Young Scrappy Money Podcast Ep. 009: How to Become a Credit Score Wizard with Gerri Detweiler

literal expert in her field, so we’re so grateful that she took the time to explain both personal AND business credit. Enjoy!

Resources from this episode:

• Nav.com, a site that lets small business owners access their personal AND business credit for free (Gerri Detweiler works there as the Education Director!)
• The three big sources of consumer credit reports: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion
• The three big sources of commercial credit reports: Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax
• AnnualCreditReport.com, the government-mandated website where you can get your free credit report once per year from each of the three major vendors
• Gerri’s awesome offer to get a free month of the premium subscription of Nav for all podcast listeners
• The Young Scrappy Money Academy Digital Subscription Service
• Young + Scrappy, home to Michelle’s work as a financial advisor and financial coach

Full transcript:

INTRO [00:00:00] Hello. And welcome to the Young Scrappy Money podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Waymire. And each week, I’ll be bringing you tips and tricks to help you take control of your finances as well as interviews with people who made big financial changes in their own lives. So join us. And we’ll help you get your financial s**t together.

MICHELLE: Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome. This is another episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. And I’m pretty pumped today because you have an opportunity, my dear listeners, to become a credit wizard. And when I say that, I’m referring to one time, I was at a party, talking about credit scores, like you do— when you’re me, and you’ve had a glass of wine. Apparently, that’s a thing that happens.

And I was telling my friends about credit scores and blowing their minds. And apparently, this is a topic that nobody understands. Like people just do not understand this black box of credit scores. If you are a small business owner, you might not know this. But you actually have a credit score as well.

So I am very, very fortunate today to have with me Gerri Detweiler. She is a credit expert. So like I joke that I’m a credit wizard. So she’s one step above that. I don’t even— like a credit goddess, maybe. So she’s a credit expert at a website called Nav, which is like Credit Karma for small businesses.

She has been answering credit and financial questions for over 20 years. She has written five books on the subject. Like seriously, this is— she’s the real deal, y’all. So Gerri, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. I am very excited to pick your brain today.

GERRI: Oh, thank you so much. And I guess— I guess we’re a little bit alike because I’ve had those party conversations too.

MICHELLE: Yeah. People invite us money nerds to parties. And they’re expecting like intellectual conversations on books and music. And we like roll up, kick down the door. And it’s like, let’s talk about your 401(k).

GERRI: And they like it. They wanna know. So it’s not always a bad thing.

MICHELLE: It’s true. And chances are, if anybody’s listening to this podcast, they probably also talk about credit reports at parties. So we’re all in good company here. I think to kick us off, for folks who maybe are not quite as engaged with credit or know as much about credit, can you tell me about credit reports? So like what are they? What are the different types of credit reports?

GERRI: Credit reports are simply a record of how you’ve managed your finances in the past. And they’ve been around for a long time, since the 1800s. So I’ll throw out something that maybe you don’t even know. There’s a credit bureau that four US presidents worked for in the past. Any ideas?

MICHELLE: Oh. Oh. Trivia. Uh, let’s see. Um—

GERRI: It’s actually a commercial credit bureau, not a consumer credit bureau.

MICHELLE: Is it Standard & Poor’s?

GERRI: It’s actually Dun & Bradstreet.

MICHELLE: Oh.

GERRI: So Abraham Lincoln, Cleveland, McKinley, and Grant all were reporters. So back in the day when, you know, we were a frontier, then people would move from location to location, a very mobile society. They would collect these— this information. And they would use it to try to help other merchants and other businesses decide whether to extend some credit, maybe at a store or for some farm equipment or whatever it might be.

And these reports were files. They were, you know, written files of notes. And it was a very prestigious job to collect that information. Well, credit reporting has evolved a lot since then. But it kind of went in two tracks. One track is consumer credit reports, which is the ones that Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion keep about you and me.

And then there’s commercial credit reports, which are the ones that Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, Equifax, and a few others keep about small businesses or even larger businesses. But they’re business commercial credit reports. But the whole goal of a credit report is to provide some information that someone else can use to help make some sort of decision about credit, insurance, or anything else that involves some kind of risk.

MICHELLE: Whoa. So this is— this is already kind of blowing my mind in terms of knowledge, so sweet. Now, business and personal credit reports, is there a difference between them really? Like what is the difference between them, I guess?

