Spent: Looking For Change (Full Documentary) | American Express

Hello how are you? I owe you money. You're going to pay the

full

balance, yes, which is 360. Yes, how much would you say you spend on expenses each month? Monthly expenses are mainly business expenses, tricky things for children, whether in the countryside. trips lunch money gas money 60 80 maybe 100 dollars a week electricity I have insurance dental insurance medical insurance medicine for the children and since a bill is paid in the next month there is more money for people to go to the movies, they are more than 150 for phones many small expenses and then big expenses. Could I do like a machine ex

change

to achieve this every month we spend between 2 800 and 3 500 sometimes I run out of almost nothing sometimes it's a nail biter it's a roller? rollercoaster I have all this enormous debt behind me and it feels so overwhelming we all want to make the most of life a big family an education a business a home is three bedrooms and four, but for a growing number of Americans the price of getting it the future is greater due to a financial system that leaves millions neglected, you just have to tuck your chin to your chest and keep going, don't give up, even when you want to, there is never an option not to make it work. for you ready, yeah, let's go run, baby, I grew up very poor, we were on welfare, we were on food stamps, I remember the first day of school, you know, everyone always has their best gear, everyone is ready for the first day of school and my best team arrived.

From goodwill, I often look back on my life from a young age, there were many wishes and disappointments despite his tough past, Justin built a small production company and wants to start a life with his girlfriend Brittany now that I'm a adult and I'm doing it, I want to carry my whole family on my back so that no one has to love or worry, see that I love Britney, I'm going to buy a ring and make her my wife. I'm going to get things done. that will get us there, he makes a living shooting videos for corporate clients.

I see a lot of potential in where we are and where we are going, but while business is good, Justin is at a disadvantage. I receive checks from clients and leave. the shine and grandeur of downtown when I go uptown straight to the check cashing place I'm doing fine I'm tired but I'm fine Justin is one of the 70 million Americans who lack access to the traditional financial system and as that number grows includes more and more people who once lived in the mainstream alright, okay, now write that number down because we're going to subtract, so actually 136 we subtract 149.

My total answer is 87. If you cook with Crisco, it will take you one minute cook. the food but you are doing a good job you have to be your child's first teacher I told you you could do it and I believed in you you just have to try hard and work hard my mom taught me to pay what you owe and save so I savings accounts saved 401k credit cards with wonderful limits I wanted to have something to leave my daughter we know we need an hour of math every night and we know we need at least 30 minutes of reading every day I want her to be able to find success whatever her goals are dreams, I chose to put her in a private school because I don't want to compromise her education.

I love you, have a great day, good luck on your exam. Tiffany worked as a nurse to support her family and built a nest for her daughter's future my 401k was almost a hundred thousand life was good I was living the American dream hey honey yeah you were right there's too much water well there will be pancakes , some will be crepes and some will be pancakes, man, I liked it when Melissa met Alex. He had a career in the music industry and was doing what he loved most. I love this. After one of the shows, I went and talked to Alex.

Can I get along? No. a little bit about it, we hit it off, we hit it off about 10 weeks after our first date, he asked me to marry him, like everything else in our life, the family thing happened pretty quickly with two kids and two income, alex and melissa had a healthy life. The happy times at home were good, everyone was doing well and then our reality

change

d overnight. His son was diagnosed with autism shortly after Alex was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It was scary and then what happened was I focused on the kids. Does it matter?

Oh yeah, which one? Do you want to go buy 10. Burlington turned 10 years old. Not today, not today, what are we going to do today, Jonas, look at mom, stay home, stay home, I can tell you to go and I can schedule it, but if you don't go, I You can be afraid mom, you have to touch your eyes. He had just gotten a new job. I had a stable income, but then my mom was diagnosed with cancer. That's my number one patient. How can I take care of someone else when I have my mom suffering? At home, Tiffany decided to quit her job so she could focus

full

time on her mother's health.

