"You've Got Money!"...what a great email to get!

I'm beta testing the credit union's new Email Notice service and it's pretty cool! While hiking in the woods in Natural Bridge State Park in Slade, Kentucky this past weekend, I got an email on my mobile phone with a subject line that said, "You've Got Money!" and the message was about my paycheck that was deposited to my account that day. Cool. Gotta love technology. (Here's a photo of me and my daughter...hiking in the woods when I got the good news!)

Other notices I'll get include a withdrawal of a certain amount, a check that clears, an overdraft :-( ...don't want to get those, but it'll be nice to know ASAP if it happens.

Email Notices will be available to all members mid-July - if you have online banking with a valid email address, you'll automatically have Email Notices, just go in and set up your preferences. If you have a checking account but not online banking, what are you waiting for? It's free and it'll allow you to get Email Notices. Sign up at eHawthorne.org.

TIP: Sweat equity is saving me $3,530 in 2009

There are a lot of home repairs and maintenance that you can do yourself and save a lot of money with a little sweat equity. Here are a few things I do that are pretty easy and will save me a total of $3,530 by the end of the year:

Lawn care: DIY $980 annual savings - with my light electric mower (no oily engine, no starter, no stinky gasoline!) I mow my own lawn every week. It takes about an hour. I grab my iPod and get some sun and exercise and save the cost of hiring a neighborhood teenager at $35 a week. I save $140 a month and $980 from May-Nov (for leaves). I have a mulching mower that allows the shredded grass to decompose and feed the lawn. I also use my mower to shred the leaves in the fall. I shred about a third and rake the rest. Free mulch!

House cleaning: DIY $2400 annual savings - I hate to clean. But I also hate a dirty house. So I enlist the help of my daughter and in 2-3 hours on a Saturday morning we get it done and then spend the rest of the day relaxing. I save about $200 a month doing it myself as opposed to hiring a service to come every other week.

Clogged drain: DIY $150 savings per occurance - According to Yahoo, to hire a plumber for one hour would cast $50-$75 per hour plus a trip charge and materials. That's steep! I recently unclogged my bathroom drain using a home solution of vinegar, boiling water and baking soda. Pour a half cup of baking soda down the drain followed by a cup of white vinegar. If that doesn't do it, try again but pour a few cups of boiling water after the vinegar. After it's finished bubbling, use a plunger to force the clog out. It worked great and saved me about $100-150.

I really never realized how much money these few things were saving me until I added it up for this blog post! Makes me much happier to cut my own lawn and clean my own house! :-)

You can also save money on home repairs and projects by doing it yourself. The Home Depot offers free classes that shows you how.

Helping Kids Get Smart With Money

National Credit Union Youth Week April 20-26

From saving to planning and investing, Hawthorne is committed to teaching young members how to be financially successful. Join us for our special events during National Credit Union Youth Week

This year's youth week theme - "Got Green" Grow it at your Credit Union - aims to help children understand the credit union difference, explaining that as members of a not-for-profit credit union, they earn better rates on saving and loan products, pay lower fees, and receive personalized service.

In 2006, according to the Commerce Department, Americans spent everything they made, and then some, pushing the savings rate to a negative one percent, the lowest level since the Great Depression. Many parents are hoping for more for their children, which is why it's never too early for us to start talking with them about money.

In a nationwide survey released on April 9 by the Federal Reserve as part of National Financial Literacy Month, high school seniors had the worst scores so far in the six years the survey has been conducted. American teenagers answered only 48.3 percent of questions correctly about personal finance and economics.

Whatever your goals and dreams might be, at Hawthorne, we believe it's really cool to save! Since we are not-for-profit, which means we work harder to return more money back to your account, you can deposit your money into your Hawthorne Youth (Savings) Account, and your saved money 'earns' more money.

It's never too late to begin setting aside a portion of your allowance, or money made from your part-time job or lawn-mowing business and put it into a youth savings account. Start saving today!

Join us on Saturday for our FREE Kids Activity Day, click here for details.

In addition, refreshments, giveaways, coloring sheets will be available for all kids. The event is open to everyone in the community.

Don’t Let Your Holiday Debt Last Longer than it needs to:

With holiday spending over, our debt recovery time may just be starting. Our credit card bills will start arriving in the mail soon. Recent stats by the National Retail Federation show that the 2007 holiday season got off to a record start with “Black Friday” sales by US shoppers rising 8.3% to a record $10.3 billion. Figures for the following “Cyber Monday” shopping holiday, the Monday following Thanksgiving, also showed a healthy increase with a new one-day record of over $700 million in total purchases.

