Hi, I'm Tonya Rapley,

entrepreneur and financial educator.

And I can say in all honesty,

I've never seen anything like this.

My income has been disrupted.

Okay, my daughter's at home now all day every day.

We essentially lost a third of our income.

And we don't really know when it's coming back.

Which is why

we brought together this digital community.

A group from around the country,

with Bank of America specialists,

for a series of open and honest conversations.

How do I make credit work for me?

Don't get overwhelmed by the numbers.

Let me see if I can bring the bill down

at a different clip.

We have tools to help you understand contribution levels.

If you fall in love with the process itself,

then those sacrifices will pay off in the long run.

This is Better Money Habits, Money Talks.

Brought to you by Bank of America.

Alright, so this is gonna be a money conversation

like you guys probably have never had before.

We're gonna pair you with specialists from Bank of America.

And I would love to learn more about you, Rachel!

So yeah, I've had to take a huge shift.

I went from teaching in a classroom

to teaching on my computer.

I went from working five days a week

to my only stable income is once a week now,

which is scary.

Coronavirus is a lot of people's rainy day

and their big emergency.

But for me, I was in a traumatic car accident

of January 2019.

I was rear ended on the freeway,

my car flipped over onto its side.

Not only do I have the debt I had before,

I have medical debt on top of that

and it feels really overwhelming.

It's like running a marathon and not knowing

where the finish line is.

Yup!

I've been speaking with a lot of people

who are dealing with that, it feels like that.

So we were coming up with a great financial plan,

life was looking great,

and then the pandemic hit.

My main job as a design engineer,

I was asked to take a pay cut.

And then I lost my second job

as a performer inside the city during nights.

We weren't able to do the show,

so, I lost a second income entirely as a result of it.

Me and my fiancé, we're just talking about this last night...

weddings are not cheap.

No, no!

We don't know if the wedding is gonna happen anytime soon.

As our income got disrupted,

yeah, we definitely had to look at expenses

that just, come out, that you don't even realize.

I do want to shout out to my fiancé,

because she was like, "I'm not buying any new clothes

for at least a month."

She just started going on thrift sites.

Why do I want to pay full price for something,

when I might be able to get a deal on it?

And I thought that was like, really savvy.

My landlord knows that we're both

looking for full time work,

and so she's given us a laundry list of things to do.

And she says, just count your hours,

I'll pay you 25 dollars an hour

and just take it out of rent.

We did 400 dollars worth of work for her

before we even moved in.

So, we were able to take that out of

just the first month's rent.

That's amazing!

So we decided to plant a garden

and we almost half our grocery spending.

We're both chefs!

We are both chefs.

We like to eat food and make food.

We had just bought our new house,

and then we lost kind of like a third

of the income stream coming in. So...

We do all this budgeting beforehand

and you can never really budget for the unexpected.

Making spreadsheets.

Really, we're just trying to find all the little hacks

to save money.

We actually learned how to can as well.

We have sauces and vegetables and fruit compotes.

And one day we will eat them,

right?

We're gonna have to, we have so much of it now.

Meal prep and meal planning

has been the very thing that I think changed my budget.

So something really cool that has happened for us

during COVID is that my daughter and I

got to move into our own space together, our own apartment.

We have never been able to live on our own

because I couldn't do it financially on my own.

A year and a half ago, I was living paycheck to paycheck.

Like there were times where I had to ask friends

for gas money. And here we are now a year later.

And I'm really excited to change my family tree

and break those generational curses.

And that is such a fun and exciting thing

to look forward to for the future for me and my daughter.

Yes! Kudos. So much good has happened.

I know that Chelsey is a new mom.

Hi, I'm Chelsey, I live in Northeast Ohio.

So I did not have any maternity leave,

nor did I qualify for FMLA.

And my husband did not have any paternity leave.

Because both of us are working from home,

my husband is able to see our son way more

than he would if he was at work 8 hours a day.

This is where we used to eat dinner.

And now it's been our workstations.

