How to Improve Your Financial Health w/ @HillHarper & Rod Griffin #ExperianBoost

Hill Harper and Rod Griffin share their tips on how you can improve your financial health.

Here’s a full transcript:

Rod Griffin: Good morning, everybody. I’m Rod Griffin. I’m director of consumer education advocacy for Experian, and I am thrilled to have with me today, Hill Harper, who plays Dr. Marcus Andrews on The Good Doctor. He has a Juris Doctorate degree from Harvard Law School and, most importantly, is a huge advocate for financial inclusion, financial health and well-being, and is Experian’s Boost Ambassador, and is the author of The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in Its Place. So, thank you so much for being here.

Hill Harper: Absolutely. Good morning to the West Coast, good afternoon, good lunch break to the East Coast. Excited to be on, excited to chat with folks.

Rod Griffin: I think there’s so many things that we had to share and that you can bring to the table to help people understand why personal finance is so important. Before we start into that discussion though, I’d like to know more about you. Our journey started in a similar place. You’re from Iowa originally. I’m from Kansas-

Hill Harper: Oh really?

Rod Griffin: Yeah, I’m from Kansas. You went to Harvard, I went to the Harvard on the plains, University of Kansas and that’s where our paths diverged rapidly.

Hill Harper: Isn’t the University of Kansas in Manhattan, Kansas?

Rod Griffin: No, it’s in Lawrence, so Lawrence. Kansas State University’s in Manhattan.

Hill Harper: Lawrence. Kansas State. Oh, okay, sorry. I can’t say…  because I lived in Manhattan, New York.

Rod Griffin: Oh, yeah? New york.

Hill Harper: So, you know, I live in Brooklyn now, but I used to live in Manhattan. And so, you know, maybe that’s another similarity but I guess it’s not because Kansas State’s in Manhattan so that’s not really-

Rod Griffin: Hey, we tried. Right? But we still have similar passions and I think that’s what’s important-

Hill Harper: Yes.

Rod Griffin: But before we… tell me more about that journey, because I think that’s fascinating. How do you go from Iowa to Harvard University to being a thespian and a television actor? And where in that journey, did you develop this passion for personal finance?

Hill Harper: Well, you know, first of all, I was very blessed because my family. My mother is from a small town in South Carolina called Seneca, South Carolina. And my father is from a small town in Iowa called Fort Madison, Iowa. And both of my grandparents… On my mother’s side, my grandfather’s named, Harold Hill, and he had a pharmacy called Piedmont Pharmacy, that served the African American community during Jim Crow segregation, when black folks couldn’t go to Walgreens or Rexall or any of those places.

They went to Piedmont Pharmacy in Seneca. And he showed me and represented what community service was about. I remember being a little, little boy sitting in his pharmacy and he would trade prescription medicine, for someone who didn’t have any money, for a sack of potatoes. Maybe they were a farmer and that’s all they had were potatoes or they had chickens. You know, it was a type of thing, he’d always tell me, “You know, if people still need what you have, then give it to them and they’ll find a way to pay you back. Or you’ll get paid back some other kind of way.”

And then on my father’s side, my grandfather there, he had a farm, 88 acre farm, outside of Fort Madison, that had goats and chickens, and cows on it. And then he also was a doctor and he was Ob-Gyn, Family Practice, he delivered babies. So again, that was about service and community service.

And so both of my parents ended up being physicians as well. My mother became an anesthesiologist. My father became a psychiatrist. And I was born in Iowa City, Iowa, when they were doing their medical residency at the University of Iowa. And we moved around a lot, ended up going to high school in Sacramento, California, went back east to go to undergrad at Brown University, went straight up 95 to Boston to go to Harvard and did a joint degree at Harvard Law School, and the Kennedy School of Government.

And all that time, the beautiful thing about education is that hopefully, it expands your opportunities, not limits them. And I think we say the wrong thing to a lot of young people, particularly. We want them to know what they want to do and then study that and that’s not true. Just study things until you can be a more learned person. Because people ask me, “Well, you have two graduate degrees from Harvard and one’s a law degree, but you do a job that you don’t even need a high school diploma to do, you know, actor.” And that’s absolutely right.

The idea is that, the more education you have, the more choices you should have. So you can choose to do the law if you want. You can choose to do acting, or something like that. Whatever you want to do, let it expand your choice rubric. And that’s what it was.

And so, as I was writing my books, to answer your question about wealth and financial literacy… As I was writing my books and I developed the foundation, the Manifest Your Destiny Foundation, working with young people, and working with their families, particularly, from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods and backgrounds, what I started to realize is that many of the reasons they would tell me they couldn’t do this… Because I was always about, “What are your dreams? How can we…” I always say, “You’re an active architect of your own life, you can build whatever life you want no matter who you are. But just like an architect approaches building a structure, we need to create a blueprint. We need to create a blueprint for your life. So many people walk around without a real blueprint. They say they have it up here, but they really don’t. They haven’t really mapped it out. And so, I encourage the people I work with in my foundation to map it out.

What I started to find, it added to my blueprint. They started telling me, that one of the biggest impediments they had was money, and access to money and debt, and all the debt elements that kept them tied down and so I came up with a quote that a lot of people pulled from my book, where I say, “You can’t be free, if the cost of being you is too high.” “You can’t be free if the cost…”

And for so many people, it’s expensive to be poor. You know? And that’s the sad reality of it. And, your credit score is a big piece of that. You know, when we have this latest data point that came out, talking about if you have a sub-prime score below… you’re going to pay over the course of your lifetime over $200,000.00 in added interest fees. How can you ever dig yourself out of poverty, how can you ever dig yourself out of a negative financial situation, if you’re already $200,000.00 behind and you don’t have the best economic opportunities?

