Growth & Grace

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NB studios original program. The following program is underwritten by Crawford management group and Chris glow, and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jaz and Moore the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Music 0:18
Even better than that was the last time, baby we back and

Leaha Crawford 0:35
we back and we back and we back and we back and we back. And I was the last do, hey, hey, hey, heavy Saturday, Las Vegas, Julian is hot outside.

Julian Rosado 0:49
Yes, yes, it is. It is hot outside. I know

Leaha Crawford 0:53
I share with you today. I made the mistake of walking on hot concrete barefoot. You made the mistake. I made the mistake. Don't, don't, don't, don't. It was, and I was, like, I do. And I was, yeah, it was, it's hot. Yes, it's really, really hot. Well, how was your week? Um,

Julian Rosado 1:15
I saw Superman. Oh,

Leaha Crawford 1:17
that's good. How'd you like that? Did you go past the sphere and see the legs of Dorothy? No, the witches. Oh, you got a robot here where I roll body Wizard of Oz. Um, well, I don't know when it's coming but, but I saw a robot. We were right. We were driving down, and it's so interesting, because when you're coming down, I think that Spring Mountain, Las Vegas Boulevard, no spring Vegas Boulevard, no Spring Mountain. Say, say you're on Spring Mountain. It looks like the sphere is behind the wind, right? Because, remember that road curves right there? Yeah. But when you're looking and I was like, Why does it look like it's behind the wind? But it's really not right? And when we got close, I was like, oh my god, the legs and the shoes, oh, boy. Okay. No, I always amazing. I know I have just some colleagues coming in town just to see the Wizard of Oz at the sphere. So is it the movie? I don't know. I think it's a live performance. I don't know. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I can't wait to go inside, though. Are they showing a movie? No, it's The Wiz No, it's not wicked, because wicked would say wicked. It says The Wizard of Oz. So it's not wicked. It's not the Broadway version. It is the Wizard of Oz. Well, y'all today we have a very special guest. We're going to talk about financial literacy, building your credit, home ownership, just a whole lot of creative stuff. I would like to welcome back, Frank. I always mess your last name up, but I'm gonna try to get a

Leaha Crawford 2:45
rubicava. There you go. I got it. Finally, it's right. Finally.

Leaha Crawford 2:49
Finally, right. Mr. Frank rubicava from operation. Hope he is gonna sit here and just educate us for the next 30 minutes. So if you're listening, you know we're gonna leave you with some nuggets this morning. Thank you so much. Talk to me. Okay, so how long have you been with Operation Hope? Now,

Frank Ruvalcaba 3:07
I've been with Operation Hope since the beginning of the year, okay? And this organization was founded back in 1992 okay, in LA after the LA riots, and pretty much the founder is Mr. John Hope Bryan. And he pretty much saw a need for the community, to be able to build stronger as a community. And also about learning about, like you mentioned, financial literacy, what? And I think we talked about this, you know, off the air, when we were coming in, about what is financial literacy? Financial literacy is pretty much for people to understand. You know, where they stand financially. Most people that you talk to, they don't know, you know, what is, what is credit composed of, okay, how does, how does credit function? And most people don't know about even their their own personal finances. I think you know, we all know that we get paid. We got to pay bills, right? But we don't really have a neck, an exact idea. We don't have a budget. So that is financial usually, learning about those things, learning about how your credit works, learning how you stand financially, you know, with your income and your expenses and so forth. So you're not overspending, or you're not, Oh, my God, I don't have enough money because where's my money going? So

Leaha Crawford 4:35
as we used to say, I got more month and not enough money. Exactly, I have more month. I got enough month. I see more month coming, but the money is gone, yeah,

Frank Ruvalcaba 4:43
where the money? Where the money go? Yeah. So basically what my title at operation, hope is, financial well being coach. Financial well being coach, okay, right? And we are partnered with US Bank. We are, I'm located. I want. Other branches three days a week, from 10am to 3pm Yeah, from 10am to 3pm and offering, not just US Bank customers, the services, but every you know, the entire you know the community could be, if you're banking with Bank of America, wherever you bank with, then you are, you know, if you need funding, that's if you need our services, then we can provide you service at no cost, and your

Leaha Crawford 5:26
contact information for information, 40499490114049949011

Leaha Crawford 5:36
now I want to dig deeper into financial literacy. Sure, just different components of it. When you talk about a budget, how do you create a budget?

