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April 28, 2025 64 mins
Right Thinking with Steve Coplon | Guest: Johnnie Lloyd

This week's show is called "Debt: Your Obligations to Others" with guest Johnnie Lloyd. Tune in and hear Steve and Johnnie continue their series Right Thinking: Life, Money, Relationships. This week, we are discussing how we all have obligations to others, but do we manage them in a way that adds value to our lives, or are we controlled by them?

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Speaker 1 (00:14):
There must be lies parting brighter somewhere, got to be birds.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Why hi in the sky?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Good morning, everybody, glad to be with you. Well.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Today's episode two thirty three Right Thinking with Steve Copeland
is very pleased to announce that this week's show is
called Debt Your Obligations to Others, with guests Johnny Lloyd
tuning in here. Steve and Johnny continue their series Right Thinking, Life,
Money Relationships this week, discussing how we all have obligations

(01:05):
to others, but do we manage them toward having value
in our lives or are we controlled by them? Well, Johnny,
thanks for doing another show with me.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
I'm excited about this topic as we continue to move forward,
especially during this season that all of us are in.
We are shifting and moving and gathering and having opportunities
for greater harvest.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
So I'm excited about today.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
You know, Johnny, a lot of people that I'm in
contact with, I'm noticing that they're starting to get more
enrichment out of their lives. They're not running around as
much as they used to looking for something to do,
something to spend their money. Honey On, I've really noticed

(02:01):
that people are getting more in touch with their own
personal values and goals.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
I believe.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
I think that's one of the side effects of the
pandemic is that people have been isolated. They couldn't go
to the movie theaters or go to sports events as
much as they might have used to, etc. And so
I'm seeing and change and I think it's a wonderful
time for what we're doing to try to enrich their
lives with teaching them how to manage their personal affairs,

(02:27):
specifically as it relates to their financial involvements, because I
think that can help a lot of people. So I'm
so glad to be sharing the platform the microphone with
you well, Johnny. Last week, I really enjoyed our approach
to the way we spoke about credit. Last week I

(02:47):
went back and listened to the four or five episodes
on my radio show that I had already done on
credit with some very very wonderful guests that are experts
in the field, and I feel like we did a
pretty good job Now if anybody disagrees, you know, like,
come on, Steve, you didn't do that. Good, Quit saying

(03:08):
that anyway, Just get in touch with us, because we
want to add more. Our goal is to be complete,
so that we don't leave any of the fundamentals of
the basics out. At the very end of the show,
we tried to finish up what I had said I
was going to do earlier in the show, which is
so important about the credit card trap. And so Johnny,

(03:28):
I want to just go right into finishing up what
I called the credit card trap, because today's show is
going to be on debt, and the credit card trap
is the bridge to people falling into the water off
the bridge and having to tread water for a long time.
And we don't want people to sink. So let me

(03:51):
talk about the credit card trap and get some thoughts
from you after I speak to it. If that's okay, perfect, Okay. Well,
there's this a little high school girl and she loves
costume jewelry. She actually has one of those trees on
her dresser that can hold up to sixty or seventy

(04:13):
pairs of earrings.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
She loves earrings. You know, there's a.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Lot of people out there that are really fashion hawks
out there, that are making fashion statements, that love all
these ear rings.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
And you know, Johnny, what I think is kind of
sad about it.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
I mean, I think it's wonderful that people are fast,
you know, get into fashion shirt. It's that's one of
their choices. And if that's what makes them happy and
have a better outlook on life, go for it. I mean,
we all like to dress and enjoy the colors that
we wear, the types of clothes. I mean, everybody's got
their own statement. I think it's wonderful. We need to
have that individual personality. But what we don't want to

(04:50):
do is get caught up in something that doesn't end
up having any value toward who we are and where
we're going, and end up in in serious financial trouble
because of something that we're doing that really we haven't.
We get caught up in I think I'll just use
that word, we get caught up in it.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
So it's a little high school girl.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
She's working at Bush Gardens that's in Williamsburg, Virginia. There's
a couple of them in the country, and it's a
summer job, and you know, she's only making right around
minimum ways and just for this example, I don't remember
what it is now, but seven dollars an hour is
what she makes per hour, and I want to I
want to lay out the variables here. It takes her

(05:35):
an hour to get to work each day, so she
has two hours invested in just the travel time and
the gas that she spends to get to work. And
when she gets to work in the summertime, she works
at a station where she scoops ice cream.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
She's an ice cream scooper.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Some days she fills in and does sodas for people,
because you know, she's just working, like I had a
little kiosk type thing where she's doing ice cream or drink.
There's days over in bush gardens where it gets one
hundred degrees high nineties all the time in July early August,
you know, and it's brutally hot over there. And she

(06:15):
generally works a four hour shift. Okay, so let's sort
of add that up two hours round trip, four hours there,
so it's six hours to do four hours.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Okay. Well, let's go back to her thing.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
She's a fashion statement and she's got some she's got
some girlfriends and they're high school and they like to
go hang out at the mall, especially when other people
that they know are going to be there.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
And so.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
What I didn't tell you is this little girl she
actually just graduated high school. Makes it easier because last
week I said, how do you get a credit card?