Both of our parents are close to us

and there have been times where we've asked them

to come over and babysit so we could clean our house.

So just taking advantage of people who want to help

and not being afraid to ask for that help.

Each of you have different goals

that you're working towards,

different things that you'd like

a little more insight on how to navigate during this time.

And so what we'll be doing is you'll pair up

with a bank specialist to answer any questions that you have

and really get a plan of action.

And then from there, we will reconvene.

And so, does that sound good to you?

Yeah.

(upbeat music)

Amanda and Andrew, you are in for a treat.

We have joining us, our Bank of America specialist

Anthony Dinello.

Give Anthony a little rundown

of what your pressing questions are.

We essentially lost a third of our income

and it was right around the time we bought this house.

At this point, we've kind of normalized

and kind of stabilized a little bit

but we really had to sit down and think about

what the wants versus the needs were.

I think the first, most important thing is

what are the monthly expenses that you have?

What are the bills that you have

that you can count on having to be responsible

for every month?

That should be your floor.

Now, let's see what money we have leftover.

And what is our budget going to be for the month?

He actually helped me write my first budget

in an Excel spreadsheet.

I'm glad there's an Excel wizard in the house,

that always helps to have.

An honest mistake or two will happen along the way,

so it's very important that you set up alerts.

I actually have an alert on my phone. For every single time

a debit card is swiped,

I get a text message.

That's a good idea.

I like the alert thing, so that both of us know

that the spending would be happening

Keep the communication open!

You know, it really helps establish checks and balances

because then you're accountable

to someone other than yourself for how you're spending.

I do also have a Bank of America credit card,

which I love because the system they have on the backend

is really useful for money management.

The alerts is something I do have set up on my end,

and that's just good to know

whenever your card is being used,

or whenever your budget's close to being exceeded.

Even if it's like 14 dollars under, you know?

It feels good that you're within your means

of what you're trying to do that month.

You're gonna probably say okay,

our goal would be to save this much, this month.

I would have two numbers in mind

and I would really strive for that stretch goal

and really challenge yourselves

because I think you would be surprised

what you're capable of.

It's like the Chinese food last night.

We are close to our eating out budget for the month,

but last night I was craving Chinese food

and he looked at me, and was like,

we're close to the budget, we can't get it.

So we had leftovers.

Yeah, you guys are great.

It was good leftovers, I'm glad we did it.

There's a lot of value, right?

And starting to look at longterm and how much

overall you could save when consolidating debt.

What type of debt is it?

How much do I owe?

How much is your minimum monthly payment?

And then, what is your interest rate?

For me, it's my favorite spreadsheet.

That's the one where I'm like, things are getting done.

I think that's a pretty cool idea.

I never really thought honestly

about doing anything like that.

It allows you to see

what your most expensive debt is

or what's the smallest balance.

It allows you to focus your game plan.

Some people say start with the biggest balance first,

because the more you can knock that down the better.

Personally, I like to start with the smallest ones first.

That smaller amount, you could pay off quickly.

It feels good when you get one paid off.

And then you have that extra money to go towards

the other payments that you have.

Until now I didn't really think of it

as a bunch of small pieces.

I kind of just think of it as this big wall.

If we look more at it, more of it as like

a bunch of bricks on a wall,

and you're just taking pieces out one at a time,

I think it's gonna seem manageable.

And it will encourage you to continue to do more and more.

The first thing we're gonna do is make a spreadsheet

with our debts and interest.

So like, Date night, date night!

I'm gonna, no, it's not a date night...

It is! I need it to be fun.

It's a money date!

There's no such thing as a finance date night.

I mean,

maybe there is now.

(upbeat music)

When trying to stick to a budget,

stretch goals can be highly motivating.

Organize all of your debt by balance amount

and interest rate to help determine

the best debt reduction strategy for you.

(upbeat music)

And so Chelsea, I know that you're in good hands.

We have our bank specialist, Marcella Gallego.

I don't think there's anyone