It is too bad that most of the record consumer spending was paid through the use of credit cards. Most consumers, including me, don’t hesitate to place $300 in goods on a credit card but certainly would think twice if they were forced to purchase the same amount of goods solely with cash? Because of this it is no surprise that the average credit card debt per US household is expected to rise again in 2008 as it has every year since the early 1990’s.

What will this increased spending mean for the New Year? According to John Silva, chief economist for Wachovia, “(Consumers) will still be spending money (in 2008) but it will be on credit card interest and minimum payments, not on apparel or eating out.”

So what’s the average consumer with thousands of dollars in credit card debt to do in 2008? Consider these five suggestions to get your debt under control in the New Year:

1. Reduce your card interest rate - Hawthorne members can now qualify for great rates and Reward points when they transfer balances between February 1 and March 31, 2008.

Visa Platinum Reward Cardholders receive 2,500 bonus points on balance transfers .**
Visa Platinum Savers credit card - 3.99% APR* for 9 months on balance transfers.
Visa Classic credit card – 6.99% APR* for 9 months on balance transfers.

Click here for more information.

2. Stop Using the Cards - seems simple enough? Stop using the cards now and stop accumulating more debt on top of the debt you couldn’t afford in the first place.

3. Pay more then the minimum – For example if you have $5,000 in credit card debt with a 16% interest rate and a minimum monthly payment of $110. Did you know that just paying the minimum means it takes 25 years to pay off your debt and that $5000 debt will end up costing you $12,000 in total? This total includes an extra $7,000 that you will have to pay in interest. A good alternative would be to DOUBLE your minimum payment to $210 and pay off the card in 28 months, which will save you about $6,100 in interest.

4. Consider a Debt Management Program - If you have over $5,000 in debt then a debt management program may be for you. Hawthorne’s Balance Financial Fitness debt management program can help.

*APR=Annual Percentage Rate. **Minimum balance transfer of $1,000.00. Also offering 1 bonus point per dollar of balance transfer up to a maximum of $10,000.00.

Get your kids back to school on the right foot!

All the parents I know are so smiley and positive lately and there is a noticeable bounce in their step that I haven't seen in months. Oh yeah, school's back in session!

It’s that time of year again. The back-to-school frenzy has begun. Stores are running sales on backpacks and pencils, and computer companies are pushing laptops for the college-bound group. The money requirements on us hard working parents is back in full swing and once again the question of how to teach our kids how to handle the money that we give them for lunch, books and spending, rears its ugly head.

The Wall Street Journal ran a great column a few weeks ago on allowances. The main point of the article was that you should give your kids an allowance as soon as they can understand that money buys things. Now I am not suggesting that your kids should be paying for lunch or school supplies, or their books in college, but they should understand that now, that additional money needs to be part of your budget.

On Saturday, when we gave Zach his allowance we included additional money for the hot lunches that he wanted to get this week. We explained that we are now paying for this in addition to his allowance. His response was that he earns his money by doing work around the house for us, so that does not count. Not exactly the point I was trying to get across, but at least we tried.

To help you kids start saving money, Hawthorne’s Youth Account is a good place to start and Googolplex for Kids offers fun games & activities for kids of different ages.

I also found some good resources to help young kids understand financial literacy (I think I will need to make sure that visiting these sites get added to Zach’s list of things to do), they include:


Mykidscredit.com answers what you and your kids need to know about credit.

Jumpstart.org promotes financial literacy for K-12 youth. The site isn't especially pretty, but there's lots of good information there.

Consumerjungle.org. Click on students to practice money management skills.

For those of you will college age students, you can help get them off to the right start with some help from Hawthorne.

Student Loans We can guide you through the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Our credit union is an ideal place to learn about the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL). While each loan varies according to your child's financial situation, here's an overview of Stafford and Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students :(PLUS).

Totally Free Checking With no minimum balance and no monthly fees, a student can save money and stay focused on studies. With Family Rewards, the ATM transactions could be free or discounted! The first 6 ATM transactions each month are FREE!

Hawthorne Visa® Check Card Accepted on and off campus, at millions of locations -- including grocery stores, book shops and gas stations. And it doubles as an ATM card, for access to cash. Hawthorne has 57,000 surcharge free ATM locations nation wide. We also offer a FREE easy ATM locator on our web site.


