Archives

5 Resolutions to Trim Spending and Reduce Stress

With the new year approaching, now is the perfect time to make a resolution to save more money. These five tips will help you trim spending, beef up savings and reduce stress. 1. Pay it off.Pay off your credit cards to save money. Let’s say you have a $2,000 balance at 18% interest. If your minimum […]

Don’t Fall for Gift Card Scams

Gift cards are extremely popular to give as well as to get. They’re a convenient way to treat someone to a meal at their favorite restaurant, purchase an item of their own choosing at a favorite store, or simply to give them cash to use anywhere the card is accepted. Unfortunately, scammers also love gift cards […]

Seniors Learn Budgeting/Adulting in ECU Financial Simulation

They’ll soon be graduating, and many will be off on their own, so what better time than now for Yale High School’s class of 2024 to get a dose of the real world, finances and all. Extra Credit Union debuted its new Real Life. Real Choices financial reality simulation at Yale High School on November […]

Detroit Free Press names Extra Credit Union a winner of the Michigan Top Workplaces 2023 Award

Extra Credit Union has been awarded a Top Workplaces 2023 honor by the Detroit Free Press Top Workplaces award program. This is the third year the financial institution has participated in the program and the third year the credit union has made the list. “We’re ‘All In’ for our members is a motto at Extra […]

Watch Out For Phon(e)y Messages   

Few of us can imagine going a day without using our cellphones. For many people, it’s become their preferred method of communicating and doing business. Scammers take advantage of our reliance on cellphones and use them to trick us into giving them our personal information. It’s important to be aware of the kinds of scams […]

5 Tips for Managing Stress in the Sandwich Generation

About 25% of adults in their 40s and 50s belong to the sandwich generation—the population of middle-aged adults who are taking care of their children and at the same time providing some level of care or support to their elderly parents. Mothers in particular feel more stress trying to balance caring for their young children […]

How to Fill Out a FAFSA Correctly

Each October, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA is made available for the next school year. This is the form that families fill out to apply for federal grants, loans, and work-study funds for college students. It is administered by the U.S. Department of Education, which provides more than $150 billion in […]

Take These Steps with Your Student Loans

All good things must come to an end—and that applies to the upcoming end of federal student loan payment relief measures, which paused federal student loan debt collection and reduced interest rates on federal student loans to 0% during the moratorium.  For those with government-held loans, the relief options provided a record-long “breather.” Now it’s […]

Blog

Get helpful articles and information on anything and everything financial related from saving money, spring cleaning your finances, auto buying tips, and more! Visit our blogs page to check out the articles!

Avoiding Postmortem Identity Theft  

Ghosting. Grave robbery. Impersonating the dead. Any way you say it, postmortem identity theft is scary, and unfortunately common. Postmortem identity theft happens when a scammer obtains information from an obituary or stolen death certificate, or buys personal information about a deceased person off the internet. With the stolen information, thieves open fraudulent credit accounts […]