Frank Ruvalcaba 5:45
Well, we do have the we do. We have to ask the two components of our our program, it's credited money management, okay? And on our credit and money management, we have the credit component and we have the budgeting component. And as I mentioned in a previous show, is that we're not a credit repair agency, right? And but we do help people to for better understand and better comprehend it. They there's on their credit.

Leaha Crawford 6:15
Because you're talking about credit, I'm going to get the credit, but you talked about a budget, right? Can you talk to me just about, how do you create a budget? Because people say that you need to create a budget, all right. Well, what does that entail? What do I do? Right?

Frank Ruvalcaba 6:29
And on our on our program, we do have a section for budgeting, okay? And so we do have the the coaching component, and we do have the educational component. So when they sign them into, into our program on, especially on the budgeting section, they are going to be able to download a a worksheet. Okay? Where they have, it's a sample budget form, and it's, it's an Excel form, okay, so the form itself automatically starts calculating as you enter the information. Okay, so I just gonna ask you, you know, in order for you to be able to complete your budget, you need to have access to one, your paycheck, okay? Two, you're gonna have to have access to your bank statement and also know what you pay on the monthly basis, rent, car payment, insurance, your your fixed expenses, okay, the reason why I mentioned the bank statement is because on your bank statement is going to show all the other stuff that is not a fixed expense, like if you go to eat dine out a lot, if you like to see if you like to buy coffee from a particular places. Then, then it'll show how much money you spend. So the budgeting component of it is going to tell you as to, okay, so I make, you know, $60,000 a year. When out of the $60,000 where everything's going, you know, you have your housing expenses, you have a car insurance, you have all that. So as you are filling out the form as to, you know, on your fixed expenses, then you start realizing, okay, so I know how much not I have to make, you know, rain or shine to cover my fixed expenses. But now on the other expenses that are not fixed, that you are just for dining and entertainment, how much of that are you actually spending unnecessarily, and I mean, not necessarily, because a lot of the stuff you can actually hold off or just cut down on certain stuff that you're spending the most of. So that's when you realize, okay, so if I'm spending too much money, say, on coffee, oh my god, I spent, you know, three, $400 in coffee, then I can and then you realize, like, Man, I could be using that if you have credit, card, credit card debt, then you can say, well, I'm going to cut down to at least, you know, say half of that, and now put it towards my credit, to my debt. Then you start doing that. Or you might not have a lot of debt, but you might want to build a savings account. All right. Well, I'm going to be saving now $200 a month for the next 12 months, you know, and now that's how you start building wealth. So, pretty much, that aspect of the budgeting, that's where it takes place. And we do have some assignments and some courses when you when you are when you decide to join in or enroll into our program. There's two like, as I mentioned, there's two components, me as a as a coach, that's going to tell you, more or less what your what is necessary information for you to understand, and the other component is for you to complete those, those assignments, those tasks, because it's gonna, it's gonna go into more detail as to, you know, what is it that needs to be done? You better understand, you know, the finances. You better understand, you know, some of the terms and how to better budget, or how to better manage your funds. And those are, that's a course that we have in again, it's free of cost. It's not at no cost to the client to be able to do that really. Yeah, and so when we have the first session, that's when I make the assessment of where the client stands, right there. You know, at that, at that particular moment in time, and we are going to continue with it for the next six months, a year, however long it takes, because this is a, you know, self paced type of program. So if you don't do anything in six months, your situation is not going to change. So your situation will change, as you know, depending on how fast or how how much you take into account, or how much you put, how much effort you put into

Leaha Crawford 10:26
it. That sound like my gym membership. I had a gym membership. But if you don't go, it's not