And so, I really wanted to dig deeper into finance, financial literacy, wealth building, to try to solve some problems that I was noticing working with folks through my foundation.

Rod Griffin: Awesome, yeah. And I think that’s something we see, and I hear the same thing from people. You’re starting at a deficit when your credit history isn’t working for you. And that’s where… and we talk about Experian Boost and how that can help people get that leg up a bit and try to give them an advantage. So, really interesting. My grandfather… our grandparents apparently, played a big role in our lives too. And my grandfather used to say similar… almost what you said. He said, “You won’t know what you want to do until you’re doing it.” And his point was try things, learn.

Hill Harper: Love that.

Rod Griffin: Be engaged, because you’ll find what you want to do.

Hill Harper: Yes.

Rod Griffin: If you just get on a path and don’t have an open mind-

Hill Harper: Yeah.

Rod Griffin: And be interested in learning, you won’t try new things.

Hill Harper: And to that point, it’s oftentimes difficult to try new things if you’re not in a position-

Rod Griffin: Yeah.

Hill Harper: Or able to, or if you feel locked or locked down or chained to a job, chained to a credit card debt, chained to your bills. All these things can stop and limit your ability to move freely. And so I think that your grandfather was right on point with that.

Rod Griffin: Yep. Absolutely, and I love that, “being an architect of your life” because it’s so important to know who you are, where you want to go. You mentioned in The Wealth Cure, you talked about your relationship with money and a night at the Henry. And I thought that was really fascinating. Can you share a bit of that experience? And do you think… and I’ve kind of had this thought too. Do you think that people need a money moment like that, to help focus their energies on money? Or help them start to learn about money?

Hill Harper: Well, the story you’re talking about is a pre-social media, pre-Instagram story. And so I don’t think folks need that moment any more. What he’s referring to is a friend of mine spending and exorbitant amount of money, buying bottles, being out, doing things where you could realize that you could almost send somebody to college on what this person was spending. And realizing that how someone uses money, you could actually transform someone’s life, but oftentimes, we overspend on things, trying to impress people that we don’t even like. You know? And why? How can we be much more strategic about how we use money and also encourage our circle to use it strategically and focus, et cetera?

But, the point is that was pre-Instagram, I mean, you can just go on Instagram right now and see folks who are presenting a life or a lifestyle that’s really not even true. Right? It’s like showing all the best pictures of the best places. Like, “Oh, my life is incredible.” You know? And so, it’s not about that. It’s about happiness. It’s about true happiness. What makes you happy?

I talk about this idea of being unreasonably happy. What is your source of happiness? And certainly, it’s not money. And certainly it’s not showing somebody that you’re cooler or happier or richer or whatever, driving this car or that car. It’s about finding your passion. Finding what makes your heart beat faster, being connected to people, loving folks, and all of that. And I call that living a wealthy life. Right?

Now, money plays a piece in that, like living, being truly wealthy, we have all these wealth factors. The number one wealth factor for me, is my health. I believe that’s number one. Because I truly believe, if you don’t have your health, it doesn’t matter how much money you have. You know, there’s that wonderful but sad quote from Steve Jobs where he said, he would trade the iPhone, every Apple, every… the whole company, Pixar, and every billion dollars, to see his daughter graduate high school. He didn’t get there. Right?

And so, here’s the deal. No matter how much money you have. No matter what you’ve done, you know, I’m a cancer survivor, right? 2010, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. My health, I put that at the top of my wealth factors. And then there are other things, my family, my son, is right at the top of my wealth factor. Right? Those are the things. And so, money is just a foundational element to help me build the life I want to build… and my relationship to money.

And so, having noticed and seen things where there are egregious uses of money, or interesting uses of money, or really seeing inspirational uses and effective uses, like Mohammad Yunus and his micro-lending program. And realizing that you can transform communities with micro-loans, right? It’s not even about the big dollars all the time. It’s about really smart dollars and that’s why I came up with this idea of smart money versus dumb money. And I talk about that a lot.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. So do that. Tell us a little bit about what’s smart money, what’s dumb money.

Hill Harper: You know, it’s very easy, when it comes to the individual, to identify smart money versus dumb money. Right? Most of us have been taught that a dollar is a dollar, like, every dollar’s the same. But it’s not true. There are smart dollars, and those are dollars that are working for you to build the life you want. And there are dumb dollars, and those are actually dollars that are actually working actively against you from building the life you want. And I believe if you could ultra over-index in smart dollars, in usage of smart dollars, because remember, money is just a tool.

Hill Harper: So I talk about money from the use standpoint. Money is simply a tool. Just like credit, your credit score is simply a tool. You are not your credit score. You are not your bank account. You are not the money you have. These are just tools. It’s just like you’re not a hammer. Right? A hammer’s really good, and this is how you identify the difference, I love to use the hammer example. Hammer is really good tool to do what it’s purposed to do, which is pound a nail. So, if you have to pound a nail, it’s much better than using the palm of your hand, which will get torn up and all of that. Right? So pounding a nails, it’s really efficient. But what if you have to clean hardwood floors, and you use the exact same tool, the hammer? You’re actually going to do more damage than good. It would’ve been better if you just left the hammer alone. Money and credit and credit cards are the exact same way.

So, smart money, how you spent money that day, by the time your head hits the pillow, and you wake up the next morning, is it worth an equal or potentially greater value? In other words, it’s earning interest, or you spent it on something that was beneficial to you, like healthy food for instance. You’re actually better off because you ate that delicious kale organic kale salad, and you spent the money on organic kale salad rather than the fried buffalo wings, right? That’s smart money.

Dumb money is the exact opposite. When your head hits the pillow, by the time you wake up in the morning, is whatever you spent it on, worth significantly less or costing you more? In other words, high interest credit card debt, or you spent it on a depreciating asset that depreciates rapidly, and you actually bought it with a credit card, so it’s costing you more and it depreciates, like an expensive car, expensive sneakers, stuff like that, right? Depreciating.

