This post originally appeared on yourmoneyfurther.com. Money plays a crucial role in our lives, influencing our choices, opportunities, and overall well-being. Yet, many of us find ourselves trapped in bad money habits that hinder our financial growth. It’s time to break free from these destructive patterns and pave the way for a more secure and prosperous future. In this blog post, we’ll explore some common bad money habits and discuss strategies to overcome them. Living Beyond Your Means One of…
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America Saves Week 2024: Saving At Any Age
Spending/Saving
Talking about money has been considered taboo for too long, but this mindset could be doing us a disservice. After all, it’s not what you say but how you say it. You’ve gained valuable insights this week, and the next step is to share those learnings and check-in with your loved ones. On the fifth and final day of America Saves Week, we encourage you to: Talk to family members, whether it be your own kids to older generations, about…
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America Saves Week 2024: Paying Down Debt IS Saving
Spending/Saving
Just like having a plan for saving is important, so is having a plan to pay down your debt. Recent reports show that individuals have increased their usage of credit cards due to the ongoing inflation and rising costs of our basic needs like housing, food, and transportation. Couple that with the return of student loan debt repayment and the interest rates increase, and the ability to pay down debt is exacerbating the savings crisis, hindering the ability to save…
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America Saves Week 2024: Saving For Major Milestones
Spending/Saving
How do you save for the big things, like homeownership, retirement, and education, when saving for the small things is difficult? Saving for competing priorities can feel overwhelming, but there are ways to break these big goals down into reasonable, practical steps even if you aren’t where you want to be financially. Today is day 3 of America Saves Week and we’re focusing on saving for major life milestones while not abandoning your other financial needs or wants. Today, we…
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America Saves Week 2024: Saving for the Unexpected
Spending/Saving
It happens to all of us: you’re saving for something that you’re really excited about and before you know it an unexpected event occurs, causing you to dip into your designated savings. Every day, Americans are forced to use money they were saving for something they truly value or credit to pay for an unexpected expense. On Day 2 of America Saves Week, we want you to embrace establishing an emergency fund, along with shifting the narrative around emergency savings….
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America Saves Week 2024: Saving Automatically
Spending/Saving
It’s America Saves Week! Each year we encourage our community to dedicate this week to pause and do a financial check-in, and this year is no different. Join us this week to get a clear view of where your finances are, where you want them to be, and what small steps you can take to put you on a path forward. We all have unique circumstances, that in many cases make it difficult (or nearly impossible) for many to save…
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Midwest Community Federal Credit Union is a proud participant in America Saves Week, an annual national campaign that encourages and empowers individuals, families, employers, and communities to check-in on their finances. The campaign focuses on several important topics that make up your financial landscape with a realistic economic approach, including saving for emergencies and unexpected expenses, leveraging automatic savings, retirement, and reducing debt; as well as more niche topics like talking to your family about money, understanding your employer’s financial…
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As text messaging becomes more prevalent around the world, text message scams are also becoming more common. The fraudsters sending these messages continue to evolve their techniques, getting increasingly convincing to lure personal information. This personal information can be used to access bank accounts or other online accounts like your email. Smishing uses highly convincing text messages to trick someone into providing private information or downloading malicious programs to a mobile phone. What is smishing? Another term for scam text messages,…
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Internet fraud is on the rise. Many of these scams used spoofing, when fraudsters pretend to be a legitimate organization or company. Read on to learn how to spot spoofing and other common methods used by scammers online. What is spoofing? Spoofing is when a fraudster uses an email address, sender name, phone number or website URL to try and convince you that you’re dealing with a trusted source. Sometimes, fraudsters have the technology to trick your phone or computer…
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To protect yourself, it’s important to be familiar with trending scams — keep reading to learn about the latest. Never share your online banking User ID or password. MCFCU will NEVER contact you and ask for it — and there’s no reason anyone else needs it, ever. Student loan scams Americans lost an astounding $5 billion to student loan fraud in 2022. As students graduate high school and look to college in the fall, scammers are busier than ever. And if…
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