10.13.19

Ep. 41: Financial Advice for Working Moms

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Betsy Loeks, marketing manager at Consumers Credit Union with "Money, I'm Home!" podcast host Lynne Jarman-Johnson.
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This week we join Betsy Loeks, marketing manager at Consumers Credit Union, as she takes you on a journey through her life as a working mom. She shares stories of applying for her first personal credit card because of a free t-shirt, paying off her first auto loan and the impact that motherhood has had on her life, her career, and her available free time.

Listen today and explore fitness to finance with this episode of Money, I’m Home!

 

Transcript

[music]

 

00:06 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Money, I’m home. Welcome on in, I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. From finance to fitness, that’s what we’re talking about today, and our special guest is Betsy Loeks, and she is with Consumers Credit Union, happens to be the Marketing Manager here at Consumers, and I have the honor and pleasure of working with you every day. Hi Bets.

 

00:26 Betsy Loeks: Hey, thanks for having me.

 

00:27 LJJ: Well, I am so excited. Today we’re doing something a little bit different. We’re going to talk a little bit about you personally and your journey, because you know something, you are an individual that many people look to when they say, “Okay, you fit the perfect age of a millennial, you’re working very hard, you have young kids, you’ve got this great position, you’re talented, passionate, the whole works.” I want to know how you got there and what you’re doing, and your focus to help others financially succeed. So, tell us… Tell us a little bit about your background, Bets.

 

01:07 BL: Sure. I am from Indiana, I’m a farm girl. I grew up on what my… We call and joke about in my family as a hobby farm. So about 20 acres, we had goats and cows and cats and dogs and bunnies and turkeys growing up, and I was in 4-H, and people can’t see me, but I am very tall for a girl. So, when you’re about six foot and you’re from Indiana, you play basketball. [laughter] So that was my sport. I also run and still do that, but play basketball. And so, when I was looking to go to college and get my degree somewhere I was really interested in writing and journalism and marketing, and I found myself at Franklin College, which is southeast of Indianapolis, about 30 minutes. They have a great journalism program. And the cool thing too about their basketball program, I end up playing there, is that the coach at the time who recruited me, he was the center on the basketball team for which the movie Hoosiers is made about.

 

02:07 LJJ: Get out.

 

02:07 BL: Yeah. So that was really cool. His name is Gene White. And I don’t know if he still works at the school, but he was a math professor at the time, but he was great. He came to all the games and he retired coaching when I started, but that was always a great story to be around him and hear his stories. So that’s always something I’ll remember from that time. But got through Franklin, graduated, out of college I worked at an advertising agency as a copywriter, which was a great experience for me. I wrote a lot of the… They don’t probably do them anymore, viewbooks. So, in the mail when you’re a junior and senior, all the colleges send you a bunch of crap in the mail and I would write those things, “Hey, come and visit such-and-such and get your degree here and why.” So that was exciting. I learned a lot about the business, professional printing.

 

02:54 LJJ: Was your passion writing right from the beginning?

 

02:57 BL: Yeah, you know what? Yeah, I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter, and then in college I kind of realized, “Wow, you can work a lot of funny hours covering late big breaking news, and then you kind of heard that, “Hey, newspapers are dying,” and I thought, “Do I really want to go down there?” I think there’s always… There’s always going to be a need for writing, and certainly news is still around, they’re never going to get rid of a newspaper, but it’s definitely evolved to digital outlets as we know. So, there’ll always be reporters, but I just realized, “Hey maybe that’s not… Not for me.” But I’d always liked art and was a little bit artsy. So, I think marketing and advertising was a perfect fit because it could blend writing content and then changing that into consumers and getting people to buy goods and services, and that was very interesting to me.

 

03:45 LJJ: So how did you come to Michigan?

 

03:50 BL: So, my husband is from Michigan, in the Kalamazoo area, and we are actually probably one of the first couples who met online, so he is…

 

04:00 LJJ: Get out.

 

04:00 BL: Yeah, yeah, so back in the time when online dating was kind of hush-hush and…

 

04:06 LJJ: What was it? Was there an app, or was it literally based on the web?

 

04:09 BL: Oh, no, we met on Match, and he’s probably really embarrassed now that I’m telling it, but no one cares anymore.

 

[laughter]

 

04:19 BL: But I mean it’s funny now and we laugh about it, but I tell people, you still had to… You still had to meet and go through the whole dating process after that, so shortly we got married after I…

 

04:30 LJJ: Well, so wait, this was like a long-distance relationship, that you met online.

 

04:34 BL: Yeah. So, I met him, I started talking to him when I was a senior at Franklin, and he went to Michigan Tech but he lived in Kalamazoo. So, the distance between our actual houses was about an hour and a half, so I lived in Northern Indiana. So yeah, so we would see each other on the weekends after I graduated, and once in a while during the week we’d travel and meet between. So yeah, so we dated long distance and yeah, it worked out for us.

