Professional background

Andre Vargas is the Senior Financial Educator at SB Loan, where she leads educational content for working households navigating short-term cash gaps. She holds the Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC®) designation from the AFCPE and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2016.

After graduating, Andre joined a United Way financial-stability center in Milwaukee as a financial coach, running intake assessments for families facing eviction, utility shutoff, and payday-loan rollover cycles. In 2018 she completed her NFCC credit-counseling certification and stepped into a senior coaching role, mentoring newer coaches and writing the curriculum for the center's monthly money-skills workshops.

From 2019 through 2023 Andre was Lead Counselor at a nonprofit credit-counseling agency in Minneapolis, where she facilitated more than 1,600 one-on-one sessions, designed a debt-management-plan template later adopted by two partner agencies, and built a self-paced budgeting course for first-time borrowers.

She joined SB Loan in 2023 to carry that educational mission to a national audience — the same plain-language explainers and alternatives-first framing, delivered at the moment a household searches for help. Andre authors money pages and reviews state-specific cost content for accuracy and tone.

Certifications held

Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC®)
AFCPE Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC®) · Active since 2018
NFCC Certified Credit Counselor
National Foundation for Credit Counseling · Certified 2018
BA Sociology
University of Wisconsin–Madison · 2016
Years of experience
8 years in nonprofit credit counseling and financial education

Specialized knowledge areas

  • Payday lending — cost structure, rollover mechanics, state regulatory variation
  • Debt management plans (DMPs) — eligibility, creditor concessions, plan design
  • Small-dollar alternatives — PALs, employer EWA, nonprofit hardship grants
  • Financial coaching — goal-setting, behavior change, crisis-to-stability planning
  • Household budgeting — low- and moderate-income cash-flow planning

Content Andre has reviewed

Andre authored or reviewed the following pages on SB Loan:

Disclosure of potential conflicts

Disclosure. Andre holds no securities in any company covered here. SB Loan pays her a fixed salary with no per-loan referral incentive. She has no outside consulting relationships with lenders, lead generators, or debt-relief firms, and volunteers unpaid hours with an NFCC-affiliated agency near her home.

How to reach Andre

For editorial questions, corrections, or interview requests, contact [email protected].