Frank Ruvalcaba 10:29
gonna do you anything. It's not gonna do any but if you go, then you start seeing something. You start seeing some changes over time, over time. And people think that, oh, well, I'm gonna do this, and then next, now, in 30 days, I'm going to see a change. It doesn't take it takes time for you to build anything. Takes time to, you know, be getting in good physical shape. If you go to the gym. It takes time if you have issues with your budget or you want to build a savings account based on, you know, how much you, you know, cut down your expenses. It's going to take time for you to build a certain amount. So as long as they put the effort as well as they put the time, then we'll see results. Because I will schedule an A an assessment in 30 and actually 45 days, we'll do another assessment as to, okay, let's see who have how much of how much progress you've done on the assignments that you were issued. And also, let's see, how much money have you put aside, or how much of your debt Have you paid down based on the budget that you know, that we've created. So that's the the type of services, or that's the type of program that we have. People are they know? I mean, most of us know, you know what needs to be done, but if you don't, if you're not, you know, you don't have accountability. Hmm, nothing's gonna change, or you're not gonna have put an effort on okay, you know what? I have to do this. I have to do this assignment because it's gonna benefit me. So that's the the the program, what it does to be make sure have you as a consumer, have account and be accountable for what you do. Love

Leaha Crawford 12:01
it. Love it. Contact information, 40499490114049949011

Leaha Crawford 12:11
credit. Credit is the you know, always, people say you want to use other people's money you want to do this, but if you don't, you still have to, I mean, talk, you still have to manage it. Still

Frank Ruvalcaba 12:23
have to manage it, you know, there's a, it's a fine line of, you know, you're you're over spent, or it's a fine line where you have too much credit. So it's like, where you stand, you know? So the other part of that program, at the credit component of it, is that we have to let them know, like, what? What is credit composed of? You know, we start with, there's three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and most people ask me, Well, how come my My score is certain amount so different all three bureaus. And the reason why is because not every creditor reports to all three credit agencies, right? So you might have one that you only, and there's, I've seen creditors, they only report to one, which is the most common. One is TransUnion, then the other ones made by report to all, you know, two, or this, you know. So not like, as I mentioned, there's not, not every creditor reports to all three. So that's why you have a different score. Now, on a credit report, we ask, well, what's what has, what information the credit report has? So the credit report has your personal information. So what? I make sure that whenever you apply for credit, you have to be consistent as to how you request your credit, because if you are, if you have a first name, middle name, last name, and then you have a server surname. After that, you make sure that every you know you are constant, consistent with how you will ask for credit. Because a lot of times people will say Joan, John Smith, but John Smith might have, you know, a middle name, you know, right, right, right. So if they, if they pull credit differently, then it's, it's going to be, that's where you're going to have a little bit of a credit discrepancy, because that all creditors have your your complete name, one of the things that we check is making sure that social security number is correct. Sometimes, when a person is pulling credit, sometimes they might create a typo, and now they might put a, you know, a three instead of an eight, or an 8% instead of a three. So that's going to be recorded on your credit

Leaha Crawford 14:21
report you can't read, put a five instead of a five instead of the three, a whole bunch of stuff. You don't have your

Frank Ruvalcaba 14:25
glasses at the time that you apply for credit and you're filling the application. It has happened to me like, Oh, my God, I wear my reading glasses, right? Where am I reading glass? Exactly? So you gotta be simple as that some point, yeah, it can make a difference. Date of birth. It's also included in there, your current and previous addresses, employers, things like that. So when we're talking about credit, you know, most people don't know, well, I have a credit score, but do you really know what the credit score is composed of? And most people like, No, I don't know. I mean, I just what is a credit score composed of? The credit score is composed of, you know, several things like 35% of a credit. Your score is based on your payment history. Okay, so if you're making on time payments, that's 35% of your score. The other 30% is based on the usage. So if you have a credit card with $1,000 credit limit, and that credit limit is always mad that credit card is always maxed out. Well, you're considered a high risk customer because you're you're you're overusing your your available credit. Other 10% is based on type of credit that you have, if it's open credit or revolving credit, if you have an closed end loan, which is an car note, if you have a mortgage, if you have other personal loans involved. So that's another 10% another 15% of that is composed of how much credit of new credit, if you're going to the mall and then, oh, if you