So, smart money versus dumb money, and then looking how you spend and if you over-index on smart money spent, investing, investing in yourself, you know setting up an… and we can talk about different investments and different things that I like and recommend. So, if you use that versus dumb money spent. And I’m different than Suzie Orman and Dave Ramsey, from the standpoint that I don’t make you feel guilty about the money. I just want you to identify it. Right?

If you’re going to spend, what I call, dumb money, then understand how and in what way you do. Because for instance, a guy came up to me, I was wearing some Nikes and he said,” You know, you’re wearing Nike shoes. You told me that that was dumb money.” And I said, “But you have to understand, how did I buy them? How?” And he said, “Well, what do you mean?” And I said, “Well, I own Nike stock, and I only buy the amount of Nike shoes every year, that I get paid in dividends from Nike stock.

So, therefore, Nike is actually paying for these sneakers. Not me. And if Nike has a down year, and I don’t get any Nike dividends, then guess what? I’m wearing my year old Nikes because I’m not buying any new Nikes this year. But if Nike has an up year, they pay a dividend, I get money. I can use that dividend to then buy sneakers. So, therefore, I’m investing in the company that I’m actually supporting by buying their shoes and I’m letting their dividend pay for the shoes that I buy.” That’s smart money in my opinion, and you still have nice shoes.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. True. And that’s, you know, we run into the stuff issue, too. And I always say that credit’s a financial tool, exactly what you said. Debt’s a financial problem. Debt can be a financial tool if you use it as businesses do. If they’re investing their cash and their capital, you get a return. And they’re using the bank’s money and paying at a lower interest rate than they’re getting in return. They’re using debt to make money. That can make sense. But if you’re just using a credit card to buy stuff, and at the end of the month you can’t remember what you bought with that credit card, which happens to all of us at some point. It’s stuff. It’s dumb money. It’s that same issue. You just wasted it. I don’t know what I’m doing with it. So, it’s about being purposeful with the way you use credit, purposeful with the way you use your money.

Hill Harper: Yes. And that goes back to the blueprint of being an architect of your life.

Rod Griffin: Yep. Exactly right.

Hill Harper: Create a blueprint, then you know what’s important to you and then every choice in your choice matrix, can be run through the filter of that blueprint. And if that choice doesn’t fit the blueprint, then you make a different choice.

Rod Griffin: Yep. Yeah and I think your tool analogy is right on the money too, speaking of money. It’s about being purposeful. You know what you’re going to do with that tool and how to use it.

Hill Harper: Right.

Rod Griffin: I think that’s so important. So, that’s a fantastic point. In Putting Money in Its Place, you dedicate a whole three pages to credit reports and credit scores-

Hill Harper: Yes.

Rod Griffin: And I think that’s exactly right. You know what I mean? And I talk about this, you don’t need to know a whole lot. There’s not a lot you have to cover. You don’t need a novel length book. You need to know fundamental things and you cover those things really well. And we talk about, since the book was published, there is the one new development, that Experian Boost. Can you talk about… so that’s really changed that landscape-

Hill Harper: Yes.

Rod Griffin: Talk about why you’ve become an Experian Boost Ambassador, why that’s so important to you. And why do you think that’s so valuable?

Hill Harper: What I really like about Experian Boost and the reason why I’m an Ambassador and promoting it is because for so many folks, they have thin credit files, they may have limited credit history report [inaudible 00:17:56]. And folks have never had the ability to have any control or say to input positive data about their bill pay. And oftentimes, the algorithms… because folks have to remember, since you are not your credit score, and remember there’s no person, like a live person, sitting behind the curtain, giving… doling out credit scores.

This is an algorithm, right? It’s done through an algorithm. And therefore, since there’s… up until now, there’s been no ability, by the individual to say, “Hey. You know, I’ve actually been paying these bills.” Because what your algorithm is attempting to rate is whether my credit-worthiness, the idea, “Do I pay my bills?” And do I have a credit history of paying bills when they come due? And oftentimes, if you have a thin file, or you have a limited credit history, you don’t have that.

So, Experian Boost allows the individual to load in positive payment history through, you know, cell phone bills, electricity bills, any type of utility payment that’s done automatically through their personal bank account. So what happens is is that you start to build a thicker file and thicker payment history and that can have a positive impact on your credit score. And that’s a positive thing and so anything that pushes, in my mind, anything that starts to push and evolve the algorithm of actually being able to evaluate the person more accurately and have more information about the individual, and allow a credit score to be created through that, is important.

Because you have to understand that people from different backgrounds, prioritize different types of bill pay. For instance, many of the folks that I work for through my foundation, they’ll absolutely, always pay their mobile bill. Why? Because a mobile bill is their lifeline-

Rod Griffin: Copy.

Hill Harper: Communicating with their family. It’s how they keep up on information and all of that.

Sometimes, they’ll allow their credit card to stay maxed out, and if you’re making a choice, they’ll roll their credit card over. Now, obviously, that’s not great for their credit score but at the same time, if the algorithm doesn’t recognize that they paid their mobile bill, that same month, they don’t get any positive benefit from having paid that bill vis a vis their credit score. And obviously, your credit score ultimately impacts the interest rates you pay and how much it costs you over the course of your life.

So, Experian Boost can improve your credit score and it’s your FICO 8 score specifically. And I like that and hopefully… I’m hoping that this new… the advent of Experian Boost is going to push the other credit rating bureaus to evolve as well. And it will encourage even Experian to continue to evolve the algorithm, so that people are really rated in a more accurate way about who they are and their ability to pay their bills and how they pay their bills.