Student Visa® Credit Card Avoid high rate, high balance credit cards sold on campus. Provide your student with our card, which offers a low balance, low rate, no annual fee and a 25-day grace period on purchases. Great for emergencies!

Our student credit card offers a great way for college students to establish a credit history and learn to use credit wisely. The credit limit is $500 and is in the student's name. This card does not require a parent's signature.

Stay in Touch 24/7 You have the option to be a joint owner on the student account, which gives you access to view detailed, up-to-date activity checking account online at www.ehawthorne.org http://www.ehawthorne.org/.

Students out-of-state can call toll-free to access AnyTime® Phone.

Arrange for regular, automatic transfers from your account to your student's. You choose the date, the frequency and the amount. For more details, contact your nearest Hawthorne Credit Union office at 630-369-4070. Or, go online to http://www.ehawthorne.org/.

What is the difference between being Cheap and being Frugal?

Everybody knows a cheap person and probably hates them. But I think we often mislabel frugal people as being cheap. I started thinking about this the other night after listening to a “lecture” from my dad about how to manage our phone service.

The topic came up because periodically during our phone conversation he was not able to hear me. I explained that we have had this problem several times since switching our phone service to Comcast, several months ago.

He went on to explain that they only use basic phone service with no additional features. Yes, that means no call waiting and no caller ID! He then went on to tell me that during the week they only call me and my brother using their cell phone minutes, and calls everyone else that he needs to talk to either at night or on the weekend from his cell phone, since those minutes are free.

Now this is a man who had money saved for his kids to go to college, lives in a beautiful home and drives nice cars, has no credit card debt and never makes us pay for dinner when he is in town, but he is worried about minimal charges on his phone bill.

My father is not cheap, he just enjoys saving money, when he can. Saving money and being cheap are two totally different concepts. So different that, well, maybe another couple examples will help.

I like to buy decent clothing. It’s not always cheap, but I like to make sure I buy it on sale. The more on sale an item is, the better I like it. In fact, if two dresses are on sale, I can buy two good dresses instead of one expensive one. Does that qualify as being cheap?

I just have a hard time buying things at regular price when in a few weeks it will be on sale (which is the price it should’ve been in the first place, in my opinion).

Here’s another example…

Let’s say you need to put gas in your car and on the way to going somewhere you were going anyway you pass two gas stations right next to one another. Gas is $3.45 a gallon at one and at least $3.55 a gallon at the other.

All other factors being equal, you’d have to be a total idiot not to buy the$3.45 a gallon gas…
That’s managing your money well.

On the other hand…

To kill a half an hour of your time driving clear across town, way out of your way, just to “save” a buck or two would be “being cheap”.

Yes, that would be me sometimes! I hate to admit this, but I have driven to Costco for gas, which is a good 20 minutes from our house.

Although there is sometimes a fine line between the two, there’s a distinct difference between “being cheap” and managing your money well and it is important for us to know and understand the difference between the two.

Knowing and understanding this difference and applying this principle to our lives can make the difference between us having money or being poor.

Get Rich... Slowly

Who wouldn't like to have that one silver bullet to get rich quick. But the fact is, most of us will never find it. Still, we can accumulate wealth slowly over time. One way is to earn more. But another way is to spend less - think smaller, be satisfied with what we have instead of wanting something else.

I recently saw an ad for a credit card that was targeted toward people who have poor credit, over their heads in debt. It showed images of people that looked like clips from "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". I thought it must be so appealing to folks who've found themselves in difficult situations that resulted in high debt.

Getting over your head in debt is easy to do - an illness, a job loss, or a divorce and before you know it creditors are calling every day. It's an overwhelming, stifling and oppressive place to be because it's so hard to resolve. Ads like that credit card ad I saw don't help.

Many years ago I had too much debt, and I didn't know how I'd ever get out from under it. It really took years of living simply that made the difference: cutting back, living with less and thinking smaller. And paying off the bills slowly but surely. That's a difficult task in our culture because our society encourages spending more than saving or not spending. I'm grateful to say that my finances are significantly more healthy today.