Leaha Crawford 16:00
go into, right? You open up an account, yeah, they'll give

Frank Ruvalcaba 16:03
you a 10% off or 15% off. And one thing that we say is that don't open credit unnecessarily. If you don't need it, don't get it right, because at the end of the day, if you don't pay the bill, at the end of the month, that 10 15% is going to go on interest. So I mean, how, how does that help you? And then now you have too much credit. So So those are the things that people don't understand. Is like in that is part of our the age and the education part of it, because it will go into detail on how to reduce that, how to better manage, how to better understand, you know, what credit is composed of. So that is pretty much in a nutshell, what we do as an organization to teach people about these things that most people know that it's you know how credit works, how what is composed of when I mentioned about 35% of your credit score is on monthly payments, one thing that I tell clients is that if you're new to credit, first thing you do when you open up a credit card is set it up in auto pay because you're not used to credit. So if life happens, sometimes you're, you know, have an emergency, you got to go out of town or whatever. The last thing on your mind is that, oh, I got to hang out my I got to make my credit card payment. So if you enroll your credit card into auto pay automatically, when the billing cycle comes, if you forget about it, at least the payment is done, because that's 35% if you miss the payment. That's huge. That's a huge that's about 1520 points off your credit score by missing one monthly payment and don't miss a mortgage payment. Oh, my goodness, that's even worse. So mortgage payments even worse. Yeah. So, yeah. So those are the things that that we teach. Those are the things that people have to understand to better balance, or their finances better balance your credit. Don't have too much open credit. And

Leaha Crawford 17:49
so what's too much open credit when

Frank Ruvalcaba 17:51
you have, like, I said, we know if you go to the store and then you're opening up unnecessary accounts, like, Oh, you got a penny's card, and you have a department store and electronics departments store card. We feel that I guess five to six credit cards will be more than enough. And I've seen people that have 1520 credit cards. No,

Leaha Crawford 18:14
I know people that have personally, and they don't have small balances, right, but they have large balances and a lot of knowledge, a lot Yeah, and I'm just like, oh, boy, okay, but, but the thing about it is, they're very particular in how they use their credit, and they use it strategically, right when they're because they but they're business owners,

Frank Ruvalcaba 18:33
right? So that's where income comes into play, because if you're making too much money, then you should, you're able to afford making those monthly payments. But same time. I mean, you if you're able to bring those credit card balances down, that's more money that you keep in your pocket versus paying it to a creditor.

Leaha Crawford 18:48
Well, no, they strategically. Well, what I've seen is people that learn how to use credit, and they don't live their lives. I mean, they make money, but they actually use credit strategically, strategically, and they do well, kind of what

Julian Rosado 19:06
percentage should you use off your credit? So let's say your credit is your your allotted $100

Julian Rosado 19:15
should you use $100

Julian Rosado 19:17
on every every go around? Or do you use $30 Yeah,

Frank Ruvalcaba 19:22
well, but the rule of thumb is probably 35% of your available credit to be used. I'm not saying that if an emerging comes like, Oh no, I out of the $1,000 I'm not going to use it all. I mean, if you have to, you have to, right? But we rule of thumb is about 35% okay, of the the available credit now, when a lot of people say, Well, I don't want to have a lot of I don't want to have a bill at the end of the month, it's kind of like a double edged sword, because, yeah, you don't want to make you don't want to pay the interest. But at the same time is that if you start your cycle, your billing cycle at a zero balance. To use a card, say, $300 and before the cycle ends, you pay off the bill, then when the cycle ends, it's going to be a zero balance. So there's no way of gaging. You know what the utilization aspect of your credit card, because that account is going to always going to reflect the zero

Leaha Crawford 20:19
balance. Okay, so what you let me, let me repeat that a different way. So when you're using the card and you know you want to pay it right off, let it, let the balance hit, or let the balance show, get the get the credit card statement right, and then immediately pay the credit card statement. So that way, you have a balance shown something outstanding, and next month you have zero where you paid it all. So there's a timing difference. Is what I'm I'm hearing,

Frank Ruvalcaba 20:44
right? The other thing too, is that, if you have, if, if you say, $300 out of that, okay, pay half of it or, or leave a some type of balance on the card, when

Leaha Crawford 20:56
the when the cycle ends, because they want to see, because you're looking for payment history and, utilization, utilization.