GERRI: There are some similarities, and then there are some huge, huge differences. The similarity is that both are trying to collect usually information about the business or the individual in account information. So the bulk of any credit report that you have is gonna be how you’ve paid your bills, from companies that report to those credit bureaus.

The big difference with business credit reports is that, unlike consumer credit, where in the 1970s we had the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law that passed and gave consumers a lot of rights with regard to credit reports— and that law is the one that says you have a right to dispute information and get a timely response. If someone turns you down based on your credit report, they have to tell you that and tell you where they got the report so you can see it for yourself. And that law has also been updated to give us access to free annual copies of our credit reports.

[00:05:10] MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: To give us a disclosure of our score if we’re turned down for credit, all those things. Well, none of that applies to business credit, none of it. There’s no federal, even state, law that regulates business credit. So it does get quite different.

MICHELLE: Yeah. So for— I guess let’s talk about both of these in turn then. So if you are an individual, and you’re actually looking for a copy of your credit report, where can you find that?

GERRI: As an individual, you can go to annualcreditreport.com. So annualcreditreport.com, that’s the government-mandated free credit report website, where you can get your report from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Now, I know there’s some difference of opinion here. And you may have a different opinion here, Michelle. That’s perfectly legit.

But I recommend the first time you check, you get all three. I don’t recommend you stagger them the first time that you get them. Because I have personally run into the situation where I had a mistake on one credit report and not on the other. And I want to know that all three are accurate and complete the first time I get them.

After that, you can monitor them. And you can go ahead and stagger them the next year if you want. But I recommend you get them. Now, this is just the credit report. So that’s just the data about how you pay your bills.

The credit score is a completely separate thing. And that’s not required by federal law through annualcreditreport.com. So you end up going to other sites to get your free personal credit report. You might use something like Credit Karma.

You might get it from your credit card issuers. If you’re a business owner, you might be getting it through Nav. There’s a variety of places where you can get the credit score for free. And that’s different than the report itself.

MICHELLE: Yeah. That’s— that’s a great point. And the other thing that I’ll say— so, one, I totally agree with you on pulling all three for the first time. Exactly like you said, I’ve definitely worked with clients where one report had like drastically different data on it, or like big typos, or anything like that. And so I think if you’re getting to the place where you’re starting to look at your credit for the first time, kind of understanding the full landscape is important.

I think that’s also a great point that, you know, people kind of get on there sometimes. And they’re looking for their credit score. That’s not necessarily gonna be on the annual website.

The third piece that I’ll say that I’m thinking about it, so you’ve mentioned exactly that, you know, this is a government-mandated website. It has— it has the quality of a government website. So I’ve actually had questions from people in the past.

They’re like, is this a scam? Like this website really does look super janky and not legitimate. It’s the real website. Like I promise. The fonts are bad, but you will get— you will indeed get a free copy of your credit report.

GERRI: Yeah. I’m so glad you mentioned that. Because people do get leery of it. And they— you have to give your social security number, right? So—

MICHELLE: Yeah, totally.

GERRI: So they’re leery about that. But as long as that padlock is in the top, you haven’t typed in a wrong name, you haven’t hit a website that’s trying to imitate it, you should be fine.

MICHELLE: Yeah. It’s just— it’s just legitimately an ugly website. It’s not a scam. It’s just an ugly website. So that’s kind of where you get a personal credit report. Where do you get a business credit report?

GERRI: So there’s no federal requirement that you get a free copy of your business credit reports. And the majority of small business owners don’t even know this is a thing, right? They don’t— they don’t even know it exists.

And I can tell you I’ve been with Nav for about four years now. And so I’ve sort of shifted a little bit from consumer to business credit education. And I get that same sort of deer in the headlights look that I used to get years ago when I would talk about FICO scores or personal credit reports. People are like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

So again, the major companies that are creating these reports are Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, and Experian. You can definitely go directly to them to purchase reports. They aren’t cheap. They usually start at about 80 bucks and go up from there. But Nav was created specifically to give transparency to this. So we do provide small business owners with free access to their business credit from those three data sources.

MICHELLE: That’s awesome. So thinking about like, OK, we kind of know where to get personal credit reports. We know where to get business credit reports. Is the information that goes into those reports the same?

GERRI: You’re gonna find that business credit reports are different in a few key ways when you see yours for the first time. So the first thing that’s really, really surprising and weird to small business owners is that they don’t list your names of your creditors. So on your personal credit, if you have a mortgage through Bank of America or Wells Fargo or your local credit union, it’s gonna list the name of the creditor.

