everyone has their own unique views and needs when it comes to financial success if you'd like to leave your financial woes behind and live a life of Financial Freedom you've come to the right place welcome to saving with Steve show hosted by Steve Sexton the show will help you with the ins and outs of money we talked about financial issues that could be costing you thousands of dollars and keeping you up at night we talked about money tax reduction saving more spending less 401K risk management retirement and everything under the sun that relates to you having a healthier happy relationship with money now here is your host of saving with Steve Steve Sexton welcome to the saving Willis TV show where we talked about the ins-and-outs of money everything under the son of relates to you having a healthier happy relationship with money my name is Steve sex and I want to thank you all for joining us today I also want to have a special thanks to everybody that's listening share the show with friends and Associates we just hit over 4
20000 listeners thank you for all that hate you let's let's talk a little bit about today before the pandemic American workers were already stressed to the tune of 190 billion dollars and and helped your expensive the World Health Organization it declared burn out of syndrome caused by unrelenting stress and I never got handled and you know what we've been living in covid-19 for the last year we seen Devastation in the news parents are worried about their children back as people started working remotely while remote working Lisa overworked employees as soon as I can Pewters all day no they never go outside you know what you can look like I don't even get vitamin D and they suffer loneliness we have a stroke from stress to success for very happy to have her things you need to do to have a successful tax season and after that you do banking credit card fees cost America
roughly two hundred billion dollars a year likely there's several services that run minimum speed can reduce or eliminate the speed we have piled kesserwani the founder and CEO cushion cushion to save consumers more than 5 million dollars in bank and credit card be since its founding in 2018 so that's something else. This is called Bears burnout toolkit and I love Davis admission and I'm very excited because I have a daughter in college and son and calling it and they're dealing with these things here and the tools in this book are so helpful to everybody that's dealing with this in and then then I want to kick out her Mission Genesis mission is to help leaders and teams banished burnout in their organization so employees can come to work healthy happy and ready to work
before we get ruining this I know that you got 20 years in h r i t and other things your coach yes'm programs to help people how did you get started in you know that stress relief business so to speak in Spanish it's kind of a long story but I'll shorten it for you about 5 years ago a client called me up and said we want you to do a program about stress but we don't want the typical mindfulness meditation sleep self-care kind of stress while all those things are important of so many people are already doing that we want you to go deep and I said are you sure I can go really deep so I had done a lot of work on myself and I had already been studying about cognitive behavior therapy which is basically what I've been doing my whole life my whole adult life and so basically I had a book from a friend and I called him up and I said I'd love some of the concepts in here I would like to pay a royalty so you don't have to do that I don't own the content is owned by
Albert Ellis Institute Albert Ellis is one of the co-founders of cognitive behavior therapy so I created this program and I called it banished burnout moves from stress to success to help people understand how they normally react to stress and then how to help them change it. It's okay why you need one and how to conduct it that's perfect so before you that you have to understand one more piece so together they make the tool called stop and audit. Part fans. Take a deep breath of zerve and then proceed what that means is when you're in the midst midst of a stressful situation somebody rear-ended you know you're in a long line you can't find something you need in a store and you're in a hurry and you get upset anytime you start to feel upset it's a normal human being a behavior to react but the question is how upset
we have to get and how long do you have to stay there so what stop helps you do is to take the reaction out of the fear center of the brain the amygdala and bring it to the prefrontal cortex so that you can grab control of your overreacting thoughts and say do I really want to be this upset over this situation I mean there's a long line at Starbucks and the mother at the counter so I can honey do you want the laminar the cherry and you want to tear your hair out about your dream has happened disagreements at work disagreement with friends how upset you have to get it doesn't hurt the other person when you're upset it only hurts you so the observed part of stop takes you then to the Express Auto in the stress audit we need to understand how we are already were reacting to stress starts with the physiology when people get upset things happen physiologically elevated heart
rape lynching jaw knots in the stomach we all have them one person even told me she gets rashes headaches neck aches all those kind of things sometimes that's the only clue that you're having a reaction because in a meeting you're not going to argue even though you might be upset if you pay attention to your body it'll tell you hey hey I'm not happy and then as soon as possible after the meeting work the stress which helps you understand what happened how you reacted physically emotionally verbally house that did you get and what is any addictive behavior did you engage in my same throughout my whole working career is sometimes you get caught off guard and summoning something somebody says something to you that you didn't it just hit you in the corner so to speak in as part of the emotional baggage stuff I know that I realize that now but you know what you you want to say something but you don't know the right thing to say cuz you don't want to overreact so I think it's really great because I bled many organizations before
just taking a big deep breath and I saw that as part of stop is to take that big deep breath slowly but surely and try and think cuz sometimes you like I can't think I don't know that it's really important to stop and pause so that you have time to think before you react because you don't want to just be out there reacting reacting to get defensive we get angry with start a big fight things get volatile emotionally verbally we want to stop and if you can't think of something to say say I'll get back to you or just just Paws sometimes I recently read something that said if you need privacy and it depends on what the other person said but if it's sort of confrontational you might say to the other person would you repeat that what did you just say to me and sometimes that fixes it. You know what in fact sometimes I don't even hear what they said when it's a bad thing you know it's funny
