Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, via fam It's Mandy here with another episode
Speaker 1: of the B, A Q and A. This is the
Speaker 1: episode where we take all of your lovely questions and
Speaker 1: try to give you a lowercase A answer. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know you guys, when I take your questions, I'm just
Speaker 1: giving you off the dome responses. So take everything with
Speaker 1: a giant like palmful of salt based salt. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean by that. And this is all just
Speaker 1: meant to be fun informational. Don't forget that you can
Speaker 1: remain anonymous, so give us you know, you can tell
Speaker 1: us your business, but we won't actually put your name
Speaker 1: out there. So just let us know if you want
Speaker 1: to remain anonymous. Submit your question to us at Brownambition
Speaker 1: podcast dot com or hit us up through IG. We
Speaker 1: are at Brand Ambission Podcast on the Gram. All right,
Speaker 1: let's dive into these questions. First question from IG. We'll
Speaker 1: call this listener Sam. Sam says. Sam says, what is
Speaker 1: better renting or buying a house? Oh? Sam, I feel
Speaker 1: like this is the perennial question on everyone's mind all
Speaker 1: of the time, and it kind of depends on a
Speaker 1: couple of different things. One, it depends on the and
Speaker 1: I will say the economy, but also the economy in
Speaker 1: your area, the local housing economy, and financially, the second
Speaker 1: huge contributing factor to whether it makes sense to rent
Speaker 1: or buy our house is what do you want to
Speaker 1: do and what makes sense for your financial picture. I
Speaker 1: think what I love about a lot of the advice
Speaker 1: and conversations around home ownership these days is there's a
Speaker 1: lot more appetite to not force people into prescribing to
Speaker 1: this vision of oh, I need to get a house.
Speaker 1: I have to be a homeowner in order to build
Speaker 1: wealth or to be a proper adult. Right, that's just
Speaker 1: bs and we all know it when it comes to
Speaker 1: deciding whether to buy or rent. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this was me four or five years ago when we
Speaker 1: bought this house. I was exactly where you are, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what is the right decision? This is
Speaker 1: very stressful. We ultimately decided to stop renting and buy
Speaker 1: a house. And I'll kind of talk you through my
Speaker 1: train of thought there at the time, in our local economy,
Speaker 1: there were some houses that we could get at an
Speaker 1: affordable price that fit the bill for what we wanted
Speaker 1: out of our lifestyle. We wanted to be close to
Speaker 1: the city. So I live outside of New York. Now.
Speaker 1: We wanted to be close enough to the city to
Speaker 1: commute to work, which is like, Lol, no one does
Speaker 1: that anymore. That's not true. A lot of people do.
Speaker 1: But yes, we were concerned about being close enough to
Speaker 1: the city so where commute wouldn't be hell, finding a
Speaker 1: home that we could put our own stamp on with
Speaker 1: doing our own you know, remodels, renovations, things like that,
Speaker 1: because of course, we were always watching HGTV, which is
Speaker 1: what you do when you're thinking about buying a house
Speaker 1: and then you think you're a property brother and you
Speaker 1: can just you know, renovate it on your own. But
Speaker 1: I digress. So we wanted we wanted to find a place.
Speaker 1: It had to be the right fit for us location wise,
Speaker 1: so close to the city, not too far. We also
Speaker 1: wanted something within our price points, so we got really
Speaker 1: clear on how much we were willing to pay. I
Speaker 1: kind of went off of what what mortgage payment can
Speaker 1: I afford? Okay, and we decided like something near or
Speaker 1: a little bit over our rent would be doable, and
Speaker 1: that was comfortable for us to be able to pay
Speaker 1: with one income. Just in I always like to be
Speaker 1: prepared and kind of think, well, what if one of
Speaker 1: us loses our job. At the time, we were both
Speaker 1: working full time for businesses, so it was possible, right,
Speaker 1: And my husband works for the government, so really I
Speaker 1: tried to base it off of his salary because you know,
Speaker 1: government jobs so stable, blah blah blah all that. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I've tried to come up with a monthly budget and
Speaker 1: then kind of work my way back my way into
Speaker 1: how much house we could afford from there, and ooh,
Speaker 1: when I tell you you think you can afford something,
Speaker 1: and then you forget about property taxes, right, so, oh man,
Speaker 1: the property taxes here are wild. So I would definitely
Speaker 1: also factor in like what's your total household expense for
Speaker 1: the month, so how much mortgage could you afford, and
Speaker 1: then kind of try to get a sense of what
Speaker 1: property tax like in your area too, to give you
Speaker 1: a real realistic picture of what your housing costs could be.
