Episode Transcript
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Narrator (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to
the Arista Wealth Podcast, where
we focus on your finances,wellness, and lifestyle.
So you can focus on living yourdreams.
Well help you navigate throughimportant topics so that you can
elevate your life and financialhealth.
Let's get started with yourhost, Paul Moffat.
Paul Moffat (00:22):
Hello.
Welcome to the Arista WealthPodcast with our guest today is
David Boyd.
David, as many of you havealready met or have not yet, or
will soon, met is an employeeteam member of our financial
planning department here atArista Wealth.
David, what's exciting about himand he'll have to tell us more
about it is that in 2020, hetook second place with his team
(00:47):
at the student challenge of thenational financial planning
association and they took secondplace.
And there were contestants ofstudents from all over the
country.
Very exciting to know that hetook second place.
It's not too often that you comeacross an FPA contest and who
won.
(01:08):
He already passed a certifiedfinancial planning test, and
he's just waiting to put thetime in so he can put the
designation on, but we'reexcited to have David with us
today.
You can always go toaristawealth.com and learn more
and send us emails, but let'sget started.
So David, tell us about yourselfbefore we jump into the facts
and figures of today.
David Boyd (01:28):
Absolutely.
It's great to be here.
Just moved to Las Vegas startedwith the Arista Wealth
Management recently graduatedfrom Utah Valley University,
studying personal financialplanning.
As Paul mentioned, I was aparticipant in the FPA student
challenge of 2020 me and twoother people were able to place
second place.
(01:48):
And that challenge was justsomething that basically took
the entire year of 2020.
It was a three-step process.
We first started with a full in-depthI think it was about 20
pages, financial plan based offa case study, move forward to a
presentation at the FPAconference.
And then last step was thejeopardy based Quizbowl.
Paul Moffat (02:11):
Wow.
Jeopardy.
David Boyd (02:13):
It was jeopardy
based.
It was the closing eventactually of the FPA conference.
So there was everybody therewatching this all compete for
that title.
Paul Moffat (02:24):
Gosh.
David Boyd (02:25):
Pretty nerve
wracking actually.
Paul Moffat (02:26):
Yeah, but I bet you
had a great time.
And did you have your pocketprotectors and books and
calculators with you the wholetime David?
David Boyd (02:34):
Actually in the
jeopardy, we weren't allowed to
have anything except ourcalculator.
Paul Moffat (02:39):
Wow.
David Boyd (02:40):
I mean, it was
time-based we only had about 30
to 40 seconds to answer.
So even then, if you even hadyour book or Google, it was hard
to do that anyway.
You know, we stuck to the honorcode and just used what we had
inside our brain and our timevalue of money calculator, so.
Paul Moffat (02:53):
Gosh, a competition
with financial calculators sight
to see.
Well then let's jump into this,share with us some figures and
statistics and things that ourlisteners can do to become
better aware of debt management.
David Boyd (03:10):
Absolutely.
Debt management is crucial toour lives.
Yeah.
According to CNBC of 2021, over73% of Americans say finances is
their number one stressor inlife.
And even with the chaos goingaround in 2020, and right now in
2021, that's above politics,that's above work and that's
(03:30):
above your family.
Can you believe that Paul?
Paul Moffat (03:33):
Gosh.
I mean, just think what COVIDhas done the mortgage
moratorium, all of the financialcomplexities of the last 12 to
13 months, we're just startingto see the effects of it.
David Boyd (03:46):
That's absolutely
right.
And you know, the first step tothat management is just getting
to know your debt, yourdifferent liabilities that you
have.
Over 80% of Americans are indebt, whether that's credit
card, student loans, mortgages,and the list goes on.
So the first thing you need todo is get to know how much do
you owe?
What is your interest rate?
(04:06):
How long is the term?
How long do you have left?
And if you can't really think ofthose numbers off the top of
your head, I was suggest youlook into those payments, you
know, look into that loan.
Just so you're on top of it.
Paul Moffat (04:18):
Becoming aware of
your current situation is
really, really important.
What are some steps that theycan take?
David Boyd (04:26):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's actually three mainmethods to tackle your debt.
The first one is helping get athird party involved with a debt
management plan.
This is one where you need to becautious about it.
It involves a middleman whereyou basically will give him
control where he can help younegotiate different rates.
(04:46):
We need to be very cautiousabout this one because one
you'll lose control.