that goes into the next thing which is unpacking your emotional baggage cuz I think a lot of you know I'm just reading your book and thinking about the way I reacted and I'm not a person that reacts a lot but when I do it's not really angry or yelling or anything like that but I can feel it in my body and I'm thinking to myself why is it occurring I have no clue but wouldn't I read the part on unpacking your baggage could you help people understand that yes it is my contention and I'm sorry I don't have the statistics to back it up and I've talked to a lot of people in the field about this it is my contention that is a huge majority of Americans have not unpacked their emotional baggage so what do I mean by that if you notice somebody at work or at home was having an extreme reaction to something that's a minor thing that's a clue that they're still hanging onto something from their chop usually childhood it could be from a parent a teacher or a peer could be something that happened in a prior job whatever it is they're reacting to something from the past
for example some people are still looking for love from their parents because they didn't get the right kind of upbringing and and show of love and emotional support from their parents parents might be gone and the person is still hanging on and still reacting to that hole in their heart so it's I believe that we all and I've done it and everybody around me has done it to dig deep into the past and either with the help of the therapist or working on your own kind of journaling that's where you can find out what's going on inside you whenever you yourself have a reaction to something that you see is a little extreme it's time to get out your pen and paper and by the way research shows that writing with a pen and paper not typing on a device although that's better than nothing but riding with a pen and paper actually has a deeper connection to the brain and gets more out and then you can say oh and then things start writing Daniel pink talks about this thing's come out that you didn't even know we're bothering and you're like oh I didn't
that was connected to this Google even the writing things down because I'm a gratitude person so every morning there's things I'm grateful for and I found that even in the worst times of life just riding those things down make all the difference in the world and I you know people keep asking me why I have a a little Journal that I do that with so and I got a few other things as well when we go ahead and take a quick break right now and we'll be right back so stick with this we have more with Janice Lipton were talking about banishing burnout going from stress to success whether you're in college whether you're working whether your house Mom or wife or taking care of the kids you really want to listen to if you really want to look at this book is it could make a difference is already make me reading it myself more expert advice for having a happier relationship with money still to come on the saving with Steve show
don't let your financial woes keep you up at night and prevents you from living a life of Financial and personal freedom hi I'm Steve Sexton post of the saving with Steve show where did he talk about the ins-and-outs of money does Financial issues that could be costing me thousands of dollars causing stress keeping you up at night we're going to talk about money tax reduction saving more spending your investment risk management retirement and everything is so sweet with you having a healthier happy relationship with money soon as you've ever dreamed of living a life of Financial and personal freedom you owe it to yourself and your family to tune into the saving with Steve show join me Steve section of the saving with Steve show as we talked about everything under the sun when it comes to money to learn more about the show visit saving with Steve. Us that's saving with Steve. Us saving with Steve. Us will see you soon
welcome back to the show that is here to help you achieve your financial goals it's the saving with Steve show now here's your host Steve Sexton I just truly thank you for tuning in I appreciate you letting your friends bam and Associates know about the show all the replays are available in Saving with Steve. Us if you're enjoying stories of helpful information inside on shaving with Steve and courage you distract our YouTube channel so you never miss the show hey by the way check out a few of our fuel is that you can't help radio bbsradio talk radio New York City e360tv Las Vegas TV network all these networks are dedicated to empower you to solve problems uplift your spirit and live a life of financial personal freedom you can also follow us on Facebook and join the saving with C-section Insider Club shaving with Steve. Us and get all your replays exclusive gas and and more so we're back with Janice Janice is helping us get rid of the burn out the stress in the so on and you know what I want
first talked about after we got out for emotional baggage it's you say the first stop changing your first stop changing your behavior by building awareness that was impacted by the stress audit and the stop process those are the first Keys II keys or the second pill of the toolkit is about looking at your typical reaction so in general the typical reactions to stress are over reaction and over-generalization let me give you an example if somebody if you're like I talked about before here in a long line at Starbucks in the mom at the front of the timer's going to chocolate and you're in a hurry you got to get to work you start to build up these reactions like I said before in your body your heart is pounding and you might you might even start saying something or let's say you're in a store looking for something and you know they have this particular thing that you can't find it and you're getting irritated cuz you have to be somewhere and you start to build up these little taste in your head
if I can't find this they told me they had it they pointed to that corner I'm in this corner I can't find it I can't believe you're so stupid you go find someone to help you and your running morte I'm going to let them know how stupid they are and all the and this is a true story this happened to me and I had this little talk to myself after I had been obviously working on myself and I said to myself you are going to stop overreacting and you are going to smile at the person affect your honor and you're going to say how's your day going and get them to smile and then you're going to say would you please help me I can't find this blue sweater or whatever it is you're looking for so it's good to know that you're over reactions are typical but the important part is to grab control an interrupting negative thoughts and then reality spend those thoughts and say this is not that big a deal is anybody in the hospital is anybody got suddenly broken legs know this situation.
