If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by student loans or unsure whether you can build wealth at the same time, this conversation will give you clarity, perspective, and actionable next steps.
In this episode of Dr. Sev Talks Money, I sit down with financial advisor Brenton Harrison to explore one of the biggest financial tensions many women face today. We discuss why income alone does not guarantee financial security, how childhood money experiences shape the way we handle debt and wealth, and why building reserves while paying down debt is not optional, it’s necessary.
Connect with Brenton here:
Website: https://www.newmoneynewproblems.com/subscribe
Instagram: @newmoney.newproblems
YouTube: youtube.com/@newmoneynewproblems
Brenton D. Harrison is the founder of New Money New Problems, a financial advisory serving the needs of first and second-generation high income-earners. He has been featured in publications such as Business Insider, USA Today, and Forbes, and named one of the Top 100 Advisors in the country and Top Advisors Under 40 by Investopedia and InvestmentNews. Brenton hosts the weekly New Money New Problems Podcast on all things finance, and the biweekly Escape Student Loan Debt Podcast for borrowers struggling with federal and private student loan debt.
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Hey, hey, hey, Savvy Squad. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money, YouTube and podcast, where we empower women to manage money confidently. Today we’re tackling the question so many women are quietly asking, can you build wealth while still paying off student loans? I know the answer because I did it if debt
Has ever made you feel behind or unsure where to start? This conversation is for you. My guest today is Brenton Harrison, founder of New Money, new Problems where he helps first and second generation high income earners, build wealth often while managing student loan debt.
He also hosts the New Money, New Problems, and Escape Student Loan Debt podcast. We’ll link his full bio in the show notes, but I am excited to get this conversation going. Brenton, welcome to the Dr. Sev Talks Money Show.
Thank you so much for having me.
Alright, now I like to kick off things with an icebreaker to ease into the money conversation.
Okay.
If your money had a personality. What kind of personality would it have and what advice would it give you about your finances and while you’re mulling over that? I think I’ll share mine. Mine would be a cool personality it’s saying Severine, sit back, relax. I got this handled. I’m growing your money.
I’m doing what I need to do. Sit back,
I would hope that my money would be like me, low key and relaxed. I don’t think that money is something, that you have to throw it all under a couch and act like you don’t have it. But I definitely am not somebody who, prefers to be very flashy.
I think that some of the wealthiest people I know are people who, are the ones you least expect. And to me, I think that one of the greatest gifts financially would be to be rich and anonymous.
I love that. Yes. Because then the hands won’t be out. And you can choose who you give and how you give, right? With calmness and no pressure. So please introduce yourself to listeners and explain the work you do and the main problem you’re passionate about helping people solve.
Yeah, so as you said, my name’s Brenton Harrison. I’m a financial advisor, and I have a firm that’s a virtual financial advisory firm.
New Money, New Problems, and that’s the base of all that we do. And the name is meant to really describe who we love to serve. I am the son of first generation high income earners. So when I was growing up, I got to see firsthand the pitfalls that come from earning more money than anybody in your family has earned.
But also not having anybody around you to tell you what to do with it and what that can lead to. So at our financial advisory firm, we work very hard to make sure that we give people those tools where if you’re in a position you’ve never been in, here’s what you can do to move forward. Many of the people we meet who have new money, they have significant student loan debt.
So just through the nature of our work. We developed an expertise in helping people navigate newfound income with a significant amount of student loan debt.
Yeah. And there are many of us like that out there, right?
Mm-hmm.
So I’m hoping you’re listening because we’re gonna share a lot more about how Brenton and his firm can help you.
You work with high income earners. Why does having a good income not automatically solve money problems?
Well, there’s a lot that comes with a new income, especially if you didn’t grow up around a lot of people who earned a high income as well. The best way I can describe it is in the pandemic.
We have a young son and he had delayed speech, so we’re really worried about it. And we took him to a speech therapist and one of the things that she shared was, I think your son’s perfectly fine. We’re seeing a lot of people in this scenario and what. Parents don’t realize is how much of children’s speech is learned by watching other people speak.
And in the pandemic, there were so many people who had masks on that. The only two people that my son was seeing speak with any regularity was my wife and I. The same is true with finances. There’s so much that you learn financially by watching other people do it, and if you’re watching people go through a circumstance that you are also going through.
It’s a little bit easier, but it’s the equivalent of you watching people growing up, speaking Spanish, and then when you’re an adult you’re asked to speak English. We’ve never seen anybody speaking English. You don’t know how to, how it goes. And with wealth, it’s a similar phenomenon. If you’re in a new environment, but you haven’t been given the tools to navigate that environment, you can feel lost.
Yeah. Let’s talk about tools some of the things we learned about money is in early childhood, right? So how do those early lessons or lack of them impact how people handle debt and income?