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Just open your mailbox.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
You know, they're just trying to inundate you with giving
you a credit card. Use our credit starts off two
hundred and fifty three hundred dollars. So she's got a
credit card now, and she just graduated high school, got
a credit card, she's got a summer job. One of
her girlfriends, actually two of her girlfriends come by. It's
got a car, says, come on, let's go. Let's go
to the mall and hang out for a couple hours. Well,

(07:16):
this little girl is responsible, she's working, she's doing good.
And it's the very last day that she can make
her monthly payment on her credit card. And if she
doesn't make her payment tonight, she's going to be late
and getting her payment posted and there's going to be
a late charge of thirty five dollars. Now, to go

(07:40):
back a little bit, she's got like sixty pairs of
air rings already on this little tree on her dresser,
and probably most of them she's never even worn yet.
They're still kind of like in some kind of packaging. Well,
she had bought a pair of air rings on her
credit card for five dollars at one of the stores

(08:01):
she goes to a couple of weeks earlier. She charged
it on a credit card the month before actually to
get the timing strain, and she got a bill on
her credit card for the five dollars pair of air
rings from the cycle before. So, you know, we pointed
out last week that if you charge something on your
credit card and you pay it off when the bill
comes in, it doesn't cost anything. It's just to use

(08:24):
some handling your money. I don't want to carry cash around,
so I use a credit card. And we're getting to
the cashless society phase of life, and you need a
credit card sometimes, and so she bought a pair of
credit cards. She bought a pair of air rings for
five dollars on her credit card. The bill came in,
and the bill's been sitting there ready to be paid.
Tonight's the last night that she realizes I better pay

(08:46):
it or I'm going to be late. Her two friends
come over, They come in her room, and they're all
giddy and laughing and saying, let's get to them all.
Because the guys that we are kind of talking about
a whole lot. We know they're going to be there
for a little while, so you know, it's a whole
social scene. She goes, I can't go right now because
I'm getting ready to go online and pay my credit
card bill. Oh, do it when you get back. We're

(09:08):
only going to be there for two hours.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
So yeah, she gets talked into it because they say, you'll.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Be home by eight or nine, You'll have plenty of
time to still pay it. So we got to go
down though, So she goes. She gets home at about
nine thirty like they not much after they said, but
she completely forgets about going online and paying that five.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Dollars ballance on her credit card.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
She gets her next credit card bill, she's got a
thirty five dollars late charge, so that five dollars pair
of air rings is now up to forty dollars that
it's costing her that she didn't need in the first place.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Now, let me give you what I what I'm going
to tell you.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
She makes six dollars an hour net just seven dollars wages,
takes out taxes Social Security on it, so let's just
call it.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
Let's just call it six dollars as she clears.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
She works a one hundred degree whether pumping sodas or
scoop and ice cream at bush Gardens, gives up commute
time and she's got to work a minimum of six hours,
but she only works four hour shifts. So she's working
a shift and a half to go to Bush Gardens
to get paid to pay for those air rings that

(10:22):
now cost her forty dollars.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Now, that is an example of what I call.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
The credit card trap, where this young lady, because she
wasn't disciplined enough to pay that credit card bill on time,
she is a slave to the credit card company because
she is literally working, standing on her feet, giving up
her time for something that didn't have much value in

(10:53):
the first place. But even if it had value, that
thirty five dollars is costing her six hours of her
life to be able to pay. It's totally working for
the credit card company. That's just my example that I
wanted to give to illustrate the credit card trap. Does

(11:15):
it have value what you did or you disciplined to
meet the terms that you're supposed to. But ultimately, I
just want people to realize that if you're using credit
cards to buy things that you can't really afford, and
there's times emergencies you got to get your car fifs,
you're going to pay it out over the next cycle
or two. Okay, fine, pay a little bit of interest.

(11:35):
That little bit of interest is nothing compared to that
thirty five dollars charge for the lack of discipline to
pay your bill in time. So, Johnny, I don't think
I need to analyze it any further. What's your thoughts
on my little story that I just shared.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
The key things for the story is every decision matters
for me, every decision right. The system is set up
in such a way that it's not just about the
interest rate, it's about late fees. The late fees actually
are higher than the interest rate.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
So if you know that you are sometimes forgetful.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
To make in your payments, then you might want to
set it up on automatic pay, especially if you use
your credit card at a time. So it's not really
the credit card that's the issue. It's the individual because
just because something is set up to fight against you,

(12:43):
to cause you to be in debt to cause you
to be.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Enslaved to a system.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
You're only enslaved when you enter in and you align
yourself to the to the issues the problems that come
in the system. The problem is not the ear rings.
The problem was not her her salary, even though I
have issues with all of that. We could talk about that,

(13:15):
But the real issue was she didn't handle her business.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
She didn't handle it.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
So the issue is when we don't handle our commitments,
our obligations.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
When we don't do what we say.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
And it relates back to Steve's book, is from a
lip from the lips.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
To the hip is a pretty far distance.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
However, it's a really close different distance when your lips
and your hip don't say the same thing. Her hip said,
let's get the ear rings and let's go play and enjoy,
and I got that she's jump. However, the lip said
to the credit of our company that you're going to
pay me, and if you a payment, than the fee

(14:01):
is thirty five dollars. So they're doing what they said
they were going to do, right. However, the disconnect is
she did not fulfill the obligation, and that five dollars
cost her thirty five extra dollars, and if you look
at it from that perspective, not just does she work

(14:24):
in another day plus to get it, she also lost
the opportunity to spend her own thirty five dollars, so
that opportunity cost right, she could have bought five more
sets of ear rings. Has she did what she says
she's gonna do, Not that I'm saying by five or

(14:46):
you sets the ear rings, because like Steve said, she
probably did. You got sixty on there. Maybe you don't
need any, but that's a whole different issue. But you
now are giving for the privilege of borrowing somebody's five
dollars the banks five dollars which you had available to
you to pay back, just cost you an extra thirty five.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
So it's not the bank, it's us.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
We have to make the decision to not be I'm
gonna call it ensplaved, or not be bound by a
system that was created to generate income for the company
because of our decision making. That is where the decision matters.