not need to be this extreme let this go so it gives you perspective so that you're not always overreacting in mind that a lot with text messages and emails really have no clue about the emotion and I call my God they said this and you're like going really I didn't read that in there but you and the other party would that scenario you just talked about see that's where you ask somebody for help and they come right back in front of your face and say there it is in high school he was breaking up with you might want to pick up the phone I don't think texting is the way to break up with somebody so you know of course he's grown out of that thankfully but a lot of people are using checks for all kinds of communication rather than I'll see you at 6 yeah but there's no emotion there there's no feeling you can't see somebody's face you can't do any of that doesn't matter what the message is it just comes off sometimes wrong and people read into it and they get the
when they read into something else and then like you said it just snowballs and gets bigger and bigger and pretty soon somebody sit down with you and you have no click no idea why the driver that cut you off on the road when you're yelling at the car nobody can hear you you're alone in your car so why are you yelling so how can you know what I'd like to talk about 3 and would like to talk about how you can keep things at arm's length lot of people know they don't allow they don't know themselves to keep things in arm length to protect themselves so if it's interesting to me and I was like this to I did not know how to say no and I wanted everyone to like me I was a people-pleaser I was a young adult and until I learn how to say no I was always like tasting approval from everyone else but myself and I finally realized that if I learn to set my own boundaries that I would be happier the other person might be upset with me but
that's on them and I'll never forget one time a friend called me up on a I don't know a week before she was going home to New York and I'm in California and she said can you pick me up when I returned us it sure what time she said 1 in the morning I said on a Sunday night instead you know I have a job and I have to be there by 8 which means I have to get up by 6:30 there's no way I can pick you up at 1 and get enough sleep to have a decent day of work and she started screaming and yelling you're my friend I can't believe this guy friend would pick me up I said I'm sorry I can't I wish I could I'm so sorry and she kept yelling and I kept saying I'm sorry I wish I could I can't and finally she let it go now he eventually that friendship fizzled away but that's not the kind of friends you want that are so demanding and have such unreasonable expectations that you're supposed to feel guilty or so all of those went away once that occurred
yes I bet so with all the perspective you suddenly had not worth it it's just not worth it okay so how can anybody build habits for Optimal Wellness performance and focused stressed eliminate Focus productivity the holeshot important to set goals for yourself no matter what they have goals and it's all one big packet just not just about setting the goals it's helping your selfie mentally and physically and emotionally happy so it might mean sitting down with your boss and saying let's work on some goals for me I want to manage my career and gets the next step what would it take for me to get promoted by such-and-such a date with such-and-such possible salary promotion 4% 10% whatever but it's a matter of being clear with yourself and your family and the people that work that have an impact on your ability to improve through the organization
is it means asking for a mentor because you might have a boss that's not as emotionally intelligent not as organized I really recommend and this is a separate tool in my tool kit I believe it's chapter 6 find an accountability buddy and or a mentor and I actually get scripts for how to email them what to ask maybe somebody is very busy and they can only give you a month say okay could we meet every Monday at 8 a.m. for 20 minutes I'll have one question each time and I only need you for four times when you ask somebody to help you be very specific and clear what it is you need help with and how much time because as you know everybody's really busy these days I think that's wonderful accountability Partners belong to Mastermind groups and we kind of do the same thing for each other and I think that's that's just outstanding sometimes just being able to talk to somebody for 5 minutes makes all the difference in the world
restore me out loud as I come up with my own answers but knowing that you have somebody else beside yourself to brainstorm with helps you get and then they'll say one little thing like yeah that's really great don't forget that you're banished burnout tool kit also addresses boundaries and so then you throw that in and you've got your answer could be a five minute phone conversation really good questions and I know I got it thanks preciate it exactly I had a wonderful wonderful boss many years ago long before we knew what he motion intelligence was he was emotionally intelligent and I was a software support wrap back in my tech days and when I had a client that was upset the first thing we were taught to do was try to acknowledge what was going on and then get them focused on the solution and then hang up write it up and come back to him and I would go into my boss and I would say so and so's upset here's what I recommend he said that sounds really good and don't forget blah blah blah maybe blah blah blah was the bigger answer
make me feel that I have the knowledge and the power to create an answer for my clients as wonderful and I like the fact that you talked about having people connect with her boss and that way everybody's on the same page and we we've all been in and work environments or other environments for people are just not on the same page and that just means you're not going to get to where you want to go because people all everybody's on the same page but everybody's on the same page it's easier to do your part because everybody knows so that's really cool necessarily saying no but it's about helping your boss help you manage your time so the boss comes to you with an exciting new project oh guess what I've got this great new project and you say okay that's great do you see these eight large piles on my desk they might be virtual piles but then you can go on to say which of these other projects do you want me to stop working on or reschedule or dolap to somebody
it's because I'm yes I'm very excited about this new project but we are going to be burning out if we don't offload some of these other projects so sometimes it's a matter of clarifying responsibilities and timeline where can people get connected with you where can I buy your book cuz I wrecked only recommended I'm already giving out to other people so you know I just have about 20 seconds left I just wonder if you could share how people to connect with you to get your support your coaching as well as the book pretty simple and the book pages name book okay perfect that's awesome I want to thank you for joining us today this is been a lot of fun and I'm really excited to have you here so without I hope you have a great day and I hope maybe we'll have an soon thank you so much. I really appreciate it was a really fun interview
