Video of the Week: Southwest's Best Mini Film Fest

Michelle from New Mexico does her best Tom Cruise in this fun contest announcement video for the new Southwest's Best Mini Film Fest!

Tim

Living Young & Free Show Episode 055: Co-Signing Loans, Working While In School & Improving Your Finances One Month at a Time

Michelle from New Mexico goes over the details of co-signing a loan, Darryl in South Carolina gives some tips on how to make money while in school and Janelle from Michigan goes over a month by month strategy to improve your finances.

You can also download all of the episode as a podcast from iTunes and you can watch all previous shows!

Cheryl

Stuff Banks Say

In case you're slower than Madonna's dance moves at the Super Bowl (zing!), you've probably witnessed  the online phenomenon that is "Sh** >Insert Group Here< Says."

From Know Your Meme:

Sh** Girls Say is a single topic blog and a web series showcasing various cliches and verbal mannerisms that are commonly associated with teenage girls and young women. Since its YouTube debut in December 2011, the series has inspired dozens of parodies exploring social gender stereotypes using the phrasal template “Sh** X says.”

And it wasn't long before some enterprising Credit Union folks came up with their own, "Sh** Banks Say."

Some nuggets:

• "Your hold time is approximately 44 minutes"
• "There's a fee if you actually go to one of our branches and see a representative"
• "Fee"
• "Fee"
• "Fee"
• "Sir, I told you, our call center is local *wink*"

And much more. Big props to Summit Federal Credit Union for embracing a meme, and not being afraid of making something that falls in line with what people are actually talking about!

If you had to add a bankism to a "Sh** Banks Say." what would it be?!

DeAndre

Zombies Good. Student Debt Bad.

From: Top Colleges Online

Student debt is crippling Gen Y. This infographic was produced by the folks over at Top Colleges Online.

At Top Colleges Online, we believe that education is important but that the cost of education and the large amounts of debt that most students take on are major problems. To highlight the problem we designed an infographic titled The Walking Debt, to emphasize that students today are caught in a catch-22: either become slaves to debt, or forego an education and limit your possibilities.

In this infographic we took student surveys about student loan debt to learn more about how debt affects students psychologically. 79% of young people surveyed believe that obtaining a college education now is more important than when their parents were growing up. But experts are mixed on whether college pays off, especially since a college degree no longer guarantees employment and over 9% of recent graduates (2010 recent graduates faced the highest unemployment rate for young college graduates in recent history).

76% of young people surveyed believe it has gotten harder to afford college in the last five years. Only 21% of young people surveyed believe students graduate with a manageable amount of college loan debt. The average student debt of new college graduates in 2010 was $22,900 as compared to only $7,000 in 2000. In other words, the average student debt in 2010 is 47% more than in 2000, even when adjusted for inflation.

Nearly 9 in 10 young people support increasing financial aid and making student loans more affordable. But some people believe that government help has actually been instrumental in creating the college debt bubble. To reduce the U.S. deficit, some politicians propose 2012 fiscal cuts that would affect the Pell Grant. 75% of young people do not want to see Pell Grants cut as a way to reduce the deficit.

Pretty heavy duty stuff. By and large, credit unions steer clear of the student debt space. On the the surface, this makes sense – large amounts of money lent to potentially risky borrowers with low or non-existent credit scores doesn't make the CFO happy. However, giving young people a head start represents a huge opportunity for credit unions. If you can cement a relationship with a young person as they transition into adulthood, you have the opportunity to gain a life-long member. 

I've yet to see a really great example of student lending in the credit union space. Are there any out there? What do you think?

Tim

The Mathematics of Paying The Minimum

Most of us don't make Donald Trump money. Heck, most of us don't even make Real Housewives of Insert-State-Here money (though the legitimacy most of their funds are certainly questionable). We don't have a great deal of disposable income so we work hard to manage what we have.

I have two credit cards and a personal loan. Rather than deal with the headache of remembering to manually pay them, I set up an autopay so that these bills will be payed on time, every single month. Great, huh?

The problem came when I ran into a bit of a rough month - I was moving to a new apartment, had to pay movers, security deposit for the new place, things like that. Since money was tight that month, I set my payments for the minimum, fully intending to raise them back up to the triple that I had been paying previously.

That was a year ago. Fast forward to last month, when I'm attempting to regain control of my finances (2012, Ringing My Financial Bell!) and I realize that I've been paying the minimum on two credit cards and a loan for almost a year. Le gasp.

In that time, the interest on one of the cards was mostly eclipsing the payments. I delved deeper into the mathematics of paying the minimum, and the results weren't pretty. If I continued paying the minimum, which was the equivalent of 3 or 4 meals a month, it would take me 4 years to pay of the card. If I jumped back up to paying triple that, which I had been doing previous, it would take less than a year. A YEAR!

