HRCCU Blog

If you’ve been a homeowner for a number of years, chances are good that you’re eligible for a home equity loan. But even if you are eligible you may be asking yourself: “Why would I take out another loan?” A home equity loan has quite a few benefits that are worth investigating. Does that mean you should take one out just because you can? Of course not! What it does mean is that you should know about the potential financial opportunities one of these loans can offer - it might provide benefits that you don’t even know about!

When you’re looking to buy a car, sometimes the range of different financing and vehicle options can be difficult to parse through: do you want to lease or buy? Do you want to take out a loan or buy a car outright? Of course, making these decisions can also be largely dependent on how flexible your income is, and the access that you have to a loan with a reasonable interest rate. So how do you know which makes the most sense for you? There are a couple of things to consider when making this decision. 

If you have young kids, then you’ve probably experienced some feelings of anxiety over both the future of their finances and the future of their financial knowledge at least once or twice. Youth education is not usually especially focused on teaching kids about how financial systems work or teaching about handling and managing money in the future. This responsibility falls upon the parents, not schoolteachers, and with life seemingly becoming busier and busier, it’s always a benefit to have some tools that will help you better educate your child about money. That’s where a youth savings account comes in; after all, what better way to learn than through experience? 

If you’re trying to develop a better understanding of how to manage your finances, finding good resources that can help you get where you want to be can be difficult. One resource that can be extremely helpful (and doesn’t monopolize your time) is immersing yourself into the world of financial podcasts! Podcasts are an especially helpful tool because they tend to be short, but not too short. For example, you can throw a podcast on during your morning commute and get through it by the time you get to work, or you can listen to a bunch of them if you’re taking a longer trip - many of them have an extensive back catalog. 

Looking for a job can be a stressful process and the unfortunate reality is that there are nearly always scammers out there looking to take advantage of people who are in vulnerable states. Individuals in the midst of a long job hunt that has yet to provide solid results can be very susceptible to these kinds of scams, because of the financial stresses that can begin to arise while unemployed. Because of this, the number of job scams, typically online, have become numerous. That’s why it’s especially important to have the proper information: the more informed you are on the common practices that job scammers use, the more likely you are to spot red flags. Here are 4 ways to spot job employment scams. 

When you’re waffling on signing up for a subscription-based service, that almost ever-present 7-day or 14-day free trial can seem like a huge draw. You think: "why not give the service a shot for a week or two, especially if it’s at no cost?" While this logic is, on its face, sensible enough, the reality is that there are some considerations that you should take before giving out personal financial information to any subscription service. What kind of considerations? Let’s take a look at a few. 

Back to school time is just around the corner and while that does mean that the kids will have somewhere to go during the day (no more trying to figure out what to do with them every Tuesday), it also means that sooner than later you’re going to need to buy school supplies for the school year and that can get expensive. Luckily there are a number of ways to save on back to school shopping, and if you’re looking for savings, you’re in the right place! Here are 5 handy tips for getting all the school supplies your kids need without punishing your wallet (too much). 

Buying a home, especially if you are a first-time homebuyer, can be a very confusing and stressful process. Unless you went to college for finance or work in a financial institution, it’s not really something that you would have ever learned and chances are you weren’t looking into getting a mortgage in your teenage years or early twenties. Now that you are looking, acquiring the proper knowledge can require a lot of time spent researching to figure out how to get a home mortgage and then figuring out the type of mortgage that makes the most sense for you. That’s what we’re here to help you with. Let’s look at the pros and cons of a 15-year mortgage and a 30-year mortgage, and figure out which of the two makes the most sense for you!