from Christian looking to save you a whole bunch of money when it comes to bank fees and credit card fees more expert advice for having a happier relationship with money still to come on the saving with Steve show
don't let your financial woes keep you up at night and prevents you from living a life of Financial and personal freedom hi I'm Steve sex and post of the saving with Steve show where did he talk about the ins-and-outs of money those financial issues that could be cost me thousands of dollars causing stress keeping you up at night we're going to talk about money tax reduction saving more spending less your investment risk management retirement and everything is so sweet with you having a healthier happy relationship with money soon as you've ever dreamed of living a life of Financial and personal freedom you owe it to yourself and your family to tune into the saving with Steve show join me Steve section of the saving with Steve show as we talked about everything under the sun when it comes to money to learn more about the show visit saving with Steve. Us that saving with Steve. Us saving with Steve. Us will see you soon
welcome back to the show that is here to help you achieve your financial goals it's the saving with Steve show now here's your host Steve Sexton said I want to just take a real quick moment here and say thank you to all the people for tuning in I appreciate you sharing this with your friends family and Associates we just hit 420,000 listeners this last month and were looking to exceed that pay all the replays are available at saving with Steve. Us if you're enjoying the stories of helpful information inside of saving and seeds that encourage you to subscribe to your YouTube channel so you never miss the show hey please check out a few of our Affiliates at UK help radio bbsradio talk radio New York City e360tv Las Vegas TV networks all these networks are dedicated to empower you to solve problems uplift your spirit live a life of financial personal freedom on Facebook and join the same thing with Steve sex and insiders Club from where
Financial tips and information at saving with Steve. Us y'all can get all the replays exclusive gifts from shows from Gaston on now we're talking with Paul Kessler right founder and co-founder and CEO of cushion now one of the things are people don't realize you're in the last year is the average Bank fees have jumped almost 44% from last year overdraft fee screw for over a hundred percent you know what and that's because many consumers overdrew their accounts do Dakota in what's really interesting is this a percent of consumers over three more than 10 times for your account for 74% of overdraft fees and most of these are middle-income consumer companies doing is they're negotiating leafy and it makes it easy to get a handle on your finances Christian has helped a customer save over 5 million dollars in bank and credit card fees just since 2018 and they've got a long way to go cuz Hey there increasing their customer
call welcome to the show I think it's really interesting about how you went about starting this business would happen to you and having your phone could you share that started with our listeners so the origin I would say is not a very exciting one it's kind of one of those things where you're dealing with problems in your life and then you looked around and noticed that there's a lot of other people suffering so the quick back story here is that my parents are having an issue with the top for US bank and they happen to get out of the country and it was basically a what they thought was a closed credit cards that have been hit with an annual membership fee and then late fees and interest charge of the start of the compound and things got out of control since they're out of the country I started to triage this problem with the bank and they're treating us pretty horribly which was weird because my parents have been with them for over 15 years while dealing with that problem I've decided to audit my own finances not about $400 Plus in my bank fees that I had accrued during my
is as employee at Twitter cuz I was traveling at a time I thought everything was on autopay you're not to be wrong and I just thought to myself you know I'm going to probably start a company one day I don't want to be worried about somebody taking their hand into my bank account pulling out cash whenever they feel like it so I could find a service that could help them protect my money essentially and that led to a very deep dive and audit of the Consumer Finance Basin few years back and I was pretty disappointed with what I found because a lot of the apps are doing very trivial things like that. The levels of automation would do things like move money from account to account be you or 10 generic template to cancel the subscription but anything that required reading for work. Work was on you didn't give you twelve steps that you have to go execute it and that's just not what consumers want people are stressed about their money and finances anyone to disengage not engage even deeper and that's where I found there's a massive opportunity to go to product.
your face is to help manage a lot of your day-to-day finances on your behalf but we needed a first product that would solve the problem and earn consumer trust and that's why we started with the Banksy negotiation product and just going to wrap that up here you know it is over a hundred million people like losing money to bank fees and credit card interest the tune of 200 billion dollars each year until cushion came along there was no digital service to do anything about it so we decided this would be a good first product get some value for the consumer and then start expanding our product sweet wonderful media reports with local and national news for more than 10 years now and I would say at least once during the year somebody has to be report on how to get rid of Bing fries or Bank fees and you know what the standard process for a typical person is hey call the bank and you say you know what I been a really great customer for many many many many years and I've got this feeling I'd like you to wave it and that person typically can't do it so they have to go ask the supervisor
and that supervisor has to do it and sometimes you get the answer of now and I tell people just call back and call back and I've had people call back 6 7 times and they got it done but that's a lot of work to do that and I had some reports from that were people that she said you know what that's a lot of work to buy not even be worth the time for the amount of fees but what are things that I don't think people realize is how much fees are actually getting charged and how much they can get refund could you shed light on that stupid comments there one is yes you can call the bank and we recommended to be honest with you if you have something urgent call the bank don't even use cushion and we're going to happen if people be advocating for themselves but the part of calling the bank is I actually had an issue with my bank few days ago and I got put up put on hold for 47 minutes and I eventually dropped off the call as we have the middle of a workday unbelievable how you get up and so I just don't want to deal with that but in terms of
what's the question do you ask like shutting the light on how do Amish people have the number one reaction folks get when they sign up for cushion is I can't believe how many fees I've paid in the last year us it's usually like people for people highlight the money they're getting back there typically dilating how much fees that we detected on the reason why is when you think about a fee probably think about overdraft your late fees are very straightforward easy names but the 15,000 banks in the US are financial institutions they all have very obscure names for the fees they charge you so Credit Union might charge you a CP item cpi-m Zaxby's in overdraft fee masquerading in a different name that's easy to sneak into your bank statement and our systems designed to Define all those and surface them to the consumer so you part one is being aware of how many fees you have and then part 2 is understand how to even approach negotiating this calling the bank doesn't mean you're a good customer if you don't have leverage in that moment they don't care if you've been a good customer but if you're depositing your money just do the checking account or you recently made of
pain on your credit card there more likely to play ball so it's not just about using some generic template that you see on a blog post and hoping for the best dude has to be some strategy around how do you ask for your money back that's right that's no so here's the big question why would banks give him back the fees so you're going back to the point I just made there are fifty thousand financial institutions in this country that's a lot and they're all competing for the same pool of users or customers I should say and the cost to acquire each customer to bank and range from anywhere from $200 up to $2,000 is quite expensive so they know that they have to play ball they know they have to give you some money back in order to not lose you completely and then have to pay even more money to replace you as a customer and that's why fishing is able to do with it doesn't that's why they were they able to call her bank in some way shape or form to go see these fees if we were in the UK for example where they have a handful of Banks and they all cooperate with each other this wouldn't be feasible
does the the overdraft fee maybe they feed a pay annually or monthly for their bank account or if they're late on a credit card payment but they don't understand what other fees could be they could be getting access to the list of Bank fees that exist are Our Endless some banks charge you fees for requesting a paper actual paper copy of your bank statement or even talk to a bank agent the bank will charge that as well so the list is very long however most of the fees that we see we have over 20 billion dollars worth of transaction David that we've analyzed is concentrated to five main types it's overdraft fees ATM fees a monthly service charges on checking account side and then late fees and interest on credit cards that's the biggest pool of us out there and there's a lot I think the myths are not really about the types of these that exist it's more about what you can do about them a lot of folks think that you cannot negotiate these fees because they're vacant your terms of service that's not true you can negotiate anything
people think that your credit card your credit score might get harm if you try to fight the species is actually the opposite if you get late fees waived you guys you report that to the credit bureau and get a boost in your credit score and it was noticed that allowed to miss tomorrow people not really knowing what you can and can't do and the after-effects into the main thing is for us to stand up for yourself don't just accept these fees that's the biggest what's the biggest Miss that's out there I totally agree with that cuz you know what if you're dealing with somebody that's lower middle-income where every dollar counts you know if you can get a few hundred dollars back that can make a big difference were picking up Dad saving for retirement all sorts of things so I think that's great advice you should always fighting always fight so let's talk a little bit about how your service works and then we're going to go to break and then we'll finish out for their service works is anybody can sign up for cushion on a website at Mission. AI folks go through a very light on boarding process where we ask you to connect your back
credit card securely and some basic information about you just to make sure that is actually your bank account and then you just dropped into the dashboard where you can see how much money you spent on Bank fees in the last year and you can add as many banks or credit cards as you'd like and then from there we can make is assessment of whether or not they want to move forward and efficient negotiate these fees for them or not and if they do they didn't have to take a annual subscription to our service and we'll negotiate for them in the movie Set It Up is the cheapest descriptions of $36 which is the cost of one overdraft fee but that's for us to negotiate all your fees for an entire year and you keep a hundred percent of the refund and so that models work very nicely for both of us in our customers so far so hold on and we'll be right back stick with us with your what I was going to show you how they go about saving you a whole bunch of money and thank you so big with us we'll be right back more expert advice for having a happier relationship
money still to come on the saving with Steve show
don't let your financial woes keep you up at night and prevents you from living a life of Financial and personal freedom hi I'm Steve Sexton post of the saving with Steve show where did he talk about the ins-and-outs of money those financial issues that could be costing me thousands of dollars causing stress keeping you up at night we're going to talk about money tax reduction saving more spending less your investment risk management retirement and everything is so sweet with you having a healthier happy relationship with money soon as you've ever dreamed of living a life of Financial and personal freedom you owe it to yourself and your family to tune into the saving with Steve show join me Steve section of the saving with Steve show as we talked about everything under the sun when it comes to money to learn more about the show visit saving with Steve. Us that saving was Steve. Us saving with Steve. Us will see you soon
welcome back to the show that is here to help you achieve your financial goals it's the saving with Steve show now here's your host Steve Sexton hello and welcome back to the same thing with Steve show I truly thank you for tuning and appreciate you letting us know your friends are Family Associates know about the show if you would like to get the replays you can always go to shaving with Steve. Us and you know what it's probably crazy checked out our Affiliates at UK help radio BTS Radio talk radio New York City e360tv in Las Vegas TV network again all these networks are dedicated to empower you to solve problems uplift your spirit of Life of Financial and personal freedom so with that let's come back with Paul Paul he's here he's the CEO of cushion Takashi just finished talking to us through the process by which somebody go to his website and figure out how much they can save how many Banksy and credit card fees can get back for a you know could you go over that the defeat structure again one more time
call the way it's set up today's anybody can sign up and find out how much money they spent on Bank fees for free if they want to move forward with cushion negotiating on their behalf we used to have them all over to take it to Mission of the money we got your back but once you start getting people thousands of dollars back that commission can get very large do we switch to a model or we charge upfront annually 3648 or $96 per year and the guy said that the lowest year $36 is equivalent of one overdraft fee and for that will negotiate all your fees for an entire year and you keep a hundred percent of the reasons and so it's pretty great deal for the consumer that's that's an outstanding in fact quite frankly that's very very expensive especially if you can step in the door and say hey let's kick the tires and see if there's anything here for me and you know what if they're finding out the guts no more hundred dollars in fees and get back and we have to pay $36 that's more than a 10 x return on investment so I think it is pretty great so okay so let's start talking about again
how does Christian go about getting back to the species I know you're using artificial intelligence to help with that sounds really cool to me cuz I know nothing about it honey I'm happy that I'm going to drop it to you soon how this works so there's a few things that are system needs to do behind the scene to make this happen for the customers one is like I said before detecting machines no matter how obscure the name no matter what the bank our system needs to be able to find these fees cuz I can't find them from there we have machine learning models that review your entire situation in history of transactions with respect and get a feel for it if I were to negotiate anything right now what are the best group receives to go after roughly how much money can I get back what is the right thing to say to the bank at this moment and from there it gets to work the system will then generate the appropriate message or letter that it wasn't sent to the bank and the way to commute the negotiation happens three different channels are some banks we have
access to secure message portal so if you have a bank that we're lets you fill out a form and send an email in our our boss able to go in and do all of that on behalf of the consumer right up to email send it to the bank when the bank responds with other machine learning models that read the email this is very important when we started the scale we got to a point where we looked at each other and said either we have to hire 50 people to read these emails or we need to invest heavily in machine learning we started High Frankie chisme she wanted space shuttle made this all possible in an automated fashion so sending secure emails doing online chats with human agents and also in some cases if there's a small Credit Union that we're not going to build custom text to support our system will write up a letter with a customer signature and mail that out to that specific bank or credit union and as a result were able to cover all Financial Plus all done electronically and so somebody's thinking hey I got a ride all these letters they don't you're going to do that there you need to have somebody that's how quickly does the emails get responded back there just curious
the dust I think the big difference I think folks and I got a lot of people are stressed out they need this money yesterday on Fort there's two things that are unfortunate one is we are always at the mercy of the banks process and how backed up their cues are and so forth specific financial institutions we have a direct plug-in and within 24 hours 48 hours and get your response until you see a lot of our reviews are folks you're like pretty pretty blown away that they paid for package with us 2 days ago and today they're getting their first refund for other people unfortunately we don't have those direct Integrations and so the process can take a few weeks and we just asking for your patience because if we could do things any faster we absolutely would but we'll have to run to the bank to get some money back in a couple days could be a couple months worst case scenario is the bank says no and that's completely okay and that's one of the reasons why we have an annual membership is that our system knows that it's only a matter of time before the bank says yes and so like all negotiations in life
don't win a hundred percent of your negotiation sometimes you have to compromise sometimes you're going to lose a few but our system knows it even if it loses once or twice and knows it can use those losses as leverage the third time around and eventually get your money back and so does this I think something we asked our customers be patient on cuz I know they all want the money immediately and that's not the time or the desire or the focus to keep going after it and learning from each interaction that they have at the bank and try to get more and more leverage or do it a different way so they can how to put a you said so you're becoming a pastor for the bank and you're not going away and that's what I think that helps the cost is two points one is unlike a human negotiating there's no emotion in water system is doing its all math base is also just expects to look bought knows when to push back in once a peel-back in Knox pursue this any further doesn't waste time when it knows there's no mathematical chance it's going
money back to that's a good thing where the human could just keep going on and on with no open site and she was even though we might be perceived as a test to the bank we're actually doing the banks of huge favor here because they're not doing anything for active to appreciate their customers and so when we get somebody 304 hundred dollars back and refund they're far less likely leave their bank and we know this from asking people do say yeah you know I was really upset and I think I'll stick with my bank and they were helping them on the retention side whether they like to admit it or not or whether they realize that are not yet you know how much does it typically cost of bank to get a new customer do you know that has anywhere from $200 up to $2,000 so if you go into like Credit Karma and they're always recommending next apple new credit card stuff you dare Philly it kicked back is 300-400 $500 / successful sign up so they must very heavily in customer acquisition
it's much easier than paying mm so I can see that so now okay so could you walk us through one more time because I just got one of those viewer alerts they they would like to know again how you go about signing up on cushion just go to our website at Christian. A I just want time to call to action button just click on it and folks we ask people to authenticate using their phone so instead of trying to remember a password and forgetting it putting in a password you use phone based authentication you plug in your phone number you verify you connect your bank securely and then within a few seconds your dashboard and you'll see how much fees you have and from there you can assess do you want to move forward with negotiations or just that the process get started in the back of the dashboard is one of those things where you can say Hey you have these fees we can negotiate this and you know if you'd like to do this for years $36 and what's that the next year's up again
I-81 is 96 and the difference is how frequently we scan your accounts for fees in the number of negotiations our system will do for you in a given month to somebody who has $100 in fees they probably want to use that $36,000 or $500 plus they'll most likely Optics the $96 package to get the most speed negotiated ASAP man again on the on the fees one of the things that you had paid I overdrive it again I've seen some of my stuff and I've had some fights with bangs for over A Roni's fees I see I bet I've never had a fight with a bank over an overdraft but these are fees at the bank could legitimately charge you know about but you can negotiate out of it because they want to keep you as a customer that's really the size of it that is really the size of it also I think knowing your position with the bank so for example I
I got hit with two wire transfer fees recently I had to pay my rent and I was unable to send out a check so I got him to $30 wire transfer fee and I just made it as a mortgage with you were paying above Market rates for our or interest you're making plenty of money off of us there's no need to nickel-and-dime 8/2 wire transfer fees and they immediately go fund me $60 as it is with the things you would not expect the average person to know I just know that I spent four years super-deep on the Banksy space and teaching the stuff to our machine learning models to do this on behalf of everybody so that's not messing that misinformation that people don't have a clue about it see you know it is true if you don't know what you don't know and this is a big thing and it could save a lot of people money do a lot of people money back and you know whether somebody's trying to get out of debt or increase your financial situation I think tuition could be a great help so give us that about end of our time here could you give us the website we need to go to in order to get
people signed up deputies just waited to do to go to cushion. AI that's are that's our website and Incredibly easy to figure out how to sign up from there and all I want to thank you for joining us here Paul cushion I appreciate you being here and I hope everything safe and healthy and again I'll look forward to seeing you in a future Vice for having a happy relationship with money still to come on the saving with Steve show
don't let your financial woes keep you up at night and prevents you from living a life of Financial and personal freedom hi I'm Steve sex and post of the saving with Steve show where to be talked about the ins-and-outs of money does Financial issues it could be costing me thousands of dollars causing stress keeping you up at night we're going to talk about money tax reduction saving more spending less your investment risk management retirement and everything is so she'd with you having a healthier happy relationship with money soon as you've ever dreamed of living a life of Financial and personal freedom you owe it to yourself and your family to tune into the saving with Steve show join me Steve sex and out of saving with Steve show as we talked about everything under the sun when it comes to money to learn more about the show visit saving with Steve. Us that's saving with Steve. Us saving with Steve. Us will see you soon
welcome back to the show that is here to help you achieve your financial goals it's the saving with Steve show now here's your host Steve Sexton okay guess what we had Jenna's Lipton author of the book and I want to show it up here one more time it's called banished burnout the toolkit wasn't that a standing I think anybody in this coven environment could utilize that just the tools in the chips in their can make a big difference in your daily life and it just a lemonade stuff that you're dealing with right now or maybe you're dealing with that the office we also have Paul kisser wine used to see of cushion if you're looking to eliminate Bank fees again this is all about the ins-and-outs of money it's about saving you money and we want to save you a lot of money so go to Christian a I see how much money you can save and that would make a big difference now again I want to thank you all for joining us no telling your friends and family about the show weed
Scarborough 420,000 listeners and we're still growing so you can go to saving with Steve. Us if you'd like to see some replay store available again our networks and sponsors are all about helping you no cell phones uplift your spirits and live a life of financial personal freedom if you'd like to join us or get more financial chips you can go to the stadium with Steve Sexton Facebook page you can get at you can sign up there you can go to saving with Steve. Us and get interviews transcripts you can also get books and special gifts were our guest so what that must move into her final segment for today tax season is a tough time K and there's three things that you want to realize or utilized or do to make sure your taxis and successful for you okay now the first thing is this you always want to file early for a couple reasons why you can get your money faster okay to 20% of people don't file on time they get that
penalty when they get hit with the interest okay that's a biggie now what's even more important is as is there earlier you file the less likely to have a froster file a tax return in your name right now some of the things you want to look out for in this there's one of the biggest scams it's come in the last few years is Ghost tax preparer ghost tax preparer where are they well all tax preparers need to have a taxpayer ID number you can ask me every tax preparer for the taxi taxpayer ID number and go to the IRS website and look it up and see if they're in good standing that's basically what you want to do okay if they don't have one of these goes tax preparer here's what they do see what they'll do to have you come in and they'll say hey we can get the largest tax refund all right and they're typically in a pop-up shop somewhere and what they will do if they inflate your deductions your income whatever the case may be to get you a higher refund and then what they'll do is they'll charge you a percentage
the refund you get as their feet don't want you to pay me in cash they won't sign the tax return they won't put a text Pierce text mirrors ID number in there because they don't have one. Here's the issue with that I had a couple clients come in here they told me what a great return the guy that they like this new person all that kind of stuff and I one year they said hate you know what we'd like to try somebody else the person I recommended to was laugh with less expensive and then they got upset because that person wouldn't give them the large tax return some of the ones that got the previous year with the same information and what I didn't realize was the fact that they're all prepare who got in a big refund was inflating their deductions and also inflating their income creating a larger tax return and you know what on the third year they got a notice from the IRS when you owe the IRS said hey where did this allow these deductions in case you can unless you can prove them and we want you to pay this penalty we want you to pay this interest and we want you to pay the back taxes so they got
pretty hard for something or someone they thought was going to do them right and when I went to the IRS about it the IRS is while you conspired with them to do this you're the ones near the names on the on the form there's isn't they don't have a taxpayer ID number so they were stock so don't get stuck if this happens to you you know I check on my check everybody you're doing business without okay if for some reason right now you know what we're seeing people that are falsely filing a tax return in somebody else's name if you think this has happened to you you mean you need to meet Lee call the IRS at 800-908-4490 let him know what's going on hey if you're bi file return has been rejected because there's a similar number or duplicate number that a tax return has been filed under hey all you need to do is you need to file a identity theft affidavit that you can go to the IRS website it's form number 14039 that's 14039 again it's called the identity theft affidavit it's a still
