Stock Market, Student Loans, & Interest Rate Changes, Oh MY!

the economy is wild right now between the stock market student loans and interest rates if you're wondering what you should do stay [Music] tuned hello and welcome back to the Alford and I'm Dr Leisa Taylor and of course we're here to help you build wealth and make good money decisions so you can create the life you desire with more control over your [Music] time as we enter the final stretch of the year if you're a doctor who thinks you might have overpaid on the IRS this year we've got some important news for you cerebral wealth Academy has now opened enrollment for the course the doctor's four-week guide to Smart tax planning an online course designed specifically for medical profession na knows who have side gigs or local Tums work this course includes everything from selecting the best business structure for your practice to advanc tax saving strategies and retirement planning on top of that there are monthly live Q&A sessions with Alexis Gatti who's not only the founder of cerebral tax advisors and The Mastermind behind this course but also my own personal Tax Advisor enrollment is only open until September 30th and if you use code well 300 you'll save $300 on the course VIs visit www. cerebral wealth academy.com [Music] today he Lisha one of the most important Financial tasks we do as doctors is protect ourselves which means getting the right insurance I recall purchasing my insurance policy just a few days before I graduated from residency what was your experience so I got my insurance when I graduated from medical school right before I started residency actually called a few agents but I had the best service from PR Auto at PKA Insurance Group he was super responsive and personable unlike some of the other agents PR actually got me quotes from all the major companies and actually took the time to explain the nuances in each of their policies what I love most is that he wasn't just this way for me whenever I would send one of my friends to him he would not only speak to them but he'd also let them know where to go or who to contact if there were better options or discounts available at PKA Insurance Group prep Auto and Matthew Peterson are independent Brokers focusing on disability and life insurance they excel in securing coverage for Physicians and other medical professionals discounts on disability insurance can range from 10 to 40% depending on your situation and there is now an A+ rated carrier offering up to $10 million of life insurance without Labs if you are very healthy with limited to no medical issues approval is likely in 5 minutes reach out to PKA Insurance to discuss your disability or life insurance needs at www.pk insurance.com or call 1 80025 81018 all right Lisa I feel like I'm always coming on to this podcast asking for your advice so sorry you are my unpaid therapist and consultant so Brooke is off Camp for two weeks and this week I'm not working next week my mother-in-law will come in and spend some time with her and my husband asked last night he's like so what is your plan for the week and I had been thinking about some of the activities that we could do together I wanted them to be fun but I also wanted to add in a few academic elements I think over the summer she's lost some of what she had previously been able to do you know my daughter is very bright so she's going to enter into kindergarten and she's going to succeed and she's going to Excel and I'm not really concerned about that but for me I've always showed everyone that learning begins and ends at home so the fact that she lost some of the things that I had previously taught her I feel like I want to get us back to where she left off my husband he said sometimes when you all do that there's a little bit of tension between us because sometimes she doesn't want to do math and I want her to do some subtraction or she doesn't want to read and I'm encouraging her to read he said just use this time to just have fun because there's going to be plenty of moments she start in kindergarten where you're going to have an opportunity to help her with the academic things and I think he has a good point there I also want her to go into kindergarten feeling very confident and so I don't know I don't know what to do I'm trying to figure out is there a way that I could make this academic stuff more fun so that she doesn't know that she's actually learning so maybe that's where I need to spend a little bit more time but I know you don't have children but you have some young nieces and nephews what are your thoughts have you had conversations with some of your friends or other parents so my first thought is that wow your daughter's stting kindergarten and she can already add and subtract that is not a kindergarten skill I feel like that's what they learned in first or second grade Maybe I'm Wrong obviously it's been a long time since I in first or second grade but my first thought is wow I think she's already ahead of the curb when I'm thinking about it like that most kindergardeners are working on their ABCs from my understanding obviously I've been out of the business for a while and your daughter's already reading and adding and subtracting my thought is she's already doing above average and so maybe you could afford to spend this time having fun without feeling like she's going to walk into school behind the other thing that came to mind when you were talking about this was that study that show the biggest predictor of how successful a child is going to be is the socioeconomic status of their parents and Brooke being a child of two PHS has definitely a leg up in this world and seeing how diligent you are with teaching her all of these skills even before she's even had a chance to be exposed to them at her own school I want to commend you on the good job that you've already done and say that if you are looking for me to give you reassurance that your daughter's