There is research out there. There’s a guy named Ted Klontz, although he’s one of many who have kind of made their mark in the field and he’s done a lot of research on financial behaviors and financial experiences and what they mean to us later in life.
And what they have found is that. The bulk of our personality and the way that we interact with money is already formed before we’re 10 years old. So even before you have a full concept of what money is, children have a phenomenal ability to observe and form their own opinions of how money should be used and how you should interact with it.
The problem is that they don’t have the ability to understand the full story. So if my son is watching me be really stressed about something financially, he may associate money with stress, but he’s not yet old enough for me to have a conversation with him and him to understand what’s causing the stress, what’s the context.
So when you have tools that you bring with you from your youth, but they’re inadequate tools. It’s unlikely that they go away, but you have to have at least an understanding of them because in some ways you can use ’em to your benefit, right? Like somebody who’s really motivated to not be poor. They may be someone who has a really strong work ethic, but they can also work to your detriment where that same person can’t be satisfied financially.
So you have to have an awareness of what you brought with you. And then how that tool can help you and then how it can hurt you.
Yeah. One of the things one of my guests said, which really resonated with me is those experiences, whatever age you form them, is that’s the age you operate in. As an adult.
So if you form those negative experiences or positive, experiences as an 8-year-old, seeing how your parents, how your family members or friends, operate with money, those formed, opinions or views. You operate in those when you’re an adult. So you are that 8-year-old as an adult who think, I’ll never have enough money, so you overwork or something like that.
So I love that you’ve framed that in a way that makes people understand and I think it may require us to go back and look at our early childhood, what were our early money memories, and look at how are we operating now? How are those early childhood memories impacting how we’re operating and what do I need to do to maybe change that or accelerate that behavior?
Yeah, I had a friend who, her name is Naseema McElroy. She came on my podcast and I believe very strongly in, the fact or, just the consideration that something that happens to you in your youth could be something that impacts you Now. And she was telling the story of her father sending her and her sister to a private school in the Bay Area.
And the whole point that her father sent her to this private school that wasn’t in their neighborhood was because he wanted them to advance themselves. And that’s something that many. Parents do, right? Send their kids to the best educational institutions. And when she would go to that school outside of her neighborhood, she would be on the bus going past these houses that she couldn’t afford, her family couldn’t afford.
She would be in school with people who were just from a completely different world. Instead of telling her that she had the ability to be in that world, the experience taught her that she would never be good enough for that world. And when you look at how she responds financially, she has to overcome the feeling of she’s not worthy to be wealthy.
And it was the exact opposite of what her father wanted for her. And that’s a perfect example of a child being able to glean something from an experience. It’s not necessarily the full or the accurate story.
Yeah. ’cause we’re not developed enough to interpret correctly or to put context to, what it is that we’re learning.
So a lot of people believe they must wait until debt is completely gone before they can start building wealth. I’m not one of those. What would you say to someone listening right now who feels stuck because of that belief?
A big reason that you. Can be stuck in debt is by not having wealth and not having reserves.
And when you see people who are motivated to get in a better place financially, especially people who have a lot of debt, the first place they’re often motivated is to knock down the debt. It’s where you see an immediate return. If you owe $10,000 and you pay down a thousand dollars. It feels really good to say, now I only owe $9,000.
It doesn’t feel as good to say I didn’t have money in savings before and now I have a thousand dollars saved. But that is the thing, when an emergency comes, that can keep you from having to go right back to that credit card or right back to that same form of debt. So to me, I think that not only is, it not accurate that you can’t.
Grow your wealth while you’re paying down debt. I would say it’s actually a necessity because if you don’t focus on building up your reserves first or building it up while you’re paying down the debt, life happens all over again and you end up right back where you started.
You said that beautifully.
And with that, we’re gonna take a short break. Hey friends, quick pause. If you’re enjoying today’s episode, the best way to support the show is to share it and leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform, and you know it. Five is our favorite number, and if you’re watching on YouTube, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share.
Thank you. Okay, so we’re back. Let’s continue the debt conversation. For someone who’s carrying significant student loan debt, what are a few key things that they may want to consider when deciding whether to prioritize paying it off versus investing or saving?
There are rules of thumb that different people in the student loan space, have for how they approach student loan debt.
To me, the easiest rule of thumb is if you owe more in student loan debt than you earn on a yearly basis, it might make more sense to try to have your student loans forgiven rather than paying them off in full. If you owe what you earn on a yearly basis or less, you’re probably gonna have to pay that debt off in full.
So if you have to pay it off in full, you want to find the best terms for how you repay it. Do you have the best interest rate? Do you have the most forgiving repayment terms? If you’re somebody who is in a different situation and you’re trying to have it forgiven. Well, if I’m gonna have my student loans forgiven, I want to have it forgiven after I’ve paid the least amount of money possible towards that debt.
