More Money Podcast - 087 Why You Need to Know Your Credit Score - Andrew Graham, Co-founder and CEO of Borrowell

Episode Date: February 1, 2017

Borrowell co-founder & CEO Andrew Graham shares his expertise on what everyone needs to know about credit scores and borrowing in Canada Long description: If you have any questions about credit scores, I guarantee you that they'll have been answered by the end of this episode. I was so fortunate to have been able to interview Borrowell co-founder and CEO Andrew Graham for this episode, because he really is the credit score guru! Not only did he start one of the fastest-growing Fintech companies in Canada, he also really knows his stuff and gave me quite the education. Which makes it quite obvious how his passion for financial literacy and offering Canadians better options for borrowing led him to co-found Borrowell. After working for several years in the banking industry, Andrew realized that Canadians were getting into deeper and deeper debt with sky-high interest rates holding them back. He wanted to find a solution that would save people from paying 19.99% interest on their credit card, but still be able to borrow to help them when they really needed it. We get into more detail about why he started Borrowell, what his company's mission is all about, and most importantly why it's so important to have a firm knowledge of credit and borrowing before you take out any type of loan. Here's a break down some of the key things we talked about in this episode, with some additional resources so you can know your stuff before you get out your next loan. Key Things to Know About Credit Scores Credit scores can range from 300-900. Just like a letter grade, the higher your score the better you are (though it's uncommon to actually achieve a perfect 900). The average credit score amongst Canadians is 749. Even if you have a "bad" credit score, you can improve with a few simple changes. Simple changes to improve your credit score include making consistent payments on your credit cards and bills and not always hitting the top end of your credit card limit. Your credit score can update as soon as the next day. More Helpful About Credit Scores Does It Hurt My Credit When I Check My Rate or Score? Credit Utilization: The Credit Score Tip Most Canadians Have No Idea About What Is A Credit Score And Why Does It Matter? Do you know your credit score? Canada’s new mortgage rules make it more important than ever Get Your Free Credit Score Want to find out your credit score for free without dinging it? You can now thanks to Borrowell. As I mentioned in this episode, I checked mine after my interview with Andrew. The last time I checked my credit score was when I was getting pre-approved for my mortgage. At the time it was in the high 700s, but when I checked again this time it had gone up to the low 800s (which is quite high for your reference. I even impressed Andrew!). Make sure to check yours at bwll.co/momoneypodcast. For more podcast episodes, check out the podcast page. Show notes: jessicamoorhouse.com/87 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 87 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessi Morris. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode. I'm pumped for this episode because it's a topic I haven't really covered in the show so far, which is insane because I have 87 episodes up here already. But so this one is really, we're going in depth about credit and credit scores and borrowing and loans and kind of honestly a world that I'm familiar with, I've dealt with, but not too much on the personal side. I've done a lot of research and everything like that, but I haven't really dealt with all that stuff in my personal life. As you know, if you listen to kind of episode one, my personal finance journey, I never really dealt with debt too much. I had a student loan in my last year of university and I paid that off pretty

quickly. And that's kind of it. I've been, you know, in the black ever since. I mean, now I've got a mortgage, so there's that. But otherwise, that's kind of my, you know, main experience with debt and all that kind of stuff. But so I'm really excited to have my next guest, Andrew Graham. He's the co-founder and CEO of BorrowWell. And we get into the nitty gritty of credit and credit scores and loans and all that good stuff in this episode. I learned a lot, so I know you're going to learn a lot too. And before I go to the interview, I'm excited to share that a little freebie for you. If you are interested in what your credit score currently is, you can do so for free without dinging your credit score. So all you have to do is go to bwll.co slash momanypodcast. So once again, that's bwll.co slash momanypodcast. I did it myself and