going to be great even if you don't make her learn math during this week I am providing that reassurance to you thank you Leisha thank you Leisha I appreciate that I think maybe is something that I should have worked through through my therapy session today is part of our identity as women and part of our history of just kind of where our ancestors came from and some of the injustices that still exist in America I have protected her and my husband have protected her to some degree from a lot of that and during the school last school year she had mentioned something about slavery and our pastor kind of talks about Harriet Tubman because that's his favorite character in black history often but I don't know if she's picked it up at church there was clearly some moment that she had and which she learned about slavery and so I asked her a little bit more about that usually when my kids say something I'm like what does that mean instead of you know applying my own adult learning and understanding to interpret what they're suggesting and it really caused me to fear a little bit about the school system introducing certain topics to my children without me being there to protect them from the narrative and how they're learning that information and so she mentioned that it was a book that they were reading and I talked to the instructor about it but it just made me a little fearful like oh I need to get ahead of the game and kind of try to introduce her to things before the world introduces her or them KJ as well to protect them so part of what we'll do during this week is going to the African-American music Muse and kind of reading I want to read that book also and using that as the platform since she's already read it to talk about it but I think that might also be driving it is some of my own anxiety that I also need to work through I hear you and I think that obviously I'm not a parent but I've heard from other parents that being a parent taking care of your own children is like a Surefire way to learn more about yourself and it challenges you and exposes you to certain areas that maybe you need to work on yourself not you specifically but just saying you in general I want to say I don't think that there's anything wrong from wanting to expose your children to things first or to be able to sort of shape that memory or that experience for them first and so I like that idea I grew up in a household where I didn't really learn a lot about my ancestry and my history outside of school and so I felt like there were gaps and I felt like I had to go out of my way as an adult to sort of educate myself on things and I found myself having biases that I didn't know were there or making assumptions that I didn't realize were offensive because I only knew the things that I had been taught in school and sometimes they don't always SK the full picture and that's with various cultures I am African-American but there were other cultures that I had not been exposed to before college and so the act of going to college and being surrounded by people that were from different backgrounds than me really helped me to educate myself in those areas this is a longwinded way up me saying that I don't think that there's anything wrong with trying to educate your daughter and trying to expose her to things I just didn't want you to feel pressure that you have to teach her all of these things or that she needs to be reading on a second grade level when she's entering kindergarten or she has to be at this level in order to pass this test in order to get in this class or all of these things just sort of siding with your husband a little bit and saying make learning fun make things fun that sort of things I don't know if what I'm saying is making sense it is you know I think being partnered for a while sometimes my husband says things like come on this is just you know just Kevin being Kevin but I try to look past that and try to think about of course he has my best interest at heart our daughter's best interest at heart and not allowing my defenses to kind of paint how I'm receiving the feedback that he's providing so thank you for being a neutral party and helping me work through that all right well is there anything that you want to share with the people about your life I'm sorry I took up so much space no it's okay I'm happy to lose space for you I this weekend got to spend some time with my nieces and my two two nephews cuz remember my little nephew is just born and it brought so much joy to my life oh my goodness my older nephew who is little over two he's walking and talking and I can see elements of his personality and I'm like whoa and every time I see him I feel like he gets taller he's just so much fun and then my baby nephew the one that just born despite all of the complications look at him and I'm like I would never tell that you were born premature and that all these things happen like he's so plump has all these roles he's eating and sleeping and gain and weight just fine and I'm like oh my goodness so cuddly so cute when I was in Paris I actually bought my nephews and my niece these Paris outfits that had the little Paris hat the Paris stuff so they all have matching Parisian outfits now I showed the outfit to them in front of their parents and everyone just thought it was so cute so brought me a lot of Joy spent some time with my niece yesterday at the pool she loves water my parents house here in Georgia actually they have this huge I don't know what you call it I guess it's like a community center thingy or whatever when you have a house you know what this is I clearly do not but they have like a little clubhouse area and then the pool Britney is like a freaking water park there's an adult-sized pool a kid pool playground thing like it's humongo it looks like you're at a water park there's use slides there's all this Kitty stuff for kids that are two or three years old so they can have fun too I was like Wow