Speaker 1: And then from there, once we knew kind of how
Speaker 1: much house we could afford and what kind of house
Speaker 1: we wanted and where we wanted it at, then it
Speaker 1: was just about really wheedling, whittling down the list of
Speaker 1: options and filtering it down. And the good thing about
Speaker 1: being so cheap and an extremely expensive market like New
Speaker 1: York is that our options were very few. Right, So
Speaker 1: once we found a house that fit our budget and
Speaker 1: the other sort of metrics, then we stopped renting and
Speaker 1: we bought the house. Okay, that is what I can say.
Speaker 1: It made financial sense for us, It made sense for
Speaker 1: what we needed. It was a house that fit our needs,
Speaker 1: and those are the reasons that we got it. And
Speaker 1: for no other reasons. Could we control the economy. No.
Speaker 1: That's why I think it really is important to only
Speaker 1: buy what you can afford. And it's true since the
Speaker 1: housing crisis of the early two thousands, banks and lenders
Speaker 1: have gotten a lot better because they've been for to
Speaker 1: buy legislation and by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, But
Speaker 1: they have been forced to get a lot better themselves
Speaker 1: that only letting people borrow what they can afford to repay.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot harder to get too much house,
Speaker 1: more house that you can afford these days. That being said,
Speaker 1: like you can still do like even though your lender
Speaker 1: says your approved for X amount of money, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you have to buy a house for that much money. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay to get it's okay to get the smaller
Speaker 1: house for a little bit less and give yourself that
Speaker 1: wiggle room. And for us especially, I didn't know four
Speaker 1: or five years ago that I'd be launching my own business,
Speaker 1: but as sure as hell, was relieved to know. And
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason why I was able to
Speaker 1: step out of my own you know, when I did,
Speaker 1: is because our housing expenses were not such a massive
Speaker 1: part of our household budget that I felt chained or
Speaker 1: kind of locked down to having this particular job at
Speaker 1: that particular salary. We gave ourselves that flexibility, and I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful that we did, because you may have have
Speaker 1: the job that pays you know, X amount of money now,
Speaker 1: but what if in five ten years from now, you're
Speaker 1: not happy anymore, or you want to take a pay
Speaker 1: cut to do something else, or you want to launch
Speaker 1: your own business or whatever. You want to buy a
Speaker 1: camper van like everyone's doing and go, you know, around
Speaker 1: the country living out of a camper van and not
Speaker 1: my style, but you know, to each his own. You
Speaker 1: have that flexibility if you create a budget that gives
Speaker 1: you some room, okay, some room to wiggle around. What
Speaker 1: else can I say about renting or buy us that's it.
Speaker 1: Rent if you want to rent and buy. When you
Speaker 1: want to buy, pay attention to what's happening in your
Speaker 1: local economy, pay attention to you know. And if you're
Speaker 1: in a place right now since the pandemic where how's
Speaker 1: how's price? Home prices have just been insane and nothing
Speaker 1: seems affordable and you can't find a house that ticks
Speaker 1: all your boxes, then just wait, wait, or potentially pursue
Speaker 1: home ownership in another area. But I definitely wouldn't want
Speaker 1: anyone to buy a house before they're ready, or a
Speaker 1: house that doesn't make sense for their financial goals. You're
Speaker 1: the one who wants to live in the house at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, and you're the name who's
Speaker 1: your name's gonna be on the mortgage payment each month,
Speaker 1: So that decision has to come from you and no
Speaker 1: one else. All right, Sam, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your question. Let me get to question number two. Oh
Speaker 1: the boys are out today. This question comes from listeners
Speaker 1: Brian the boy the men's are here all right? So
Speaker 1: Brian says, let's say someone's credit is under six hundred,
Speaker 1: would there be any benefits to them being added as
Speaker 1: an authorized user on another's credit card account whose credit
Speaker 1: score is over seven hundred? Would there be any negative
Speaker 1: credit effects in doing so to the person whose credit
Speaker 1: score is over seven hundred? Okay, So we've got two
Speaker 1: hypothetical people here. Someone's got poor credit, their credit is
Speaker 1: under six hundred, and then they're wanting to become an
Speaker 1: authorized user or on someone's account who's got great credit
Speaker 1: seven hundred and above. And so the question is like, basically,
Speaker 1: what are the benefits of that? And then is there
Speaker 1: any risk to the person with good credit to have
Speaker 1: someone piggyback on them who has crappy credit? Okay, fun question.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about being an authorized user. So there's
Speaker 1: a couple of ways to share credit responsibility and credit
Speaker 1: card usage with another person, authorized user or joint account holder.