Okay.
And there's going to be upfronthidden, probably monthly fees as
well.
So I mean, it actually can costyou more in the end.
Okay.
The second one, and this is onethat I've heard a lot about
recently, it's getting a lot ofhype recently is debt
consolidation.
And that basically is you justget all of your debt and you
(05:08):
consolidate it.
You put it together into oneloan.
You see this a lot with creditcard debts, auto loans and pros
to this.
It can be faster, notnecessarily, but it can be
faster.
They can simplify it.
You know how you get one paymentinstead of 10 different payments
for different cards and you canget a lower interest rate.
It's not guaranteed.
It's based on your credit score.
(05:29):
You can get a lower interestrate cons to that though.
Again, you need to be cautious.
There's starting, there'sclosing there's annual fees
associated to it.
And the biggest one for me iswhen you have a credit card that
is unsecured debt, unlike anauto loan, when if you don't
make the payment, the bank cancome take your car.
The car is the collateral in anauto loan.
(05:50):
However, in debt consolidation,you will need to put up some
kind of collateral.
So if you take a credit card, anunsecured debt and make it a
secure debt that couldpotentially give you a lot of
hazards coming up.
And the last con to debtconsolidation is basically about
the interest rate it's based offyour credit score.
(06:11):
So if your credit score isalready too low, the
consolidation might not evengive you a lower interest rate.
And if it doesn't even do that,why would you do debt
consolidation, right?
Paul Moffat (06:20):
Yeah.
Well, that's great.
That's some great insight date.
A lot of people talk about thisdebt snowball even during the
summer months when there's nosnow, they're talking about the
snowball.
So, so help us know a little bitmore about that, David.
David Boyd (06:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
That is probably the best wayyou yourself can get ahold of
your finances and begin to payoff your debt.
So first step one, get to knowyour debt, know how much you pay
the term length and the interestrate.
And what do you need to do onthis debt?
Snowball is essentially you needto pay the minimum payment on
(06:53):
every debt payment.
All right?
And then you list, your debtsfrom smallest to largest and
then any extra cash that youhave, any extra money that you
have laying aside, you attackthe smallest loan payment, the
loan amounts, and you do thatwith as much as you can and as
soon as that one's paid off, youtake that current payment, any
(07:16):
added to the next one and thenext one and the next one, and
the best part about the debtsnowball is it really gets you
focused on doing it one step ata time as you attack your debt,
as hard as you can and begin topay it off.
And eventually t hat debtsnowball is g oing t o grow and
grow until you're completelydebt free.
Paul Moffat (07:36):
Excellent.
It's just so sad to see thatthere's over$1.5 trillion in
debt and then 54% of allstudents have debt right now.
David Boyd (07:45):
It's absolutely
crazy.
And even the average student hasover$37,000 in debt when they
graduate.
It's just absolutely mindboggling to think about.
Paul Moffat (07:54):
Yeah, what's
another tool out there that can
help some of our clients sharewith their kids or some of our
listeners and clients share whenthey encounter some of these
people with these enormousamounts.
David Boyd (08:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, debt management, it canbe scary and daunting to you at
first when he was trying totackle this and begin the debt
snowball.
So one of the best tools that Ilearned about while going to
school at Utah ValleyUniversity, it's called
powerpay.org.
Okay.
It was created by Utah stateuniversity, and this is a very
(08:27):
simplistic, free to use actuallysoftware to help you tackle your
debt.
And essentially as soon as youlog in, you create your own
profile and then you input allthe data you have the amount you
owe the interest rate, the turnlane, any potential, extra
payments that you can make, youknow, a big one right now, Paul
is actually the tax return.
(08:47):
If you're getting a refund, youcan throw that into your debt
right there.
And it could accelerate thatexceedingly, but powerpay.org
will actually help you withthat.
Once you list all of yourinformation there, and then
it'll actually give you acalendar plan of how much you
need to pay, and actually whenyou will pay each debt off, it's
(09:08):
a very good, easy to use tool.
And the best part is it's freefor everybody.
Paul Moffat (09:12):
Excellent.
Excellent, David, thanks forlistening listeners.
Don't forget to subscribe, rateand review.
So you don't miss out onlearning from our excellent
guests like David today, andlook forward to seeing you in
our next podcast.
Narrator (09:29):
This episode of the
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