Dad how much are your HOA fees because this kind of seems like a lot he's not paying that much and so my brothers love going over to my parents house now cuz they can get their kids in the pool there's lifeguards that are out there at all times I mean you go out there and the parents love it it's always full because the lifeguards look like basically watching their kids and then you see the adults on the side like having a couple beers playing cards it's like daycare for your kids but like at the pool it's a whole thing anyway I was doing all that stuff this weekend I love it and I need to come to your parents house too because my HOA fees they don't get me not much an elevator and our rental property it's ridiculous we pay a lot for HOA as Physicians one of the most important things that we can do is make sure that we secure our income because a lot of our financial plans are contingent on our high doctor income one of the things that you will need to do is make sure that you get long-term disability insurance now prip and his team at PKA Insurance Group have a reputation for putting people over profits and always doing what's best do not hesitate to email PKA insurance and his team today they will help you get the insurance you need with the service you deserve all righty well let's move on Lisa to have a conversation because I received a text message from a friend and I was like H this would be great to talk about on a Financial Focus in the podcast because I know you actively have student loans and this text message was about student loans and so essentially she took a snapshot of her computer and basically it's that her student loans are now in forbearance because she's in the St plan and that she has a 0% interest and I'm like yes I do know something about that it's okay this might be an opportunity for you to take advantage of the 0% interest but I'm sure there are other people who are listening to this podcast who also received that message and because you have student loans can you just prepare us share what's going on why is this happening what do you think people should actually be doing about it yeah yeah so a lot of people's loans not everybody but a lot of people's federal student loans are in for bearance right now and actually there have been a series of forbearances and so I have gotten this question from my friends there was one forbearance that happened for a lot of people because moila which is one of the loan servicers for the federal government basically was transitioning a little bit and so if anyone is enrolled in the Public service loan forgiveness program that's the loan forgiveness program That Forgives your loans after you make 10 years of qualifying payment if anybody's enrolled in that plan then their student loans were automatically managed by the loan servicer moila so moila said hey this is a lot of work for us to manage everybody's loans and manage this pslf program and so they said the federal government since you put this plan into place and you keep changing it all the time why don't you manage it and so moila is still managing people's loans but the Department of Education is managing the Public service loan forgiveness part if that makes sense and so as they were transitioning so that this could all go into effect they were putting a lot of people's loans into forbearance and this was automatic and this sort of forbearance counted towards the Public service loan forgiveness program so that sort of forbearance happened and as they were transitioning people over they were doing it in waves so I remember getting an email saying hey your loans urge transitioning systems and there's this new website that you now log into to see your Public service loan forgiveness tracker all that stuff so that's one forbearance that happened I think that lasted for most people a couple of months and then there was this other forbearance that happened which is probably the one that your friend is talking about and that is in regards to the save plan so remember the save plan stands for saving on a valuable education and that is the new student loan repayment program that the Biden Administration and the Department of Education put into place and this one had all the cool perks right no unpaid interest is going to ur on your loans and so your loan balance won't grow from year to year most people have to pay a lower amount per month than they would have under other plans and so all these other perks with it the problem is that some of the Congressional leaders and some of the state leaders said hey this plan is not constitutional and they said hey the department of education does have the authority to create new student loan repayment plans this is what happened when the payu earn plan came into play or the repay plan or ibr all these plans so the department of education does have the allowance to create new student loan plans however the department of education does not have the authority to forgive student loans and there are a couple of elements of the save plan that involve forgiving student loans one of those elements is if you only took out loans from undergrad and you took out less than $122,000 and you've been paying on the loans for at least 10 years then under the save plan that should be forgiven whatever is left should be forgiven and some of the Congressional leaders and lawmakers said hold on that's not constitutional if you want to forgive some part of people's student loans that has to be approved through Congress and so some of the courts said hey actually you have a point and some of the higher courts said because you have a point we're going to pause all of the elements of the save plan until we work out the Kinks until we work out which parts are constitutional and which parts or not so since they have to pause the save plan and a lot of people are in the save plan they said okay we're going to just put everybody into forbearance and during this time in