And you have to have a pretty thorough understanding of how that works to be able to take advantage of that opportunity. So in both scenarios, it requires you to learn more about the debt. Earlier I used the analogy of learning about finances. When you’re in a new situation to trying to learn a new language that you’ve never seen anybody speak with federal student loans, they’re very complex.
And if you talk to people who English isn’t their first language, learning English is extremely difficult. That’s what it’s like learning federal student loan debt language, right? There’s all these different rules that don’t seem to make sense, but if you can form a mastery of that new language. You can use the rules to your advantage.
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I’m gonna be sharing Brenton’s, contact information where you can talk to him because this is one of his specialties. And so if you are. Burdened with student loans and you are trying to find your way around. What should I do? We talked earlier about making sure that you’re building the wealth while paying on the loan because it makes sense to do that.
So please, contact Brenton when we share his information, which I’ll share towards the end of the show. And then also in the show notes. So a lot of us are juggling student loans.
We’re juggling taking care of kids, we’re taking care of elderly in our homes. And so we’re juggling all of that with student loans and supporting our families. And that brings its own pressure. How should people navigate because society already dumps that on us. You have student loans that much. So how can people really manage that without guilt or shame?
I was just talking to some friends the other day about, financial shame and keeping up with the Joneses and some of it just from a mental health perspective.
As basic as it sounds, the teacher used to catch you if you were trying to peek over at somebody else’s math. Test, let’s say keep your eyes on your own test. That’s kind what you have to do financially. And that’s on many fronts, right? If you’re looking at somebody else that’s a friend of yours or in your community, maybe even your arch nemesis, and they seem to be doing a little better than you are financially, you gotta keep your eyes on your own test.
If you’re looking at, financial media. And it’s telling you that you are behind because you don’t have insert number X, Y, Z in your account already financially. You gotta keep your eyes on your own test, and I think the incremental progress is lasting progress when it comes to money, but unfortunately.
When you look around, you incremental progress is not really rewarded, right? You look and you see somebody who got rich in three years, at least seemingly got rich in three years, and that becomes your perspective when in reality, if you’re doing a little bit better tomorrow than you are today, you’re still doing better tomorrow.
And that’s something that you have to take comfort in.
I love that analogy, keeping your eyes on your own test. Because social media will have you comparing and we don’t know the full story. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg, right? We don’t know the full story. And keeping your eyes on your own tests and looking at your own circumstances. To determine what your move should be, not what the gurus say, not what social media say, because some of these all or nothing concepts are just. A way for these people to put their name forward and to be seen as gurus, because really there’s nothing that’s black and white.
There are more grays than black and white. So let’s talk about a strategy that you may recommend to people that would surprise them. They don’t expect to hear that when they think about debt and wealth in the same sentence.
I have several, one of them that I get the most flack for.
It was one of the first podcast episodes that we did, and I was talking to people who were trying to establish an emergency reserves. And I told them that if they didn’t have a minimum amount of emergency reserves, then they should stop making retirement contributions. And people were upset about that.
How could you tell people to stop making retirement contributions? And what if they’re getting a company match on their company, 401k? Those are all valid points, but it’s also a valid point. Of if you don’t have enough to get through a month, if you are without a job or if you’re ill or injured, if you don’t have enough, if you need two new tires on your car to go buy those tires cash, why would you be putting aside money in an account that you can’t access for 10, 20, 30 years?
So that is one that has been controversial in the past. I also have recommended in the past for people who are trying to get rid of credit card debt. To open up another credit card at 0% interest and transfer some of that card debt over so that it is costing them less money to pay it down over time.
It’s not what I would recommend to everybody, but I think that rules of thumb are very dangerous and when we take a piece of advice and we have the belief. That that advice works for every single person. That’s very arrogant to me. So I think that everybody has to have an awareness of their individual circumstance and the tips that help them improve that circumstance could be radically different than what quote unquote makes sense.
Yeah, I’m one of those who, advocate against rule of thumbs because we come from different circumstances. Our foundations are different. Our perspectives are different. There’s so many things that are different and that’s what make us unique. And so for you to tell me this is what I should do when it doesn’t correlate with my circumstances, my culture. It makes no sense. Know me first before you. Give me advice about me and what I should be doing is what I would say.
Yeah, and finances is one of the only places I have found where people truly have the arrogance to believe that something that they say works for a hundred percent of people.
It wouldn’t even stand to reason in almost any other field, but there is something about finances where people think you can just tell everybody, oh, you should do 50, 30, 20 budget. Or you should only spend 10% of your money on this or 10% of your money on that and walk through life with the confidence that works for a hundred percent of people.