They don’t do that on business credit. They just categorize them. Like they’ll say it’s a line of credit, or a term loan, or equipment lease, or a commercial line of credit. The story I’ve heard when I’ve queried about this is that— the fact that anyone can access your business credit.

[00:10:02] They don’t need any kind of special permission like they do for consumer credit. They don’t need permissible purpose. They just need to pony up for it, basically. Means that creditors are worried about maybe other people seeing, you know, who they’re lending credit to, or poaching their customers, or whatever it may be.

I think it’s probably more that there’s no regulation around it. They don’t have to show it, so they don’t. So you have to be a little bit of a detective the first time you see your business credit to figure out, OK, who’s reporting to this report, and who’s not? And then the other thing that’s really different about business credit is that it’s very granular on payment history.

MICHELLE: Oh, yeah.

GERRI: So on your personal credit, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, Michelle. I was on vacation once. And I went to— I realized, oh, I forgot to pay that credit card bill. So I went online. And you know how they have you say, I want to pay it? Here’s the account I want to pay it from. And then you have to actually go to a third screen and say, yes, I really do wanna pay it.

MICHELLE: Yeah. No, I’m really sure. Please take my money.

GERRI: Yeah. I forgot that last step. And so I was late on my personal credit card payment. And but it didn’t show up on my personal credit. Because when I found out about a week later, when I got back from vacation and got the notice saying I was late, I went ahead and paid it. I paid a late fee. But I didn’t— it didn’t show up on credit. Because on personal credit, we go in 30-day buckets, right?

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: On business credit, they use something called days beyond terms, which is the number of days past the invoice due date that you pay it. So if you have terms with a vendor that says you have to pay net 30, which means you have to pay 30 days after the invoice day, and you paid on day 32, you’ll be reported as two DBT. If it’s net 60, and you pay on day 62, it’s still two DBT.

It’s the number of days beyond the invoice date. So it’s much more granular than it is on personal credit. So you have to make sure that you have systems in place to stay on top of those bills and make sure they’re paid on time.

MICHELLE: Oh, yeah. That’s super interesting. I had no idea.

GERRI: Yeah. It feels a little different the first time you start experiencing that. Also, the data consistency, it just is not there with consumer credit. So if you get a student loan or a mortgage or a car loan or a credit card on your consumer side, it’s gonna probably show up with all three credit bureaus.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: It’s just most of them report to all three. They— not the same with business credit. It’s much harder. Business owners will say, well, hey, I have all these relationships. But I only have one or two accounts reporting on my business credit. So sometimes you have to be a little more proactive about seeking out accounts that will show up on your business credit when you’re trying to build it.

MICHELLE: Yeah. So kind of moving away from maybe this idea of like the credit report— because I think the big thing that people are really curious about, and like certainly the big litmus test for the type of interest rates that you get either as an individual or a small business owner, is the credit score, which I think is for a lot of people again a little bit of a black box. Like they don’t understand necessarily how the information on the credit report then feeds into the credit score. So I’m wondering if you can kind of take a few minutes and talk maybe first about like personal credit scores. How are those calculated?

GERRI: Well, the large majority of personal credit scores are calculated by algorithms developed by FICO. So we’ve all heard of FICO. FICO is not a credit bureau. They don’t have any credit data.

A great analogy that I heard is the data in your credit report is like the ingredients for the chocolate chip cookie. And FICO provides the recipe. And then the result is the cookie that you have. So FICO’s just providing the recipe for the credit score. So they just are helping analyze that data. But they don’t sit on any credit data themselves.

So what I find a big confusion point with consumers is they— if I ask in a workshop— I’ll say, how many credit scores do you think you have? Most people will say, three, maybe— because there’s three credit bureaus. Maybe nine, maybe six, I rarely hear numbers above that. But FICO alone has over 40 different models of FICO credit scores.

MICHELLE: Oh, wow.

GERRI: So there— there is no— even if you account for the fact that the creditor might pull data from Experian, or they might go to Equifax, or they might go to TransUnion, even the FICO score that they use can be different. So an example is that in the— if you have a credit card, they’re probably showing you a FICO Bankcard 8 score. But if you go to get an auto loan, it’s gonna be a FICO auto score.

So that’s why sometimes when you’re checking your own credit, you see, hey, it’s this number. And then you go in to get an auto loan, or you go to get a mortgage, and they pull another number. You’re like, where’d that come from?