forbearance it's going to be a 0% interest rate so you don't have to worry about your loan balance growing from year to year the thing that's different about this forbearance that is that makes it different from all of the other forbearances is that they have specifically stated that this forbearance does not count towards Public service loan forgiveness and so that has freaked out a lot of people including Physicians because they're like hey look I'm working and even though I don't have to make a payment while my loans are in forgiveness that pushes back my forgiveness clock right they're like hey I'm working this academic job making way less than I could in private practice and I was going to switch the moment I get my loans forgiven and now you're pushing that back they don't want to be in a forbearance that doesn't count towards Public service loan forgiveness and so a lot of people are freaking out and they're saying what should I do well maybe I should just switch out of the save plan and go into a different plan the problem with doing that is that the Department of Education and moila they are not processing any changes right now at the time of this recording right who knows things change all the time but as of late August as we're recording this they're not processing any forms right now even if you try to switch from the Save plan and two income based for payment that is not going to be processed right now and so a lot of people are really just in this holding pattern and I would encourage people to just sit tight I really do think that they are going to work this out and if I'm being honest I think a lot of this may depend on who gets in the presidency who wins the presidential election because Democrats tend to be a little bit more fa when it comes to student loans and some of these loan forgiveness programs versus the Republicans tend not to be as generous when it comes to some of these plans and so I would encourage people to sit tight things may change there's really nothing that we can do right now you can't switch out of it it's not helpful for us a lot of people are frustrated but there's nothing we can do right now I think we're just going to have to hold tight unfortunately Wella thank you so much for just educating us on that because I know there are a lot of people who've been thinking about what should I do and honestly the student loan arena has been so disruptive it is frustrating even for me although I don't have student loans because of what we do as Financial Educators people come to me with question and it's how do I provide the best guidance and one of the things that I really love what you said is just to be patient and hold tight and that has been a word from God for me recently with all of this economic wildness no seriously it's like just be patient and sometimes that is so challenging because we want to react and unfortunately that reaction might be the wrong thing to do another thing is the 0% forbearance doesn't count towards IDR forgiveness depending on your student loan mix 20 to 25 years that these forbearance months do not count towards that forgiveness either now one of the things I wanted to ask is sometimes when things are 0% interest you're like great let me make a full payment and it all goes to the principal because it's 0% but what my friend's text message also said is that if you make payments during this forbearance period Then they would basically be held in an account and apply to Future payments instead of allowing them to capitalize on the 0% do you have any knowledge of that I can't say for sure what your friend's thing was because for me as someone who's in the Public service loan forgiveness program I'm not trying to pay anything extra than what I have to and so if they're saying this time in forbearance is not counting I'm not making a payment and they said I don't have to make a payment I'm definitely not making a payment so for me the thought never even crossed my mind to pay yes most of the time though for people who are not in this situation who are planning to pay back their loans in full and who are not in a forgiveness program that's something to think about which is should I be paying during this time or should I not if the payments are not going to be applied to the principal amount then I would advise against people paying during this time typically speaking though if you have a 0% interest loan most people will save up money on the side in the high old savings account or something and then right before the interest starts back again they'll just pay a lump sum off that's how I would do it if I were trying to pay down my loans and the payments actually counted at this time I want to clarify something that you said though which is in regards to IDR forgiveness and remember IDR forgiveness is different from the Public service loan forgiveness program so Public service loan forgiveness you got to work for qualifying employer make qualifying payments 10 years worth ID forgiveness is different this is something that everybody is eligible for regardless of how much you work or who you work for and it is basically a thing that says once you've made 20 to 25 years of payments towards your loans your loans Lo are forgiven and so this is a forgiveness program that you don't have to apply for it kind of happens automatically and that I think a lot of physicians may not know about now I don't know about you but I don't want to drag out my student loans for 20 or 25 years and so I am not planning to get that sort of program but for some people who that is a viable option for them that's what you're talking about like this time and forbearance also doesn't count towards that so it is unfortunate hopefully they work things out in the future and I will say if I'm being completely honest it's one of the reasons why I am actually applying for another student loan forgiveness program I don't know if I told you this Britney I spend a lot of my time