Scott Terrio is a regular author for Macleans, Moneysense and Canadian Business magazines, focusing on consumer debt issues. He is a frequent media commentator, appearing regularly on the Business News Network (BNN) TV and various radio broadcasts. He has also contributed to such publications as The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, and The Walrus, among others. Scott has been a guest on popular personal finance podcasts and a frequent guest speaker for a number of groups, associations and businesses. Most crucially, he is a devoted fan of Liverpool FC.
We met at the Toronto Reference Library on March 2, 2020 (Monday @ 1400) for this interview. The duration of the interview was 38 minutes and 17 seconds. Thank you Doug Hoyes for the e-introduction.
Urgen Kuyee (UK): Hi Scott, we will talk about consumer debt but let’s start this interview with Liverpool. We are both huge Liverpool fans. What do you make of Liverpool’s amazing, historic 2019-2020 season?
Scott Terrio (ST): Well, I think when Kloop started with us, everybody knew that was a big deal. That was a huge day. I couldn’t believe we got him and he just landed in between other jobs. Madrid wasn’t available and he could have gone anywhere. It just happened like it was fate. I thought that was my take on it right away. But I think getting Klopp is probably the biggest thing Fenway Sports Group (FSG) have done. They have done a lot of good things but that was the crowning glory because he is perfect for us. He can see everything in a team. He doesn’t buy certain players because they are not the right mentality. They might be awesome. They might be, you know, one of the top 10 targets around. And it’s frustrating because we don’t get them and we ask why don’t we get them? But you see it after he has been around for long enough that there is a certain type of player that Kloop has to have on and it’s amazing how he can be that deep in thought.
But I think it’s great. And I just dread the day he retires but I am going to enjoy it while it’s here. And I think he is always thinking about the next team. The greatest managers are always doing that. They are focused on now, but they have always got the next year planned ahead and who’s going to be gone and who needs to come in. It’s really phenomenal. And, yes we are having an amazing season.
UK: I agree. Kloop is one of the best managers in the world, if not the best. Scott, Why don’t you let my readers know a little about yourself? Which school did you go to? How did you get into personal finance? What are you doing today?
ST: Sure. I grew up in Niagara, St Catherines. So, I am a Niagara boy. I went to the University of Waterloo. I was in co-op there so that was great because you get work experience and you kind of have some stuff under your belt. I had the opportunity to join John Deere. So, I worked for John Deere Canada for 14 years. I got moved out West. I was mostly a territory manager with them. And then I got kind of recruited into this business by someone I know. It was good timing because John Deere and a lot of the Canadian operations were losing autonomy and it was getting a bit frustrating.
Any of us who started in the mid nineties and by 2005 or so, we were kind of getting disillusioned a bit. There was also a really good chance you are going to get moved to somewhere like Kansas city. I didn’t really want to do that. I thought about it for a good year before I changed. Going from sales and marketing in John Deere into insolvency is a pretty,180 degrees turn. But it was meeting with people and I am good at that. I was helping people, which I also really liked to do instead of working on the corporate side of things. Once I spent a few kind of shadowing sessions with some people, I was pretty good. Then, I got on with Doug and Ted just over two years ago with this firm.
UK: You have seen thousands of Canadians with consumer debt. What are some of the primary factors or primary causes for consumer debt?
ST: We work with consumers so average people. And before I directly answer that, I will be indirect. We work with people that you wouldn’t think were in enough trouble to be in our office, put it that way. So people who should be doing better. And so there’s something wrong. People who file proposals and bankruptcies aren’t broke deadbeats. That’s very erroneous thinking. It’s people who have jobs. Eighty percent of our clients are employed. Most of them employed decently well. I think what gets most of them into our office is the very loose nature of credit in Canada. You would be surprised at what some people are able to generate for credit on such low incomes. And, also there is a kind of a real gap or a void in Canada with regards to financial literacy. I think people don’t know, like by the time they have met with us two or three times, all of them say if I had known that stuff when I was 18 or 20 I never would have got into this situation ever.
I think the whole system is kind of set up that way. Maybe intentionally, maybe not as it could be, you know, on the cynical scale of one to 10, if you did my job, you would be 10 but I think the system, the banking system and the financial system has evolved over the years in Canada. It kind of traps people. It’s slow creep. You get one card and another card and then they get a line of credit. Then, they up your limits, and then student loan debt. There’s a lot of things going on in Canadian finance that are slowly trapping people. And I think what gets them in to see us is a lack of knowledge about how all that is going to pan out in their lives. It is not very specific but that’s the pattern I see. I have done about 6,000 client meetings and probably filed about 4,000. And that gives you a real good look at things and every story is different but there are patterns.