I thought she could get back into the workforce and pick up where I left off. The image of the financially unstable is an image of you and me, but During a couple of breaks between Alex's illness and Jonah's diagnosis, this became a huge expense for which we had no contingency plan, since we did not We had savings, as Alex's illness affected his ability to work and he was forced to quit his job, so they did what many Americans do. do at your bank if a bill came up and we had to pay for electricity or cable, we knew we could go ahead and write a check and it would clear up when a customer withdraws more money than they have in their account, they can give their bank permission to cover that cost with an additional fee, this is called overdraft protection, banks were increasingly

looking

for profits from these classic consumer checking accounts, some customers weren't making money for the banks, so they found other ways to cover the costs, what most banks were doing.

A common practice was to reorder this check, it is also called string check sequencing, when Alex and Melissa paid their bills, their grocery and student loan checks settled well, but the price of energy went up and that bill emptied their account, an overdraft fee 35, but if the three debts posted on the same day your bank had software that reordered your purchases energy bill first then loan then groceries three overdraft fees 105 the fees became so high that payday would come and we would go back to zero eventually what the bank would do is expel them, exit the system and close the account because they feel that they are not going to recover their debt if the banks cannot retain those clients.

There's an alternative that will get more than 30 million Americans using check cashers every year, and for many of them, the service works, they're open later, they remember my name, they're offering, uh, we can get you what you need right now. Type of solution. A lot of business is done at check cashers because people can get their money right away and they need their money at the right time. We've all had to wait a couple of days for a check to clear, it's because when a bank clears a check, it must be scanned, verified and processed by a system that was built in the era of rotary phones that most Western nations have discovered. faster ways to clear our funds, but not US funds, so Americans have to wait three to five days from now, not acceptable to tens of millions of Americans, if it is going to be shut down the light tomorrow, they should be able to have it clear now.

I'm not exactly sure when it will be settled and I have to pay my bills. You go to the check casher. They give you your money back minus the fee. You have that money in your hands right at that moment. It's not an irrational choice, it just isn't. A Productive and Expensive Choice Underserved Americans spend the same percentage of their income on fees and interest as the typical American family spends on groceries, amounting to $89 billion a year as a way to avoid the fees that Alex and Melissa they decided to live cash we have cash on hand and that's the money we have this is all we can spend so when the money runs out that's all payday is coming to the places so you can pay the bills on time hello there how are you?

Well, I'm here to pay for the electricity. Thank you so much. No problem. Have a good one. Being unbanked is really kind of like having a part-time job. I probably spend between a quarter and a half tank of gas driving and paying bills. You're going to spend more money and more time doing things that people in the banking system take for granted and usually do for free. You go to a check teller. You automatically have to pay someone to get your money. Now you want to pay a bill. Well, you have. a lot of cash. How are you going to pay your bill?

How can I help you? How are you? I just need to put some money on this card. Money is becoming increasingly digital, meaning there are fewer places that accept cash. that makes the lives of the underserved even more expensive we have a prepaid debit card and the money on the card is real cash it's cash that I give directly to people and they turn it into fake money for me it's convenient, You know, if you don't you have a bank account, you can still do everything everyone else does, but they charge you taxes. Not only does Justin pay a fee when converting his checks to cash and it's cash on a card, he pays a fee for every purchase he makes, the transaction exists and there is a dollar in the transaction costs a dollar and a dollar until the end of the dash man it just kills you real quick you can lose 80 dollars a month cashing your checks and another 100 dollars a month spending your money over the course of your career justin could spend up to forty thousand dollars just to turn his paychecks into cash and another thirty thousand dollars using his card and that's not how you get ahead, that's not how you think about the future, this is like it's completely hand sewn and you know, I have to like sewing every single one of them.

I have to make each hole before sewing it, yes, like each one. Debbie is a designer struggling to grow her business, but she's used to overcoming obstacles like being the first in her family to graduate from college, rather than being proud of herself. I was happy to be able to make my parents proud when she was 14 she emigrated from Argentina with her parents her father worked in construction and her mother cleaned houses my parents were people who worked very hard and sacrificed all our lives debbie applied the work ethic from her parents and paid for college with student loans and then started her own business making handmade leather bags.