Leaha Crawford 21:01
So utilization, payment,

Frank Ruvalcaba 21:03
okay, yeah, if you have $1,000 and at the close of the of the cycle, you pay down, say, 200 and you have $100 balance, then you're under way below the 35% that you know that it's a rule of thumb to have on on credit card usage. So the same thing with, you know, the following month is the same thing. If you want to do use it again, then you can do that. As I said, just keep the balance as low as you know, as you can when the when the cycle closes,

Leaha Crawford 21:30
nice, nice. So when someone comes in to talk to you, and they, like you said, they don't know where to start. And we probably are. We're going over this again. I don't know where to start, and I am frustrated. Am tired of by the 15th of the month, I have no more money. I'm living check to check. So I get my check on Friday, and by Monday, I'm back in the same situation. Do you have strategies to assist them? I mean, is it a mindset? Is it they haven't been taught differently? What have you seen?

Frank Ruvalcaba 22:00
I think as a it's a combination of both, okay, and then a lot of things, also frustration. People see that, you know, you know month, month comes and month goes, and they still in the same spot, but they can't change their habit because they don't know, you know, where to, where to start. My job as as a financial well being coach is for me to sit down with you and have a conversation as to, okay, so what is it that what is bugging you, what is it that you need help on? And let's together. Let's see where we you know, how we find a solution to your to your problem, and I'll do an initial assessment with them. Okay, so we'll enroll them as a as a client for operation. Hope they're going to build a profile that we can have we can keep track of how their progress goes as they're in the program. We have a we have an agreement with TransUnion so we get a soft credit check for the customer again at no cost to them. And

Leaha Crawford 22:56
it doesn't, and that doesn't a soft pull means that

Frank Ruvalcaba 22:59
it's not gonna, it's not gonna affect your credit score. Okay, okay. So being that, it's only one credit bureau, I'm gonna be able to see what's on the on TransUnion. We're gonna sit down and say, okay, so Mr. Client, you have a collection here, you have late payments here, charge off here. So let's tackle all this together. So

Leaha Crawford 23:19
how do you tackle? Well, let's go step by step late payments. Is there a way to come back from late payments? There is okay. And the reason why I ask because some things just take time, and you have to be consistent.

Frank Ruvalcaba 23:33
Now, when you mentioned about late payments, you may have skipped or you might have forgotten, make one or two payments here and there, depending on the relationship that you have with your creditor. If it's if you have it's a one time late payment. Say, you know, with one of your creditors that you've been with them for a long time. One thing that we suggest is the first thing to do is, like, call them and say, You know what, I've been a longtime customer of yours. I've made always my payment on time. So communicate, okay, yeah, it's like, you know, I just realized that I made a leap payment. I had a family emergency, I had whatever situation that might have been at the time. And, you know, I'm calling to find out if, out of courtesy, would you be able to remove this from my credit report? Wow, I've seen it happen. It's had happened to me that I've called, you know, one of my credit card accounts, and I told her, as you know, I ended up going out of the country, whatever the situation was. And this is what happened. I've been a customer since, you know, say, in 2004 or whatever, and they'll do that. I mean, they don't do it all the time, but if it's they will, you know, if it's a rare occasion, but if you have in the last six months, you have not made a payment, or you've been making the payments later, it's like, well, wait a minute. I mean, you have a pattern. You have a pattern. So then that is going to be very hard to get rid of those late payments. They might waive one, but over two. Time your score as long as you keep up with your you with your monthly payment. As I mentioned, 35% of your score is on time payments.

