Holiday Financial Wellness with LMCU

Savannah Girmscheid, Financial Wellness Manager with Lake Michigan Credit Union joins us to discuss resources available for financial wellness as we approach the holiday season. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Questions about financial wellness, like what does it mean anyway?
It says West Michigan's Morning News Stee Kelly and Brett Kaita.
Back with us from our friends at Lake Michigan Credit Union,
Savannah Germscheidt, who is a financial wellness manager at Lake
Michigan Credit Union. Savannah, thanks for doing this this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, thanks, thanks so much for having me, Steve.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Let's start there. What does financial wellness really mean? And
why is it about feelings as much as numbers? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
So, I think financial a wellness is really such an
important topic because, like you said, it's not just about numbers.
It's really about how money makes us feel and the
choices that we make because of those feelings. So, finance
a wellness is all about having confidence, having control over
your money. It's not just about those financial habits like

(00:50):
budgeting and savings. It's really about feeling secure, feeling less stressed.
We all know that our emotions can really drive our decisions.
We feel anxious when we feel guilty about money. That
can cause us to overspend maybe avoid bills. So true
wellness really means that we're aligning our financial habits with

(01:14):
our values and really feeling good about those choices that
we're making.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Savannah. Have you noticed too, I've done this with both
my mom and my father in law who's now passed,
where they wanted me to go in with them, and
I was happy to do it and just kind of
help them take care of maybe a car loan or
look at the different options in your case. But every
credit union or bank is different of you know, should
they do bonds, should they do some different things, and

(01:39):
just going through that process with them and them having
another resource to kind of bounce things off along with
the people at that credit unior bank. Would you suggest
that especially with you know, some of our aging parents
or maybe grandparents, because I really enjoyed that process because
it also made me look at my finances differently.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's incredibly valuable for both parties.
You know, you want to be there for your parents
and help guide them, but anytime that we're handling finances,
we're learning more about them. I think it's really important
to to watch videos and to read books, and we

(02:20):
have a financial Wellness center with a lot of information
on onc dot org and so really continuing to learn
about finances, whether it's really any topic. If it's savings,
if it's avoiding fraud, et cetera. All of those topics
are incredibly important and things that, yeah, you can have

(02:41):
conversations with family members about as well. I think when
you're Yeah, when you're silent about topics, it can create
more stress, and those conversations and doing things together can
build some confidence on both sides.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Give us a little more about how emotion can influence
the way we make financial decisions.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, So I think when we think about especially I
think about the holidays, we're experiencing a lot of positive emotions.
We want to celebrate, We love our friends and family
and want to buy gifts, And so I think whether
those emotions are negative, whether you know, we're making decisions

(03:23):
out of stress or anxiety, or whether we're making decisions
out of excitement and wanting to celebrate, all of those
emotions can lead us to make decisions that maybe we
wouldn't make if we weren't experiencing those emotions, because we
want to buy a gift that's maybe out of our

(03:46):
price range. So I think, especially as we think about
the holidays, it can be really easy to feel like
there's a amount that we need to spend versus figuring
out what's really comfortable to spend instead. And so I
would just encourage everybody to really determine what that amount

(04:07):
is that's comfortable for you, yeah, and do your holiday
shopping and spending out of that number, and that not
out of obligation or feeling like, Okay, it's the holidays,
I have to I have to check off all these
boxes of things that I need to stop.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
On Savana quickly. The last thing we want to touch
on too is if you do feel, if you're listening
right now, overwhelmed by your financial situation, what's the first
thing you recommend they should do.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, So I think, like we talked about, money can
be really emotional, and so taking a deep breath, really
getting clear on what's going on with your finances. So
starting by writing down what you owe, what you earn,
what you spend. This can really just be done paper pencil,
or you can use an app or a spreadsheet, but

(04:57):
just writing down what you're spending in a week, figuring
out what you might be able to cut, and studying
some sort of small financial goal. So maybe it's saving
twenty dollars a week. Maybe it's just cutting out a
certain expense so that it can free up more margin
in your budget. And so maybe it's paying off a

(05:18):
really small debt, just picking something to build that habit,
and yeah, start making progress towards towards one of those goals.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Financial wellness manager Savannah Germsheind at Lake Michigan Credit Union,
Thanks for your time this morning.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, thank you so much