Mom said you were that tall. You came up and asked me for a needle and threatened me. She gave it to me and I started making clothes for my dolls. I discovered how to sew on my own when I was four years old, after six months her bags are starting to sell. I'm excited. Beautiful shoulder bag. I love it. I love it. I can see all these stores and I can see my business growing. I can see If You Know Your Way, but because student loans have weakened her credit, Debbie's dream has a limit. Banks use credit to measure a person's ability to repay a loan.

They look at a limited set of data. Length of credit history. Payments on previous loans and debts. If you have never taken out a loan or line of credit you are invisible to the credit scoring system. I thought I was being responsible by not having credit cards and we already had a lot of friends who were really falling into that trap of maxing out one card, so we had to get another credit card and another credit card and we didn't want to go down that path. Not having a credit card may have saved Alex and Melissa from debt, but it hurt them when it came time to get one. loan, we tried to buy a car, we went to a car dealer and the car dealer told me that you were more likely to get a mortgage than you were to be able to buy a car and we contacted a bank to say, well, let's see if you can get a mortgage and I said, oh you'll never be able to get a mortgage, you should try to get a car, there are a lot of financial transactions that one makes that aren't actually tracked in the credit system, so people who seemed high financial risk can not exist When a bank looks at a borrower, they don't see their monthly bill payments, rent or hard work, they see a number and if that number is damaged by past mistakes, it is very difficult to get it back.

People often judge me for the decisions I made without knowing the options I had. Justin had to grow up fast when he was a teenager his family fell apart so at 16 Justin was on his own paying rent and working every job he could. just to support yourself regardless of your salary it didn't cover you put a card you can't go to work you have to pay someone money for gas you need to get some foodwhatever he needed like that had to be taken care of that couldn't do it wasn't We've grown enough to address these mistakes in this situation appropriately, so you know, what does a kid do?

Justin stopped paying his debt, a mistake he's been working to overcome since we set up filming, we'll have two live. cameras off and the image still or we could see her still alive and while he takes his life and business in new and better directions the banks don't see where he's going they only see where he's been it's just frustrating because you know we've put in the work. really hard for a long time it's really hard to find a house, yeah, with his lease coming up, Justin wants to buy the kind of house he never had growing up, a lot of these places are, I mean, they're like that, they're townhouses.

They are all for rent they are never for sale I can check on craigslist again I think it is smarter to check on craigslist for the house that we can afford and that we won't be able to get if she is the only one in the papers It's not enough just with her income, but if she were in the papers, my credit is so bad that it would negatively affect us and we wouldn't get the house, so I have a couple of things that I needed to get, I guess, so you guys make the smaller orders too, right, yeah, okay, Debbie He has close to 100k in student loans but even though he pays a bill every month.debt makes it hard for him to move forward in terms of pricing I guess that makes a difference these are more expensive they are fine millions have seen their credit scores affected by having student loan debt and it's really hindering future opportunities for this kind of next generation, you know what I need knobs to know where the strap goes, okay, they're a little more expensive because they're made of solid brass , costs 91.48 per gross.

I want to build my credit and I want to be able to have the opportunity. have some type of line of credit debbie's bank refused to give her a business loan instead they offered her a secured credit card which is like a prepaid card except it helps build credit 34.75 but the card has a limit out of 250, how much does this cost? making a single debbie bag needs a leather cord zippers magnetic closures rivets lining the roof components and linen thread this is a downfall when I go to get my supplies and I've reached my limit which happens almost immediately I have to take advantage my personal money, which is a huge overkill on a tight budget.

Your order will cost one hundred and ten dollars. That's okay, because even after Debbie completes an order, she still has to wait up to three months to receive payment. I just

spent

every last penny she had to my name. and next week I already have student loans that I had to take care of. Most people live paycheck to paycheck. I lived from him back to him. Thank you, so this is a great man. He is quiet near the main road. Good access to the highway. For most people when we are buying a house it is a compromise between price and location and for us buying a house is a compromise between price of location and the actual ability to get through the entry process.

