April 13, 2020
Transcript
Crystal Washington: Hello, I’m Crystal Washington, Technology Strategist, and Futurist
Karen McCullough: and I’m Karen McCullough, the millennial evangelist who helps you adapt to change and we want you to rethink it forward. And by rethink it forward, we mean that there are things that have worked for you in the past, but if we were to be really honest, they’re not going to work for you in the future and they’re probably not working. Right, man. Yeah. So let me tell you a little story because this is money Monday. So we’re going to talk about, we’re gonna talk about financial things. I’m going to share just a really brief story about something that I did when I was starting my business during the last recession to make a little extra money. I one of those people that I noticed patterns and so I realized I would go into Craigslist every day and I would just see what are people posting, what are people buying? And I started noticing the strangest trend near the end of the month, Karen, everybody was looking for boxes.
Crystal Washington: Like people are looking for moving boxes, but they didn’t want to go to like a U hall and pay $3 per box. And so they would say, does anyone have any boxes they’re willing to sell for like a dollar 50 piece? Well, at the beginning of every month I noticed all these people would post free moving boxes and the free section, you already guessed where I’m going with this. And so I started flipping boxes. I would go and pick up all the free boxes from people at the beginning of the month. I would hold those boxes for three weeks. Then I would list them on Craigslist for one 50 a piece and I would earn anything from an extra 300 or $400 a month. And that was my spending money because I was reinvesting all of my money into the business because it was during a recession. So I was just being creative. Karen, do you have any crazy creative?
Karen McCullough: Um, I got a lot cause I was a scrapper for me. Um, when I first started speaking, I had left the retail business. I told that story a few episodes back, I had some retail stores and I left that business and started speaking and there was very little money and I had to continually continually think of things that I had talent that I had skills that I had and I had to, I had to put them to use. And one of the skills that I had in the very beginning was I was going to be the closet therapist. Um, if your closet, your closet was driving you crazy, call the closet therapist and it was me, it was me and I would go in and I would kind of analyze people’s closets and I would help them clean them out and I would make, I would make a few hundred dollars a closet and I’m being really honest with you, it kept me going.
Karen McCullough: The biggest problem were cats. I am allergic to cats and it seemed like every woman to go into her closet, she was like cat lady. And I would be in there like I’ve been going get rid of this, get rid of it. And my eyes would be like dripping with water because the crafts were me crazy when we’re thinking before I go. The other biggest challenge I had was women don’t want to get rid of their clothes and like they would grab something to get rid of and I would say take it away and then all of a sudden like it was a battle like pulled away from them. They’re so attached to their clothes, but for me, my advice to anyone is to look at the skills that you have and some of those because we have to be creative and any way that we can bring in a few hundred dollars at a time.
Karen McCullough: It really helps. With that said, we’re talking about money, but today we’re actually getting serious because we’re talking about the biggest stimulus package ever. That trillion dollar stimulus package where many of us are going to get $1,200 a month. No, sorry, I wish that was $1,200 but we’re going to get $1,200 that is going to be coming to you very soon. They say that the first checks will be released the middle of April. So we’ll see. That’s, that’s actually now they say, well they do say, and that’s what I wanted to talk about. They say, okay, all of this is up in the air. We have never in the history of the United States done programs this big. We’re talking trillions of dollars. And so this one for you and I will say with, I’m going to have to read it cause I don’t want to get this wrong.
Karen McCullough: Um, the $1,200 stimulus check is going to go out to families who make pretty much less than $99,000 a year. That’s kind of the basics of it. So there’s definitely a cutoff. And then there’s a cutoff if you’re single, there’s a cutoff if you were the head of the household. And then there’s another cutoff if you are married with children and I think you get $500 a child. But the thing is, don’t take my word for it. B, be aggressive on this. Check on this. I go to CNET every day and I learned about the money and the packages that are going out. Um, be that person, be the person who cares about your even the $1,200 who cares about that money coming in and be very conscious of it. So that’s for me, that’s what we’re talking about. There’s another part of it, which is the um, excuse me, unemployment benefits.
Karen McCullough: So right now the unemployment benefits are going to be expanding from 26 weeks, then 39 weeks, almost 40 weeks. And that’s really good. And for people like you and I freelancers, we are eligible. So some of you out there that have your own businesses and you’re a freelancer, you are eligible for unemployment. But check with your accountant. Yes, because there is a little caveat to it because we, you all, all of us that are self-employed, we do pay an unemployment tax of about 1% if you file that percentage will go up. So you know, be careful. There’s never a cut and dry with money. Right? There’s always, there’s always that little, the thing that you’ve got to check. So I’m talking about personal crystal takeover and share with us a little bit about the business. Sure. So with business it’s the same thing here and you know this, I mean you have a business like I do. These programs are changing by the day.
