Wherever you are on your financial journey, Alco FCU can help!
by Michael Miller, CEO/Treasurer of Alco Federal Credit Union
I have always been passionate about financial literacy. I grew up in a lower income home. I was one of the kids who wore off-brand clothes and got reduced cost lunches in school. My parents worked hard and did everything they could to help myself and my two siblings have an opportunity to succeed. I started working at Fitzpatrick Poultry Farm in Whitesville when I was 14 and any day I wasn’t in school or playing sports I was at the egg farm. Every dollar I made went toward keeping my 1991 Dodge Spirit on the road or to eventually pay for textbooks for college. My story is hardly unique. Most of us in Allegany County and the surrounding area have had similar experiences growing up. Many are in much worse situations. I am very thankful for what I did have and those sacrifices my parents made.
I was drawn to Financial Planning at Alfred State College and spent a number of years after college working for the ACCORD Corporation in their Small Business Development Division. There we worked with small business owners to help them create Business Plans and to apply for funding for their small business dreams. We also worked with low-income individuals in the county. We provided training and assistance in many life skills topics including personal financial skills. There was also a great program called Wheels for Work that helped single parents get low-cost vehicles to help them keep and maintain a job. Programs like this and others are still available at ACCORD today and you can find out more from their website at www.accordcorp.org.
Another great program I helped with at the time was the VITA tax program. VITA stands for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance. This program provides free tax prep from certified tax preparers to low-income individuals. Often low-income filers are tricked into paying high fees to prepare their taxes when they are often quite simple to fill out. They can also get stuck with refund anticipation loans or made to get their refund on a card instead of just getting it direct deposited into their credit union or bank account. The VITA program helps avoid many of these traps. The United Way ran the program for many years and recently Houghton University has taken it over. You can read more about the program here. https://www.houghton.edu/community/vita-tax-prep-allegany-county/
Coming to Alco FCU in the spring of 2012, I immediately felt right at home in being able to help members no matter where they were on their financial journey. No matter what your age or income, Alco offers unique programs and services to meet your needs. A previous article covering our youth education programs was written last January in the Sun. https://wellsvillesun.com/blog/2023/01/19/alco-federal-credit-union-brings-banzai-to-local-schools-to-teach-real-world-personal-finance/ Other than the Banzai program, the article also mentioned our John Patterson Memorial Scholarship. We’ve made a number of changes to how our scholarship works to reach more students. We have extended the deadline for submitting the application from the end of March to the end of April. The application process has been streamlined in allowing for a broader list of reference letter options. The scholarship amount itself has been doubled from $500 to $1000 for two scholarships. There is still a little time to apply this year or save the link for your Juniors so they are ready to apply for next year. An application can be found on our website, but just for convenience, here it is: https://www.alcofcu.com/pdf/johnpattersonmemorialscholarship2024.pdf
I also enjoy going into schools when I can and speaking to the students. I’ve spoken to school age kids of all ages about financial literacy. One of my favorite topics to cover with older kids is retirement. I like to show them how much their money can grow if they start saving early and how much they could have at retirement by just saving a little bit over a long time. Their eyes grow big when you show them the numbers of how they could realistically be a millionaire given enough time and savings.
Members that are ready to talk to someone right now about their retirement savings can talk with our great partners at Gildner & Associates Wealth Management. Kevin and Shawn provide amazing service and are able to help you meet your investment goals. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our joint community shred day that Alco is co-sponsoring with them. This will be held on Saturday, May 4th from 10 am to 1 pm in the parking lot at the Wellsville Alco branch. The address is 2859 Lindy Lane if you’ve never been by our office before. You don’t have to be a member of Alco or a customer of Gildner & Associates to take part. Just bring down your old documents to safely get them shredded and off your mind. Securely getting rid of these old documents is an important tool in protecting your identity and reducing fraud.
Fraud is a growing problem in our modern world and is another area that Alco works very hard to fight. I’ve spoken to groups for the Office of the Aging as well as the Alfred Box of Books Library on the topic. It’s especially scary because of how much money you could lose very quickly to scammers and fraudsters. Every dollar that we keep out of fraudsters hands is another dollar that stays in our local economy and helps our community members have a stronger financial foundation. One part of my fraud talk is about having a support structure that you can rely on to help identify scams and to protect yourself from them. I list three people that you should have contact information for: 1. A local banking professional 2. Your investment representatives 3. An IT specialist. Of course, 1 and 2 are already taken care of if you work with Alco FCU and Gildner & Associates! The third is important because many scams are on the computer and you want to be able to talk to an IT expert quickly to help you clean your computer if you’ve been scammed online. Even better, work with them before you get scammed to have the right protections in place. If you ever question the legitimacy of something and think it might be a scam, please reach out to any of our offices and we would be happy to help. I think one of the misconceptions out there that leads to worse outcomes is that people feel dumb or are afraid that they’ll be judged by getting caught in a scam. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Everyone at Alco would love to help.
One important service available for members of the credit union is financial counselling. We have certified financial counselors on staff that can help you budget or just talk through your unique financial situation. There are a lot of resources available that we could point you in the direction of. I recently spoke to a young man in my office that uses a popular online company to do most of his banking. We spent an hour talking about his very unique situation and he walked away with a few specific steps he could take to improve his situation. As we were finishing up, he agreed that he couldn’t have had kind of one-on-one help through that online company.
It’s common knowledge that Allegany County is one of the poorer counties in the State. Since this is the case, it’s vital that the income and assets people in the County do have are protected and not wasted. Alco is proud to have the lowest fees in the area. Our loan rates really catch people’s attention and many of our members, including myself, first came to the Credit Union because of loan savings that couldn’t be ignored.
Remember that if you live, work, or worship in Alco’s area of membership, you can become a member and start getting some of these great benefits today. Since 1953 Alco Federal Credit Union has invested in our communities. Along with Allegany County, we are now able to accept members from Steuben, Cattaraugus, and Wyoming Counties in New York as well as Potter and McKean Counties in Pennsylvania.