We can do it, but it won't be easy. I have to find the right person in the right place and that can take a week, it can take a month, it won't take more than six, you know what I mean, this is going to happen, come in, oh, it even has a shed. honey so this is just a guest house it should be like an office area what and then that could be oh my god how amazing that would be I mean if it's cold inside that would be great I really like it I like it too much, come on. call them on the number yes we are ready financially we have all our ducks in a row as far as you know proof of income and proof of residency and proof of bills we are ready hello um my name is justin dickinson I was calling about the house for sale.

Is she interested in a full-time position? Yes, ma'am, when her mother got sick, Tiffany made a plan and decided to live off her savings and go back to work in a year, but she wasn't counting on it. The recession is now the only part-time job she can find and it doesn't pay her enough to cover the bills. She was working on a travel assignment in Kingwood and it ran out. She came with a trip for you. It's 50 miles one way. I always told myself: I'm a nurse, I can get a job, I'm educated, I have an associate's degree in psychology, a bachelor's degree in nursing, then I have a master's degree, after the financial crisis we saw many more people lose their jobs and not pay their debts .

Credit scores just started going down because I had to decide what was more important when you are the caregiver for someone who is an expensive toe but every day you need to take care of your family pick one okay okay I know That this is different, no. No, when one of your children needs more support than you originally expected, the only thing you can do is provide them with the best care you can find and can afford to get access to a school program that meets their needs that Jonah had to get. first. For an exam, we really needed a report to make sure Jonah got into a program that was really right for him.

Many of the developmental psychologists were 2,500 to do this report, without access to credit or savings, Alex and Melissa did not have. As a way to cover the cost, nearly half of all American households were living paycheck to paycheck and could not come up with two thousand dollars in an emergency. More and more people are middle class and suddenly they find themselves in a situation where they cannot afford to support themselves. a cushion in their accounts like they used to before I had depleted my 401k, that's how I paid off the card notes, the mortgage and if you're constantly taking and taking and nothing is coming in, it evaporates, so you have to pay attention to your numbers. either you are adding or subtracting the process is different when you are subtracting the number is going to be smaller when you are adding the numbers get bigger my back was against the wall and I had borrowed as much as I thought I should from friends and family, are you? what are my other options?

It used to be that you could go to a bank or finance company and get a 500 unsecured loan with just your signature, but that product doesn't exist anymore, finance companies have essentially disappeared, so what filled the void during that Time is easy to ignore until you really need the money, which is one of those things that you see is there, but I didn't really know what it was, I was in a state of desperation of course. I see this commercial that looks like it will solve all my problems if you have your title, we have your box, like title maps, turn it into cash.

Loans can be approved for you in just five minutes. In the neighborhood where we live. Payday loan places everywhere call it a payday loan because it's designed to be repaid on the borrower's next paycheck if you have a job and you have a paycheck, you know, sign up, we'll give you this payday loan and then the next payday you pay us and okay, let's make title loans like payday loans, except instead of using your paycheck as collateral, you put the title of your car, the company will give you a loan based on the value of your vehicle and if you don't return it then they will take the car away from you.

I say, well, I'm thinking about taking out this loan for my car, how much do you think it's worth? Well, let's go out and take a look and then they say, oh, you should be able to get five thousand dollars. I was like, okay, we'll do this, it'll help me and when I start working, we'll just pay it off when I got the title loan and paid the bills. The rental was like a little boost for me at the time we needed it. I was glad it was there, but then you get into a cycle that you can't get out of.

I would get my paycheck, but now I'm stuck. where I was before, where I don't have that money and we lived too close to the limit to not have it, so we would just top up if the option is to pay off the loan or pay to extend it. Americans who are on the brink, don't have a choice, week after week the account comes due, but for some the fee is more affordable than paying the principal, so the loan is renewed. This is how over time a short term loan can turn into a long term crisis, but even when the fees accumulate, the original loan is never paid off and thus begins the spiral, those loans are based on this false idea that all someone needs is a little money to get to their next paycheck that's not what's happening what's happening is people can't make ends meet and get a loan in this pay period no It makes the problem go away, it just makes it a little worse in the next pay period.