(15:35):
That is where you we all get a chance to say,
volunteer to go in or volunteer to say, nah, I'm
not going to do that because this this is not
worth it to me. I want to do something else
with my money, or I need something else. So that's
what I would say, Steeve.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
So all of.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Those things, the story that you provided, the scenario that
you provided, has a lot of ebbs and flows in it.
I mean, we could talk about the fact of how
much money she's making. We can talk about the fact
that she's going two hours, so it's not just the
hours that she's at the job, it's really the two
hours in addition for commuting, and how much does it

(16:14):
cost her to commute? So are you even you know,
there's a lot of dynamics in that. However, the biggest
dynamic to stay on the debt piece is the obligation
versus and responsibility because with the obligation comes our responsibility
to meet the obligation that we agreed to. And there

(16:39):
is a penalty anytime we don't meet an obligation that
we have assigned to, whether that's be a personal penalty,
a relational penalty, a financial penalty, and emotional penalty, a
professional penalty. When you don't do what you say, there

(17:02):
is always a ramification from it.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
That's the deal. So that's what I would say, see.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
You said a lot, and I like what you said.
You know, Johnnys, let's go back. I'm a very simple person.
I like to keep it to the basics. The whole
purpose of right thinking that we're doing life money relationships
is to try to help people have a better life.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
And there's many different components of that.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
If everything's going nice, they're not feeling a lot of pressure,
they're not having debt collectors calling them on the phone
all the time, they're able to meet their budget, they're
able to buy the birthday gifts for the kids that
they want, They're able to eat properly, they're able to
pay for their medical insurance. And you know, in other words,
if they're able to live the way that they would

(17:53):
like to live that they've thought about, that's good, healthy,
moving their life forward, clean, whatever you want to describe it,
managing their lives. Being disciplined requires being focused and knowing
what you want, and we can This is kind of
like a circle here. You know, we're we're into the

(18:15):
trenches now with credit and debt. But really, let's pull
out of it for a minute and go back to
what is it we're trying to kind of do in
the first place, and that is to teach people that
if you know how to manage your finances, your money
and your finances, well, you're going to reach more goals
in your life and you're going to have a better life.

(18:35):
And that's that's what our that's what our little niche
is is to is to help people manage their money
to have a better life. Now, you said it right
there when you analyzed it. If she wanted to, she
has the right to. We're not telling people what their
choices are. We're telling them to get to where you can.
You can make the choices that you want to have
that freedom. And so what we've really talked about in

(18:58):
this example that I brought up, this little antidote story illustration,
it's the difference between being enslaved and having freedom of choice.
And so, you know, if she wanted to buy five
more pairs of air rings, like you said, she might
not have needed them, but that's her choice, not ours.
You know, she's not ready yet to start putting the

(19:18):
money aside for something that's a bigger goal. She'll get
to that later when she starts looking at her money
and realizing, you.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Know, if I only had fifty pairs of her rings.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
I could take the money I spent on that other
ten and start to plan that little travel vacation with
my friends down to I don't know where they go now.
And you know it used to be the tone of
beach and all that other kind of stuff years ago.
But so that's the substitution principle. So what we're talking
about is all all connected together.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Now what I would like to get into.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Now, are you satisfied, Johnny, that the credit trap that
we that we were going to talk about has been
talked about enough? You think you think we've covered it?

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (20:07):
I actually think that we have tapped into the surface.
It is deeper, and then that gives people an opportunity
to reach out to us if they have or need
additional information because it becomes very specific to people or
a group to discuss other things from this point forward.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
So I think we have covered it well.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
Enough for what we uh, you know, just to let's
call it encouraging people to understand the overarching view of
how they are really in control of their thoughts and
coming out of debt or the debt trap. Yes, I

(20:54):
think we've covered it good.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, So everybody, we just encourage you, like Johnny said,
to take.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
A look at how you are doing things.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
And it may be as simple as make sure that
you set as out a certain time of the month
to pay your bills on time, knowing when the due
dates are.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
So you don't pay them late.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
That's all because the biggest part of credit is how
you pay your bills timely. I think that's I think
that's your history. Thirty five of your score is are
you a late pay?

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Do you pay on time?

Speaker 1 (21:32):
So get that part in your life straightened out, and
you know, Johnny, another thing is I would assume that
most of the people that are listening to us that
are trying to get something out of what our message is,
they're probably listening to it more so that they can
help encourage others that they care and love about to
help their situation. Because I'm going to give a compliment

(21:56):
to our listeners, I bet that most of you are
on top of your financial situation and doing very good
and you're listening to J and I because you want
to fine tune it a little bit. But if you're
one of these people that you know you're working, but
your money doesn't seem to ever get you anywhere and
you're spinning your wheels.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Pay attention to this little story and see if you.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Can broaden it to take a look at the way
you do things and see how much money you may
be wasting that you can channel into a different direction.
So that's that's that's my my my summary of how
the credit card trap fits in the overall financial management.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
Johnny. Today, we're talking.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
About debt and and when I when I wrote the
announcement to the show, I said, we all have obligations
to others. I mean the name of the I titled
it Debt your Obligations to Others.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
I've played with that title a little bit. You know,
we have commitments and we have obligations.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
And you know, no man is an island. We're all
in this together. But I'm talking about obligations. And I
will say this and that I would like for you
to write a thesis on it for us today speak
a thesis on it, because we're radio not book, Johnny.
I believe that commitments are wonderful. We have to make commitments.

(23:21):
People need to depend on those. We say we're going
to do something, we need to fulfill it. Obligations are
very closely related to commitments, but I think they might
be different.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
So the question that I would.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Like you to include the answer to when you speak
on this is I think that some obligations that are
of choice can be very very good, but some obligations
that we fall into that we wish we didn't have
to be locked into, could be very detrimental to our
well being. What's your thoughts on your obligations to others?

(24:01):
That ends up and get.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
Wow, that's a that's a deep that could that's a
deep will?

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Can I say that that's a deep Well?