Rod Griffin: Yeah, and I think that, to me, that’s been really incredibly exciting and I’ve been with Experian more than 20 years, now. And it’s the first time that we’ve given consumers that kind of control.

Hill Harper: Yeah.

Rod Griffin: So people now control what’s going in it. They have a choice and I’m always being asked by people-

Hill Harper: People are… That’s a good point that you just made. You can opt in or opt out.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. Yeah.

Hill Harper: That’s what I like about it. It’s not that once you’re in, if you don’t believe that your score is moving the way you want it to move, then just opt out and it doesn’t hurt you. In other words, there’s no downside to opting in, checking it out, seeing what happens. It happens in real time. And then over time, it will continue to work, hopefully, it will continue to work for you. Now, if you don’t like it, opt out. And so, that’s another thing that I like about it. It’s not like it’s going to continue to grab information from your records if you decide, “You know what? I don’t want to do this anymore.” I’m a proponent of it and I like it.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. And that’s so true. We’ve never, as an industry, been able to tell somebody, “Tell us what you want in because we this will help you.” And it really… what makes me proud of being part of Experian, is that we’re looking for innovative ways to help people, which is something you may not have heard before. To think that the credit bureaus, like Experian, wants to help people gain access to credit and we’re finding ways to give them control over that. That’s an amazing thing to me. And, you know?

Hill Harper: Yeah. Amazing to me also

Rod Griffin: It turns that model around.

Hill Harper: I want it to be accurate. I mean, ultimately, I think, Experian, any of the… you’d hope that any of the credit rating bureaus, including Experian, want to give the most possible, accurate, score and information to a lender, as possible. That’s-

Rod Griffin: Yep.

Hill Harper: And so, if we don’t know that this person has been paying every month their utility bills, their cable bill, all these bills, the electricity bill, all of these bills then how can that necessarily be an accurate representation of them?
Rod Griffin: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s what we are about. It’s helping people connect with business. We don’t want that to be a barrier. Businesses want the customers and we want to help people make that transaction. We don’t want to block that.

Hill Harper: Right.

Rod Griffin: We want to make it happen. And you’re exactly right. When I’m asked all the time, “You know? I paid my cell phone bill every year, every month for ten years and I thought I got credit for that. And I thought I got recognized for that.” And you didn’t and now you can. Because it does give us a more accurate perception, particularly of people who have not had access to credit, who have not had the ability to have traditional kinds of low cost credit accounts.

You know very well, I’m sure, about the issues around financial deserts, where there are no traditional banking institutions where low cost credit is available to large portions of our population. And this kind of helps solve some of that, I think.

Hill Harper: Right.

Rod Griffin: It helps people who just didn’t have access before, now show that they’re a good credit risk. And can help improve their lives. I think that’s such an incredible story for us to be able to tell and I appreciate and thank you for helping us tell that story. It’s such a new kind of opportunity and a great one to share and to be able to help people so it’s usually important.

Rod Griffin: And I had in my notes, because I keep looking at my notes, and you said right off the top. One of the things that you said is that, “you can’t be free if the cost of being you is too high.” And I thought that was a tremendous insight because that’s what we see. We talk to people with low credit scores, sub-prime scores, little or no credit history, and the only things they have access to are payday loans or predatory lending situations, can’t have access to traditional banking, can’t get money from an ATM-

Hill Harper: Rent-to-own.

Rod Griffin: Rent-to-own, yeah.

Hill Harper: It’s almost 300% interest. You know, it costs you 3… It’s crazy. The idea of the people who can least afford it, are preyed upon the most by negative financial products. And that has to change. And one of the ways it has to change is that if we can really educate folks, in terms of financial literacy, then we can shut those places down, just because they won’t have any business. And that’s where I come in, hopefully, my foundation and the work we’re doing with Experian. Hopefully, that… to me this is just a gateway. Having people boost their credit is great but it’s also a gateway to having a much bigger financial literacy conversation.

Rod Griffin: Yep. Yeah, and I think that’s so tremendous. It’s so important. And that’s kind of the, as you said, it’s the foundation. You have to have knowledge first. So getting that foundation of financial knowledge-

Hill Harper: Yep.

Rod Griffin: It has to start when you’re young but then we have to reach people at the right points so that they’re open and ready for that information and figure out where that is.

Hill Harper: It’s about habits. It’s about habits too. And the good thing about right now, we’re living in a time where technology can almost create the habit for you. Meaning, you know, for me, I set up automatic savings. So I don’t even see, you know, some of the money that comes in. I never even have… I don’t… Even if, you know, I have that moment where I need to devise something with some dumb money, I may not even have it available to me because it’s already gone into a smart money bucket that already… before it even hits my account. And so, technology allows us to do a lot of that for us. You know? And, you know, understanding what those tools are and how to do that is an important piece of the bigger kind of literacy puzzle.

Rod Griffin: Yeah, and revisiting the dumb money conversation because you brought up, I think, another really good point. If you plan that spend, it might be… just stuff, it might be… if you didn’t think about it, it would be dumb money. But if you saved that money for that particular, sort of, expense, that it’s just your thing. You know? It’s free money, in a sense, to use and you’ve planned for that. That’s not dumb money.

Hill Harper: No, no, no. Not at all. I call it save and pay cash. Right? If you don’t have to go into debt to do it, you know, that’s not dumb money. Right? That’s actually smart money because you’re improving the quality of your life. You’re enjoying it. Take that vacation. Just don’t go into massive credit card debt for that vacation. Plan for it, save for it, do it. It’s just like, even… I asked this question to the students I teach. I say, “Hey. Is a new laptop, smart money or dumb money?”