doing research I see patients clinically about half the time and I do research about half the time and I do research sports medicine because that's my sub specialty and I also do research on financial Wellness thankfully my job has been very lenient with me and very supportive but because of the amount of research that I do and the fact that I do anything at all I am eligible for the ni student loan repayment program and it is a loan repayment program that will give me $50,000 per year towards my student loan and so you apply for the program when you first get it it's $50,000 a year for two years and then it's renewable after that and so you can submit a renewal application and get $50,000 for another two years and I've been asked this by people Lea you're already in the Public service loan forgiveness program why in the world would you apply for this other program and I told them two things one Public service loan forgiveness was approved by Congress but I just like that added Assurance of knowing that if anything crazy happens I still getting my loans for for given so that's one and the other thing is that with this NIH program not only do they give you $50,000 per year towards your loans but they also give you more money to account for the taxes that you would have to pay and it takes a place of what I would have to pay per month so in these income driven repayment plans you have to pay 10% of your discretionary income on average towards your loans each month but with this NIH program they basically give a lum sum that can cover my portion and so it will allow me to keep thousands of dollars in my pocket each month so it allows my loan balance to decrease and also saves me some money out of pocket that I would have spent on my student loans and so for me especially as a subsp specialist in sports medicine I could work in private practice and almost double or triple my salary and I'm very aware of the pay cut that I take in order to be an assistant professor in order to see patients in an academic center in order to do research and that loss of income is not lost on me but I think being able to get an extra $50,000 per year taxfree towards my loans makes up that difference a little bit and so that is a program that I am applying for and if you are listening to this and you want to apply for it too I think enrollment opens September 1st and it closes like mid October it might be something to look into keep in mind that you can be enrolled in several different loan forgiveness programs at the same time ah well that is a healthc care hustle right there Alicia so thank you for sharing that and you know the pslf how everything is right now is definitely more promising I think than it was when I was paying off my student loans but but that was the main reason why I just paid them off I refinance and I aggressively paid them off because I didn't want to have to do this recalibration all the time well I am recalibrating some things in my life because of the economy yeah I can understand where you're coming from cuz Britney I heard mortgage rates are dropping and as our federal interest rates I know you just bought a house so I'm like wondering how this affects you and what you're doing about it yeah if you all haven't noticed the headlines said oh mortgage rates the lowest that they've been in 18 months I think the lowest rate that I saw was like 5.6% and I don't know what that was I don't think it was 30-year fixed it might have been like a 7year arm or something like adjust a rate mortgage but nonetheless they are dropping and when we purchased a home in all transparency and we will get into in another episode some of the details of a refinance and what that means but when we purchased our home we locked in at 7.125 horrible but it's not like the interest rates that we saw in 2020 so I was like okay this is an opportunity for us to consider refinancing and we are starting to think about that process any time mortgage rates drop basically what that means is that now it's cheaper for banks to loan money not only to you but also to themselves and so when you see that there is going to be a drop and rates one of the things that you can think about is oh this could be an opportunity for me to lower my interest rates if you're borrowing money but also on the other side of that a con could be now we're going to receive lower annual percentage yields in our high yield savings account so we might not make as much money on our emergency funds and other money that we have and CDs and things of that nature and we also have some CDs so I'm really thinking about okay how can I leverage this so that the math actually works in our favor overall I think that this is good news for our home I'll have to let you all know after I finish this whole process what that looks like overall but I think with the economy we have to consider how does this impact us not to be hyper responsive to it but also to be thoughtful about the pros and cons yeah no it's so funny this weekend I was talking to my oldest brother and he just had kid number two he's like we need a house we need more space and so him and my sister-in-law are thinking about buying a house now they are renting right now like a really nice town home and it's very spacious but between her parents staying there so like his in-laws are living with them right now not like living but you know they just had a baby so her mother and her father are staying in the home and then they now got two kids and obviously it's him and his wife he's like look I need a room I need space to just not be around anybody well there's so many people in this house we need to buy house and so he was talking to me about this he's like you know what leysa mortgage rates are dropping and he's looking at the predictions that say they may drop as much as two full percentage points by the top of next year and he's like yep we're going to buy a house then you know and so it reminds me of this thing