I'll share some of the results of that at the end of the episode. But I just wanted to see how my credit score has improved since I last checked it when I was getting pre-approved for a mortgage. And I wanted to see if I was going to beat my husband because last time his credit score was better than me. So I wanted to see if I was kind of improved over the past couple months. So feel free to do that. I'm going to include a link in the show notes, jessicamaros.com slash 87 if you want to check your credit score for free. But yeah, without further ado, here's my interview with Andrew. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show. I'm so excited to chat with you for this episode. It's great to be here, Jessica. Thank you. You're welcome. So I first like starting these episodes, you know, to get a little bit

more detail insight into who you are, and how you got to where you are now. So I don't know where you want to start if you want to start childhood or teenager, or whatever. But when did you, you know, realize that a you want to kind of be a business owner, start your own business? And also, you know, what got you into the personal finance landscape? Sure. Uh, well, I won't bore your listeners with going all the way back to my childhood. Um, but so I, you know, a number of years ago I was working in financial services. I was working in a bank. Um, and, uh, you know, noticed that credit cards are really sort of an interesting and in some ways strange

part of the financial services landscape. Because credit cards are great for transacting. They're great ways to buy things. You go to a, you know, you go into a store, you don't have to put in any cash. Very convenient. But it turns out a lot of people use credit cards to borrow. And so I was working in a bank and my part of the business had nothing to do with credit cards. And we'd always be beaten when it came to profitability and, you know, other kinds of metrics by the credit card folks. And I'd be like, well, what's going on there that makes this such a, you know, in many ways, attractive product if you're a bank and you're doing it properly. And it's because about 40% of people with credit cards carry a balance from time to time.

Really? 40%? That's quite high. Yeah, yeah. You know, there's about $85 billion of credit card debt in Canada. And about so 40% of people carry a balance, but about two thirds of the outstanding debt is held by people that carry a balance. The rest is people sort of who are going to pay off pay it off in a few weeks. So you've got a lot of people, you know, many, many people, you know, perhaps some of your listeners who at some points carry a balance. And it's something that many of us have done. I think I've done it once or twice in my life, certainly.

And I know many people do it more often because it is so convenient. It's a very convenient way to sort of borrow. But what's strange about credit cards is that there's really no what we call risk-based pricing. So if you think of how car insurance works, there is risk-based pricing. The riskier you are, the riskier your driving record, the more you're going to pay. But credit card interest rates don't work like that. Pretty much everybody pays the same. Chances are if you've got a credit card from a bank, you pay 20% interest or 19.99. And if you've got a credit card from a store, you'll pay in the 20s.

And if you ever miss a payment, your interest rate goes up. So many people are paying very high rates of interest, even if they've got great credit history. So you've got people paying 20% interest who have never missed a payment on credit card or on their mortgage or anything else. And that's just kind of crazy. It'd be like if everyone who had car insurance paid a very high rate, even if they're perfect drivers. So credit cards are this sort of strange animal in the financial services landscape that is kind of hidden in plain sight in the sense that we all have them. We've all known about them as we've grown up.

And I think it was as I was in the business sort of saying, wow, it's really strange that something operates like this. And surely there's got to be a way to help people who carry balances, but who have really good credit histories to be able to borrow more inexpensively. And looking around the world, we're really in the midst of a financial technology revolution and really specifically a lending revolution,

whether it's how mortgages are done, whether it's how loans are done. Auto loans is a lot happening right now and changing very quickly. And at that point, none of it had come to Canada in any meaningful way. So I thought this is a great opportunity for me to go off and start a business with some great co-founders and, you know, give people a different option. Give people an option for people with good credit, give them an option to pay lower rates of interest.

So kind of before you started BorrowWell, the only kind of ways that people could borrow is like obviously go to the bank traditional, like get a line of credit or something, use a credit card and pay like a ridiculous 19% or kind of go to the shady kind of payday loan type things. Like those were kind of the options available that I'm aware of. And I bet most people think that's all there is out there out there. So you want it to start borrow well as kind of a nice in between safe option. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you're right at the, for people with more challenged credit, you know, there, there are, um, you know, that's what we think of payday lending and that, that's a, that's an industry that charges much, much higher rates than credit card or anything we're

talking about. I mean, it really turns out to be hundreds of percent, hundreds of percent, excuse me. When you look at, you know, if you're borrowing for a month and you're paying whatever you're paying, it can be very, very expensive. You know, we're really focused on, you know, the bulk of Canadians. So, so, uh, you know, if you look at our credit sort of score cut off about 80% plus of Canadians would qualify for what we do. So we're not focused on the sort of elite. We're focused on the vast majority of Canadians. And I think you're right. Before