Crystal Washington: Like even if you have a banker that you have a relationship with at your bank, it just happens that one of my business bankers birth me. Thanks, Mom. So, so, right. So I get up to the minute information and it’s interesting even talking to them, my mother or my neighborhood bank banker or another bank that I bank with, all of them around these SBA type loans that they’re giving out, especially the payment or payroll protection plan loan. There’s a lot of confusion with the banks on that. They didn’t know, many of them didn’t have details until the day before it was supposed to roll out and still didn’t have every little piece in place. That’s why some of the banks weren’t able to start processing immediately, especially the big ones. So it’s changing day by day. The people that work for them themselves, they’re just getting on these calls. But I think there’s, there are many resources, but there are two I want to mention in this particular episode that we have. The first one is a payroll protection plan. This is a loan that you can get, but you have to get it through a, a financial institution. So you’re not actually getting this through the SBA even though it’s backed by them. So wherever you have a business banking relationship, that’s likely where you should go. Although there are some other places that will process the loan for you if you don’t have a bank account with them. Um, Karen?
Karen McCullough: Yes, I just heard that. So I was just listening to CNBC and they’ve changed that. The banks have had like 350,000 applications at each bank and some of them, like Wells Fargo had to cut it off, but they’re reopening this now. So yes. So even if you had to know, move on and try it again.
Crystal Washington: Yes, try it. Try it with another one. And the other thing is that when you talk about Wells Fargo, they actually hit their limit. I think that they were able to 10 billion and then within like the first few minutes it pretty much hit that number and so they had to pause everyone else in the queue, so just keep trying, try with other banks. What I learned from my CPA is that a lot of times it’s, it’s been the people that bank with regional banks and smaller institutions that are getting through. It’s the big banks, so that that might even be a lesson for anyone that’s watching us, that is a business owner wants to be a business owner. That might be a lesson for all of us, that we should have some type of banking relationship, probably with a large and a small bank because
Karen McCullough: I thought I’m going, I’m going to look up a community bank right away because I think that that was the lesson I got out of it too, because we can have a relationship with this much smaller bank.
Crystal Washington: Yeah. And I am, again, there are things that big banks can do that smaller ones can’t. But I think now we’re seeing that just being smart, you know, this is money Monday, we’re talking about, you know, making sure that we’re covering ourselves. It might be wise to have a relationship with both, maybe split your funds in two places. So that’s the payroll protection plan and their loans go up to a few million dollars check. I promise you it changes every day. So I don’t even want to give you the actual number because by the time you watch this, hours later, the number might change. Right. What’s interesting about the payroll protection plan loan is that if you spend the money, and it’s supposed to be two and a half times what your payroll costs are, if you spend the money on things like payroll, I can think it’s mortgage injury, more mortgage interest, and a few other things, then the loan turns into a grant, right?
Crystal Washington:And it doesn’t have to be paid back. Right. That’s magical. So I think anybody with a small business might want to look at the PPP loan through a financial institution, your view. Uh, the second resource would be the SBAs economic injury disaster loan, which gives you up to $10,000. We’ll go ahead and put the link below the video so you can just click on that link and go through to the application. Um, it’s really fast to fill out. I mean, as long as you have your financial information like you want to know, like your revenue for the past 12 months, your cost of goods sold. That’s pretty much the only numbers you need. Other than that, it’s just other business, you know, just stuff about your business. As long as you have that, you can fill out that application in less than 10 minutes and beyond with your day.
Crystal Washington: And this is changing day by day too because at one point it was supposed to be $10,000. Then there’s, there’s been whispers about, well, it might only give you a thousand dollars per employee. So it’s kind of everywhere. It’s changing, they’re trying to accommodate everyone. And so Karen, I think we’re probably in the same boat on this one. I would just encourage everyone to be patient.
Karen McCullough: Everyone I filled about, and I’ve not even heard back even an email back yet, and I did this last week. So I think we have to be patient. And I know that’s hard because we are all kind of, you know [inaudible] right? Yeah. But we’re all in this together. We’re all here. And I think that’s one thing we have to remember.
Crystal Washington: Well, and everyone’s trying. So your bankers, a lot of times you’re getting information at the last minute, even these big banks, we can’t look at these.
Crystal Washington: You know, Karen, you talked about this is the first time we’ve had anything like this in the United States, right? You can’t look at this and set the same standards and expectations. Okay. Other loans and programs we’ve had in the past, everyone’s trying to have this, no, everyone’s trying to move as fast as they can from the government to the banks themselves. So let’s just practice a little grace. And you never know how when you are interacting with someone at a financial institution, your grace, how that might work for you later on as leverage when they, when they’re able to help you. So just be thanks.
Karen McCullough: Good. So maybe we should end with a little grace. I like that. I do like that. Let’s end with you guys tomorrow.