to freeze my accounts, which I did when when Jarelle passed away. Angelie my financial advisor, is like, right away freeze his credit because people will look up obituaries and try to know that you're grieving yes, and try to go with So I went into LifeLock because we had LifeLock together. Froze all of his accounts and his social Security number.
I just happened to like like LifeLock because I've been using it now for a number I don't work with them or anything. I've been using it now for a number of years. But it doesn't hurt to get a free credit sess me account just to have that backburner too, you know, like get that for free, but then LifeLock or another like system like that that you pay.
She was like, dang, I want to eat Chipotlet once a month.
I know, tagget it, but it's like you want to you want to eat Apotle or you want to make sure that you actually have Chipotle money in the futen.
I don't agree.
Okay.
I did want to catch because I left this an open ended thing and I don't like doing that. But I did bring up the idea of what happens if you have unauthorized purchases on your debit account, like your your checking account, and I talked about the limit and like if you have to that you generally do need to contact your bank within a certain timeframe. But I found that the updated info from US News and World
Report oh edited by a former freelancer of mind. Okay, anyway, So in most cases, federal law limits your liability for unauthorized debit card purchases to fifty dollars, provided you report
the fraud within two business days of discovering it. If you report the debit card fraud after two business days but less than sixty calendar days, you could be liable per up to five hundred dollars, and if you don't report the fraud within sixty calendar days of receiving your statement, you could be liable for any amounts stolen from your account.
So this is why it's important to regularly review your bank statements and which the tools that Tiffany's talking about, like if you get a credit card or one of these like monitoring systems or what I do is I don't care how how annoying it is. Every time I use my credit card or my checking I don't evenly use debit. When I do, I get an email with the transaction.
So just like this quick skim through.
Each day, I go through my email and I'm like, oh that, oh yeah, husband went God, is you know metro card reloaded? I guess that was all me this month.
That's fine again.
Okay, yeah that does my AMX does it? It sends me a text. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I have it for my business card, and it quote unquote is annoying, but not really because I'm like wait what and that Sometimes I'm like we still use that company? No, no, no, that I'll hit up Georgia my cfon and being like Georgia, why do we still work with?
So yeah, that's that's actually great.
You know I never thought about that to not just do it for my business but for my personal Oh yeah, yeah, so that's all.
That's really great.
Yes, like having a text or email sent to you, so you're like, wait, who charged?
What ever?
Sent someone in New Orleans like spent thirty bucks on my Fandango account on movie tickets. I was like, not again, not again, not ever, not ever? Alright, A good question actually an old like a question that is Tailor's oldest time. But also it's good to look up the most recent and see that you know that liability really hasn't changed for checking accounts.
So if you have questions, ask us or confessions, Yes, questions or confessions, what you're gonna do?
Questions? All confessions here? How are you? Questions? A confessions on.
The b A you can tell it where the PBS generation everything, have like a fifty little jingle to open it up.
I know, all right, y'all, but yes, if you do, certainly can go to the BA podcast dot com.
Oh no, look Brown Ambition podcast dot com.
Google Brown Ambition. That's all you got to.
Do yeah, just Google and just like you know, however, Instagram, Twitter, our site, just like you know, hit us up and ask us questions about business, career, personal finances, whatever.
We're here for you, okay, all right until next week.
Until next week, Bye bye