online lenders like Borrow all came along, I think you had a choice. You could either do what was easy, which was credit card, but expensive. Or you could do what was cheap, but not easy, which was going into a bank and applying and getting a bank loan. People ask me all the time, well, who are your customers? Couldn't they just go to a bank? And yes, our customers absolutely could go to a bank, almost every one of them. They're people with strong credit. But the reason that many don't is it just, it takes a lot of time. It takes a bunch of work. It can be an intimidating process. So I think what we're trying to do is be the best of both worlds. We're trying to have rates that are very, very competitive, lower than credit card, but also be very easy. So you can apply for, you can check your rate with us, you know, anytime of day or night from your phone,

from your home. It doesn't affect your credit score to check your rate. So like, why not do it? It takes like a minute. Why not do it? At least you'll sort of know what the option is. It's not nearly as challenging as going into a branch, for example. Absolutely. I feel like another important thing that I think I want to talk about too is lots of people kind of, you know, are a bit afraid of loans. For me, like I don't really like debt and I don't want to get a loan unless I really need it and I know I can pay it back. So what are you kind of doing to, you know, offer this great option that's cheaper than credit cards and stuff like that, but also make sure that you're educating people so they aren't just always in debt? Right.

And I think that's a great feature of loans versus lines of credit, for example. So if you think of a credit card, it's kind of like a line of credit in that you have a maximum that you can borrow, and that moves up and down every month. Or the amount you borrow moves up and down every month. Well, what we offer is a loan. And the difference is that you get a set amount of money from us up front. And then you have a monthly payment that never changes until the loan is gone. So it's like a mortgage, right? Like a mortgage, you get an amount of money up front that goes into buying your house. And then every month, you pay a certain amount.

That's a mixture of interest and principal. Excuse me. And then it's paid off after a certain number of years. Well, we've designed our product in the exact same way. So either you're getting a three-year term loan with us or a five-year term loan with us. And you have certainty that at the end of that period, if you've made all your payments, it is going to be paid off. So one of the challenges of a credit card and lines of credit have the same problem too, is if all you're doing is paying the minimum every month, it's going to last for years, decades. Whereas I think there's sort of a, an enforced, um, uh, you know, there's an enforced payoff time that comes with, with our product or a mortgage. Uh, so we think that that helps people who really are serious about tackling debt. And what kind of like incentives are like, how do you kind of make sure that people don't default or like, or what happens if they don't

make their payments with you guys? Well, you know, we, we treat that very seriously. Um, you know, we, we have money. Cause like the goal is you want them to pay you back. Yeah. We want them to pay us back. And look, our model starts to fall apart a bit if people don't, because if people don't pay us back, we can't charge the low rates that we charge. So it's, it's not good for anyone when people don't pay us back. So we do the same kinds of things that, um, uh, a credit card company or other banks would do if, if, if we, if people don't pay us back, first of all, we reach out to people and we say, Hey, look, you missed a payment. You know, is there an issue? Do you need us to reschedule it? And we're very accommodating. Um, you know, if someone needs to move a payment by a few days, for example,

you know, if someone avoids us or routinely doesn't pay, then we take other measures, you know, like getting a collection agency to be involved, reporting the non-payment to the credit bureau so that it affects people's credit, et cetera. So we do exactly the same thing a bank would do. And it does seem like it's pretty evident on your website that you are very focused on educating people. So you're not in the business of just, you want people to take out loans so you can make money off them.

It's like you wanna give people the option if they need to borrow, but you do want them to pay back, pay you back on time. And then you also want to educate them about their options in the future. So they're not always relying on, you know, racking on debt and stuff, which I think is very important because I think a lot of people don't realize, um, you know, kind of the, the good and bad parts of debt. I was actually just talking to a friend and he thought that it was a good thing to have like a balance on his line of credit. And I'm like, no, that isn't good. It's, you want to be out of debt. And they just kind of, I think a lot of people just don't have a

lot of education when it comes to credit and borrowing. So I think, did you want to kind of talk about, um, or just kind of, uh, you know, what are some of the things that you feel like a lot of, you know, maybe your customers or just Canadians in general don't know about credit and borrowing that you're like, this is something we really need to drive home so people are aware? I mean, I think one of the biggest things we found was that people, most people don't know a lot about their own credit history, or at least how it's perceived by banks and other lenders. So all of us have credit files with the credit bureaus in Canada. Anyone who's ever sort of borrowed anything or opened an account like a Rogers or a Bell account, I mean, you're creating a trail, essentially, of behavior, of how you've paid those bills, et cetera. And all of that

behavior is summarized in a credit score. So if you have a high credit score, that means you're someone who's traditionally paid bills on time. If you have a low credit score, it means that you've haven't paid bills on time, or you've used, you know, use credit in ways that are viewed as more risky. And I think what we found is many people who were applying for loans with us, like really didn't have a good sense of what their credit score was or what the credit history was. So we worked with Equifax, which is one of the sort of two large credit bureaus in Canada, to be the first ones to offer credit scores for free. And we do that as a way to really start a conversation with people in Canada. So we've had about 170 000 people get their credit

score with us for free um and also the good thing about that is not only is it free but it doesn't ding your credit score which i think is really important because i i've always been interested like before we got our mortgage i was always curious what our credit score was but i was too afraid to find out because i didn't want to affect it and like get lower because i'm like i don't want to check it and then you know apply for a mortgage and it's lower than it could have been. So I think, so can you explain like why it doesn't ding it? Yeah. It's, it's, so it's a great, it's a great point. And we get this question all the time. Does checking my credit score with Borewell affect it? And you're right. The answer is it doesn't. So why does checking your credit score or applying for,

why do, why do other times that people access your credit score, why is that effective? So it turns out that someone who's applying for credit a lot tends to be a more risky borrower, right? Like let's say you were running a bank and I came to you and said, I really want a loan. And by the way, I've asked 10 other people this morning if they'll lend me money, you might be more concerned than if I said, look, I've done my research and you're the organization I want to borrow from. So that's why applying for credit impacts credit score because there's a behavioral reason that

if you're someone who checks- I never thought of it like that, actually. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So that's why, and that's called a hard hit. So if you go and apply for an auto loan or a mortgage or something, then that's what's called a hard hit. Checking your score with us and, in fact, checking your rate on a loan with us doesn't impact your score. If you go through and get a loan with us, that'll count as an inquiry. And look, one inquiry, two inquiries, three inquiries every few months, that's not a big deal.

What is a big deal is if you have like 10 inquiries in the last month. That's much more of a concern. I think for people, um, check, go through you guys to check their free credit score a couple of times, or do they only go once? So what we do is we give the credit score,

uh, for free when, when the, you know, the money you apply and then we refresh it for free. And again, it doesn't affect the score every three months, every three months.

So we give you a sort of a picture over time. And there's a nice little chart in our website showing how your score has changed over time. And what's the benefit, I guess, of knowing your credit score? Like if you don't really have an intention of borrowing in the near future, maybe you will, maybe you won't, you don't know, what's the benefit of knowing what your credit score is? I think credit scores are important for a few reasons. First of all, you're right that if you do have the intention to borrow, whether it's getting a car or buying a house, that's a really important transaction for many, many people. For many of us, it's the biggest financial transaction we make.

And you want to know that if you're going to buy a house in the next six months, are you going to be able to qualify? So is a bank going to lend you money? And then now there are these new stress test rules that the government of Canada has brought in, where if you're below a certain score, it changes how lenders have to lend you money? And then now there's these new stress test rules that the government of Canada has brought in where if you're below a certain score, it changes how lenders have to treat you. So I think you want to know going into that process

where you stand. And it may be that, hey, look, if I can get my score up by 20 or 30 points, that's going to reduce the cost of borrowing. So it becomes really important for mortgages and car loans. I think the other, maybe two other reasons, in many cases, if you want to rent an apartment, a landlord will ask what your score is

as a way to sort of get a sense, accurately or not, about what your sort of character is like. Are you likely to pay the landlord? And then I guess the final reason is some jobs, especially in financial services, will require a check of your score. So a bank may not want to give you a job if you've got a very, very low score and you've shown that you don't follow through in your commitments, for example, to pay bills.

