Financial Health-An Important Topic for Us All (Part 3 of 3)

Posted in Board Brief, KTFCU News on Jul 16, 2025

Having debt is not necessarily a problem. Spending within your means is the behavior you want to foster. Saying no to purchases you can’t afford is a hard choice, but with such hard choices brings freedom, financial freedom.

We provided statistics that show half of Americans with credit cards (100 million) use credit cards as a convenience tool. They make purchases every month and pay the full balance off each month when the balance is due. This infers they have a plan to only buy what they can pay for when the bill come due.

Of the 100 million Americans who carry a credit card balance, 25% (o...

Financial Health- An Important Topic for Us All (Part 2 of 3)

Posted in Board Brief, KTFCU News on Jun 18, 2025

At the end of 2024, US credit card debt reached $1,210,000,000,000! That’s $1.21 trillion!

What’s worse, according to Lending Tree, 47% of Americans pay all the interest on credit card debt. JDPower says 49% of Americans pay off their credit cards monthly.

Basically, that means of the nearly 200 million people in the US who own credit cards, half are burdened with paying all the interest on credit card purchases: $130 billion per month. That debt is financed at exorbitantly high interest rates.

Financial planners say the single most important financial decision a person can make is to not have...

Financial Health- An Important Topic for Us All (Part 1 of 3)

Posted in Board Brief, KTFCU News on May 21, 2025

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WEALTH AND POVERTY IS TWO CENTS.

What?!!

That’s right. It’s a euphemism for financial health. What it summarizes is this.

Every person who earns one dollar and spends 99 cents of that dollar are building savings and, over time, financial wealth. By contrast, every person who earns one dollar and spends $1.01 can only do so by taking on debt, which if not managed well over time, can lead to self-inflicted financial oppression.

The difference between spending $1.01 and $0.99 is two cents!

Of course, taking on debt can be necessary and practical.

Taking on debt to buy a ca...

Our Phones and Messaging Apps Have Become the Primary Source of Phishing Attacks

Posted in Board Brief, KTFCU News on Apr 16, 2025

Part 2 of 2

We think financial lost as a result of scams, phishing and smishing schemes target other age groups, not ours.

The data shows different age groups are susceptible to different types of fraud. Here are some shocking statistics related to fraud targeted towards our cell phones via texts.

• In 2022, people between the age of 18-44 are most likely to lose money to phone scams.
• Of this group, over 55% are men and about 42% were women. The other 3% chose not to declare their sex.

WHY ARE TEXT MESSAGES INCREASING?
On Dec. 30, 2019, President Trump signed a bill called the TRACED ACT...

Our Phones & Messaging Apps Have Become the Primary Source of Phishing Attacks

Posted in Board Brief, KTFCU News on Mar 19, 2025

Part 1 of 2

Almost all Americans own a cell phone (98%). In 2023, 76% of those were smartphones.

Our mobile phones are increasingly becoming instruments of phishing and spam attacks via our text apps. The industry calls these “smishing” schemes.

In 2022, 19.5% of texts were reported as spam (requests to block) and they are growing at a 15% rate per year.

What to Do?
Here is one example supposedly from the US Postal Service (USPS).

Upon inspection, here are some simple observations:

• The sender is from the Philippines (+63).
• It claims to be US Post and USPS parcel but does not say US Postal Se...