I'd set out with one goal in mind, but had been derailed, and never got back on track!

The moral of the story - keep a close, close eye on your finances, and always pay more than the minimum. Its ok to make changes to your financial plan for emergencies and such, but make sure you get back in your lane after!

DeAndre

What's In A Logo?

A friend of mine is considering launching a startup and exploring some branding possibilities. As we looked through pages and pages of logos for inspirations, it struck me that so many logos are unimaginative, boring, and flat out terrible.

Generic fonts. Boring art squiggly-things. Random shapes. You know the kind I'm talking about.

The worst offenders used images straight from the hallowed halls of Microsoft ClipArt.

Your logo should be the cornerstone of your branding and convey, at first glance, what your company is about. There are a lot of "safe" options for logos, and many credit unions and banks have them. They are dependable. But are they memorable?

Should a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real meaning. A logo derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes. If a company is second rate, the logo will eventually be perceived as second rate. It is foolhardy to believe that a logo will do its job immediately, before an audience has been properly conditioned.

- Paul Rand

The credit union playing field is crowded. An exciting, memorable logo can be the edge that your credit union needs to appeal to prospective members.

There are a lot of stale credit union logos floating around out there. Do you have any examples of some new perspectives? Share em in the comment section!

Video of the Week: 5 Tips to Build Your Savings

Janelle O'Hara, the Young & Free Michigan Spokesperson, takes to the white board to help you build your savings.

Tim

Customer Service Tweets Revisited: Is Your CU Doing It Right?

I've spoken at great length in the past of how important customer service is. Especially in an industry where one of the key cornerstones is community, it is imperative that members feel respected.

In this era of the ever-connected social media, there are a few rules to remember when interacting with customers online, via phone or in person.

A Twitter follower of mine told me that when she was having problems with a company, the first thing she does it tweet them - before phone, before email, she tweets. While not everyone uses this method right off the bat, the trend is growing.

Twitter-as-a-help-desk is a trend we see in huge companies, such as @ComcastCares and @FordCustService. These companies are in fields where customer service makes up a large part of their interaction with consumers, and their dedicated twitter accounts show that they realize this.

As Twitter expands and grows, consumers (reasonably) expect that businesses that they patronize will have a presence there. Making sure that your credit union twitter account is active and responds to any tweet, positive or negative will go a long way with members.

No one expects any business to be right 100% of the time. Mistakes happen. But what should differentiate your credit union is how you deal with it. Do you respond swiftly and take action? Or do you ignore the problem and hope it goes away?

Tell me your twitter war stories. Have you seen any companies handle situations completely wrong? Let me know in the comment section!

DeAndre'

This Just In: Everybody Hates Fees. Also: Sky is Blue.

Hot on the heels of the $5 Fee Fiasco (like the Subway song, get it? ) that engulfed most of Bank of America last year, Verizon has drawn the ire of the interwebs by announcing a $2 fee for those who make a one-time payment online or via phone.

This move hurts those who don't have a recurring charge system in place - basically those without bank accounts and those who pay their bills at the last minute.

Predictably, the internet has lost its mind over this.

An online petition garnered over 50,000 signatures in a single day. The Verizon twitter account was deluged with angry tweets about the fees.

Just a day after its initial announcements, Verizon heeded the sound of thousands of angry customers and cancelled the fee.

Here's where Verizon misstepped:

• They tried to be sneaky. The announcement about the fees was made in between Christmas and New Year's, which is known as a "Dead Week" in the journalism world because people are spending time with their families. By announcing it during this time, Verizon was trying to sneak it past media scrutiny. *Insert Verizon twirling its mustache like Whiplash from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
• They did it purely in self-interest. Anyone who knows anything knows that this is a corporation's number one priority. But some analysts think it was just a mad money grab - 

Gerry Purdy, a principal analyst with MobileTrax, a market research firm, said it made sense that Verizon was charging for over-the-phone payments, because carriers typically must pay a third-party service to handle those transactions. But Internet payments do not require a third party, he said.

“That’s the one that surprises me, because most people won’t charge you for paying on the Internet,” Mr. Purdy said. “When you book a plane ticket online, you don’t get charged a fee.”

• They underestimated their customer base in the age of Twitter.  Back in the olden days (Re: 2005) It could be safely assumed that any consumer backlash would take weeks or months to organize. These days faction of people with an agenda (noble or otherwise) can join together and raise their voices to be heard. 

People hate fees. This is no surprise. But what people hate even more are unnecessary fees and the companies that try to be slick about it.

*Oh, and here's that picture of Verizon twirling its mustache like a cartoon character from earlier.

DeAndre

Video of the Week: Credit Unions Aren't Just For Old People

Michelle from New Mexico does her best Estelle Getty impersonation in this short, fun video.

Tim