Speaker 1: The main difference between those two is that when you're
Speaker 1: an authorized user, you're able to use the card, but
Speaker 1: you don't actually have ultimate responsibility for the payments. A
Speaker 1: joint account holder is when two people have joint responsibility
Speaker 1: for the payments. So if one person stops making payments
Speaker 1: the other one they're going to come for you. Okay.
Speaker 1: So authorized user. The benefit of that is it's less
Speaker 1: risk for the person with poor credit to piggyback onto
Speaker 1: someone with good credit. Less risk meaning they don't actually
Speaker 1: they're not on the hook for those payments. And if
Speaker 1: the person who actually is the primary account holder has
Speaker 1: issues making payments, it's not they're not going to come
Speaker 1: after the authorized user. And the benefit of being an
Speaker 1: authorized user, which is this person's getting at, is it
Speaker 1: can actually help you improve your credit score, so long
Speaker 1: as the main account holder is making their payments on time.
Speaker 1: So this is the tricky thing here. You're really trusting
Speaker 1: that you're piggybacking, and you're like attaching yourself to someone
Speaker 1: who's going to be responsibly using their credit card. If
Speaker 1: they start to not responsibly use their credit card, that
Speaker 1: could have a negative impact of course on them they themselves,
Speaker 1: but also on you as an authorized user, because those
Speaker 1: that credit card behavior could be reported on your credit
Speaker 1: history as well. These are this kind of reporting will
Speaker 1: change by credit issuers. So before you become an authorized user,
Speaker 1: I would actually call up the credit card company and
Speaker 1: ask them how do you guys treat authorized users? Do
Speaker 1: you report positive And of course they're going to report
Speaker 1: positive behavior to credit bureaus, But what about the negative
Speaker 1: behavior because that can actually change by issuers, So definitely
Speaker 1: call them up and get the details on that. Now,
Speaker 1: would there be any negative effects or risk to the
Speaker 1: person with higher credit to have someone piggyback on their
Speaker 1: account who has poor credit. Well, as an authorized user,
Speaker 1: you are giving that person the ability to use your
Speaker 1: credit card, So yeah, there's a huge risk there. They
Speaker 1: have to be able to use it responsibly. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: if they screw things up and they charge a bunch
Speaker 1: of crap to the credit card and they can't afford
Speaker 1: to pay you for their part of the bill, then
Speaker 1: you're on the hook for that. So what I tend
Speaker 1: to see is people you know in relationships or like
Speaker 1: a parent child relationship, where it authorized credit card user
Speaker 1: makes more sense. I mean, you think you can hopefully
Speaker 1: you can trust your kid, but yeah, there's a risk there,
Speaker 1: and I would say if you have an authorized user
Speaker 1: on your account, you got to watch them like a
Speaker 1: hawk baby. Okay, it's really it's your credit on the
Speaker 1: line at the end of the day. So it's helpful
Speaker 1: for the person who needs you to improve their credit,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a great you know a tool
Speaker 1: and a strategy for that, but there's got to be
Speaker 1: mutual respect and trust. And I think the person whose
Speaker 1: names on that bill at the end of the month,
Speaker 1: do not take your eye off of that credit card
Speaker 1: bill and make sure that you nip any shenanigans in
Speaker 1: the bud right away, because you're the one holding the
Speaker 1: bag at the end of the day. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: let me take a quick breaky break, and I'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more BAQ and a All right, the
Speaker 1: A fan, It's Mandy. I am back with our third
Speaker 1: and final question for the BAQA. This week, we have
Speaker 1: got a question from Brittany. Brittany says, Hey, I'm new
Speaker 1: to the podcast, but I've definitely been binging. I paid
Speaker 1: off my student loans in twenty nineteen, saved up and
Speaker 1: bought my first home, and now I'm thinking about my
Speaker 1: overall financial health and trying to build wealth. On a
Speaker 1: recent episode, you mentioned you have a financial advisor. Could
Speaker 1: you talk about where we should get one, how much
Speaker 1: I should spend on them, and how often I should
Speaker 1: meet them. I tried one and it really didn't work.