Even if you're not in debt over your head, I hope you're not, living simply can help you accumulate wealth, too. There are two books that changed the way I think about money and helped me get out of debt:

Voluntary Simplicity, by Duane Elgin (Quill/William Morrow Publishers NY ISBN 0688-12119-5)- This book taught me about living "toward a way of life that is outwardly simple but inwardly rich." It's about learning to appreciate what you have instead of looking outside yourself for happiness. The tenets of Elgin's voluntary simplicity are frugal consumption, ecological awareness and personal growth.

Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (Penguin Books NY ISBN 014-016715-3) - I learned how to determine what to spend money on by looking at my values and my goals and putting more money into things that propel me toward my goals. The subtitle is called "Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence".

These books are great reads, regardless of your financial health. But if you are over your head in debt, we have a program that can help relieve some of the stress of living with debt every day. Check out Balance Pro on our website or contact Member Services for more information.

Where does all of our money go?

This weekend, I did it again. I went shopping and spent too much money. I did not buy anything big, just all of the things that my family and I need.

Looking at the total on the bottom of my receipt, made me stop and think. What is really necessary? We slowly get used to more & more stuff, and before we know it, it is hard to tell the difference between our needs and our wants.

Instead of buying Suave shampoo (on sale for .99) like I used to, I now buy a more expensive shampoo that cost about $3.50. Is that cost increase really necessary? All of my little cost increases can really add up, and my hair does not even look or feel any better than it did before. Although this represents a very small piece of my financial puzzle, I wonder why many of us spend extra money, when we don’t really need to.

Money is a powerful resource. We strive to acquire it and we are told we cannot survive without it. It represents glamour, prestige, power, security and happiness and no matter how non-materialistic we may strive (or claim) to be, in the end, much of our life revolves around making money and spending it. And, we certainly spend tremendous mental and emotional energy thinking about it.

What is the difference between or needs and wants?
Our actual needs are pretty limited: food, shelter and clothing. Just about everything else is a "want," and our wants are essentially endless. Almost all of us have limited resources, so we have to make choices about which wants to fulfill.

The way we fulfill our needs also involves a lot of choice. Shelter, for example, can be a bed at a homeless shelter, an apartment, or a $1 million home. Our food choices offer similar extremes, from beans and tap water eaten at home to steak and Dom Perignon at an exclusive restaurant.

I think that many people believe they have to spend money in certain ways or in certain amounts, when in reality their spending is a choice -- or is at least based on choices that have been made in the past. For example, if you have a huge mortgage payment, it's because you chose to buy a big home and select a particular mortgage.

A hard, cold look at how and where we spend our money can show us – often in a painfully clear light – why we may experience financial difficulties from time to time. This, of course, is one of the main reasons that so many people resist examining their monetary habits and belief systems in the first place.

For more information on learning how to properly budget your money, take a look at our free Balance Fitness Program.

Balance will help you develop a workable spending and savings plan, we want to help. That's why we've provided access to free and confidential financial counseling and education through BALANCE.

Teach your kids how to manage money during Youth Week!

Join us this year as we celebrate National Credit Union Youth Week from April 22-28 . Our theme for 2007 is "Stash Your Cash @ the Credit Union."

Teaching your children about money does not have to be a chore and you can get started early with some fun activities that will instill financial values in your child’s life. Our primary job as a parents is to prepare our children for how the world really works and in the real world, as most of us know, “you don't always get what you want”. Our kids will be easier to deal with as adults if they experience this fact of life during their childhood.

I usually try not to let guilt get in the way of parenting. My job as a parent is not to make myself feel good by giving my son everything that he wants. My job is to prepare him to succeed in school and when he gets out into the world.

A few things that we have tried are below.

Long-Term Savings Account. We set up an account at the credit union for his first car. Zach knows this money is there and that he has to put half of his allowance every week in to this account. This can also be an account for something else like college or another big item.

We also have a family 401K. We match a quarter to the dollar for Zach’s long-term savings.

We have also tried this approach for short term goal, but watch out, this one can get you in trouble. Last year in January Zach asked for Xbox 360 and we told him that if he could save half of the money that we would pay the other half. Before we knew it, he had saved almost $200. After looking at the price of Xbox and the price of the games $50-$60, we talked to him about this not being the smartest way to spend his money. After he thought it over he decided that it would not make sense to get Xbox yet. Had he not come to this conclusion we would have had a hard time not following through on purchasing Xbox, since Zach had reached is savings goal. What a relief that was!

Helping your children understand the value of money goes a long way in establishing a lifelong pattern of good money management. There are many lessons for our children to learn, and what and how we teach them about money can affect them throughout their lives.