of being hopeful and recognizing the advantages but also making sure that you're not trying to predict the future and time the market because yes if the FED lowers interest rates then that means that mortgage interest rates will lower so it will be cheaper to purchase a home but then think about all of the people in America that have been waiting for these mortgage interest rates to drop and so then there may be more competition when it comes to buying a home which could then increase the price of the home and so I think that there are pros and cons I wanted to ask you as somebody who just purchased a home how soon is too soon to refinance like if you and your husband purchase a home this year do you have to wait a certain amount of time to refinance that's my first question and my second question is do you have any idea of the costs involved because from my understanding refinancing is not free you still have to pay to refinance and then it resets the clock so if you have previously purchased a home under a 30-year fixed mortgage and then two years later you refinance you get a new 30-year fixed mortgage right and so it sort of resets the time clock but I have never purchased a home so I don't want to make assumptions so help me out educate me and the people how does it work when you're refinancing oh okay so this is a great conversation because with your brother wanting to purchase a home you're right interest rates will likely drop and then it's like the timing of it so even for me thinking about a refinance it's like do I do this now or do I wait because there is suspicion that they're going to drop even lower and as you mentioned that there are costs to purchasing a home and there are costs to refinancing and the cost vary from bank to bank when you can do a refinance also varies from bank to bank one of the things that I was very thoughtful about with this home purchase and this could be maybe news for your brother as he's thinking about this because I suspect that more homes are going to come on the market this is going to maybe not be as bad as in 2020 when interest rates dro to like an all-time low but there's going to be more competition and there will likely be more bidding wars which is going to raise the cost of home ownership for the buyer great for the seller but bad for the buyer and so when I was shopping and interviewing our lenders I wanted to look for a bank that had a rate adjustment program so that I wouldn't have to go through the whole process of refinancing now I'm doing my research I'm reaching out to other Banks to see if they have refinanced products for Physicians and what that looks like but because we just purchased a home we don't have much equity in the home right and so some banks will not refinance 100% so it's easier to go with a bank that you currently have and what I also love about seeking out A lender who have a rate adjustment program instead of a refinance program is that it doesn't reset the clock we just purchased our home so for me it doesn't matter can switch Banks I'm going with the best deal because as far as the mortiz calculator and how much of our payments will be applied towards the principal versus an interest we're just one month into our mortgage so resetting the clock is not going to make a huge difference for us right if I were five years then I would have to do the calculations of okay when is going to be the break even point from a Time perspective and a cost savings because we're dropping the interest rate typically they say about 1% right if you can lower your interest rate about 1% then typically that's going to be a good deal depending on where you fall and how long you've had that mortgage but some people are doing a Cash out refinance so it just really depends on how much Equity you have in a home the timing this is not a quick calculation to do depending on where you are but for us it's definitely easier because I know we just got into the mortgage we have a rate adjustment program and So speaking to the cost it depends also per Bank there are closing costs usually you'll have to pay the underwriting fee Fe that is going to vary from bank to bank you'll have to pay the closing attorney fees and they have to adjust everything in the records and sometimes you have to have an appraisal of the home we know that the value of the real estate market and homes will shift depending on what's going on in the economy but because we just got an appraisal with the same bank we don't have to get another appraisal for a year the adjustment for this particular bank would be about 3,000 to 5,000 because of how much home we purchased and our interest rate I'm like okay this is no-brainer will like break even after 6 months but depending on your credit score if you have a higher credit score then they can decrease the cost so there are a lot of factors at play here and it's an exciting time but now I'm back into the thick of it doing the math about okay what is the best decision and what is the best timing for this decision so are you and Kevin thinking about waiting until it drops to 6.125 so that's a full percentage point or you've decided any drop is worth worth the cost so not any drop right now it's 6.5% and I've done the math and that would save us about $600 a month and because of where we have like my last credit score is like 820 so because we have high credit scores it will actually only cost us about $1,800 to do this refinance and after two months we broke an even so I don't know what the future is going to hold for us and one of the questions that I ask is how many times can I do this is there a time frame a waiting period where we can do the other refinance and really they just like if you pay the fee then you can refinance so the fact that we would break even after two months it provides some assurance that we can lock in a lower rate knowing that I don't know what the future holds gotcha and then for my own Clarity is this for the