UK: Wow, 6000 client meetings and have filed about 4000 cases. That’s real skin in the game.
ST: Exactly. It’s people slowly getting in trouble and it’s human nature to try and get out of it organically by yourself. And especially, I think the Canadian mindset too is I created this problem, I am going to get myself out. Nobody that comes into my office meant to do what they did. Nobody that’s in this situation wants to be there. Nobody intended to be there.
Interviewing Scott at the Toronto Reference Library
UK: What does your client demographics look like? Renters vs homeowners? Millennials vs Boomers? Nurses vs Teachers? Lawyers vs Doctors?
ST: Good question. Our annual study on all of our clients is called Joe Debtor. Joe Debtor just came out last month and so that was sort of our 2019 look at all of our clients. 5,800 individuals in Ontario who filed insolvencies. Eighty percent as I said are working. Ninety five percent or ninety three percent are renters right now. That’s going to change because this is always a moving target rate. Big homeowners have a lot more avenues by which to get out of trouble than renters do because of their home equity. And the banks see them as more creditworthy. They have a lot more leverage they can pull than renters. That’s why it’s mostly renters. But our homeowner index right now is about six or seven percent of all of our filers. The vast majority are renters. And, that’s going to change as the homeowners get hit as lag time is longer. Homeowners get in trouble a couple of years after renters. And of course insolvency fillings are spiking now. So, a year or two from now, you are going to see it’s still going to be spiking, but it will be more homeowners that renters.
The biggest trends are demographically so age group wise, right now, millennials are the fastest growing filers. Year over year, more and more millennials are filing than before. For a while there they were seniors. For a few years there were seniors because seniors were overestimating the amount of money they had saved for retirement and underestimating the costs and maintaining it. They had an idea of lifestyle in mind in retirement and that was way more expensive when it actually happened than they thought. But now that’s shifted to the young. There’s still a lot of seniors but more young people. And the reason for that is first of all, loads of them are saddled with student debt because you can’t pay tuition from a summer job anymore.
When I went to university, you could, you can’t do that anymore. It’s just too expensive. So, they come out of school, they have got this massive debt burden already, and they got a couple of credit cards that they frankly can’t pay either because and this is your third whammy in the triangle. The trifecta is the job situation. So much gig economy work, there is no full time, full benefit jobs anymore as much as there used to be. In those days, even though a lot of my cohorts in the nineties coming out of university had debt, you could still pay it off because you get a job at John Deere for 14 years like I did. I was okay so that’s great. Well, that doesn’t happen much anymore. So, I think we have got a generation of people here who are going to be saddled with debt, who are going to be broke for probably what otherwise would be the 20 most financially productive years of their lives. Your thirties, forties and fifties is when you should be making all your money. So, I think these people are going to be really in a lot of trouble. And I don’t think governments see this coming because they don’t sit with people every day and do this stuff like I do.
UK: That’s scary and I think social media makes it worse.
ST: Yeah, I think that’s a good point and one that shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s human nature to compare yourself. When I was, I don’t know, I probably had owned five or six or seven houses by the time I was in my mid thirties but nobody cared. I wasn’t constantly posting pictures of my house. I was just living in it, you know what I mean. I grew up in an era without the internet at all. So, I am one of these people who had seen both. I know I was a young adult when there was still barely any internet at all, certainly no social media. And so if you got a house, I don’t need to fill it with a bunch of great stuff because only the people coming over are going to see it. It’s not going out to thousands of people and it’s not like a big beauty contest. And I feel bad for people because I see a lot of young people and I see what they are doing on their phones when they are in my office. It’s almost like they are hard wired to do as best as they can even if they can’t afford it.
UK: Yes, I think most of us are hard wired. When you see pictures of your peers in Facebook or IG especially with IG, you can filter the pictures so it looks better. You feel like you are not having a good time, you feel like you are missing out. And, I am no different. In fact, I was just in LA last month and I didn’t post any pictures on my social media for the first two days. And, LA is a beautiful city. Venice beach, Santa Monica pier, Pacific Coastal Highway, Malibu, all these places are beautiful. But I felt empty and I gave in. So, I used the check in feature on Facebook where I let the entire world know I am in Los Angeles and posted a short clip of myself doing pull ups at Venice beach. I wanted my friends to know – Oh, it’s snowing, -26 degree Celsius in Toronto. I am here in Venice beach in LA, sunny weather, people are walking in shorts. I was craving for likes, hearts, thumbs up and nice comments from my friends. But we all know this is not healthy.