Eighty percent of borrowers are forced to renew their loan after two weeks if you are in a situation where you have to get a payday loan you don't have the money you don't know that payday is two weeks away and I have eight dollars and I have to make that effort I have a job in Dallas, while I was there one of my payments was due so I called them and they told me we can't accept a payment over the phone. You have to come. I said, well, can I go to one of your sister companies?

No, you have to come. to this store so when I came back the fees kicked in it was a routine I go and get the loan pay whatever bill and now in two weeks I owe them the money again and then they tell me I can't make a part. Payments If you cannot pay the full amount then we will not accept anything. I have a quarter tank of gas. We want to celebrate Gabriel's birthday at my sister's house tomorrow, so that's what that quarter tank of gas is for if we need anything. otherwise we have to pay interest and fees instead of accumulating and it gets higher and higher, you always try to run to the finish line but the finish line never comes, we still have to be able to pay that in full and so on for Over the course of time, we have

spent

around 1700, how much was that loan originally? um 450.

I got some good stuff, this is cool, oh yeah, I didn't even show you that one anything, I love this one you want, yeah, I keep it, I want. I love it, Debbie is encountering more and more boutiques that want to sell her bags to anyone else. It would be good news. She couldn't afford to have such a big contract come and tell me I want so many bags. What about chain one um this is the last one okay because like the material I think I can have enough to make maybe one or two more and then um and then what catches this It's the latest, absolutely fine, today you have more orders than her.

I can handle the reality of this is that I won't be able to produce that I have to do like the numbers and see how much it costs me, sometimes it's scary because I'm trying to build something without which I simply don't have the means credit or cash to finance the order she has no choice but to take another job justin and brittany need to convince a seller that they are credible home buyers they really like the front that's a great place this is nice i like it a lot we have to find people who are willing to work with us and that they can rely on income history for the past few years rather than credit history for the past 10 years.

Well, it'll still be on the market for a couple of weeks at that point, although I'm sure there will be more. I'm willing to listen to an offer, right, but at this point it's probably too early so I never thought I'd find myself in a pawn shop unless I was buying something because it's a place to get great deals without realizing that those offers. they were other people's dreams there I was selling my dreams I woke up and that sounds like my car alarm when I got there it was a tow truck taking the car around the corner that's how I get to work after a 14 day two hours doesn't end no matter how many nights you don't sleep.

It's just not enough. This sucks. Baby, you're telling me I'm really trying to improve my life. Become a different person. There's no hope. I ended up having to date her. private school mommy why don't we go to this school anymore it hurts these situations have taken families who hit a roadblock and dragged them into a bigger crisis people end up at the doors of our social service providers what what happens when a family runs out of options what happens when a mother cannot give her daughter the education she needs what happens when an entrepreneur gives up on his dream or the door to the future of a young couple is closed the financial landscape is changing and changing rapidly one in four households are underserved many of them are working families military men and women and college graduates over the past five years bank branches have been closing at record rates while check cashing andPayday loans are thriving as you get closer and closer to the limit there are fewer places for people to go, but there is some reason for hope.

A new generation is using innovation and technology to reinvent the way we bank in San Francisco. A company is helping people pool their money and lend to each other so families have a better option when money gets tough in New York There is an organization that is providing affordable loans to growing businesses so entrepreneurs can see your ideas come true and outside of Atlanta a company is creating a new type of credit score using rent and monthly bill payments to give underserved Americans a path to In the mainstream is about having a variety of options available that They allow people to spend, save, borrow and plan, but for many of us, when we need to, the best options are not available.

Tens of millions of hard-working Americans are trying to achieve their goals. potential and they are waiting wanting to believe in a simple promise that if they push forward they will not be held back this is redemption nothing has changed he is asleep I just remember all the things we don't drink until then if I if I were you we would all trust for two thousand years now for me. I was keeping all my secrets soft and the healing pages were folded and there was nothing at all, so if in the future I might need a savior, I remember what it was like. written on that wall we don't eat until your father is at the table we don't drink to hell so if I were you we would too so if I were you my friends you