Leaha Crawford 25:07
So what? So what is considered a good credit score? Now, good

Frank Ruvalcaba 25:11
credit score will be, I would say anything above 656, 80 will be average. Okay, anything over 700 will be that's good, that's really good credit. And your credit score ranges up to 808 I believe, and anything, if you're applying for a car, car loan, if you're applying for a car lease, anything over 700 that's to give you the top or best deal, best credit, I

Leaha Crawford 25:39
was gonna say, because when you don't have good credit, that's when you get into those ridiculous rates, 16, 20%

Frank Ruvalcaba 25:44
things like that. And so most people that, oh, I want to have, you know, the max credit score. It's always going to have, it's going to be, always going to be a challenge keeping it over 800 or at the 800 mark. Most I've seen the the average credit score here in Nevada, it's about 692 okay, that's the average wow that you've seen, that I've seen, okay, as far as that is really good. That's good actually, because when you're trying to, even when, if you try to buy a home, if you try buy a home with an FHA loan, they allow you have a 580 credit score to be able to get financed. I did not know that. Yeah, wow. So, and it has to be FHA. It's a government loan. So FHA, with with VA, they allow with even lesser score, as long as I did that with VA, yeah. So with VA, I've seen clients get financed with a 484, 90 FICO score. But one of the caveats for that VA being one of their their benefits is that be able to get financing with low score. One of the things that they have to do is that they cannot have any derogatory credit in the last 12 months that includes late payments, charge offs, collections, anything like that, if they have a clean payment or clean credit history for 12 months with none of that, no late payments, no derogatory credit, and they have a low score, they can still get financed.

Leaha Crawford 27:05
I love Okay, so that's, and that's 12 months, and that's, I guess, you know you want to purchase a home, you know you have some challenges. VA, VA, VA. Okay, so that's good, but I learned the rules exactly. Learn the rules say. You know how to apply the rules. Okay, you're listening to growth and grace. I am. Leah Crawford, this

Julian Rosado 27:22
is I'm still amazed. You

Leaha Crawford 27:23
still amazed. You are still amazed. And we are listening here with Frank from Operation Hope. And I just want to tell you, first of all, thank you for coming on the show and well, as always, accepting our invitation to talk about this. Because I think we sometimes we just need information and just a little push right. And some people are very private. I don't they don't want people in their business to know that they're, you know, just may not know enough, but to contact you, to have somebody be an accountability partner, I think, is huge, especially if you want to change your life financially

Frank Ruvalcaba 27:59
correct. And I want to thank you also for extending that invitation. It's always a pleasure being with you and Julian here providing you know this information to your audience, and which is important to know that we there are services, there's help out there. If you're feel overwhelmed or you just want to know more about credit, that is something that we offering again at no cost to the to your community, and they can always reach out to me again. The phone number is Eric at 404-994-9011

Leaha Crawford 28:35
more time. 404-994-9011 Do you speak Spanish? That's it. I know that

Leaha Crawford 28:41
I had had to ask, I had to ask Seattle Espanol.

Leaha Crawford 28:45
Seattle Espanol, yeah, I'm taking, I'm doing Duolingo,

Frank Ruvalcaba 28:50
yeah. You need to start learning how to speak Spanglish. Oh, Spanglish, mixing Spanish with English.

Leaha Crawford 28:57
Okay, you want to know what? Maybe I need to come down and sit down with you so we can do Spanglish. Spanglish, okay, right. Okay, yes, that's all I can say. No, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you again for coming on the show. Julian, you have any closing questions? No, already,

Julian Rosado 29:15
I was doing me so I couldn't respond when you asked my name. Oh, you

Leaha Crawford 29:20
couldn't even respond. Can I ask your name? All right. Well, you have been listening to growth and grace. I want to say thank you for tuning in and listening to us every week. We want to let you know that we come together every week to explore entrepreneurship, wellness and generational wealth. Remember, growth is not just about building a business. It's not just about you know what you're going through. It's about building ourselves. And Grace is the gift that allows us to keep going when challenges come. So thank you again for tuning in to growth and grace. We will talk to you next week. Peace and blessings Las Vegas.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai