entrepreneurs and other professionals who are thinking about starting their own businesses today i'm joined by the president and c e o of risings federal credit union i'm excited to have her here and without any further delay people to know a little bit more about you the person so please introduce yourself and just to know a little bit about how you kind of found yourself all this path that's legit into this role of president and see well i started in credit union back in one nine hundred seventy eight i actually was a credit department employee at an app sign department store which was based in marston new jersey there was a there as actually a branch down here in princeton but the main office was in marsh town i was working there and it was a very difficult job everything was manual we did a lot of things on credit like the old card machines and my sister worked for allied chemical corporation and their credit union needed an employee and i went over there to interview got the job and i've never looked back i worked there for a couple of years i volunteered on the youth involvement board for the state association and from there and up work for a data processor for credit unions and i was there for quite a to transition into credit unions i don't think it occurs to them sometimes i don't think that they realize the amount of services that are available to the credit in so rather than this kind of going through this litany of services free what about one thing that you think will totally surprise people about credit unions or specifically your credit i think they would be surprised that we are so technology based we offer almost every personal banking service that a bank does including mobile banking clearing mobile deposit and usually for much less than the bank will will charg that but in our case we can say it because it really is right and when every and every time a bank as a monthly fee to their accounts we get accounts at the best marketing we have people doing a name for this an individual tired of it so  have your checking account with us you do your direct deposit you have a free debit card we have agreement with a company called all point and we also have what they call c u dollar a t m those are no surcharge a t m networks fifty eight thousand m s every c v s every seven eleven every has every target and fact i looked up before i came over here there are within three miles of this location twelve free a t m so you can go in here and just walk around princeton you could actually get a free t m c one love that there this show is all about trying to help people especially with the smallest uncover resources and that's why i'm talking about and i'm glad you brought it up so you leveraging technology you're making it easier for us your mobility program is under that umbrella that says it's a virtual branson right if you open your what your account is open you can do everything a t m debit card smartphone and you're on line you're looking at your account you're doing your transfers you're doing your transactions you really you can do long if you open your lab and you can do everything online nothing has to be done via the branch itself anymore you can do everything via the computer i think that's important because we're so busy for you to be able to say and again i think that's going to dispel the myth i know that it's going to ask well i'm either going to my best time to do my banking is sunday morning when i wake up and nobody else is up yet i sit at the computer and that's when i do my little bit about debit and credit cards are going to go into chip and basically the envy chip card technology has been around a very long time in europe it's just not here in the united states we are finally getting into that the united states is coming about and mainly it's a stock fraud the gas stations do not have to comply with that technology till two thousand and seventeen just about everybody else is starting now and that ship car technology is going to help us to get rid of the fraudsters without getting too technical what is it the one we see this e m p or this whole chip is it something in there that it's picking up different do you know that used to get picked  basically with the magistrate they could copy that mag stripe and it's the same confirmation number that they use each time so if you're a business owner you need to upgrade your technology in your machine so that it can read the chip card or the liability for fraud will fall in that business owner that simple that's the important part from the business owner standpoint and then like we as the as the card provider we have to also upgrade our cards to have chips in them and then what'll happen is whoever doesn't have the chip technology is going to be responsible for the product so the onus is coming back on the business owners in hey man have to take a lot old corral and protecting  probably people just wouldn't think of it we don't have a choice we have nobody you know we have going to compete so we have to compete and even you know we're small local credit union but we have to follow all the rules and regs that the banks share and we have to keep up with them to because basically we started because the banks did not want to work with farmers back in the day farmers had a very different cycle banks wanted to get paid monthly well farmers don't work on a on a monthly basis you know how the seasons work for plumbers they got they needed to have somebody who would help them with seed money in the spring and when they are harvested in the fall they could get they could pay the bank well the banks didn't want that so they started credit unions and that was really back in germany back in the eight hundred so credit you started in the united states in the one nine hundred thirty s and that's what happened so credit unions have their own we actually started our own insurance company back in one nine hundred thirty s because the insurance companies didn't want to work with credit unions so we became very self sufficient we can't go out and raise capital we have to our capital is actually earned through our own earnings we've never gone to the to the public for a bail out everything and that's one of the things you know we're a not for profit financial cooperative just like there were farm cooperatives back in the day where cooperative i've done lobbying for tragedians i've gone down and i go to the congressman or his need which is typically when you say and i say ok so here's the difference between the in a banker when the banker gets up in the morning his job is to make money for his investors when i get up in the morning my job is to take care of my members and clearly there's a big difference a huge difference and my board of directors are unpaid volunteers the bank's board of directors are paid to do that job and make money for their investors and there's a big difference philosophically there's a big factory with that pos in this day and age with customer service is not going to article the other day and i think it's a no brainer but it's something along the lines of delighting your customer which to me for some people feels like an old school terminology or just work it's a good it's everything there is absolutely names and they knew your well i am and it's kind of funny because we've kind of got to a point with oh well you come on in and open your account but we always said you're joining the credit union right as you're technically you're joining in you're becoming a member of the credit union but you're really opening an account in the door and they know who we are we know who they are we know what their business is about and they know we're going to take care of them because we have their interests at heart not just what how much money can we make off of right i think it's i think it's everything it's a different different focus talk about business or is it entrepreneurial services but i will talk about families and especially some of the services that you offer for news which is my favorite so hold that thought we'll be right back after these quick messages introducing the workshops that ibis provided exclusively for the tenants of the ibis plaza and other invited professionals and out of print north to help grow support and take your business to the next level the hands on workshops tutorials planning sessions are intended to provide you with specific tips tools and resources that you can implement the moment you leave and return to your office better yet the interactive media workshops that we have planned are designed specifically to help you understand and leverage new technology whether a beginner with absolutely no video or camera experience or a seasoned pro you'll learn to increase your visibility in the marketplace any professional presence online or even get your business in front of thousands on t staging exec's dot com for the complete workshop schedule and get started today we are here today with the president and c e o of hamilton horizons federal credit union ascend the rhymes  cindy we were just kind of wrapping up talking about the benefits of membership but before i go into a little bit more of the eligibility requirements something came to my mind if i just listen to the first half of that show and i've been with a financial institution for a lot in years i maybe has it in right i may say are really want to move into a credit union if i'm told simple but i don't know i don't know if i will a deal with the hassle what's the process if i did decide i want  to transition from a financial institution to credit you know it's really not that difficult at all i mean you need to have you to open the account right so you need to bring your driver's license it's social security number and your proof of address tel aviv bill maybe it's in your insurance card you can open the account you can open your checking account you're going to start to move your direct deposit you're going to start to move your bill pay those things get moved over your direct everything gets moved over slowly and then eventually you close the other account it's really not complicated and for hamilton horizons the minimum balance you need to open an account is just five dollars it's very simple so you're going to start to move things over slowly but surely watching the other account making sure you know the a c h debits that are hitting your account your electronic transactions those things are going to make sure you have enough in your old account to clear them and then get them switched over that's the kind of stuff that you have to watch  you get it done the right way so you're not getting hit with an s f yeah but i don't see i want to talk about that because again i just want to help people understand themselves out of things that maybe think things are more compass everything else is so complicated that when something is simple on bringing to the forefront we really don't think that people should have to pay to keep their money someplace or pay to access their money and that's because we don't have investors that we have to pack right yeah well let's let's go ahead and go into eligibility requirements specifically for your credit we are for hamilton community so if anyone who lives works worships or attend school in hamilton township new jersey or is related to someone who does so if you have a family member who works in hamilton they can join it's also anybody who's a member of an organization in hamilton so if you go to the hamilton y m c a or you have a family member who goes to the hamilton y m c a they are you are eligible to join if you have a family member who is a member of the n i in hamilton new jersey you are eligible to join so they are what used to be closed membership has become a lot more open and we make a lot of research and investigation to make it possible for people to join a credit union see you doing everything you can to a comedy absolutely we think that if you want to be able to join a credit union you should be able to reap the benefits absolutely now and once you if you were fired from when they joined the credit mean you get twenty five dollars for referring them and if they join an open a checking account with direct deposit they get fifty dollars for joining they get very good and gently and you get twenty five so we love to have real rewarding to see and that's that's all i wanted now right passing the word along right it's a really great deal right and that's my best way of marketing that word of mouth it's kind of old fashioned but hey it works if i want to talk about we talked about how we served business owners and entrepreneurs which will lot of services that are serving families and especially youth in the same view for last because i get excited about that but let's talk about some of the other services than are available that we haven't hit on yet well one of the things that credit inside always and it's a philosophy of people helping people we want people to take care of their finances one of the things that we are starting this year and we've always been big on financial literacy we are starting a budget seminar program the first budget seminar we have scheduled is for march fourth in our office we are also going to be doing some lunchtime luncheon learns we have a couple of them are going to schedule for thursday nights like from five to six and we're going to start posting the schedules of these so it's going to be open to the community and for the companies that we're working with and if there are business owners who are interested in us running a lunch and learn or bagels and budget kind of program for their search for their employees we are more than willing to come in it's an hour long budget program is probably going to be a budget one in a budget two program will help their employees put budgets together from excel spreadsheets and sit down with them and no charge just something that we want people to be more responsible with their finances right up front and honestly there's a there is a little bit for us because if they're taking care of things up front later on they're not having to declare financial literacy for kids and there are different you know anybody can actually go in on our website and go see her and there are some games and things they can play on the site you know there's no cost to having kids account so you can teach your kids young how to next investing saving donating and spending are the four the four stomachs i know it was what we were trying to teach the kids and that's how you should really think when you're spending your money so  horizon star or go and see if we can if were available we will come out we try to keep it hamilton based because obviously we're hamilton based credit union we will be out of the hamilton girl softball opening on april ninth and that's our we have in the pantry gone to hamilton september fast and some of the other events and then you get out there so people can know and i love it and i want to talk for going about it seems i want to talk about the programs that you have for the teams the online program nowadays heart of credit cards a lot of debit card things with debit cards and they should have a checking account their parents have to be cosigners on that they have to be but the kids need to start very young they need to understand how to get into that and to build or rebuild credit and there's no risk on the part of the institution because the money is long term we also do what we call a credit builder loan talk about their nature it's a very simple loan basically you're going to borrow anywhere from five hundred to twenty five hundred dollars the money is deposited in your account and locked up and you pay that loan monthly and it might go over six months or a year you can at the end of that take the money and just pay the loan off but you are building credit and so your credit  the show you and help and that is one of the things with the budgeting seminar we showed them how to put together we call them like the piggy bank accounts they're called sub accounts you don't just have to have a savings account you can have these different accounts underneath for your insurance and for your vacation and for birthday gifts and for all those non monthly expenses that show up you can have all that money and every paycheck you can just a part of a little bit into those sub accounts so that when that expense hits you have the money set aside already and that's one of the tricks about budgeting is to put that money aside and we can help you do that level of service or use a phenomenal from that just thank you i am a proponent of it something that everybody can and honestly i feel like a lot of people are moving back to that kind of of budgeting structure because you get frustrated looking at those credit card bills they build up so quickly and honest now with the way the economy is and you know the fed raised rates back in december for the first time since december of two thousand and eight it had been seven years since the rating crease the fed has said oh we're going to start raising rates every quarter for two thousand and sixteen well then the markets went crazy so we're kind of thinking with that market volatility they may hold back this quarter but they're probably going to go back and reach rates again in june you know i'd be really careful of doing anything you have variable rate credit cards out there right now if you have any variable rate credit cards pay them off we have a fixed rate credit card nobody has fixed rate credit cards mov is a certain part of the site here designated just for us so let's just have you provide the u r l for the website again cindy have you w w dot hamilton horizons dot org perfect and so with in the website everyone you want you to be able to least navigate through here and find the information specifically for these problems that we're talking about so you got to go to the website even though under community to use programs everything else is kind of it's a very easy to navigate web cams awesome but i want you to start their moment you know want to do everything that we came collectively to wrap ourselves around young people and give them an early start them to deal with who knows what ten twenty years out is going to look like so if they can get that kind of support early on with getting the foundation to him so i just want to thank you going thank you for the service that you provide to the community particularly in this information to help people avoid these people but if they are in the know that you are kind of working in wrapping themselves around them to help people get through it because it can be overwhelming so thank you so much for being here cindy she had the opportunity here and fantastic thank you thank you everyone for tuning in thank you to our wonderful sponsors for today show if you know of anyone who is in need of the services that you saw here today please reach out and show your support if you'd like to learn how you can have your own business featured on the show please feel free to visit our website at staging exacts dot com