PDF to be really easy to do what you going to do with that if you're going to tax that your real return and send it in to the IRS if you think something's happened to you you definitely want to go to the new identity theft.gov figure out what it is there's some steps you can take there to protect yourself and your financial accounts if you previously contacted the IRS and you haven't got a resolution you want to contact 800-908-4490 they have changed to stand by and help you melt one last thing you might be getting a erroneous 1099-g 1099-g are what you receive if you would have received unemployment okay so it'll say that box number one unemployment and here's the thing if you didn't actually get it personally but yet you receive this that means somebody filed a false unemployment claim in your name so what that really means is you've got to have to go to your Franchise Tax Board your state tax board and tell him to correct if they if they haven't corrected you file your tax return based on
more information only that you receive with a notification of what's going on now the next thing if you want to do is this if you find out that somebody's filed a false rack on a tax return under your name and your number you want to get a copy that you can go to the IRS. Gov and get instructions for requesting copy of a fraudulent tax return let's get organized best way to get organized is to make a list of what you need too many people do not make list of what they need and they forget stuff okay so first thing detailed income sources if you're working somewhere it's as simple as a W-2 okay if you have investment you're getting 1099-r all right so that means you're getting a 1099 from Schwab Fidelity from the insurance company from the investment firm that you're working with okay now you can also get a 1099 miscellaneous if you had a lawsuit and you won the lawsuit and you receiving feet all right if you ran a business or you invested in an LLC or a business you receive a K-1 so you want to get the K1
if you rollover an IRA to another Pro Fidelity to swab or insurance company to another insurance rate you're going to get what's called a 5498 now that just tells them that you did it within the expected time. And it's not going to be tax if you have a rental income you want to detail that as well so you got to get all those things prepared and don't forget you know what you got to do if you're if you're retarded you're getting Social Security or pension you want to make sure you get the 1099s for those as well thanks Damon bank statements will talk about income you receive you don't have all the checks you wrote OK and it also have all the bank interest by the way you're also going to receive a deduction them a 1098 for your deductions in reference to your mortgage interest now also want to list all your charitable deductions keep in mind the money you gave Ancaster charity if you did tell him you'll be able to write it off as well as the check make sure you go through all your stuff why do you do that very simply put you know what I
so many people that give two or three thousand dollars to the church through cash and other things belongs what have you think about it that's two three four five thousand dollars that you won't have to pay taxes on your tax bracket that's more than $1,700 in savings back in your pocket so don't forget those things list of medical expenses list the co-pays ductable is a coinsurance has all of them Dental stuff all of it okay because if it's more of it adds up to more than 7.5% of your annual income guess what you can get the right off the difference now mortgage interest Bank fees property tax statement another tax-related documents make sure you have all those you know it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a conversation with your tax repair or somebody there office to say what other things that you should be bringing based off your situation right next one of the things you do want to consider is this you're talking to your tax preparer there are two questions you want to ask write them down please here's what it is how much should I contribute to my IRA to reduce my taxes
play because if you have a SEP IRA or IRA or any other plan that you haven't filed your taxes on just what you can still contribute to those two counts and for every dollar you put in there you won't have to pay tax on it so that means it saves you $30 plus you're saving for retirement so max it out if you can't next talk to your GPA of your text about your withholdings think about this I talk to people getting their three for $5,000 tax return every single year OK and think about that they paid in over pay their taxes through their payroll every single month of the year fill out a form and February or March and then they have to wait two months to get their money back and they burn do interest you know what if you're some people utilize it to go take a trip what I recommend you do is this if you can have your withholdings adjusted so the amount of money that you're getting back in tax return refund is $150 or you're paying $150 it's not so bad right but what it does
do improvised U23 $400 every single month that you can utilize the paint on your credit card to help out your kids or your grandkids contribute to your paying off your mortgage hang up that car bring up your life so you can do those things and if you know what you want to save Richard scrape a work out a deal where you can make small payments beach every month on the trip at the best thing is if you've got it taken care of now there's a lot of people who said hey Steve where can I get a cheap check return done okay fine if you have a basic tax return or you disable you can utilize the volunteer income tax program is called vitamin d i t a k uses irs-certified volunteers offer free basic tax preparation and e-file to people who earn less than $56,000 or are disabled AARP hasn't Foundation a similar program called you want to make sure you're involved with that to save some money and have taxis and success you know what we had a wonderful show.
it was just outstanding we had Janice lift and talk about banishing burnouts to dress to success wonderful book grateful kid already given one of my daughter and my son My Wife Met Lyle Lovett you're going to love it to you want to check that out or least listen to this show because you will go through some wonderful tips and tools that you can utilize next we have Paul kesserwani from the CEO cushion hey you want to get those Bank fees back it could be four hundred bucks that you only have to pay $36 I'm not promoting the product but I'm saying if I could do that so can you see what that I want to thank you all for joining us looking forward to seeing you next week right here on sitting with Steve will see you now bye bye thank you for joining us for the saving with Steve show hosted by Steve Sexton to learn more about the show and how to become a guest or sponsor visit saving with Steve. Us that's saving with Steve. Us join us again next time as we continue to talk about everything on
the song that relates to you having a healthier happier relationship with money this has been the saving with Steve show hosted by Steve Sexton