house that you just bought or is this the house that you moved out of that you rent this is for the house that we just bought the house that we moved out of we are now 2 or 3 years in the mortgage we have a 10-year arm and it's locked in at 3.9% if rates drop a lot lower then yeah I will consider refinancing that one also but at this point I'm not so eager to refinance that one because we won't get a rate that matches it and we have 10 years that we're locked into that lower rate I have a question another one if you just took out a credit card does it factor into I guess they're just looking at your credit score and so if you have a hit on your credit meaning you just took out a credit card then that would then lower your credit score and make it cost you more to refinance and so I guess you're now like sort of pausing any new credit card applications and stuff right now yeah I think I mentioned that I was trying to leverage credit cards to create this luxury vacation for us for next year and so I opened up a few credit cards and honestly I just feel a little bit overwhelmed with the credit cards that I want to get myself a spreadsheet of when we've opened them when is the renewal and what the fees are and keeping better track on our credit cards so right now I had no plans to open up any new credit cards until I can kind of get that in order gotcha gotcha wow it's really interesting okay all right well I wish you all the best it seems like these interest rates are going to keep dropping is there any harm for you to waiting until the top of the year it seems like they're going to keep dropping so that you don't have to keep refinancing or I guess now you're in this rate adjustment program where I guess that means If the Fed drops interest rates and your mortgage interest rate drops or something help me understand the strategy yeah so I could potentially wait to lock in a lower rate but because this process is so easy and I would break even within two months I think it's worthwhile for me to do it one of the things that gives me a little bit app pause in Waiting is that when I was shopping our mortgage lender for this home that we just purchased everybody told me that rates were going to be down in June when we closed and that we should not lock in and that was not the case we know that because of how emotional we can all be in response to one single data point I mean we saw that the stock market had the biggest drop in the past two years and everybody was crazy talking about it and then the next day next couple of days like it's rebounded and now they're like oh we're not going into recession so there's just so much fluctuation of up and down and there's no way for me to predict the future if that break even point was a lot longer if it was like one year then I would probably hold off but because it's literally two months for us and there's more benefit because we just got into this mortgage and little harm I feel that we have the money in the bank for the $1,800 if at two months I'm just going to say this is the decision that we made given the promise that could potentially be there and if they drop further then we will just do the process again because there's no harm in doing so and for me a twomon break even point is reason enough to just make a move now I hear you I hear you you know as you're thinking about refinancing I am thinking about my strategy for savings cuz right now with the excess money that I have that doesn't go towards mandatory bills and food and transportation or whatever I have a certain amount of money that I give each month that probably won't change at all but I also have a certain amount of money that I use to invest a certain amount of money that I used to save and a certain amount of money that I Ed to pay down some of the private student loans that I know that I'm going to have to pay down myself and right now the interest rate that I have on my high yield savings account is pretty high and so caused me to say okay maybe I do want to save a a little bit more but as the FED lower interest rates then that means that the yield that I'm getting in my high yield savings account is probably going to drop and if I'm not making as much interest in my high yield savings account it's making me think that maybe I should use a bigger percentage of my money to pay down some of that debt some of that student loan debt some of that private student loan debt and so it's caused me to sort of rethink some things and sort of saying okay how much money do I actually want going towards my emergency fund or in cash savings and then how much money can I afford to put towards dead and should ijust those numbers just a tad and so I don't think that I'm the only one sort of thinking this way because you know as interest rates change it changes Behavior which is why the feds are so strict about how they do the interest rates and so I think there's a lot to think about but it's really interesting for me to hear you say I'm going to refinance and my brother saying I'm going to look for home now and me saying okay I'm G to pay down somewhere debt now all based on what the feds are doing so it's very interesting but I do want to say one thing that does not change is my investment strategy I continue to invest in the same things I was investing in before whether the market is up or down I'm investing in for retirement I'm Investing For the Long Haul and so I don't make changes to my investment decisions based on whether the market is up or down and so that part of my financial life stays steady it is just the percentage that I'm saving and the percentage that I'm using to pay on debt that may change I hear you I'm the same way actually when there was a drop I was looking at our retirements I'm like what is going on here but there's so much emotion involved this is one of the reasons why women are better investors than men because we're less likely to react or maybe we just have so many other