I mean sure, there are positive contents you can consume from social media. You also get to keep in touch with your family members from all around the world. You get to know your favourite sports team and players better. You can also flip the table and leverage the internet to your benefit. I run Facebook ads for my brother’s SAAS business to promote the product. However, I feel the negatives outweigh the positives when it comes to social media especially when we are on our phone 24/7 and always trying to keep up with our peers.
*For those curious, you can watch the clip of me doing pull ups at Venice beach HERE.*
ST: Yeah, it’s scary. It’s rewired a whole generation of people’s brains. I was just without a phone for two weeks. I lost my iPhone. I went a few days because I thought it would turn up. It wasn’t like I lost it. I think I had lost it at home. I can’t find it. And so after you go five or six days and you are someone like me who lived in an era where there weren’t any iPhones. After a few days, your brain starts to rewire itself. You don’t care as much. I didn’t want one. My friends and my wife’s like, okay, you’re going to get a phone so you can text me and tell me where you are or whatever. But if I could just get a phone that just texted, just called, and I could just look some stuff up on, honestly, I think I would be happy with that. It’s been two weeks and two days and I frankly didn’t miss it. And I found myself thinking more, like about things. Like about, okay, what are we doing next year?
Everything is immediate when you get your phone in front of your face. And it just shows you how hardwired we are now with this stuff. And I feel bad for people who, like we were talking about young people and similar to your situation of feeling empty during your trip to LA. I don’t even think they are taking time to back up to look at their situation from 30,000 feet. I had two weeks where I could look at everything from 30,000 feet because I had no phone. It was great. I was going around town. I had a book in my hand, like some psychopath.
UK: Yeah, who is this guy? Who is this psychopath?
ST: Yeah, who is this creep. There was a joke on the internet about a few weeks ago. A guy says, I was in Starbucks and there was a guy sitting there. He wasn’t on a phone, he was drinking his coffee and looking around like some psycho.
UK: He is an outlier.
ST: Exactly.
UK: The biggest problem with social media is we are always posting pictures of us having a good time or something nice. Nobody wants to post about how they had a panic attack last night and woke up in the middle of the night. Personally, I have experienced a couple of them and I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to go back to sleep. I am sure everyone else has experienced some form of panic attack in their life but they never talk about it. Nobody wants to post about how they are struggling to pay their OSAP, rent, car payments or mortgage. Like you said, millennials are the fastest growing filers. That’s a huge red flag.
But all I see on my friends’ Facebook page and IG – pictures of them on vacation, on a beach, pictures of ice cream, burgers, waffles, bubble tea, pictures of their dogs and cats. What a fucking joke. Again, I am no different. I would put myself in the same boat as most of my millennial friends. We all seek instant gratification, instant pleasure. We want to lose weight, we want a magic pill, we want a magic diet to lose weight in a couple of months but we don’t want to go to the gym consistently for 2 years, 3 years, 5 years. We don’t want to maintain a clean diet for a year or two. We don’t want to save for a year so we can pay for our vacation. Instead, we want to go on vacation right now and put it on our credit card.
ST: You know what they all still have that bad stuff going on. In my case, the people who are spending fifty percent of their net monthly income on housing and sometimes a little more than that. But these people who are posting all this stuff, it’s me included, they have financial problems but they are not saying anything about them. The worst thing about debt or the worst thing that you can have with debt is time. Time is your enemy when you have debt. The longer, the worse it gets. It’s the opposite of wine in other words. The longer you have debt, the worse it gets because that’s the formula. That’s how banks and lenders make money.
What the banks want you to do, you don’t say this but when someone comes into my office and sits down, I have a notebook. And we make a list of their debts first. First of all, they are always shocked when I add up how much it is. Always more than they thought, which tells me that they are putting it out of their minds. They are not dealing with it. They are not backing up to 30,000 feet. But when you are in my office, we are doing 30,000 feet. So, I add up your four visas, your two lines of credit, whatever your student loan tax is and it’s 65,000 and you go, what? Because you thought it was 50 or 55. But that’s what happens. People get into this rut and that list of debts is all high interests. And so, the banks want you to have that list of debt for a long time. That’s exactly where they want you. They want you on my notebook page with your list of six or seven debts that you’re paying 18% interest or 10 or nine for as long as possible.
