Linda Baker calls herself CCCU’s “happiest and most appreciative customer”. Before she joined the credit union, she had been seeing a trend of poor customer service nearly everywhere she went. In fact, poor customer service is what drove her away from her previous financial institution. 

 

Linda is a native Nevadan. She was born in Reno and moved to Las Vegas as a child in 1963. Since then Linda has witnessed a lot of changes in this town. She recalls the good ole days of Vegas, when it was truly a small town. She was a tour guide in college and she recalls fondly some of the questions she would receive from out-of-towners who couldn’t believe people actually LIVED in Vegas. “It was assumed by most tourists that all locals lived on the Strip,” she said. “I think some people still think that. In truth, most of us don’t even go visit the Strip all that often, right?”

 

Linda was nervous about switching her bank initially, because she was concerned about the process. She thought it would be frustrating and inconvenient to move everything over. However, she was fed up where she was, so she made the call to Clark County Credit Union. She said, “I could tell from my very first phone call that CCCU had a whole different attitude.”

 

She recalls that the representative who first assisted her was “helpful and considerate”. The process of switching her accounts ended up being much easier than she anticipated, and she’s been a loyal CCCU member ever since!

  

Now, the population of Clark County is over 2 million. Although it’s no longer a small town, Linda says, “CCCU makes it feel like a small town. They make you feel like family, which you are! Thanks CCCU!”

 

 

 

Just a few weeks ago, my wife abruptly pulled me aside from the chaos of 3 little ones running around on a Saturday morning. It caught me a little bit off guard, so I still wasn’t quite aware of what was going on when she looked at me with big eyes and said “I’m pregnant.” 

I responded like any good husband by saying “Huh?” 

I was confused. We had just given away all of our baby clothes. In other words, we were not planning on having any more babies in the near future.
 

The main reason we had decided not to have any more was because my wife got very sick for our last one, and it took a toll on everyone. She was very nervous to go through all that again. We vowed that if she ever did that we would do everything we could to let her rest and try to stay well. That included forking out a lot of money to pay for medicine, childcare, food preparation, and housekeeping. 

Let the spending begin
 

And so we started hiring out help. We’ve paid for several things that we’d never spent much money on including: 

• professional house cleaning

• professional meal service

• babysitters

• easy packaged snack food for the kids 

 

Along the way, we’ve done even more spending on things such as yard work, fast food, and whatever helps her conserve as much energy as possible. 

 

The good news is that she did not get abnormally sick this time! Usually there is a very high likelihood that the sickness returns with subsequent pregnancies, but we believe that we were able to beat the odds by sacrificing some of our financial cushion as a form of preventative maintenance.

 

 

The financial lesson we learned is this: All those early years of scrimping and saving paid off! They were seriously worth it!

 

Throwing hundreds of extra dollars each month out the door over this past few months has felt strange, but it has been relatively stress free for two reasons. 

 

1. We have an emergency fund in place. The general rule is to have 3 to 6 month’s worth of expenses on hand. Ours is closer to 6.

2. We knew that this very situation might be a financial emergency for us, and we had already planned how we would act and what we would spend money on before it occurred. 

 

It’s been amazing to have someone else occasionally do the cooking and cleaning, but we are not going to let it spoil us. It has actually made us determined to keep living financially smart once things get back to “normal.” 

 

 

If you are in the thick of trying to get yourself to a safe financial situation, keep going! It is a wonderful gift to give yourself, your spouse, and your family! Money isn’t everything, but it sure goes a long way in getting through the unforeseen crises we will all face.