Speaker 1: Then I found another one that has a flat feet
Speaker 1: of twelve hundred and fifty dollars, which for someone who's
Speaker 1: trying to build wealth feels counterintuitive. I would love some advice, Okay, Brittany,
Speaker 1: I get this question a lot, and you know what,
Speaker 1: Do I have a financial planner? Yes? But do I
Speaker 1: think that everyone needs one? No? Even I don't need
Speaker 1: one sometimes. I mean, I'm sure my financial advisor and
Speaker 1: planner would tell me like, yeah, you need one, but
Speaker 1: I don't really think that everyone needs them. I think
Speaker 1: what was helpful for me, and the reason I got
Speaker 1: one about when did I meet Helen like five years ago,
Speaker 1: is because my husband and I were thinking about getting engaged.
Speaker 1: We knew we were going towards marriage and wanting to
Speaker 1: combine our you know, financial pictures together, and we were
Speaker 1: kind of like not speaking the same language about our finances.
Speaker 1: I mean, ten eleven years into our relationship now, I
Speaker 1: just know that we're two fundamentally different people, and we
Speaker 1: decided to make life really difficult for ourselves choosing someone
Speaker 1: so different to us. But what really helped me was
Speaker 1: having financial planner to kind of be that mediator between
Speaker 1: the two of us and to help kind of like
Speaker 1: make things less. I don't know, it just made our
Speaker 1: conversations easier to have. We would schedule a time with Helen,
Speaker 1: we would have a question, you know about saving for
Speaker 1: the wedding or I know, we talked to Helen when
Speaker 1: we were thinking about buying our first home and it
Speaker 1: just kind of made it. We had like a referee
Speaker 1: in the mix, and it helped my husband feel more heard,
Speaker 1: because when you're married to Mandy Money, or you're dating
Speaker 1: Mandy Money, it can feel a little bit like I
Speaker 1: take a lot of like air out of the room
Speaker 1: because I live and breathe and eat and sleep this stuff,
Speaker 1: which made it more challenging for him to feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, his ideas mattered and things like that, which
Speaker 1: I understand looking back now. So that is why we
Speaker 1: brought in a financial planner for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You know, let's talk about what's the point of a
Speaker 1: financial planner and what can they actually do. So most
Speaker 1: financial planners can be really helpful in kind of assessing
Speaker 1: where you're at with your net worth, so how much
Speaker 1: assets versus liabilities do you have, and then helping you
Speaker 1: sort of strategize how to increase your net worth. So
Speaker 1: how can we get our debt paid down? You know
Speaker 1: what can we do to be saving more and increase
Speaker 1: our cash flow so that we have more money to
Speaker 1: save and invest, make some suggestions on you know, how
Speaker 1: much to contribute to different accounts, and if you need
Speaker 1: someone to kind of help you, just get the nice
Speaker 1: foundation for financial success set up. That's where a financial
Speaker 1: planner can be helpful. Another thing, and this is where
Speaker 1: I kind of suspect this flat fee of twelve hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars is coming in, is financial planners can
Speaker 1: give you like a full plan which kind of gives you,
Speaker 1: like your goal for how much you want to have
Speaker 1: saved and invested for retirement and things like that. And
Speaker 1: that's more like here's a you know, you're going to
Speaker 1: download a lot of information from you and then they'll
Speaker 1: like give you this plan. I've had one of those
Speaker 1: plans done not by Helen, but by a previous financial planner.
Speaker 1: I actually got it through I was a personal finance
Speaker 1: journalist and I was using a service called learn Invest,
Speaker 1: which is now not even around anymore. But they had
Speaker 1: a financial planner and I just decided to use them
Speaker 1: kind of for research to see what it was like,
Speaker 1: and I got one of those big financial plans and
Speaker 1: when I tell you, I haven't looked at that thing,
Speaker 1: I don't even know since one Also I was making,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know forty five thousand dollars at
Speaker 1: the time, and it just a lot of that plan
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily it didn't stay like accurate for long. My
Speaker 1: career was just progressing. I was making these big leaps
Speaker 1: in my pay, and that plan made sense for a
Speaker 1: single twenty four year old, you know, making forty five
Speaker 1: to fifty K a year, but it definitely didn't make
Speaker 1: sense for me a few years down the line. So
Speaker 1: I would just make sure you really understand what it
Speaker 1: is that you're getting with an investment like that. The
Speaker 1: financial planner that I have, we base, we just pay
Speaker 1: for the sessions. When I decide I need a session,
Speaker 1: I'll book one and then we pay, and it probably
Speaker 1: amounts to a couple of times a year. And how
Speaker 1: do you decide how much you should meet with them.
