This content was created by Alan Akina. This content was uploaded by Alan Akina. This is a YouTube video titled "Our Lives Were About to Change" - 101 Financial (posted 2015-10-27) featuring Jay Chance and Valerie Chance from the Seattle/Puget Sound area. It is a first-person testimonial about the Financial 101 / 101 Financial University program: Valerie describes first encountering the program in 2014 and later sharing it with her husband, they joined the program in March 2015, paid off roughly $30,000 of debt, gained hope and reduced financial stress after years of struggle, and praise the instructors and community. The clip is promotional/testimonial in tone and invites others to join.
Chapters
So I'm Jay Chance.
And I'm Valerie Chance.
We're here from the Seattle Puget Sound area, and our Financial 101 story started pretty recently.
Actually, back in October of 2014, I was presented with the 101 story from one of our friends, and it just was so good to be true I couldn't believe it. And so I never shared it with my husband. And then approximately 4 months later, I got it out and was prompted to look at it again. And this time I really went through it and I thought, okay, this is something I probably need to share with him, but how do I do that? And how do I get him to think that it's not too good to be true as well? So it took me a couple more months to get up the courage to tell him about it. And when I did, and we sat down and talked with Uncle Merle, one of the dean instructors, it was amazing. And we just couldn't believe how our lives were about to change. And we came on the program in March, I believe, of 2015, and it has allowed us to pay off approximately $30,000 in debt. Come to Hawaii, which we never would have done, be here for 101 Financial University, and just not have the debt struggles and worry. We have hope, and that is something we haven't had in 25, 27 years of marriage. 101 is such a blessing.
We initially started looking at this, and my nature is to kind of be a little hesitant about too good to be true. So we started, or at least I did, started crunching the numbers, and I'll be— it actually worked out. Everything kind of came together. Of course, then I started looking at all of the debt that I had accumulated, that had I known about this about 20 years ago, where would we be? But, you know, as Valerie said, it allowed us to do quite a number of things. When we first got started in our marriage, you know, we did the typical thing. We accumulated the debt. We used the financial services that We were taught to use, we were educated to use. Mm-hmm. And the whole plan was to continue to move up, increase your income so that you could increase more debt. And after a while, you find out pretty quickly that that's kind of a negative cyclical spiral. There's no, there's no way out. And I told folks yesterday that there was an individual or a friend of mine that asked, you know, Jay, what are you going to do when you retire? And I came home prior to the Financial 101, and we started talking about it, and we really didn't see that there was going to be an opportunity to do that. It really wasn't going to be what we had always hoped that it would be. So when Financial 101 came, came along, the initial thought was, all right, here we go again, another one of these fly-by-night things. But when we really sat down, talked with the people, and crunched the numbers, this really works. So we're very fortunate. Valerie used the word blessed. We're very blessed to be a part of this and to see the hope. And I think that's one of the key things that we really want to let people know. You don't understand the hopelessness that debt creates and just that downward slide you get into. And the thing about it is everybody else is on the same slide. So when everybody's sliding in the same direction and at varying speeds—
It seems normal.
Yeah, it seems normal and you don't know you're there. But when you really start down— sit down and you start working on it and trying to figure it out, you know, you start to get that hope. Financial 101 has provided that hope again.
And excitement.
And excitement. And that's from— I'm going to tell you, the excitement is from here, from this week. You talk to financial advisors and you talk to people from the bank, and they know their business. They know the routine. They know the financial calculations, those kind of things. These people, they don't just know it, they believe it and they love it and they're involved in people. I have never met in my life so many people that are interested in me. It's not just the financial piece. It's not just the numbers. They're interested in me. And that is—
It's so awesome that we are now part of the 101 Financial Ohana, or family. We are blessed. Beyond anything we can ever imagine. So join us.