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: Well, that’s why. Because there’s different versions of the FICO score that are created to predict different things or are updated periodically. So you don’t just have one credit score.

And then I’ll throw one more just wrench into this wheel, and that is VantageScore. VantageScore was created as a competitor to FICO by the credit bureaus. They’ve been around for, I think, about 10 years now. And they do create credit scores that are used by some lenders. They don’t have the market share that FICO does.

[00:15:08] But that’s the most common score you’re gonna see if you’re checking your free credit score through a site like Credit Karma or through Nav. And the reason is FICO scores— when you see a free FICO score, it’s probably from your credit card issuer. Because they’ve already purchased it. They’ve already paid for it. But with something like Credit Karma or Nav, they’re providing a VantageScore, which is more affordable to provide, to pay for and provide you for free.

MICHELLE: OK. So what— if you don’t mind sharing, like when you’re thinking about the FICO credit score or even the VantageScore, what components go in that? And how are those calculated?

GERRI: Yeah. So the most important by far is payment history. So they’re looking at, you know, how many— how— and largely under payment history, they’re looking for negative information. Were you late? Do you have a collection account? Do you have a bankruptcy, a judgment, tax lien, charge-off, something that’s negative?

And then, in that category, they’re gonna look at, how recently did that happen? How frequently did that happen? And how severe was it? So recency, information that’s recent can drop your credit score like a rock. So anyone who has a good credit score and accidentally missed a payment will see their credit score drop 40, 70, 100 points, unfortunately.

It will recover over time as that information gets older. But it’s considered very predictive. It’s considered a good prediction that there may be some problems here, and you could wind up falling behind on other bills.

And then the severity issue, you know, were you just 30 days late one time? I had a banking snafu once, ended up with a 30-day late on my credit report. It drove me crazy because I couldn’t get it off there. It was accurate, even though I didn’t feel it was my fault.

But as time went on, it really didn’t have any impact. Because it was just 30 days late one time. And as it got older, it had less impact. So for anyone who is— who does have negative information on their credit report, I’d say, here’s just a piece of hope there.

As information gets older, it has less weight. In particular, negative information in the past 24 months carries the most weight. So time will have an impact on your credit score— provided, of course, now you’re paying your bills on time going forward.

MICHELLE: OK, awesome. So if that’s like the biggest piece to the credit score, any other like big things that people should be aware of in terms of how personal credit scores are calculated?

GERRI: Yeah. The other thing I’d say is really important— and this is where you could see a really quick impact on your credit scores— is debt usage. So the credit scoring models will look at your balances reported on your credit cards and compare that— on your credit card accounts, compare that to the credit limit. They will look at each account individually and all accounts in the aggregate.

So for example, you have a credit card with a $1,000 limit. You have a balance of $400 that shows up on your credit report. You’re at 40% debt usage. I had a friend who contacted me a couple years ago, right after the holidays. She was freaking out because her credit score had dropped about 40 points.

And it turned out she only has one credit card. It’s a retail card. She had used it at that store. And she had charged about $700 out of a $1,000 balance. And that’s what showed up on her credit report. And she said, but I pay in full each month.

She said, why should my credit score be affected if I pay in full each month? And the answer I had for her was that the credit card— the credit report— or the credit card issuer doesn’t wait until you’ve made your payment to report to the credit bureaus. They report at the end of the month when your billing cycle closes.

And that’s when they say, you know, OK, Michelle, you owe us $2,355. You can make the minimum payment, or you can pay it in full. That’s when they report. They don’t wait until you’ve paid it.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: And so sometimes it looks like you have high debt usage, even though you’re someone who pays in full each month.

MICHELLE: OK. OK, yeah. That makes sense.

GERRI: So here’s my tip. Because I love my credit card rewards. I charge everything on my credit cards to get my, you know, miles and points. So what I do is if I have a month where it looks like it’s gonna be pretty high, I’ll go in, and maybe five days before the end of the billing cycle— because it says on your statement. It tells you when the billing cycle ends.

I go in maybe five days before and make a payment online. And so that way, five days later when they cut, you know, end the billing cycle, and they report, my balance is lower. So it’s a simple way to help reduce that debt usage.

And I will also add that there’s no magic number. It’s not 50%. It’s not 30%. But I find that, generally, a consumer with a good, robust credit report can get away with 25% or so debt usage before it starts to hurt their credit scores. But you’re individual.