Speaker 4 (24:10):
Okay, So obligations when when we talk about obligations, we
are uh, there's there's different types, right, you just alluded
to that. So let's talk about the obligation. When you
signed a contract and you say you're going to do
something in exchange for.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
What they're going to provide you.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
A credit card company is going to provide you a
credit limit or a line of credit that you can
swipe your card against UH in response for you paying
the bill. That's an obligation or you're committing UH, that's
an obligation. Where the commitment comes in is you taking

(24:59):
your future income and committing it to pay back that
obligation that you made. That's if you can look at
the two again. The obligation is the legal or the
the sign document that you're in exchange for this A.

(25:21):
If you do A, then you get an opportunity to
do B. That's the obligation you and you sign the
dotted line saying you're going to do that, right, So
you are obligated to do that.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
And it may be a legal obligation.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Even in marriage, you know, or even in relationship or whatever.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
You are obligated you have you have on your own ability.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
You have decided that you're going to say yes to this.
Nobody tied you up, nobody beat you, nobody did anything
negative to you to make you say yes to that.
So you look at the opportunity and said yes, that's it.
And so you are obligated to meet the requirements that
or the legal contract or the agreement that you have

(26:11):
set aside.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Even if it wasn't signed, it could be verbal agreement.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
So let's go back to commitment.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
The commitment is is actually doing what you obligated, what
you said you were going to do. The commitment is
looking at your life and saying, okay, I said I
was going to do a they met, They're part of
the bargain. Now I'm going to commit future resources to

(26:38):
repay or to do what I said I was going
to do, to align my life, my budget, my will
being to ensure that I meet the obligation I signed
up to.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (26:56):
Okay, So that is the key, the key it said,
you know, uh, people have I'm gonna call it, they
have limited recall when it comes to aligning to things.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
That they are obligated to.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
When it comes to you know, like when the paycheck,
it's easy to say yes that I'm gonna pay you
back when the paycheck hasn't come in when I'm buying
the thing I want. When she's buying the five dollars
ear rings, it is easy to say, I'm anna repay
the I'm a repay the credit card company, right, But
when she has to commit her time, her energy, and

(27:35):
to literally take the money out of her account and
pay it, it's not that it doesn't exist. Is that
then other things have popped up because remember, it is
your future, You're gonna you're gonna repay it in the future.
So that's what sometimes happens to people is that life
happens between the obligation you receiving what you want.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Let's say buying a car.

Speaker 4 (28:00):
You receive what you want right then when you start
making those monthly installments, it's like you have to be
committed to do that because other things happen. Sometimes the
car breaks down and you say, I don't want to
pay for it.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
No, you're still obligated to do what you said.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
And that's why the FYCAL score or you know, the
score that you have for your for your interest, I
mean not for your interest, but your FYCAL score makes.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
A difference when you look at that part of it.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
And I believe it is right spot on that thirty
five percent of building your FYCAL score is actually built
on you following through with your commitments.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
What is your payment history? Isn't that where we look
at people and.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
Say, okay, based on the way that you have responded
to me in the past, I can trust you now
with this.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
That's all they're saying.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
They're saying, based on how you have responded in the
past to other people, to other situations. Because it's not
always easy to align yourself or to set aside the
resources to go ahead and meet your obligation.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
But it's a matter of your character. That's what we
talked about, right.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
It's a matter of your character, it's a matter of
your integrity, it's a matter of all those things. Because
absolutely most people would love to build dead on one
side and never pay for it. But that's not acceptable.
I mean, people have done it, and I understand there's

(29:49):
things that can happen and people do that. However, what
does your word look like. I'm gonna do and do
one more step and I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Hand it back to you.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
Stay if you were in a relationship with someone and
every time they said they were going to do something,
they didn't do it, would you the next thing? At
some point you would look at them and say, you
know you said it, but I know you're not going
to do it because based on past history, you haven't
done it. That's all we're talking about. So if I

(30:24):
say I'm going to do something like there was a
situation that happened to me yesterday. I was headed to
my girlfriend's wedding, her daughter's wedding. Actually there was a
lot of dynamics, but on the way there was just
no way I was going to get there in time,
and some other things happened, and so I text her,
I sent her a video and told her how sorry

(30:44):
I was that I was not going to celebrate this
time with her, that it was not if something came up,
something happened, Well, it rained, I left late. You know,
the traffic was horrible. None of those things I got control.
Same thing with you. You obligated yourself right and yeah, something
happened in your life.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
You know you had an extra buility to know about.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
So then you have to be the person of your
word to go back to the person you said you
had the obligation to and let them know that you're
not going to be there.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
You're not able to do it right now, How can
you fix this?

Speaker 4 (31:23):
Because you value the relationship, whether it be with a
financial institution or with it someone that you care about,
or you're building a relationship with, or your job whatever.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Okay, you have to.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
Go back and say that it doesn't look good. You
don't wait until you've missed the suspense and then say, I.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Guess they figured it out because it didn't show up.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
No, just go back, stand up and do what you
say you're going to do it, and when you find
out you can't be the same person that you were
when you when you said you were going to do it,
and go back and say, I know, this is what
I told you, How can we rework it?

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Or this is where I am right now?

