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>> I would not have taken advantage
of that first credit card offer as a college freshman.
The exchange for a free t-shirt was not really worth the debt
that I accumulated in that first year.
>> I decided to charge a pair of Gap jeans
because I didn't have the money to pay for it,
so I opened a store credit card.
And shortly thereafter I moved and I never got my credit bill.
And I thought hey I just outsmarted the credit
card company.
So I never paid that bill
because I thought hey they're never going to find me
and little did I know your credit information is tied
to your social security number, not to your mailing address.
So that $54 pair of Gap jeans that I wanted cost me
over a 100 bucks when all was said and done.
>> Rather than using a credit card to pay for things
and trying to pay for it later with interest and that sort
of thing, I would've borrowed, I wouldn't have borrowed,
I would've gone and applied for financial aid.
And maybe gone to school full-time and finished quicker.
>> I would never have taken out that Citi Bank credit card
in exchange for a t-shirt.
At the time I was only 17 years old, I did not have a job
and I maxed out that credit card.
And it really jacked up my credit.
>> As a first generation college student I wanted
to concentrate on my studies.
I thought the best way to do that would be to take
out financial aid and take out student loans and not work.
I also thought that I should buy a snowboard and get a Jeep
with that extra money that I took out during school.
And if I could do it all over again I wouldn't look
at that money as this imaginary amount that I'm going
to pay back at some point in the future.
>> I was a non-traditional student,
so I had you know responsibilities
with my job and school.
And so was just easier to eat out all the time
and I should've just you know cooked more at home,
is what I should've done.
>> I had just gotten out of school
and thought I was balling hard.
And just did not want to save anything, so spending 30
to 50 bucks a day for food or you know trips
or shopping, a lot of shopping.
That in hindsight was not the right way to go about it.
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>> The best piece of financial advice that was given to me was
from my mother who saw what I did with my credit card
in that first year of college and said, "You need a budget."
And she taught me that it was one thing
to you know have enough money and have funds available to pay
for stuff and a very different thing to have a budget
that allowed me to plan thoughtfully
and carefully how I use my money.
>> My grandmother, she was just really smart with money.
She told me if I was real young and I started a savings account,
then I would have x amount of money
when I retired or when I was older.
And she told me there's no way to catch up like
if you start when you're older.
Like the money will just multiply
if you start when you're young.
>> The best piece of financial advice
that I have ever gotten was from an older couple at my church.
They sat all of us down and talked about budgeting.
The importance of like printing out your bank statements
for a month and looking at where your spending went.
And then from there making a budget
to see you know how much money should be going to groceries
and gas and clothes and savings, savings importantly.
And yeah that was, that changed my life I think the first time I
ever did that.
>> I think I was watching a documentary one time
about personal finance and the gentleman that was speaking,
he said, "How many of you all pay yourself first?"
So I thought that was a powerful statement,
I never thought about that.
When we get our paychecks, we pay our rent,
we pay our car note, we pay all you know we pay things,
we go get groceries.
But how many of us actually pay ourselves first?
>> In my case I took the advice
of paying off my highest interest loans first,
which seems daunting just
because they were my biggest loan.
But a few years down the line,
me and Sallie Mae Student Loans had parted ways.
>> Try to live off of one income
and we've been doing that 27 years.
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