Everything in your credit report, you know, especially, especially your young listeners— and that’s your audience, young and scrappy— they probably have a more limited credit history. So debt usage could have quite a big impact. So just by getting those credit card, you know, balances down, they may see their credit score pop by 25, 35, 40 points or more as soon as the credit bureau gets the new information.

[00:20:10] MICHELLE: Awesome. That’s super useful. So then in terms of like— you know, that’s the personal credit score, the big factors there. How are business credit scores calculated?

GERRI: So business credit scores largely— the most important factor there is payment history. And in some models, it’s the only factor. They’re only interested in payment history. So payment history is very, very important.

And that— this is where we go back to the fact that it’s very granular. So what I tell business owners, who are probably way too busy and don’t have enough time, and maybe don’t always have their systems in place to manage their finances, you know, the way they need to, is to set up systems so that at least the minimum payment on whatever that account is is paid on time each month. You don’t have to pay it in full. But make sure it gets paid on time each month to maintain a positive payment history, which goes a long way toward building business credit.

MICHELLE: Yeah. That’s awesome.

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MICHELLE: One other question I had for you about— like while we’re on the topic of credit scores specifically, so I feel like there’s just a ton of debate around what constitutes a good credit score. I get this question a lot from folks. So I’m wondering if you could weigh in. Like what credit scores do individuals and businesses want to have? What’s ideal?

GERRI: Well, my answer is a good credit score is the credit score that gets you what you want.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: So it’s gonna vary from lender to lender and product to product. But I say to someone who is, on a personal credit score scale, in the high 700s, you’re probably gonna get the best rate on anything. You’re gonna get plenty of offers.

Don’t stress if you’re at 800, and you wonder why you’re not at 850. I get those questions all the time. People want a perfect credit score. And in the FICO world, 850 is the top credit score that you can get. But really high 700s is very likely to get you what you want.

On the business credit side, it’s different because the scales are different. So for example, Experian and Telescore, which is a commercial credit score, and Dun & Bradstreet’s Paydex score, which is a popular small business credit score, those both run from 0 to 100. So 100 would be the best score. And in those, you wanna be in the range of 80 to 100. So you have to look at the scale of the score as well as the number that you see to see whether you fall into a good range.

Now, at Nav, we break it down. We give our free— our customers with free Nav accounts, we give them a letter grade. So if you’re an A, great, don’t worry about it. Focus on something else. If you’re below that, you may wanna take a few steps to build stronger business credit.

MICHELLE: Yeah. I love that. As an admitted very type A overachiever, credit scores are one of those places where I personally looked at my credit score. Like I have, you know, decent credit, right? I’m obviously pretty financially responsible. But I looked and saw that I was like hovering around 800, but I hadn’t broken it. And it felt like getting a B on an exam.

GERRI: You’re just like my daughter. She’s in college. And she said— and she’s an authorized user on one of— on two of my accounts. So she has an excellent credit score, high 700s. She said, this is not good enough.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: I want it to be higher. So—

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GERRI: But don’t stress. There are other things you can do financially that’d be— would probably have a bigger impact.

MICHELLE: Yes. My very logical brain is like, functionally almost anything over a 750 is probably fine. But, you know, my little nitpicky overachiever brain doesn’t always listen. So if you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re in my boat, you know, high 700s, totally fine. You heard it from somebody who knows what’s what.

So I guess one final question for you, thinking about— you know, we do live in a world where there is fraud. And I think especially with all of the data leaks that have come out, like holy crap. People have been concerned about credit reports in particular because it’s such a concise summary of all of your financial information. What’s your best advice for making sure that your credit reports are accurate? How do you do that?

GERRI: There’s a couple things I recommend. First of all, definitely check the full report at least once a year at annualcreditreport.com. Because you wanna see if other people’s information might be showing up on your report.

Your score could look fine. But then you could discover— and I had this happen once. A woman was going to get a mortgage. Her credit score was great. But the loan officer asked her about her BMW lease. And she was like, I don’t have a BMW lease.

MICHELLE: Oh, no.

[00:25:00] GERRI: And so here was a $450 payment that was appearing on her credit report, which could impact her ability to get the mortgage that she wanted, that didn’t— it didn’t belong to her. So it wasn’t fraud. It was just a mistake. But I’ve been a victim of identity theft. And I know so many people who have been.

So two things, one is checking that full report at least once a year and then monitoring your credit scores on a monthly basis. It’s not that difficult to do. I wrote an article of 150 places you can get your credit score for free. So there’s no reason you can’t monitor it just quickly once a month for each of the major credit bureaus and stay on top of it.