And they’re like… some are like, “Oh, no. It’s dumb money because it depreciates so quickly. Technology, they’ll be a new version, six months it’s better and faster and cheaper.” And then others are like, “No, no, no. It’s smart money because I can do my homework, I can do work, I can improve the quality of my life, I can…” And then I say, “But, no. Well, listen, it can be both. You’re right but it’s really how you pay for it.” If you go to a rent-to-own shop and pay 300% interest, or if you put it on a credit card and pay it down over five years, it costs you double, or if you save up and pay cash, then it’s smart money. Because you saved up, you planned for it, you paid cash and it’s costing you exactly what it’s costing you.

And then they get surprised to learn, they say, “Well, what computer do you think I have?” “Oh, you have the best brand new blah, blah, blah.” I said, “No, no, no. I bought a refurbished, you know, Apple Mac.” You know? The least expensive one that’s used, refurbished, because I thought that was smartest money to spend, paid cash for it, I think it was like $500.00. And that’s the computer I use. It’s a nice computer. It gets the job done. And [inaudible 00:29:18] a $500.00, used computer. It had a warranty.

So, you know, there’s ways to think about your spend and just because I could afford to buy the nicest one, it’s just like my pastor used to say, he looked around the parking lot and he saw these expensive European cars and he came to me and said, “Listen. I need this congregation to start buying a car they can afford. And when I say afford, I mean, A FORD.”

Rod Griffin: Except you can’t buy a Ford car anymore, or for much longer. So, it’d be a truck or a Mustang-

Hill Harper: The F-150.

Rod Griffin: The F-150 awesome.

Hill Harper: Yeah, Raptors? Is that smart money or dumb money to buy [crosstalk 00:30:01]

Rod Griffin: Yeah. I can’t afford a Raptor. My truck’s ten years old. I live in Texas so you have to have a truck in Texas. I think it’s a law. But it’s ten years old, so what are you going to do? And then, you know, we kind of talked about, just looking back at my notes, we spent a lot of time talking about money, financial inclusion from the individual perspective-

Hill Harper: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rod Griffin: But we don’t always talk about it from, sort of the external forces. So the question that I kind of have is, what can business entrepreneurs do to help address real problems, societal barriers to financial health and financial access? Because I think that’s a huge question. There are great programs; Boston Builds Credit, for example, is Looking at the difference in the wealth of minority families and communities versus whites in white families in Boston. And it’s astronomically different. There’s, you know, white families have a net worth on average of something like $80,000.00 which isn’t a phenomenal number. African-American families? $8.00.

Hill Harper: Yeah.

Rod Griffin: A lot of that is societally imposed. And we have to recognize that and we have to find ways to address it. Do you have any thoughts there? I mean, that’s sort of a big question for a few minutes [inaudible 00:31:27] but it’s an important one that we have to raise and address.

Hill Harper: Big question but a relatively simple answer, I believe that because of discriminatory forces, you haven’t seen true market forces applied. And what do I mean by that? There are so much beautiful investment opportunity in the most ignored communities but because of discrimination, fear, basically misrepresentation, historical lies, misinformation, you don’t see the investment made. And that’s where the shame or the problem is.

Investing in diversity, investing in diversity of people that you work with, but also investing in the communities, it literally, finding those organizations and people that work in these communities, giving them access to capital, letting them invest to rebuild and build up these communities, is some of the smartest money you can spend.

And I’ll give you a great example about institutional racism and systemic racism where it’s not applied properly. It was my first book. I went to pitch my first book to all these book companies and many of them, my first book was called, Letters To a Young Brother: Manifest Your Destiny. It was a motivational book for teen boys, and particularly inner city teen boys. Right? And so, I go to pitch the book. At the time I was doing Seaside New York, which at the time was a top five show in the country, 17 million people watched it every week. And almost at every meeting, these big book companies, would say, “Hill. You know, we want to do a book with you but not this book.”

And I said, “Well, why not this book?”

“Well, you’re pitching us a book for a population that doesn’t read. And we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders. We are not a charity book company. We need to make profit. So, we need to have books that sell.” I said, “Well, what makes you think that this population wouldn’t be interested in purchasing this book?” “Well, our data shows that they’re not readers blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.” “Really? Well, how about your data… What about your data should show that you’re just not publishing books that they’re interested in reading. Why are you blaming them rather than actually looking in the mirror at yourself?”

And so, when we did put the book out, and it went to the top of the New York Times Best Seller’s List and it won the American Library Association Award for Best Book for Young Adults and every library across the country stocked it, and to this day is the number one selling motivational book for teen boys in history, incredibly profitable book.

If one of the companies that actually believed there was a market, would’ve said, “No.” I mean, most of them said, “No.” It took putting it out to show that there’s a huge market because there’s a huge need and a huge thirst for this motivational material.

Same goes with investment in these communities. You have a number of banks that say, “Well, there’s no money in us putting a branch in this community. So you let all these payday lenders pop up. Because the pay-day lenders know that there’s money there and there’s opportunity for them. And they become predators. Where if you just had traditional banks actually opening up branches, you would put the pay-day lenders out of business. Right? Because they wouldn’t… people could have access to their money, deposit it for much less.

Investing and the diverse investing is there. You know, I wish someone would lend me enough money to create my own credit union, my own bank, because I know for a fact, if I opened multiple credit unions, in these communities where there are pay-day lenders, or banks where there’s pay-day lenders, and I was able to set up CD programs and savings programs, and get people access to their money quickly and cheaply, I know it would work. But again, the flow of capital is discriminatory and too much vestiges of history have held that back. And it’s very difficult because there are people already in these communities doing all this work, but their access to capital is much more expensive. So, it makes their ability to scale, much more difficult.

Rod Griffin: I think that’s so important. And I think that looking at some of the programs that are out there, I’m really excited about how do we change and that’s sometimes the hardest thing to do. So, great insight. I really, I think that’s hugely important.