That’s the formula. And that’s how certain banks can post fourth quarter, three and a half billion dollar net earnings because of how many people are in that situation.
UK: The struggling ones end up on the wrong end of the bargain and banks end up paying their shareholders with pride.
ST: Yeah, it’s that horrible new, or not new, but horrible, relatively new phrase, maximizing shareholder value. That’s what it’s all about, brother.
UK: When a person is considered to be insolvent, so when they are unable to pay back their lenders. He or she comes to your office. What are some of the first few steps that you go through with them?
ST: When you come in, you sit down and I say, so who do you owe money to? Simple. There is zero judgment. We are fixing this. What are all the facts and what can we do about it? Everybody is different. Personalities are different, how they look at you are different and how they interact. Some of them are chatty, some of them you got to pull information out of them, like pulling teeth. But that’s the first thing we do is make a list of debts, with me anyway. Everybody in my firm has a different style but that’s how I do it because I want them focused on the list.
Here’s the list. I haven’t asked you your income yet because I don’t want them thinking why do you need to know what I make? The problem is the debt. That’s why you are here. We look at that, we talk about it because from that list of debt, I can tell a lot of things. Who are the creditors? Because they all behave differently when it comes to proposals. In a consumer proposal, the creditors are voting on an offer. Instead of doing a bankruptcy, you are saying to the creditors, okay, I owe 60 grand. I am going to offer them 20 grand. So, it’s over 60 months maximum. We always set them up for 60 months because the terms are open. You have got a five year proposal which means you pay as little as possible per month. That way you are not strapped up to the neck and I just made a gesture under my chin here because nobody can see this. We want you to have as minimal monthly commitment as possible because you can always add, pay faster if you are able to. So we say, okay, how much are your debts, here’s your debts, here’s your mix of creditors because I know while looking at a mix of creditors, how the proposal is going to go because we do enough of them. Because the creditors are voting yes or no within a 45 day timeframe. And if they vote yes, you have a proposal. If they vote no, they will always ask you for more.
And even when there is a no vote, it always ends up being a proposal just a little bit more than what you offer. We try and set it up so that it’s kind of maybe a little below what you can handle because it gives you a bit of space in case there’s a counter offer. And also the nice thing about proposals is once it’s approved, that’s it. If you go and get a way better job six months into your proposal, it’s still the same amount as the creditors approved. They can’t come back and ask you for more than more.
In a bankruptcy, it would be the opposite. If you make more, you end up paying more and for longer because the bankruptcy has very tight restrictions on income in Canada. I would say in my office at King and Yonge, we are probably doing eighty percent proposals at this point. Like bankruptcies for certain situations because it’s obvious, you know, usually way too much debt, because if you do a proposal on $1 million of debt, you have to pay like 200,000 or something so most people can’t do that. At some point, you just don’t have enough income to do the proposal. But for most people as I said, our people are mostly working. They are working. In other words, they can’t handle the debts they had but they could handle the proposals way more easily. They are not paying minimum payments and everything every month because that’s usually what’s killing people. If you have that $60,000 list means you are probably paying anywhere between a thousand and two thousand a month on minimum payments only and it’s all interest. That’s what people can’t handle.
UK: I have like zero experience being in credit card debt so far. I am knocking on this table but it’s crazy how people get into huge amounts of debt and the spiral keeps moving downwards.
ST: It’s back to what we were talking about earlier. Some of it is back to the social pressure. If you are a millennial, you are not making the kind of money I was making at John Deere. There aren’t those jobs anymore but your friends are getting stuff and going on trips. There’s an awful lot of pressure on you to do that. Okay, well, you can’t pay for it by cash flow so you do it by credit and pay for it later. That’s the mentality. It’s not a cynical mentality. I am making it sound that way but I have a lot of empathy for people doing that because it’s hard. If all of your friends are going on a trip and you can’t. They want you to go. You probably can and will find a way to go. And young people living in the city, like you don’t want to just sit in your apartment all the time. That’s why you are in the city. It’s for work but it’s also because it’s the city. It has lots to do. You don’t want to waste your 20s and your 30s and wait until you are an old guy.