Speaker 1: That's really up to you, and it's really up to
Speaker 1: what kinds of goals you have and how much support
Speaker 1: you need in achieving those goals. And I think that's
Speaker 1: maybe not the best. That's the answer that you know
Speaker 1: people would like because they just want me to tell
Speaker 1: them what to do, right, But I can't do that.
Speaker 1: It really depends on you and your personality. For myself,
Speaker 1: I work better if I have sort of like a
Speaker 1: big call and then I can like execute, you know,
Speaker 1: do X, y Z, and then I'll get it done
Speaker 1: and then you know, see you in six months or whatever.
Speaker 1: So that works for me. If you're someone who's got
Speaker 1: more of a complex financial picture, maybe you have children,
Speaker 1: you have a mixed family, You've got some big goals,
Speaker 1: you know coming up, big career changes coming up. You
Speaker 1: may want to have a chat with a financial planner,
Speaker 1: you know, once a quarter or once every other month,
Speaker 1: or maybe even once a month. It all depends ultimately,
Speaker 1: like how much you're willing to mean it will cost money, right,
Speaker 1: this is someone's time. But I think what you should
Speaker 1: get as an upfront expectation of what is an hour?
Speaker 1: What is a one hour call with you? Look like,
Speaker 1: what is the goal for that call? What am I
Speaker 1: going to get out of that call? And because there's
Speaker 1: so many more independent financial advisors now financial planners, they
Speaker 1: have their own way of doing things, so unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: not as easy to compare kind of apples to apples.
Speaker 1: When I was searching for a financial planner, I remember
Speaker 1: we interviewed probably three different planners until we found the
Speaker 1: one that we felt was the best fit for us.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't really a like a strategy there. It
Speaker 1: was just kind of who did we think fit, Like
Speaker 1: who do we both like because this is two of
Speaker 1: us deciding, and who could we afford and all of that.
Speaker 1: So all that is to say, it's what you're doing
Speaker 1: right now now is the work that it takes to
Speaker 1: find the right financial planner for yourself. It is to
Speaker 1: work with different people and see how it goes, talk
Speaker 1: to different people until you find the right fit. And
Speaker 1: I know Tiffany has also in the past talked about
Speaker 1: her own journey to find the right financial planner, and
Speaker 1: she interviewed several people. So it's not easy work. And
Speaker 1: it's not as easy as going on like a ZocDoc
Speaker 1: and getting the best reviewed gynecologist. There's just maybe this
Speaker 1: is a business idea, but yeah, there's no easy way
Speaker 1: to gauge as the success of financial planners or like
Speaker 1: who's best for you kind of have to do a
Speaker 1: lot of the like work yourself. You can definitely ask
Speaker 1: for referrals from friends and family and people who you
Speaker 1: know who have had a good experience with their planner.
Speaker 1: What else can I say about that? Oh? Right, where
Speaker 1: did I find Helen? So? I found Helen through x
Speaker 1: Y Planning, which is the x Y Planning network, and
Speaker 1: at the time, they were really focusing on gen X
Speaker 1: gen Y, which I think they still do. They have
Speaker 1: a lot of fee only planners there, and fee only
Speaker 1: planners will charge you a fee for their services. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, when I have a call with Helen,
Speaker 1: I pretty much know what it's going to cost me
Speaker 1: and all of that, so everything is pretty transparent. And also,
Speaker 1: if you want investment advice, like if you want someone
Speaker 1: to tell you where to put things and give you
Speaker 1: a plan for that, that's an additional level of service
Speaker 1: which some financial planners can help you with if they're
Speaker 1: a registered investment advisor. So ask those questions too, and
Speaker 1: also ask what the fees are for those services. So
Speaker 1: I know when I go to Helen and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: give us advice on how to diversify our investments. You
Speaker 1: know we've been doing these an autopilot for a while.
Speaker 1: What's your advice? I know that's going to cost me
Speaker 1: more to get that kind of advice from her, So
Speaker 1: I just kind of ask what's that going to cost me?
Speaker 1: And move from there. Okay, I hope that's helpful. Brittany.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening, and you're a new listener,
Speaker 1: so welcome to the show. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: supporting us. And that wraps up this week's be a
Speaker 1: Q and a thank y'all so much. Hit us up
Speaker 1: at Brandimission Podcast at gmail dot com. If you have
Speaker 1: any questions, you can also go to our website, brandimission
Speaker 1: podcast dot com submit a question there, or go to
Speaker 1: ig We are at brandambission podcast on the Gram.