And you talked about unreasonable happiness, and it’s sort of the last question on my list. And you covered them right at the start, so you got ahead of me, which seems to happen but that’s great. So, you answered the question. Let’s talk about that again, because when I read that, you know, I thought, actually it should be the most reasonable happiness we have, that we’re not struggling with debt. That we’re living a life that gives us joy, doesn’t mean we’re living outside our means. Why do you think we feel like that’s unreasonable in some ways? We sort of have this reticence, you know?

Hill Harper: You know, I think a lot of us have subconsciously been taught that we have to struggle. A lot of us have this subconscious that life has to be painful. And relationships have to hurt and that everything… If there’s not a problem, or chaos or instability, then you’re not really living. I just think all of that’s not true.

The things that have happened in my life, actually… and that’s not to say that there are not roadblocks and bumps and all those things. Like I said, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2010, it was scary. My father was diagnosed with the same thing as me and he’s since passed on from cancer, right? So, I certainly, know enough following in my father’s footsteps in that regard. And so, I’m attempting to do my best to mitigate that.

But at the same time, I’m still living my life to the best of my abilities and taking risk and having fun and not saying, “Oh, I have to live inside a bubble because I’m afraid that I’ll pass away soon, like my father did, because he had the same cancer I had.”

And so, you know, everyone has their own definition of what their life can be and there’s all these different factors, that I believe, that are important to helping you live. And the reason why we call it unreasonable happiness is because I want people around you to look at hat person and say, “Dang, they’re unreasonably… Why are they so happy? They work in the desk right next to me. Why are they so much happier than me? You know, it doesn’t make sense.” And it’s literally, “It’s unreasonable that they’re so happy.” Right? And that goes back to the point.

It’s not about the care you have or the clothes or the watch or the this or the that that creates the happiness. It’s about in here, in here, in your spirit, in your soul, in your psyche, and the people you surround yourself with, in your circle and what you do. Do you meditate? Do you do stuff for your mental health? Do you do stuff for your spiritual health? DO you do stuff for your physical health? Do you do stuff for your financial health? Do you do stuff for your friends and families and networks and give back and figure out ways of giving back. And all of those things are pieces and part of being unreasonably happy and not being fake happy, and not being Instagram happy but being truly unreasonably happy in your core.

And I believe happiness and love radiates out and when you give it away, it comes back. And you can share it. And it’s just like, to me, investing in people. I invest in people all the time. Right? Because I want to see people go for it and most of the time, let’s be perfectly honest, those investments don’t pan out because most small businesses, most start-ups fail. That’s okay. Right? I’m happy to make that investment. That’s part of my plan is to save someone who comes up to me with the right plan and they’re engaged and they hit me at the right moment, even if it’s on the subway. You know? I mean, “Okay. I’ll listen. What? Really? Okay. This sounds good.” I don’t mind that because I have a whole set aside that’s about money that I don’t need to get back. Right? It’s about, I’m going to invest, not expecting a return. And that makes me unreasonably happy. And I’m not saying everybody has to do that. But that’s part of my unreasonably happy me matrix.

And I get excited when I see other people excited. I like to excite people, right? So, it’s an exchange.

Rod Griffin: Cool. Yeah. And that’s such a cool concept. And I think you’re right. It’s in the heart and in the core. And being… making other people feel you’re unreasonably happy. I love that perception. You know, that kind of perspective.

We have a few questions.  Jill asks, “How long did it take for Hill Harper to pay off his student loans?”

Hill Harper: Ooh. That’s a great question, Jill. So, I graduated with $100,000.00 plus in student loan debt.

Rod Griffin: Ouch.

Hill Harper: And it took me about seven years. And I was so happy when I paid off that last one. You know? And it was literally really being aggressive, I was really aggressive with that pay down. I was like, “I’m every…” You know, here’s the deal, many of us have been taught that we have to buy, or have stuff and… When you come out of school, if you continue to live as lean as you did in school… You know, I remember, I used to get that three Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes for like 59 cents from the Dollar Store and eat it. You know, I mean, it’s not great nutritionally, let’s be honest, but at the same time, and also Ramen Noodles. Ramen Noodles are cheap.

Rod Griffin: I ate a lot of Ramen Noodles.

Hill Harper: You know, you can make Ramen Noodles much better by, you can get the cheap marinara sauce and then you take the Ramen Noodles and marinara, and maybe that doesn’t sound too good to you but listen. It’s possible, right? There are ways to cobble together saying, “I’m going to dedicate this huge pile of money to paying down debt.” Student loans are some of the most debilitating loans over time. And they can hang over our head like a cloud. I was really aggressive with mine because I just wanted to get them over and done with. And so, it took me about seven years.

Rod Griffin: Yeah, so that… you did a little better than I did. I only had $25,000.00 in student loan debt but it took me ten years. So, yeah, and a little at a time and-

Hill Harper: Ultra aggressive with it. I try to be ultra aggressive. You can also do side jobs that are only about debt. That’s another recommendation [inaudible 00:42:30]. If you do, for instance, let’s say, you can sit kids or babysit or do something like that. Let’s say, that’s a side hustle. So you do this side hustle, and that side hustle, every single penny from the side hustle goes to debt pay down.

There’s different ways of trying to structure and different ways I looked at it. But I looked at some of my income at the time. When I came out of school, I waited tables from seven at night to 11, I mean 11 at night to seven in the morning, at a diner, a 24 hour diner. And I dedicated sometimes it would be two days, you know, maybe Tuesday night was my student loan night. And I’d even talk to people about it at the table. And sometimes they felt guilty, they’d tip me more. “You know, tonight’s my student loan… Every tip I earn tonight is going to my student loan…” One guy, you know, nice guy, left a 100 dollar bill so it works.

