We’ve Moved!

We have integrated our blog into our website!

For all of our latest updates you can go to www.tdecu.org/blog.

Interviews With TDECU #1

We were able to sit down with our VP of Student Lending and find out more about the College Survival Kit.

Saving With DeAndre’

Our Young and Free Texas Spokester, DeAndre’, is going to be trying to save $100 in the month of February. This doesn’t sound like too much, but for a college senior I think it is a substantial goal. I know that when I was in school, all of eight months ago, that $100 was half of my monthly income so graciously provided by our campus bookstore. I would have been doing good to save twenty dollars a month!

The $100 dollar challenge might be small potatoes for you or if you are like I was it could seem like the impossible dream. Either way the point is to start saving. Saving is one of those things that if you don’t start you never will, and it doesn’t matter what you start with because you can always save more. Personally, I am going to be joining DeAndre’ in this challenge and I recommend that you all check out his progress as the month goes on at youngfreetexas.com.

Invest In America

We are pleased to announce that Credit Union members are able to participate in the Invest In America program being offered by GM and Chrysler. This program allows Credit Union members access to discount pricing. In the case of GM, Supplier Pricing is available and Chrysler is offering rebates of $500 – $1500. Access to these benefits is gained by financing through TDECU.

For mor information go here.

Cuero Branch Named Business of the Year

At the Cuero Chamber of Commerce banquet this past Tuesday our branch was named the business of the year. We have it on good authority that even a local bank board member, who will remain nameless, voted for us!

We would like to congratulate everyone at the Cuero Branch for this receiving this honor.

Annual Meeting

This Friday is our annual meeting! Make plans to come to the civic center in Lake Jackson. This is a great opportunity to meet with your fellow members, and the people who work hard everyday to meet your financial needs.

What is RSS?

If you haven’t noticed by now blogging is going to be with us for a long time. Many major print newspapers are facing bankruptcy and it looks like the internet has taken their place as the place for news and commentary. Headline news is easy to get, but what about commentary? Some of us go to as many as twenty different sites a day to catch up on what people are saying about the world around us. That is a lot of bookmarks to keep up with and a simple way to avoid that is to use an RSS reader.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Most blogs have an RSS link and when you click on it you are taken to page that has everything that was on the real webpage except it doesn’t have any formatting. The cool thing is that the RSS page updates every time a post is made automatically and there are many services that you can put the addresses into and they will show you all the RSS feeds you want in one place.

I like to use Google Reader. It is easy to set up and use, like so many of Google’s other products. Many browsers will even give you the option of subscribing to the RSS right into Google Reader. You can find out more about Google reader here. Some email programs even allow you to import the content into your inbox.

I have about twenty blogs setup in my reader and every morning I wake up to about sixty new posts. Some are as short as a line and others are the length of regular news features. This easily keeps me up to date with the various things I am interested in and the world around me.

I highly recomend setting up an RSS reader and then taking advantage of all that the internet has to offer. You will spend less time going to websites only to find there is no new content and be able maybe find out a few things you didn’t know.

New Years Resolutions

We are eight days into the new year and I’m sure many of us have already forgotten about or haven’t done anything to start on our new years resolutions. Every year we try and become better people by declaring the vaguest things about our lives. I will be healthier in ‘09! I am not going waste any money in ‘09! I’m going to learn French in ‘09! etc.

These are all great things to want to do and are things that should be pursued. I think one of the things that keeps up from being able to follow through with our resolutions is that we decide to do things that will take the whole year, but we never take the second step to break the goal down into something more manageable.

Say if you wanted to be healthier this year. Why not start by bringing your lunch to work instead of going out to eat. The odds are that you will exercise more portion control and be able to choose foods that aren’t as artery clogging as what the drive-thru is offering. This doesn’t seem like much but it is a serious start towards lowering calorie intake. Then in February why not start walking in the evenings. Don’t try for the marathon first, get used to do things and slowly build up to what your end goal is.

Also, Reward yourself! If you don’t want to waste money and you start budgeting. Why not make an envelope and put ten dollars in it a week, and then once a month you will have about forty dollars that you can spend on whatever you want. This way you can have some fun while you work towards becoming a saver and not a waster.

Reading, and even writing, about these things is fairly easy and the follow through is the hard part, but it usually is worth the sense of accomplishment. Don’t forget about the joy of being able to have a NEW new years resolution for 2010. So one  last bit of advice would be to find a friend to do this with, or even start a blog or journal to track your progress. This way you can avoid the crushing loneliness of feeling like you’re the only trying to do better and maybe you can make a friendship stronger or make new friends at the same time.

Anyway, here is to a new year! Let’s knock out some resolutions!

Young & Free – Big Bowl-Off-Ski

We are getting very excited about the Big-Bowl-Off-Ski! This is the first Young & Free event of the year and will be taking place at Bowl Texas in Lake Jackson. If you are a Go2 account holder you get to bowl for free! That’s right from 9PM-12PM all the bowling you can do for free! If you are not a Go2 account holder and would like to bowl for free go get the account.

And if you still would like to bowl a $10 donation to Relay for Life at the door will get you all the bowling you could need.

Interested? Go here to sign up!

Can’t wait to see everyone on the lanes.

My Welcome To TDECU

In early December I experienced something that I have never experienced before. I went somewhere where my name had preceded me. As I walked around the TDECU campus I was greeted with smiles and congratulations on my losing Y&F campaign. People talked to me like they knew me and then I would have to remember that I had just been part of a big online competition that was put on by my new employer. I had come down to Lake Jackson for my NEO training and was looking forward to learning about both credit unions in general and TDECU.

I do not come from a financial background and there was a lot for me to learn. Having just graduated from college I have lived the past four years of my life with many acronyms. In Huntsville I went to the HKC after class in the SHB and then probably would go to the LSC to kill time, but what were these FSR’s everyone was talking about. A whole new set of acronyms to learn and live by.

Mary Jo in HR had been clear to me the week before that class began promptly at 9 and not to be late, and so I made sure to be ten minutes early. It was here that I met the ladies that I would spend the next three days with. Lani led me, Lisa, and Mary Kay on a cruise to every port of call that would tell us about where we were.

Seeing the time they put into planning their training course as well as the space given to it I knew I was somewhere special. The first day I learned about the differences between banks and credit unions and also about our history. It is impressive that an organization that started 50 years ago in an office with 50 dollars has grown to deal with 1.5 billion in financial assets. Surely something worth bragging about and that all my friends have now heard about from me.

Lani led us around the campus and was sure to introduce us to everyone in each department. In case someone missed us we were assured that they could see our pictures on the content manager. It was great to see so many smiling faces busy working to ensure that our members received the best possible service, but how would I ever remember all of those names! I would like to take this opportunity to apologize if I don’t remember everyone’s names but I am committed to learning them all as I continue to work here.

And so we continued on our three day cruise and learned about all the services that we offer. I am not sure I remember them all, but my rule of thumb for now will be if I can think of it we probably have it. The best part of the training is that it really prepared me for dealing with the public at large. In the evenings while out to eat I had forgotten to take my name tag off and found myself answering questions that my waiter had about our services. I am not sure that I provided the most informed answers ever but she did know that there were people just down the street who would also be more than willing to help.

What surprised you the most when you joined TDECU? Share your thoughts in the comments.