Our study of the past year, Joe Debtor found that it’s expenses that are killing people. It’s the big three. It’s shelter, food and transport. And none of those three are very easily changed. Shelter for sure because the cost of housing has driven everything up. I mean, anybody who’s changed apartments in the last two years and had lived in where they were for a long time had got a real shock. Because your 1200 square foot apartment in Toronto, now you got to move out to Richmond Hill to get the same place and you were living downtown before. We have had people come in just because they moved actually. They couldn’t believe the amount of like you have to come up with $3,000 for the first month and last month’s rent. Nobody has that and then you borrow on credit. Sometimes if your credit is already deteriorated to a certain point, you might have to go to one of the more brutal lenders.
UK: Like payday loans, cash money?
ST: Yeah, exactly. I won’t name any, but once you get in there, you are really in a cycle and you are pretty much just a downward spiral after that.
UK: The pattern I have seen with my co-workers struggling with debt, nine out of 10 times, they own expensive cars, SUVs. I have noticed they mention their debt problems in subtle ways during conversations. A nurse once told me she is paying one credit card with another credit card but she can’t give up her car. I share this story with you because of car loans. How bad are car loans? Because cars can get really expensive.
ST: Usually your car is your second biggest expense. Not your third, but your second. Food is third. There’s rent or mortgage as your biggest expense. What people usually don’t realize when they get a new car or used car or finance car is the total cost. You have got your payments which of course they conveniently break down into biweekly because it sounds softer even weekly because you know, $68 a week. That sounds awesome. But that’s a whole bunch a month, almost $300 a month. Then you have got your gas which usually people underestimate. Maintenance which they usually underestimate especially if they bought used. And insurance because if you are a millennial, your insurance is way worse than if you are older. Just by virtue of being young, that’s the way insurance is, that’s how car insurance works.
It’s not uncommon for me to see people spending between a thousand and two thousand a month on their vehicle, just one vehicle. The temptation to drive something nice and new and is there. And frankly, the car manufacturers, they have been given away car loans for decades now. The average was more than 50% of car loans in Canada are 72 months or more. Now, if you pay for a car for that long, how much is it worth? Almost nothing. Almost every car loan I see is upside down. When you tell them, okay, how much do you still owe on this car loan? 26 or 30,000 and the car is worth 18 and they still have three years to go on the loan. This happens all the time. So, cars are a great financial trap.
If a whole bunch of more people drove cars that were either, you know, older and where the loan is way lower than the value of the car, or at least more balanced, they would be in a lot less trouble. Because what happens is there’s a knock on effect. If you are spending a thousand or two thousand total a month on your total car costs, that’s probably five or 600 more that you could have otherwise been using to pay debt down or whatever else. That’s lost money and it happens every month. It’s monthly cash flow out the door.
So, I think cars have a great choking effect on households, families and you don’t realize it because we are such a car culture. Having a car and especially having a nice car has become like a trend. None of my parents’ generation cared what car they drove. They just didn’t and so much so that if somebody had a nice car, it really stood out. And in my parents’ generation, they were making good money. And, a house cost a hundred grand, like a fully detached house in Niagara. So, you could pay a mortgage off faster. Nobody today is even thinking that, you know, you take on a big mortgage now and you are trying to finance that vehicle at the same time, you are never doing anything extra. You are just making your payments on everything else.
So much so to the fact that a lot of people who come in and see me once we get to the car, we list your unsecured debt. And I say, okay, well what do you have for cars? We list one or two cars, one’s finance, maybe one’s not. But when you file a proposal or bankruptcy, your current loan is secured. And I explain that to people because they don’t always get that.
But if you give that car back so let’s say, they say you are right, this car is killing me. I need a car but not THAT car because I got a bad deal. The loan sucks and I rolled another loan into it and whatever. If you give that back, what happens is the secured lender then repossessed the car and calculates the shortfall. When they go to sell it, they sell it at auction price. So, then the shortfall on the vehicle and they will sue you for that but they can’t because it goes in your proposal or your bankruptcy. I tell people this is your one chance. I am not preaching to get rid of your cars but if you want to, this is the time to get out. And more and more people are doing that in the last two, three years. People are taking me up on that. They didn’t use to as much, but I think people are hitting the wall enough now to go, you know what? I got to get out of this car loan. It’s terrible. I will go buy a beater and drive till it blows up. Pay my proposal or get rid of my debts, and then you are better off.
UK: We are almost done. I have two more questions. Last month, you tweeted this, “An 18-yr old with $55,000 in credit card debt. Yep. All of it via Big 5 banks.” How did this guy or girl even qualify for the loan?