So for all of those reasons, having a good score is important. I mean, it's also kind of like a fun... I mean, I don't want to sort of say a score is like a game, but in some ways... Yeah, you want to know what your grade is. is, what's your grade and how are you doing? And like, what are the things that you can do to improve it? Because you can absolutely improve your credit score over the course of like three, six months. Um, and that's a good, good way to sort of know that you've got good, good habits when it comes to credit. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's a, an important thing to know to, if you want to have a really good idea of what

your financial picture is, how much money you have in bank, how much you owe, what your credit score is. It's a nice thing to just to have in there. So you really know what's going on with your money. Um, you talked a little bit about, you know, uh, improving your credit score. So if you find out your credit score, you're like, Oh, that needs some work. What are some steps that people can take to improve their credit score? Yeah, it's a great question. And there's some articles on our website, but a few very concrete things. The single most important thing is pay bills on time. So, and that includes like phone bills and other kinds of bills. So make sure you're paying your, if your car loan payment comes up, make sure you pay that. Make sure you pay your mortgage. And with credit cards, it's much better to pay the minimum payment than to pay nothing at all,

for example. Even if you can't pay the full balance this month, make sure you make the minimum payment because then you're at least technically up to date with your payments. So that's the most important thing. I think another thing you can do is make sure you haven't maxed out all your available credit. So if you've got a credit card with a $10,000 limit on it, and you're always at $9,900, that's a concern. That's a concern for many lenders. I mean, you're looking at sort of say, wow, this person's all maxed out. Are they in a bad situation? Is it even if you like borrow $9,000 on your credit card, but pay it back immediately, does that still have a bad effect to it it or they just don't want you to borrow

the full amount too much. Like it doesn't look good. I think even if you're, even if you're spending right to your limit every month, I think that can be a concern as well. So if you're spending right to your limit on your credit cards, I think you should either, you know, I never want to sort of say more credit is good. It's not more credit, but you should increase your limit. Don't increase your spending necessarily, but increase your limit so you can show that you're not spending up to your limit or even get a second card that you don't use, but at least it'll show to creditors,

well, this person actually has not one card with a $10,000 limit, but two cards with $10,000 limits and they're only using half of it. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So those are two sort of very, I think, practical things. Those are very practical and actionable things that people can start doing immediately. So do the effects of those changes kind of refresh after three months?

Is that kind of the timeframe? Well, so, you know, credit scores can change even daily. Oh, really? But most banks and other financial institutions report once a month. Yeah, okay. And, you know, typically big moves don't happen in a month's time. So that's why we think three months is the right period for most people to sort of get a refreshed, you know, typically big moves don't happen in a month's time. So that's why we think three months is the right period for most people to sort of get a refreshed, you know, view.

You know, if you're driving a car, you don't want to look at the speedometer every second, right? I mean, there's a right period of time to check that. And we think checking your score every few months is plenty. Yeah, that's awesome. I want to kind of switch gears a bit and talk a little bit about the entrepreneurship side of you. I think it's so cool that you took this big plunge into the fintech industry and started your own company. But I know being a Canadian and also knowing a lot of what's going on in the States, they've got a lot of fintechs over there. They've got a lot of cool

stuff going on over there. There's not as much fintechs in Canada. And it seems like all the ones I talked to, it's really hard to get started in Canada. Why do you think that is? And why did you still want to, you know, power through and start your own fintech company in Canada? I mean, look, I think starting a company anywhere isn't easy. And I'm sure many of your listeners who have done that, I mean, it's just not easy anywhere, right? But, you know, Canada is really interesting. We have one of the most profitable banking systems in the world. So on a per capita basis, banks in Canada make more, about twice as much profit as banks in the US do. And, you know, if you added up all the profitability of different