Rod Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I have to look at Experian, we look at automotive prices and the average new car price, that people are paying now, it’s about $32,000.000, $30, $32,000.00. The average student loan debt is about $32,000.00. We don’t seem to be complaining a lot about paying off a car in five or six or seven years, but we can’t seem to manage a student loan at the same level in that same period of time. We worry about that so-

Hill Harper: Well, I have to-

Rod Griffin: Different issues granted-

Hill Harper: Different issue. And I also have a rule about cars.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. I-

Hill Harper: If you can’t pay cash for a car, remember a car is a severely depreciating asset. So to go into debt over a car? Mm-hmm (negative). You have to pay cash. My first car was $315.00, Toyota, green, it was rusted out on the side, rusty bottom, 5 speed, had… it was a wagon, called it the Green Machine. It was not a chick magnet at all. And it had 295,000 miles on it, broken out seats.

Hill Harper: I believe you should never pay interest on a car because it’s dumb money. You’re paying interest on a depreciating asset. So it’s costing you more and it’s depreciating at the same time. It’s amongst the dumbest money out there. So, you have to pay cash for your car. I’m sorry. You got to buy a used car that you can afford or whatever that is, that’s what you got to do.

Rod Griffin: Yeah.

Hill Harper: That’s just my rule from my book. I’m just saying. And if you can afford to buy that Bugatti at $1.3 million and pay cash for it, then God bless you. In other words, I don’t mind if you buy a nice car, if you go pay cash for it. Buy that Bugatti, in fact, I’d like a Bugatti too. I can’t afford it.

Rod Griffin: Oh, I don’t know if I want a Bugatti. I’d hate to insure the thing. That’s the other issue.

Hill Harper: True.

Rod Griffin: Jill has another question.

Hill Harper: Yes.

Rod Griffin: What are the… I love this. What are the first financial lessons, Hill Harper is teaching or is going to teach your son?

Hill Harper: Oh, man. I really have to make him understand that things cost money. And money… You have to work for it. Because he often asks me, when I have to go to work, why I’m leaving. Right? And then I try to explain to him that I have to go earn money so we can live in our house. And then, the bike that he wants, I have to make him understand that I go to work, to earn money to pay for the bike.

And so, he starts to connect the dots between the value of time, because work and me being away from him, creates income that allows me then to spend for him to have certain things, et cetera. So, I want him to really start to make those mental connections. So that’s the first lesson.

Hill Harper: I’ve already started him saving. So, I bought him this little safe. You know? It’s like a little ATM type of bank, you know, piggy bank. So he’s already saving but he doesn’t quite make the connection of value, the value of money and what something costs. So I’m waiting a little bit on that so he understands that a bike is not the same thing as buying a little doll like this. It’s two different things. But, you know, understanding cost and value.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Awesome lesson.

Rod Griffin: Sylvia asks, “My generation, believed in paying yourself first from each paycheck, as a form of saving money. What would you suggest to current generations?”

Hill Harper: Oh, oh, I think that you absolutely pay yourself first. But it’s a couple different buckets. So first, the first bucket is an emergency fund. You know with the government shut down recently, we really saw that people for the most part haven’t built up adequate emergency funds. So you have to have that emergency fund. I recommend at least three months of living expenses put away. The more the better. Six months would be great. Just in case there’s some kind of catastrophic…

We have to remember that one of the number one bankruptcies that people file are medical, catastrophic medical bankruptcies, right? Because that injury that we have that we didn’t expect to have, something happens, we’re out of work, et cetera. So, emergency fund first and then you’re paying into that bucket out first.

And then, you pay yourself first, at least 5%, I like 10% of what you earn for sure. The more the better. And that goes into savings or a readily accessible investment. And I’m big into auto-investing, into like a Vanguard 500, and Vanguard Growth Funds. You could set those up to auto-invest, so that money comes right out of your bank account. You stop thinking about it. It’s called dollar cost averaging. You’re not thinking about whether the market is up or down that day, it’s just automatically happening. My father taught me that. It’s one of the most beneficial things that he ever taught me. He said, “Listen. Allow, the time value of money, or compounded interest to work on your behalf.”

Hill Harper: If you start when you’re young doing this, you get this amazing head start. The vast majority of us start later, so we never get that real ramp up on the back side. There’s this wonderful story about a teacher in Detroit, recently, who gave two million dollars upon death through her will to the Detroit art museum. And people were like, “Well, she was a public school teacher. How did she end up with that?” She allowed compounded interest and the time value of money to work on her behalf and it just went like this. And that’s a huge recommendation that I have.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, I’m finally getting… I refuse to say old, but seasoned enough, that you start to see that as you save. It’s flat, flat, flat, flat and you start to see that [inaudible 00:49:25]

Hill Harper: Yeah. Particularly if you’re re-investing the dividends. You automatically… You hit that button to automatically re-invest the dividends-

Rod Griffin: Yeah. That’s it.

Hill Harper: So you never see the dividends and it starts to grow. And it starts to grow rapidly on the back side.

Rod Griffin: Yep. Don’t chase the market, try to anticipate it. Stay in and don’t look any more than you have to.

Hill Harper: Absolutely.

Rod Griffin: Zack says he’s curious about investing in stock in order to boost financially, will this go that route as well?I think from an investment perspective, we’d agree that you should invest-

Hill Harper: So, I like, again, the mutual funds element. You know? You can, if there’s some individual stocks that you really like and you think that there’s a future, there’s nothing wrong with that. Right? You can go invest individually but I particularly like doing a very low cost mutual fund like Vanguard. And I’ve done… I’ll just tell you what I’ve done with Vanguard. I’ve done… You know, I don’t get paid by them or anything. I’m just telling you.