ST: I don’t know. I mean we don’t go into forensics with people. In that case, a friend brought them in, a family friend. The kid felt bad enough as it is. We are there to fix an issue. There’s no point in getting into why did this happen? I can pretty much guess from experience why it happened. He went to university and on the first day of university, there’s five tables on frosh week.
UK: They will give you a free t-shirt.
ST: Exactly. BMO, Scotia, TD, Royal and CIBC. Then they throw an iPad at you or a t-shirt, as you said, some are cheaper than others. I probably would take the t-shirt but I certainly would take the iPad. But they want to get you because if they get you, they have got you. Canadians don’t tend to veer from their banks too much once they are in. They all are vying for you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t go to the other table. And so in this case, I think what happened was they said, here’s a MasterCard. It’s just a low limit, don’t worry about it. Of course, they upped the limit.
Then another one got ahold of him. Because if you are new to a bank, they love you. When you are with a bank for a long time, they kind of don’t care about you as much because you are sort of a given. But when you are new, that’s when they really nail you. And so this person was smart enough to go to each bank because he was trying to pay his tuition and student loans and everything. And it doesn’t take very long to get $50,000 in debt if you’re willing to say yes. If we are playing the blame game, the person shouldn’t have said yes, but the lenders should have said, no.
There’s equal proportion of who did what wrong here. But I think the fact that the kid never had the income to support any of those debts, let alone the cumulative amount. And so, I look at our credit reporting system and it drives me crazy. You can ask Doug about this too. To me, the credit reporting system is so badly broken but you are not going to change it. And it’s just the way it is because it’s systemic. It’s incipient.
UK: You are talking about Equifax and TransUnion.
ST: Yes. Their clients are not you. Their clients are the banks. You are the product. You are the product that Equifax and TransUnion sell to the banks. People have entirely wrong notions about the entire credit system. And I am talking about this because how did that person get that $55, 000 in credit card debt. So, I don’t know and I can’t answer that but I look at a lot of credit reports. We do credit report reviews with every single client. We do them when they come in and we do them about six months later because we want to have the information and it takes so long that the credit system that usually, you know, I want to make sure there’s enough months have passed and I want to review your information to make sure it’s accurate.
One of those two companies is very inaccurate. The other one’s pretty accurate. I won’t say who, but it doesn’t matter because any bank could be looking at either one of them or both. The banks don’t actually see the score you see. So, your credit score, no doubt, 850 or whatever in your case isn’t what the banks necessarily see because each of the banks has different parameters that they ask the two companies. You don’t know if TD, RBC, Scotia are seeing that number or not, because each of them ask for a different blend of scores so even your credit score is not the credit score that you think it is. I could do an entire podcast on this and I probably have done in the past but it drives me crazy.The fact that there’s so much wrong in the system is what is why that 18 year old can get $50,000 in credit card debt I think. There has to be major flaws in the system for that to happen.
You can’t have a robust system and have that happen. You just can’t. And, even old school banking, like even if somebody in that process stepped back and said, wait a minute. You would think out of the big five banks, somebody would have gone you don’t qualify. You are 18 but the system says you do, then the person’s in my office. So, explain that.
UK: Scary for a kid. 55K is a lot of money. That’s a bad start.
ST: That’s a terrible start. You are right, very well put.
UK: Let’s go back to Liverpool. Which weekend do you think Liverpool will be crowned EPL champions?
ST: Well, if you had asked me that five days ago, I would have said it would be at Goodison.
UK: That game is next weekend I believe.
ST: That’s also because going by Everton is, you know, eternal bad luck. That’s their worst case scenario if we win it there. I am not sure I want to win it there. Well, part of me says rub it into the guys across the park. But I mean, ideally I think we win it at home just because of Anfield and everything. The other possibility is Palace is too soon, City is probably too soon now that we lost but then if City loses next weekend, well maybe. I think it’s going to be the week after Everton. I think it’s going to take us the month of March even though we only have to win four. We got champions league in there and then we got a few injuries as well. What’s your pick?
UK: I thought we would win it by second or at least by third week of March but then, we lost this past weekend to Watford so like you said we might have to wait a bit longer. Thanks Scott. Where can people find you?
ST: You can email me at sterrio@hoyes.com. I am on twitter @ScottTerrioHMA or on Facebook but mostly on twitter.
This interview has been edited and condensed. Thanks to Scott Terrio for his contributions, all errors are mine.