banking systems, the FT did a study on this, Canada came fourth. So it's like one of the most profitable banking systems in the world. So in many ways, Canada, I think is ripe for disruption. It's ripe for companies that can offer different options. There's other studies that have been done like the accounting firm and consultancy firm, E&Y did a study showing that Canadians use FinTech at a lower rate than people in other countries. So the average Canadian uses third party companies like a Borrowell just less often. And there may be sort of a more of an inherent conservatism amongst some Canadians about trying new things. So I think I might explain part of it, but I'm, I'm really optimistic about FinTech in Canada. I think, you know,

we've got a very robust financial system and a healthy part of our financial system is having options that go beyond big banks and that treat data securely, that offer all this kind of security that you'd expect from any financial institution, but offer, you know, great customer service, the latest, you know, technology and interfaces. You know, I think it's sort of like in some ways the best of both worlds, the best of what you'd expect from technology and the best you'd expect from financial services. And if companies like ours can do that, then I think we're going to have more people, you know, trying us and switching. Absolutely. And I think, yeah, one of the things when I do talk to people about, you know, different fintechs in Canada, lots of them, even people my age, millennials are concerned about, I think because it's not as popular yet in Canada compared to say the U S lots of people are really

kind of sheepish to try because they're afraid like, Oh, what if it goes under? Will I lose all my money? Or it's all online. There's no people behind it. Is it just a robot? Like there's just not a lot of, uh, certainty of what's going on. But I personally, just because I am more in that sphere and I have dealt with a lot of them, I think it's a really exciting time for people and money. Before, I mean, I'd say even five years ago, there weren't that many options to borrow or to invest. And now there's so many different options, which is,

I mean, I think it's exciting. And hopefully BorrowWell is kind of one of the, you know, it will be very important, I think, in the long term because it will be one of the first fintechs that really kind of helped fintechs and new options available in the financial industry, which is exciting. Because, yeah, I think it's not good if there's only like five options out there. You know, like that's not good if there's only like five options out there, you know, like that's, that's not a good thing. Well, you know, and I think we're, we're trying to make it easy in the sense of maybe you don't want to get a, get a loan today. Maybe you don't need a loan today, but everybody needs to know their credit score. It's helpful for anyone. And, um, if you come get it from us, it's free. Uh, it won't affect your score to get it. And we've even started offering, uh, recommendations of products that you could qualify for given your score,

um, which is interesting. So for all those reasons, it's a great way, hopefully like a very low friction way for people to try. So, you know, I'd say to anyone listening, I mean, come try, get your score, let us know how you find the experience. And if you're in a situation where getting a loan is helpful, then that can be sort of the next step in the relationship together. Exactly. And I think an important thing to note also is, you know, for all the people who are a bit wary to try something new like this, cause it is all online and you're like, Oh, it's brand new pretty much. Uh, you know, it's, it is really difficult to start a financial services company in Canada because there's so many regulations, but that's actually a good

thing. Cause it means the ones that have survived have made it to launch day and are still afloat. It's because there's a lot of regulations in place, so they're not really going to go anywhere. And I think that's an important thing for people to know. They're not just going to, you know, um, sink the next day. That's just, it's impossible. Really? It's really, really tricky. Um, before we go, um, is there anything else that you really want to make sure that people know about, you know, either yourself or borrow well, or just credit in general? I think it's, you know, a topic that, yeah, we all deal with credit and yet we, it seems like most people have no clue about it. I would love to know if you, if there's anything else on your mind that you want to make sure that people are aware of. I mean, I think we've covered a lot of great ground. I mean,

I think really knowledge is power. Um, sometimes I meet people and I say, Hey, you should get your score. And they say, look, I just don't want to know that. It's not good. I don't, I'm sure it's not good. I just don't want to know. Lots of people are like ignorance is bliss. Right. Exactly. And, and I, like, I totally get that. Um, uh, I, I, I get, I mean, it's, you know, there's enough challenges in life that you don't need to sort of open, you'll get another one necessarily. But on the other hand, it's like, if you do want to buy a house at some point, your credit score matters.