Speaker 4 (32:09):
And I think that that causes people to be able
to work with you. But more than anything, it causes
you to build trust for you and to remember how
important obligation, obligating your time, your resources, your talents, all
of that matters. Okay, So Steve, I know I said

(32:31):
a lot.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
I like listening to you, Johnny. Thank you, Johnny. You
brought up just to kind of a major illustration. The
two main things with having good credit, because that's really
what we've been trying to talk about. Credit and debt
go hand in hand here, hand in love. The two
main components that will help you have good credit is

(32:56):
your credit payment history and your bill to communicate to
your creditors, because your creditors will help you if you communicate.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Upfront with them.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
But one of the third major things that makes for
good credit, and this is one of the main components
of the score. I think it's eighteen percent, give or take.
It's the length that you've maintained your credit that's a
very important thing. And in other words, credit's not the

(33:29):
kind of thing that you decide you're going to go
from saving all your money under your pillow because you
found out that you didn't know, well, I can't get
a mortgage to buy that house without having established credit
for over a period of time. I'm going to refinance
right now. As a matter of fact, it's a good
time to refinance. And you know, my income is being

(33:54):
averaged over the last two years, even you know, in
other words, you got to you've got to be able.
They look at things like, if your income is on
a decline when they average it, that's good. But if
I'm all of a sudden got a job, not me.
But if a person gets a good job all of
a sudden and they've had it for three months, four months,

(34:16):
six months maybe, and they go, oh, good, I'm making
enough money now to go buy a house and have
a mortgage payment at a certain level. When they go
to apply, they go back two years the mortgage company
when they look at your ability to get approved for
this mortgage, and if your income was real low for

(34:38):
the last eighteen months, but all of a sudden you
finally got stabilized and got a good job.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
It might be too soon for them to.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Believe that you're going to be able to make the
payment because your history hasn't been out there long enough.
So a real easy example to tell you, if you've
got credit cards that you don't use anymore, that you've
had for a number of years, if there's not a
fee attached to them to carry that's costing you something.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Keep those credit cards.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
You might occasionally want to buy a five dollars pair
of air rings or an ice cream cone to show
that there's a little activity so that the card's not
completely inactive. But my point is the length of time
that you've demonstrated your person of your word is one
of the major things to have good credit. So when
people are wanted to know how to rebuild their credit

(35:26):
or establish credit, you start now. You can change it,
but it's going to take time, and you need to
be patient to move on down. So when life gets
in the way and circumstances come up that are unexpected
and your financial picture gets very difficult, and you believe,

(35:48):
maybe to know reason that I've created just circumstances that
car accident didn't help my finances, The divorce crushed my finances.
Whatever your personal story is, sometimes you have a very
difficult time meeting your obligations, things that you've committed to,

(36:09):
and so.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
What do you do when it gets hard like that?

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Well, on today's show again, when I'm thinking about the title,
I came up with what I was thinking about using,
but it was too long and it's got a lot
of other things to think about. But listen to this
definition that I the title that I was going to
kind of build. The definition in debt something that you

(36:36):
incur when you can't afford to buy it from your
current situation. Now, you can't afford to buy a house
with cash. Most people can't. I mean, if you can't
afford to buy a house with cash, you're very well
off and you're just going to move one investment to another,
and so I'd rather pick cash for it.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
There are some very wealthy people that.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Just have gotten to where they just pay cash for
things because they don't want to incur a payment to
a company where they're making money.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
You know, if.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
You buy a house, on the average, you're going to
pay approximately three times with the price of that house
is over a thirty year mortgage, So if you buy
a two hundred thousand dollars house, your payments are going
to be close to six hundred thousand dollars over thirty years.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
If you can find some.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Way to pay it down quicker, make extra payments, if
you want to whatever.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Sure, there's a lot of things that we can.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Do here, But what I'm getting at is, in our world,
it's very hard to buy things or have things like
a car. There's not very many young people that need it,
need to buy it, want to buy a new car.
They can afford to pay for the car without financing
the car. You need credit to finance the car. You
need good credit to get the lowest rate. So what

(37:55):
happens though, when a person's circumstances get difficult and they
have to go in debt. That's the phrase, go in debt.
It means I can't afford it, but I got to
do it. I got to pay these medical bills, I
got to finance this for that. So you use credit,

(38:16):
it could be a bank loan or whatever. So we're
going to talk pretty much about how how credit works
in terms of loans.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
By the way, the definition that you gave was right
on spot on.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
A banker that's a career banker, retired very close friend
of mine, Don Price, on the board of my foundation.
He said that credit is a legally binding contract between
a borrower, in which case a borrower accepts something of
value and in return agrees to pay the lender that

(38:50):
amount with consideration. In this case, the consideration is interest.
So it's an obligation, but it's legal.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
And you know the credit card trap we talked about.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
You have complete control of whether or not they win
the game against you, and most people kind of succumb
to it. They can't play by the rules properly, and
it costs them a lot of money. And there's a
lot of sacrifice of not having what you want because
you didn't you know.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
You got stuck.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
You pay on a credit card bill sometimes and the
principle never goes down because you don't have enough money
to pay the balance off like you should have, and
it just sits out there and sits out there and
sits out there. Now, when you're in that situation where
you got a lot of bills and they get caught
up with you, you know, your intentions to pay the
bill on time didn't happen. I want to give you

(39:39):
a little scenario here that teaches what I think is
the single best way to rebuild your credit and move
yourself forth when you feel like you can't do anything
about it.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
It's debt consolidation.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Now, debt consolidation means, if you've got a lot of
small bills out there, you want to do is you
want to get rid of a lot of small bills
because they're pulling your credit down if you haven't paid
them on time and they've been reported to the credit agencies.
And so a very simple example that I want to
that I want to give you that I teach. Let's

(40:13):
say you've got ten creditors out there and you fell
on hard times. You're out of work because of surgery
or something, missed a couple months of work, and now
you're all behind, and you're doing your very best to
have payment plans.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
You've communicated, and you've got.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Ten very simple example, it's a it's a theoretical hypothetical here.
You've got ten creditors that you call up, just like
Steve and Johnny show you how to do, and you
set up a payment plan that's the very best that
they will accept. Each one of these ten creditors that
you owe five hundred dollars to you owe five thousand

(40:51):
dollars total. It's going to hurt your credit if they
report you to the to the credit agency. Is it's
going to pull your credit way down. You don't want
that to happen. The secret is when you're having a
hard times maintain your credit. So you call each one
of them up and you use the Steve Johnny method

(41:13):
of setting up a payment plan, and you come out
of it with one hundred dollars a month for five months,
and you you're really good at it, and it didn't
mean one hundred dollars today. You actually got five months
a month from the day I'll pay you one hundred dollars.
I don't have the money today. They're okay to accept that.
So you're on ten one hundred dollars a month payment plans.