And that is just beyond arrogant to me.
And you just said something because I saw a post on LinkedIn yesterday, and I wanted to make a comment, but I restrained myself, from a financial professional who should know better. Oh, this is what I accomplished, my wife and I, and it’s simple.
It’s not complicated. You just need to do these four things. No. That doesn’t work for everyone. You may have had help from your parents to pay off debt, so you are debt free and you can make those moves For somebody who didn’t have help from their parents and maybe focused on trying to build that home while paying off debt, while doing other things, those four things won’t apply or they won’t apply in that order.
So yes,. That is a subject I’m very passionate about, and I don’t want to get on my soapbox about it.
So let’s talk to the person right now who’s listening and they’re nodding their heads or they’re saying, I don’t know if I can do that. Let’s talk to them. They’re feeling overwhelmed. They may be behind, unsure what their next step should be. What are some things that you would tell them?
If cashflow is an issue, I often encourage people to take the mantle of trying to free up money, and that can take many forms. It could be canceling subscriptions, it could be.
You know, not radical beans and rice budgeting per se, but hey, if I’m going out to eat for lunch at work four days a week, knock it down to three, and automating whatever you’re saving, right? Even if it seems small, if you’re saving $15 a week because you’re not having that fourth lunch, then automate the transfer of that $15 from checking to savings, right?
Start to establish something. I also encourage people to look at the reality of their circumstance, and sometimes the reality says you have to earn more money. I don’t like it as financial professionals when we make it seem like the reason people are in financial situations is because of a lack of discipline.
Sometimes that may be the case. There are also scenarios where you cannot budget yourself out of a situation where you just need an extra $20,000 a year or an extra $30,000 a year. So freeing up money is very important. And then I also would tell people they need to find a resource or resources that speak to how they retain information and what they enjoy financially.
I talk about wanting to explain finances in a way that’s so simple that a five-year-old could understand it. But if I don’t explain it the right way, find another podcast host who explains it in a way that you understand. Find a YouTube channel, find a blog. Pick up a book, and start to, while you’re dealing with yourself and your personality and your background experiences, free up that cash flow and learn what to do with it once it’s free.
Yes, find someone who speaks your language because there are some toxic financial professionals out there. Let’s be real, and they will make you feel worse. You’re already putting pressure on yourself, and they’re not helping.
So as Brenton said, and I reiterate this and I can’t emphasize it enough, find someone who speaks your language. And as Brenton also shared, you can’t budget your way to wealth. You just can’t there are just certain things, other things that you have to do, so it compounds.
So think about who you are and how you approach things and talk to a Brenton and his team because here’s the thing too. We see things based on our emotions and our circumstances, and it’s not necessarily the true picture.
Our experiences color what we see. And having an outside person look at our finances, look at our situation. You might be surprised that you are much better off than you think you are, because you’re comparing yourself to other people. You’re comparing yourself to social media, you’re doing all these things.
And with that, I am going to share. The best way. You can contact him newmoneynewproblems.com/subscribe. And, he’ll talk more about some things that he’s working on that we can support because he’s poured out a lot to us, so we wanna make sure that we support him also.
So what are you working on right now that you’re most excited about and how can listeners support you?
We stay pretty busy. So we have the new Money New Problems podcast that comes out every Friday. And then we have the Biweekly Escape Student Loan Debt podcast, and that’s for people who have a significant amount of federal and private student loan debt.
So that’s what takes up most of our days. If you combine those two. We’re putting out over 75 to 85 different pieces of podcast content every single year. But it’s something that we believe very strongly in. I would rather someone be in a position where even if they say, I can’t afford to work with you one on one, I can go through all of your podcasts, all of your YouTube content, and put together my own curriculum for how I can advance myself financially.
So I never want someone to be able to say that. I didn’t give them access to quality financial advice. So we give a lot of it away and we do it through those platforms.
Yes, I am also a firm believer in that there are a lot of people who can’t afford our services and how can we still serve them and give them some tool that they can use to further themselves because just because we wanna get paid doesn’t mean.
We don’t wanna help and serve our community the best way that we can. Brenton, this has been an eye-opening conversation for me, and I’m sure it is for a lot of people, some simple concepts that you’ve shared that. Just seem silly how simple they are, but they work. And that’s the beauty of an educator who can break down complex topics to make it relatable to the ordinary person. So thank you again for sharing your wisdom on my little old podcast. I appreciate you so much. And to our listeners, today’s conversation is a reminder that debt doesn’t mean you’re failing and it doesn’t disqualify you from building wealth with the right information and a plan that fits your life.
Progress is always possible. Even when things feel heavy. So until next time, this is Dr. Sev saying Please take care of yourself and your money.