things going on that we're not paying attention to the dayto day but we invest in our brokerage account the same amount it's like built into our budget the same amount every month and so sometimes if the stock market is down then hey we got to Discount us some shares today or if the stock market is up then we purchase at a higher price but honestly when you're investing forther Long Haul and you have a strategy that is long-term and not really looking at the changes from moment to moment it feels less emotional because you know that your strategy is in place and that your strategy is going to work and you kind of expect that this is part of the roller coaster but it feels less like a roller coaster because you have the protection of a plan yeah I totally agree with you and now as we are closing out this episode today we're going to get into our fun money segment so Britney what is something fun that you are doing with your money besides refinancing today you know I opened up this episode with some advice about Brooke and we have this whole week planned so today is Mommy Queen day she's been wanting to do this for forever we're going to wear Tiaras and go and get our nails done she put on her ripped jeans and her white shirt like me so we're matching so it's Mommy Queen day I don't know why she called it mommy Queen because maybe she's like always a princess but I don't treat myself I don't know I have to ask her how she came up with that title mommy Queen day but that's what we're doing we're going to get our nails done together and we have a whole week of activities but honestly our library gives free classes to museum so I just got the library passes we'll probably take the bus or the train and really take advantage of the free things that they have to offer a mommy Queen day I love it I love it so I have been obsessed now with rose gold jewelry I know that is so Random it's started with me ordering O-rings have you heard of the O-ring I think I mentioned this before like it's a tracking device it's better than a Fitbit Fitbit you wear on your wrist right tracks your steps and things like that or ring is like an activity tracker also a sleep tracker and all of this stuff but you wear it on your finger it's more accurate I care about this because I'm a sports medicine person so I read all the studies and studies show that wiist wearables are not as accurate as finger wearables when you talking about high-intensity exercise I could talk about this for hours but I will not my point in saying this is that as I'm ordering my athletes or rings and my staff or rings I'm ordering myself an or ring I want to make sure that I understand how it works and when it comes to the oing you can order different colors and different styles and I want the rose gold style because I am obsessed with the color pink I was getting the O-ring you know ordering it and I was like oh I want rose gold jewelry and I need a rose gold bracelet I need a rose gold necklace when I was in Paris I bought a rose gold necklace and I was like this is the slippery slope this is what happens people buy one thing and they're like oh I need this other thing to go along with it and then I need this other thing to go along with it I forget what that principal is called but it's totally a thing and that's what I've been spending my money on there a bunch of rose gold jewelry So Lisa I thought when you mentioned the word rose gold that you're going to say it started with the snow globe oh purchase in yes did not start with that but that was a factor into I just love pink it just makes me happy to look at pink gives me life I don't know why so my phone is pink you'll notice my Apple watch which I don't wear as much anymore is rose gold just a lot of the things that I own are rose gold my luggage is pink I'm very much obsessed but now that I have a rose gold necklace I'm going to have a rose gold or ring I was like I need a rose gold bracelet I need a rose gold whatever so spending a bunch of money on something that is not a necessity that is what I'm doing well hopefully every time you look at it you feel it you see yourself in the mirror it brings a moment of Joy so happy for you and I can't wait to see it see your rose gold outfit oh my goodness well we're going to wrap up this episode today hopefully you got something out of it our goal today was to encourage you that you don't need to freak out it's going to be okay we know that there's been some changes in student loans but let's just be patient and give things time to work out we know that the stock market can be crazy but we are not going to freak out we're going to continue to invest we are going to pay attention to those interest rates and see if maybe it's a good time for us to buy a home refinance a home or at least rethink our thoughts and our current debt strategy so thanks for your time and we can't wait to come back to you again next week hello everybody it's me Brook I'm recording a little disclaimer for my mommy Dr Britney hord and her friend Dr Lisa Taylor Just so you know they're not financial advisers tax professionals lawyers or financial planners everything you're here is for education and entertainment it's not strict Financial advice you know so use your best judgment chat with a chck professional and all those other people that you need to talk to thanks for tuning in today keep cruising on your journey to well and wellness bye-bye hey Britney I don't know about you but taxes are always a pain I know we always have to pay but the amount of taxes we owe has decreased significantly after working with Alexis and her team at cereal tax advisers tax advisors is more than just a company of CPAs they're actually a company full of tax strategists that can help you keep more of your hard-earned money they're effective communicators and can let you know when something needs to be done ahead of time and walk you through it so 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