(41:35):
Now ten one one hundred dollars a month is one
thousand dollars a month for five months, you're going to
pay five thousand dollars. Well, you do your cash flow budget,
you do your projections that you've learned from Johnny and Steve,
and you can't make ten payments of one hundred dollars
a month. It's too much, but you felt that you

(41:59):
had to accept it. If you didn't start that hundred
dollars a month payment next month, you got them away
from today.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
But they gave you that first month.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
They're going to report you to the credit agency for
being late paid because you've already been a couple months late,
and they're getting ready to send it to the.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Credit people for collections.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Well, you decide, Okay, I'm going to get a part
time job because i want my credit to be good
and I want to get out of debt. So you're
working full time already. You get a part time job,
and I'm just going to tell you, if you're working
sixty hours a week, or maybe you already worked fifty
for your regular job, and you put that much stress

(42:40):
and pressure on yourself, it's a really good chance that
something may go wrong and you might not be able
to keep your payments made the way that you intended
to do. Your intentions are really good. I'm going to
work really hard for five months and I'm going to
make a better position. Well, it's in evitable that something's

(43:01):
going to happen and you're going to skip a couple
payments with a couple of your creditors and then you
don't have a second chance. They're tired of you. They
just don't even call you. They just send it right
on to collections. Your credit's going to be impacted negatively
because you didn't do it you said you're going to do.
So what's the answer to that is, before your credit

(43:22):
goes much lower, get a consolidation loan. And on this case,
I know you want to get out of your debts
as fast as possible, but sometimes you can't work that hard.
It's too hard on yourself working all that extra hours.
So my suggestion is if you go to a bank
and you get a five thousand dollars loan to pay

(43:45):
off all ten of them in one day, A five
thousand dollars loan for twenty four months two years at
ten percent, and that's way higher than what you ought
to be paying.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
But if you got credit that's iffy. They might charge
you ten percent.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
The payment is two hundred and thirty dollars in seventy
two cent a month. Now think about it, you're saving
almost two hundred and seventy dollars a month on killing
yourself to get them all paid in five months. And
so instead of having to get that extra job, you

(44:21):
can just not even get an extra job. You've got
all these bills paid off. Your credit is improved immediately
because you don't have ten little bills floating around anymore.
There's no risk that you're going to be late paying
any of them when you're stressing to try to fight
to work that hard to get them paid. And at
the end of the two years, all of them are

(44:44):
paid off. Assuming that you've learned your lesson or not
so much learned a lesson, I apologize for that statement.
Some people will learn a lesson because they got themselves
into all these little debts by not being focused doing
things they did need to do. But for the person
that I'm giving the example that you're you know, you're

(45:04):
a good, honorable person. You're trying to do the best
you can. You had a hardship sidetracked you. You want
to keep your credit straight. You get a consolidation lie.
You're you're banking two hundred and seventy dollars a month
from what you would have done if you were working
that extra money, But you could probably absorb two hundred
and thirty dollars a month by tightening down on other
areas and not kill yourself in the process. Get a

(45:27):
better attitude, be smart, and be relaxed.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
And at the end of two years the debt's paid off.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
You can pay it off sooner if you do well,
but you don't have to put yourself into that stressful situation.
But you've improved your credit. Johnny, what do you think
about that initial start for consolidation?

Speaker 4 (45:46):
Actually, actually I am while you were talking, because you
know how you do. We think of all the things
that the other person is saying. Just to add some
more information, The thing that I would like to identify
is this, most some people that do debt consolidation then

(46:07):
have excess. Like see gave the amount of Now you
have two hundred and seventy dollars. When you do the
debt consolidation and you pay the loan that is set
up for five thousand dollars, all those little payments you
have to the bottom line of your budget, you have
a gain of two hundred and seventy dollars right now.

(46:31):
I don't want you to miss what he said. He
said put it away. See what happens with a lot
of us when we get whether it be an opportunity
like debt consolidation, or we get a raise for something.
We don't tell our money where to go because money
doesn't have a mind.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
So we have to give it purpose.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
Right, So of that two seventy, we're using the same
example to just elevate it. Another level is think about
the two seventy. So the two seventy would either consider
it going into the emergency fund we've talked about in
previous episodes, consider taking half of it and putting it
in an emergency fund, and taking half of it and

(47:17):
paying the loan off early, or and these are just options,
take half of it put it in an emergency fund,
because the deal with an emergency fund is it's set
up in such a way that the money is available
when there's an emergency that you have identified in advance.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
That does not mean sale, that doesn't mean that.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
Okay, an emergency identified in advance, so you don't have
to go back to our credit card, right, So you
want to look at that now. The other possibility is
to take the money and do do something else with it.
But do something with the money, identify how you can

(48:05):
be better off, and that your credit score will even
grow from that and When I say grow, I'm saying
increase because Steve already said with a consolidation, normally there's
an increase because you got rid of a lot of
small debt. However, the other thing that happens is based on.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
How long you've had the small debt.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
It could cause your score to drop because you could
have something on there that you've had for ten years
open account now is closed, so your length of.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
The time that you've had credit may change.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
Don't worry about your Don't let your score be the
driver the only driver. Let your budget be the driver.
Let the fact that you're building wealth, that you have
a plan. So what I tell people who are considering
debt or loan consolidation is what are you going to
do with the resources?