Then, if you are a victim of fraud, or if you are really worried about it— for example, my daughter, her social security number was published online through her school when she was like 12 years old.

MICHELLE: Oh, no.

GERRI: Yeah. And she doesn’t really have a lot of credit needs right now. So there’s no reason not to freeze her credit reports. So you can freeze your credit reports. There’s a brand-new law that went into effect in September of 2018. It gives you the right to freeze your credit reports with all three bureaus. It doesn’t cost you anything to freeze it or to lift the freeze.

Now, it’s a little bit more hassle when you have a frozen credit report. Because if you go to get an auto insurance or a cellphone plan or new— I don’t know— new internet service for your apartment, whatever it may be, they check credit. And you have to unfreeze your reports first. But if you’re worried about fraud, that’s another way to lock down your personal credit reports.

MICHELLE: For people who are listening who are maybe not super familiar with the concept of a fredit— a fredit creeze, wow— a credit freeze, what— can you define that for us?

GERRI: Sure. It’s like putting a— it’s sort of like putting two-factor authentication on one of your accounts or, you know, having a strong password on one of your accounts. No one can access it unless they already have an existing relationship with you until you unfreeze it. So there’s— they have online assistance to do that. They have PIN numbers. They have apps, just depending on which credit bureau you’re dealing with.

So basically, it’s locked down. And except for the creditors that you already have relationships with, no one can access your credit until you unfreeze it. So that would prevent someone— for example, in my case, someone opened up a department store account.

And when I found out about it, the $400 in shoes that they bought were on a UPS truck being delivered somewhere. That couldn’t have happened if my credit was frozen at that time. Because they wouldn’t have access to it without me lifting the freeze.

MICHELLE: Yeah, that’s great. So you have been a veritable fountain of information about credit scores, both personal and business. Is there anything else that you would like to leave us with, knowledge-wise?

GERRI: Yeah. One other thing I want to mention real quick on the fraud side is that on the business credit side, you can’t freeze your business credit. And business credit is a growing problem. So for anyone who is an entrepreneur, starting a business, even a side hustler who’s thinking about growing it into a business, I would encourage you to make sure you set up the business properly and then to set up and monitor your business credit so you have that as an additional tool and resource for you when you need to grow your business, whether it’s getting financing or new business relationships and partnerships.

It could be compromised. And I was at a conference recently where a financial blogger came up to me. And she said that her— someone had opened a business credit card in the name of her business. And, of course, they didn’t pay it because it was fraudulent.

And then they were calling her relatives, trying to track her down. And on the business side, there’s no law like there is on the consumer side that they can’t tell other people about your debt. So she said, you know, relatives were getting calls about her supposedly being a deadbeat on this business credit card. So, you do—

MICHELLE: Whoa.

GERRI: Yeah.

MICHELLE: What a day, what a terrible day for that to like materialize in your life. Bless her heart.

GERRI: Yeah. Although she’s like us. She writes about finances. So don’t you always have this thing in the back of your mind where you’re thinking, oh, this’ll make a good story?

MICHELLE: Oh, yeah, for sure. Like 50%, god, today really sucks. And 50% like, this is gonna be an awesome blog post, for sure. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Y’all, check it. We have such a sweet offer for you as a result of listening to this podcast. So Gerri has so graciously extended everybody a free month of the premium subscription of Nav. So if you are listening to this, and you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur interested in building your small business credit, whatever the reason, this is such an awesome resource for you.

So I’ll be sure to put all the exact like spelling and everything in the show notes for you. But you can check that out at nav.com. That’s N-A-V.com\freeaccount. And then the coupon code is also freeaccount— all lowercase, no spaces. So if you’re interested in building your business credit, that will help you do so.

[00:30:02] On my end, my shameless plug is if you are listening to this podcast, I would be so very grateful if you were to drop us a line, send us a comment, rate our podcast, like us. Whatever you found us through, just show us a little bit of love. Super, super appreciate that from you because that lets us spread the word about the work that we’re doing.

I believe that is it for today. Gerri, thank you again so much for joining us. That was sweet.

GERRI: Oh, it was a lot of fun.

END CREDITS I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. If you want to read about my work as a financial advisor and financial coach, you can do so at www.youngandscrappy.com. That’s www.youngandscrappy.com. Thanks again for listening.