Vanguard 500 which is an index fund, I do a Vanguard growth fund, these are both domestic. And then I do two international funds. There’s a Vanguard International Growth and I think that there’s a something it’s… something… I can’t remember what it is. But there’s two international. So I have two international. And I do automatic deposit into all four of those accounts. And I do an automatic deposit two times a month into all four, towards the beginning of the month, towards the end. So that means, eight times a month, there are withdrawals coming out of my account into those accounts. And then I re-invest the dividends. So that’s one thing I do. That’s me. I’m just telling you.

The other thing I believe is, I do believe in whole life policies. I believe that investing in a whole life policy, my policies are with Mass Mutual. I believe in investing in whole life policies are good because they’re not connected to the market but they still grow. It’s very conservative, old school investing. And you also can take… If something happens, as the policy grows, you can take out a loan, 95% loan to value, on that money, and obviously you’re not paying tax when you take that loan out or what have you, if you need it. And so, I actually like, in concert with other investments, doing a whole life policy.

There are a lot of financial advisors out there that say that they don’t like whole life because it doesn’t grow as fast, et cetera. But it’s an old school, tortoise, hare approach. Right? The old time tortoise, they grow 6% every year and you also have the ability to take out a loan and it also has some death benefit elements to it, for any of your family, et cetera. I’m a proponent of those as well. So those are two direct dollar investment things that I do, that I support.

Rod Griffin: Yeah. And I think you’re… with money, it’s the tortoise every time. I mean, it’s just, there’s no fast answer with money or credit. It’s always about tortoise. Being patient-

Hill Harper: Yes.

Rod Griffin: Consistent, and deliberate. If the question is will it boost your credit scores. No, investments don’t. Just so we’re clear on that, I want to make sure… I don’t think that’s what was being asked but it has to be a… your cell phone… If you’re talking about Experian Boost, it’s cell phone, utilities, natural gas, electricity, so on, gets reported to your credit report, so, paying those bills on time, being consistent.
And [Michelle 00:52:44] had a similar question. I think we’ve… What mutual funds are good to invest in? We can’t advise any specific ones but you touched on a couple of well known ones.

Hill Harper: Yep.

Rod Griffin: And then, Sunshine asked a question. We only have about five minutes left. I don’t think we’ll be able to get there because I think it’s a huge discussion that I would love to be part of and I think we need to have a much bigger discussion. But how do we get around these types of problems, talking about systemic racism, or fear and discrimination in underserved communities? I think there… that’s a hard… that’s a big discussion.

Hill Harper: A big discussion but simply put, at least the work I’m attempting to do, I’m attempting to empower communities from within because ultimately if we can prove, just like I proved, for instance, with my book, Letters to Every Brother, if we can prove that there’s great opportunity in the communities, then we’ll see other… We’ll see investment flow come in to them. You know?

There’s a lot of enterprise zones out there where it can make money sense from a tax perspective to invest. Anybody who wants to join me in what I’m doing and invest alongside with me, in these communities, I’m doing a lot of investment in Detroit. I’m doing a lot of investment in Newark and in other cities.

And so, these are places where I’m looking to invest and build from within and show that there’s opportunity and show that it can be… I call it triple net wins. A win, win, win. It’s a win for the investor. It’s a win for the community. And it’s a win for the people there. Right? The people, because ultimately this is all about people.

Hill Harper: It’s all about helping people. It’s all about making people’s lives better. And there’s a way for that and that’s why I like to work within communities. And that’s why I don’t think… it’s not mutually exclusive to do grassroots work in the community, boots on the ground and then work with a multi-billion dollar company like Experian. We all have this… hopefully, we can align our goals and we can actually create opportunity and prosperity so that more people are winning, more people have the tools to win, more people have the credit rating to actually get access to cheaper and cheaper money, or less expensive money to them to build the life they want. Those things are foundational, fundamental things that I think folks at Experian are on board with or they wouldn’t have come to me and said, “Hey, let’s work on some stuff together.” And it’s folks… things that people from the community are onboard with as well. And it’s like, if I can be that conduit to bring big business as well as grassroots together, then so be it. That’s great. I’d love to do that.

Rod Griffin: Fantastic. Hill thank you so much for all of the great insight. Thank you for being a Boost Ambassador-

Hill Harper: Thank you.

Rod Griffin: We are right at time. And thank you for taking time to be with us this morning.

Hill Harper: You’re a great [inaudible 00:55:45] and hopefully we can do it again. And I’m just very proud to work with Experian. I’m proud of the company. I’m proud of what you all are doing, what you represent. And so, thank you for asking me to be an Ambassador. I’m proud to be an Ambassador.

Rod Griffin: Great. Thank you so much. Hey, mutual admiration club. Thank you for all the great work you do and the great insight. And thank you for being on Facebook live with us today, everybody. Check out Experian Boost, experian.com/boost. And thanks for all the great questions and we’ll see you all again, I hope, very soon. Take care.

About

Hill Harper is a humanitarian, an award-winning actor, best-selling author, entrepreneur, health and wellness ambassador/educator, and philanthropist. Harper is perhaps most recognizable for his starring role in the CBS hit television drama CSI: NY where he played eccentric Dr. Sheldon Hawkes from 2004 to 2013 for which Harper won three NAACP Image Awards for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

Click here to find out more about Harper. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

About Rod Griffin

Rod Griffin is a recognized expert in consumer credit reporting and scoring, fraud, and identity theft and other consumer information and data use issues who is quoted regularly in national print, online and broadcast media. Rod is a skilled writer, public speaker, and relationship builder. As director of public education for Experian, he implements strategic public education and financial literacy grant programs that drive positive. brand value and strengthen client relationships while empowering consumers to become more financially capable. He takes leadership roles in national financial literacy organizations and represents Experian in the consumer advocacy community. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.