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Number one?

Speaker 4 (49:01):
What are you going to do with now the resource
that you have in your bottom line? When I say
bottom line, say in your budget, what are you going
to do with that? How are you going to be
better tomorrow than you are today?

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Because if you don't.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
Make a plan, what will happen is that two hundred
and seventy dollars would just kind of disappear every month
and it'd go away on things, you know, like, what,
I got extra money and you'll start spending it.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
So give it a plan so that you do that.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
I was with the client a few days ago and
what I what I told them to do is put
a savings account as in one of the bills, because
they have an issue and they don't save. They have
the resources, but they don't save. So I said, make
it a bill, make it an automatic withdrawal every month.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
They said no. I said, no, make it a bill.
You pay your bills extremely well.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
Make your savings account, which is in this case an
emergency fund. Make it a build so pay yourself. Take
a portion of it and pay yourself. Take a portion
of it and invest it in your future, whether it
be emergency fund or whatever, to increase your bottom line.

(50:16):
So just consider that because it's really important.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
And the other thing, it's just.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
When you know your numbers. When you know your numbers,
you're better off. You make better decisions. Let me say that,
when you know what's in your hand, you value it
more and you're better you make better decisions.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Okay, I'm gonna say it again. When you know your numbers.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
Whether it be you call it a budget, you call
it a spend plan. You call it cash flow. When
you know your numbers and you know what's in your hand,
you're able to power yourself in your home, your household
in such a way that you'll be better off in
the future.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
See a lot there. We're down about the last ten minutes,
give or take. So what I want to do is
speed up. I'll talk a little bit faster. But first
of all, the savings of the two seventy or even
the five hundred that the person was trying to pay
off in five months, they may or may not have
had that money, and so if they had to work

(51:33):
over time to get the money to pay on all
these bills, then that's one scenario. And what the consolidation
does is it makes it where you've cut the five
hundred that you need it to pay all of them
in half down to two thirty below half. So now
you've got only two hundred and forty dollars that you

(51:53):
have to get to keep your to keep the bill paid,
and you only have one bill. And if you only
have a one bill of two thirty and not ten
creditors that you got to worry about all the time
and they fall through, you're gonna slip up on them,
you're gonna hurt your credit. The advantage to what we
just talked about is you get rid of it all
at one time.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
You're starting on the right path.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
And then you look at the two hundred and thirty
dollars that you need and you decide if I got
to work a little bit overtime. But what you probably
would be able to do instead of overtime is look
at your budget and make some choices to where I
can find two hundred and thirty dollars in the way
that I spend money that if I cut back and

(52:37):
get more disciplined, I won't even have to work overtime.
Now it's manageable for you to attack your problem.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
And so there's so many ways. Now. I want to
tell you one real quick that you just brought up.
I was.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
I've been in forbearance on my first mortgage during the
whole pandemic. That came as a god sent to me
to be able to stop making my first mortgage payment.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
I can talk at great length about it.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
They add the whole payment, including the interest, onto the principle,
and so you end up in a much worse situation
than you were, and you don't want to stay on
forbearance forever. But you know what, if you have to,
you have to. You just have to accept that. So
I did. But but I did this one thing. I
put myself on a on a on an automatic savings

(53:26):
program in an investment account. During the very beginning of it,
I said, you know what, if I'm going to be
relieved on my first mortgage payment indefinitely, I took five
hundred dollars and did uh. I learned what dollar cost
averaging is. And next week we're going to get into insurance.
I think that's we're gonna have to get into investing

(53:47):
sooner than later. But next week we're going to do insurance,
and then we'll lead ourselves into investing because there's a
there's a link between buying insurance and investing. And so
bottom line though, is I saved five hundred dollars a
month into an investment account and the market soared during
the time that I had my money coming in, and
they went up almost twenty some percent, twenty seven percent.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
I think so. But here's the beauty of it.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
I knew that in July I went on Social Security.
I've been waiting for a number of years to do that,
and I knew that I would have to do a
consolidation debt. So what I've done is I was prepared
for a circumstance that I didn't know about. My five
hundred dollars a month grew over eighteen nineteen months, and

(54:35):
it went up twenty seven percent, so it became beautiful
for me. What I did was I took two thousand,
five hundred dollars out and got lot of my bills
cleaned up because I'm refinancing now, so they're getting ready
to do credit reports only everything else credit checks. But
here's one that came out of nowhere, and I'm just

(54:55):
thankful that I had the money in reserve because of
that five hundred dollars that was automatic, exactly like you said.
And some people said, well, maybe you ought to just
pay that five hundred dollars down on your credit cards,
and I said, I'd like to, but I want to
have it to where I can use that funds for
more of an emergency because I didn't have a good

(55:15):
emergency fund. Well here's my emergency as it relates to
my refinance. I don't know anybody that knew this. I
just learned it through my refinance when you're on forbearance.
You cannot refinance until it's a federal law, until you
have made three mortgage payments off of forbearance. And that

(55:36):
came as a shock to me. And I'm helping other
people with their refinance these days, and when I learned
that from a mortgage burger, I was like, what, he goes, Oh, yes, Steve,
you know you can't even get a refinance until you're
back on your first mortgage off of forbearance and got
three payments made, So I didn't know what.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
I was going to do.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
And then I spent a couple of hours talking to
my mortgage company last week. So here's what I'm doing.
I'm off of for barons in July. I'll make my
August payment, and then by the time my new lender
has approved my loan, which will happen, I'll have the
three mortgage payments done over barely a forty five day period.