And so it's better to know there's a problem or better to know there's not a problem. I mean, better to sort of be like, oh, actually, you know what? I thought there was that bill I missed. I didn't pay three years ago, but actually, you know what? That's gone away. It doesn't matter at all. So I, you know, knowledge is, is power. You don't have to tell anyone what your score is. It's your information. It probably shouldn't tell anybody that. You probably shouldn't tell anyone that.

Yeah. Anyhow, it's, it's great to start. I'm curious, actually, I'm just, uh, do you have an idea of what people borrow for? Like when they go to borrow well and like get out a loan, what are the typical things that they use that money for that they maybe just don't have the cash for? So I mean, I think that the main reason that people would borrow money from us is when they have higher cost debt

that they want to consolidate, like a credit card. That'd be the number one reason. But then there's, we also would rather that someone borrow from us than put some money on a credit card. And we know that many people in Canada, um, just haven't had the ability, the opportunity to sort of to save. So many people are living, um, you know, paycheck to paycheck. So let's say even people with very good jobs, right? Like this is not a, it's, it's,

this is not a phenomenon of, of low income. It's a phenomenon across income levels that, um, so, you know, let's say, you know, your house springs a leak and you got to, you know, spend $10,000 on a roof. Like you can't delay that. Or let's say your kid needs braces and you don't, your health plan doesn't cover it. Like, you know, that's probably an investment you want to make. Um, so things come up and people, many people end up putting it on credit cards. So we'd rather, I'd really, you know, we'd rather that if you have put something like that on credit card, we can help you pay it off. Or if you've got an expense coming up like that, rather than, rather than putting on

a credit card, get a, get a quote from us, see how much it would cost to borrow from us. If it's better than your other options, then, then you should do it. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I feel way more informed about credit scores now. And I'm probably going to check mine when I get home. I hope you do.

Absolutely. I'm interested to see if it's gone up. When me and my husband checked our credit scores back this summer when we were getting pre-approved for a mortgage, I found out that his was actually better than mine, which kind of pissed me off. Because I'm like, there's no way that's possible. I'm the personal finance guru in the household, and his was better. So I'm going to make him do it and we're going to compare

again. Yeah. I want to see if mine's improved and his is that. I want to see who beats the other. You can hide one of his bills when it comes into this. That's so bad, but maybe, maybe I will. Well, thank you again for joining me. It was awesome chatting with you. Pleasure. Thanks a lot. And that was episode 87 with the wonderful Andrew Graham, co-founder and CEO of BorrowWell. I just want to give him a super big shout out because he was so nice. He was a super busy guy, but he even took some extra time after the interview to let me kind of nerd out because I had some extra questions about how BorrowWell worked, what they did, what the back end looks. And he actually gave me a whole kind of a tutorial on how the whole credit score thing

worked and how they collect data and all this really cool stuff. So thank you, Andrew, for letting me nerd out at your office. I really appreciate it. I kind of mentioned that I also did check my credit score after this interview because I was super curious, like where am I at compared to where I was back in the summer? So I went to bwll.co slash momoneypodcast to check my credit score for free. And let's just say, so when I first got my credit score checked a while back, it was the high 700s, I think I wrote down. And now it's low 800. So I have improved quite a bit. I haven't got my husband to do it. I'm going to do it when he gets home from work today and compare notes. So I have improved quite a bit. I haven't got my husband to do it. I'm going to do it when he gets home from work today and compare notes. And I'm really fingers crossed I beat him

this time because come on, I've got a personal finance podcast. I've got, you know, come on, it's not cool. I've got to beat you. So I encourage you to also check out your credit score and maybe try to do a little competition with your, I don't know, friend, partner, roommate, whatever. It's definitely a good way to, you know, see where you're at credit wise and see if you need to make any changes like kind of we talked about in the episode. So make sure to also check out the show notes. I'm going to include links to everything and a bunch more information about stuff that we talked about in this episode, you can check that out at JessicaMorehouse.com slash 87. And yeah, thanks again, Andrew, for joining me. And I will see you back here tomorrow because I have another listener series

episode to share with you, which I'm very excited about. So have a wonderful Wednesday, and I'll see you back here tomorrow. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.