(56:23):
It takes about forty five days to close the refinance.
But I didn't have the money to pay. I couldn't
go off for barants because I didn't have the first
mortgage payment out of my current income.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
I didn't have it in my checking account.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
My cash flow budget for the next couple of months
doesn't include picking up that mortgage payment. I thought the
refinance was going to take it out. So what I
ended up doing was I'm drawing money out of that
savings program and I'm making my mortgage payment my first one.
If I need money, I might be able to take

(56:58):
my second of my third, but it's all there if
I needed all three payments. And so that's managing my credit,
managing my debt, managing my refinance. And so I have
a whole life of having to go through this very
close because I've been in serious financial situation because of
because of my illnesses. I've had a lot of downtime,
and forty four percent of the people that have my

(57:21):
kind of incurable cancer go bankrupt.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
But I didn't want to go bankrupt. So here's my
last thing.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
I want to say in our lass soon on debt,
and we can pick back up on it the more
next week, because debt and insurance all go hand in hand.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Johnny, here's what I want to.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Tell you about about debt and moving moving our lives forward.
You can consolidate, you can re structure things, but at.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
The end of the day.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
If you don't have income to cover whatever it is
that you restructure, it's going to catch up with you again.
And so the one thing that we've left out today
though that I apologize, it's getting a co signer, and
I teach the value of a co signer. Now, if
you can't get a bank loan, your person's got bad

(58:16):
credit and just can't get a bank loan, you have
to look closely at friends, family that believe in you
and trusts you. It's fact the initial lesson of being
able to have people trust you for what you say
you're going to do. And if there's somebody that loves
you and believes in you and trusts you even though
you're on hard times and is willing to co sign,
that's a tremendous obligation on their part because your payment

(58:41):
that you're going to incur on the new loan or
the debt consolidation, they're liable for it the exact same
as you. If you don't make the payment, it affects
their credit, it's their debt also, So if you've got
somebody that can step to step to the line and
help you do that, then you can work work out
your credit and The one thing that I encourage everybody

(59:04):
is become a trustworthy person, or you're not even going
to be able to get a bank loan, or you're
not going to be able to get a co signer.
But if it wasn't for a few people in my
life that love me, that trust me to have co
signed for me when I've gone through incredibly difficult circumstances,
mostly health related, I wouldn't be here teaching like I'm

(59:25):
teaching right now. And so here's what I'm going to
tell you, and I'll give this one as quick as
I've ever done it.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Let's say that uncle Steve.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Cos Tons of a five thousand dollars two year payment,
the one we just talked about, consolidated somebody's debt, like
a nephew or somebody. And they asked me, and they
don't really even ask me. I volunteer and said, I'll
co sign for you. I hope you get out of debt,
will help manage your debt, we'll get you in strong position.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
And we do that well.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
That person respects me and loves me so much, and
I've done this. That person respect me and loves me
so much that they're going to make dag gone sure
that they don't miss a payment. They're going to finally
settle down and go, I mean an obligation to Steve,
and I've got to honor that. I'm not going to
let Steve down. So they make every single payment. They

(01:00:15):
learn to control some of their habits where they're wasting
too much money or entertainment or frival those things. At
the end of the two months, two years, rather that
nephew he's paid off that loan. He gets it in
the mail, comes over my house unannounced, open the door.
My nephew's standing there with the biggest smile from heir
to heir on his face, and he says, Uncle Steve,

(01:00:37):
guess what And I say, what's that? He goes, I
got the loan paid off. Here's the satisfied note. And
he goes, thank you, thank you so much for believing
in me. And I say, and I hug him, and
I say, I got to tell you something. I believed
in you before you even believed in yourself. I never

(01:00:59):
doubt for a moment that you were not going to
miss a payment on that line.

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
I knew you were going to make every payment.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
That's the kind of life that I want to help people.
Embrace is to help other people, have people believe in
themselves when maybe they didn't before, become trustworthy and if
you can be that person, you will have good credit
for the rest of your life.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Johnny, you want to close the show please?

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
Wow, that's that's an amazing place to to move forward.
What I would like to say is that, uh, listen
to the show a couple of times because there's a
lot of things in between that we're saying. Don't want
to take it lightly. Make sure you apply it to

(01:01:45):
your life. And then this is the This is there's
actually two thoughts. One is don't okay. So if you
ask somebody to co sign for you and and there's
been some dynamics before whatever that means, then don't be

(01:02:05):
offended if a person because you don't know their situation
whether they say yes or no.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
But be a person of your work.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
And it's very important because when we talk about being
enslaved to debt, coming back to what we were talking
about debt, being enslaved to debt, when we say the
word enslaved, it is about to control someone else's actions, thoughts,
or emotions or life completely right. So when you look

(01:02:39):
at that, remember that you can be enslaved by a
lot of things, whether it be technology or anything, but
the biggest thing that we're referring to is debt. We
do not want you to be enslaved by debt, and
so the tips, the tricks, the information that we provided

(01:03:01):
is to help you step out so that you can
step into your next level of greatness, so you can
step into all that's before you, because there is greater
ahead for you. However, remember that every decision you make matters.
You being a person of your word matters because it

(01:03:22):
allows you to better move forward at a faster pace.
It costs you something to get in debt. It didn't
happen overnight, and it's going to cost you something to
get out. It's not going to happen overnight. However, it
is worth it. It is worth it because it impacts
every area of your life.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Steve, Johnnie, what a beautiful clothes credit is about character,
It's about trust. And with that said, I'm looking forward
to next week's episode in this series where we talk
about using insurance and having insurance, because it's just going
to keep right on going trying to help people have

(01:04:02):
a better life. Johnny thank you. God bless you everyone.
God bless you. Have a wonderful week and we'll see
you next week. Thanks for listening to right Thinking with
Steve Copeland. I'll look forward to being with you again
next week and remember it, don't quit, plan ahead, it
will get better. God bless you, and have a great week.
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