 

05:02 LJJ: That is great.

 

05:03 BL: We just celebrated our 13th anniversary.

 

05:05 LJJ: So okay, here you are, you’re both graduated, you’re deciding to plan, get married. Why Michigan? Was it because you also fell in love with the area, or…

 

05:17 BL: To be honest, so Nick as a structural engineer and he was more established I would say, so he had a house and more money than what I did, so it made sense that he was set up here, so I moved up here. And truthfully, while my family is still around, a lot of my college friends are very spread out, so it wasn’t like we’d said, “Hey, if we move here, we’re going to be around these people, or you move here.” No one was in a really a central location, so we just decided, “Hey, you know… ” And I’m close enough to the family that I can drive home and visit whenever we need to, so that was nice.

 

05:53 LJJ: That’s awesome. So now you’ve decided to get married, you’re here. Tell us a little bit about your background if you’d like to, tell us a little bit about your background regarding schooling. Did you have scholarships? When you came out, are you looking at it more scared, or you looking at it, “Boy, I was pretty smart.”

 

06:16 BL: Franklin is a small liberal arts college, wonderful school. I’m from a rural hometown, very small and humble beginnings. I went to Franklin because I got an academic scholarship to do so and probably would not have went there otherwise. I probably would have ended up at a state school, but I was blessed with the scholarship that covered my tuition. So, I just had to pay room and board for the four years. So, I still had some debt coming out, but very blessed. I did live with my parents. And so, a lot of that first year was a saving, putting aside money. I had a car payment at that time. So, it was planning out and budgeting. Okay, every extra dollar went in three funds. I can remember I paid my parents a little bit. They charged me some room and board. So, bless them.

 

07:05 BL: And I paid for… I had an auto payment and I started paying my student loans. And then I had a wedding fund. So that’s pretty much where all my money went at the time when I was graduating. I remember that, that was really the first time when I came out and really like, “Hey, I really gotta look at budgeting before.” Not that I didn’t before, but I didn’t have a credit card. Debit cards, I think, were really new, I remember, when I got out of college. I feel like that really dates me, but debit cards were a new thing and I remember being weird. I’m like, “Oh, you don’t use cash. You just swipe and it does the same thing in the check register.”

 

07:39 LJJ: Now, you were growing up at the point of time where credit card offers were just a plethora in your mailbox, which they’re not quite as much for students due to regulations, but they’re still out there. Was that anything that you had looked at and realized, “Boy, this is pretty easy money”?

 

08:00 BL: No, no. Not a… I don’t know that I could have gotten a credit card for one. I actually had friends who they would… We would go to baseball games and they would… It used to be at baseball games you could apply for a credit card and get a free team shirt of the sports scene that you were at. And they would apply for the cards so that they would… Could deny, but still get the team shirt, when they went to the game. So I thought that was always funny. My dad was a union painter, my mom was a legal secretary. We’re very budget. We didn’t have a lot of extra money to go on vacations and that kind of thing. We had a farm and 4-H and that was our vacation a lot of times in the summer.

 

08:37 BL: But I think my mom did in particular, did a great job of teaching me the value of money growing up. Save more than you spend. Have an emergency fund. I can remember some important lessons too. I remember driving through… We were going somewhere in a really fancy neighborhood, and I’d commented on how the houses I think were so beautiful there. And she goes, “Betsy. That’s great. But sometimes you have to keep in mind that people who look like they have a lot money may not really.” And so that was kind of an eye-opening lesson. I probably was like 10 or 12, and to think and realize, “Oh, people maybe are borrowing that money. They don’t really own it.” So, I think that was something that they taught. And then giving to church important to that too. So, watching them tithe growing up was always an important lesson too. So, I don’t know that I was very financially savvy, to be honest, coming out. But then you realize… Yeah.

 

09:33 LJJ: It sounds to me though that the foundation of that is just incredible. What a gift!

 

09:39 BL: Sure, yeah. So, I don’t think I was necessarily financially savvy. But it’s like you graduate, and then suddenly you have these bills that became very real, very fast for those things.

 

09:50 LJJ: I have a daughter who has a dog. And I remember when she purchased the puppy that was the first thing I said was, “Can you afford the puppy?” Because it’s not just the puppy and it’s not the cost of the dog. It literally is the care that goes into that. And when you’re young, you just really try to run into doing the things that do give you such great pleasure like a puppy or a vacation. But, yeah, what a great testament to your parents. Did you start looking for work right away after you got married, or…

 

10:22 BL: Yeah. So actually, before I moved up here, I started looking for a job and found one at a manufacturing company in town where I worked in their marketing department doing similar writing things, but also some different things. I would be there for three years after we got married, and then I worked at a non-profit for six years prior to coming to Consumers. And I think from a marketing perspective, that was a really great experience because I think sometimes when you’re in a non-profit, there are very few marketing people. There might be one or two, maybe more if you’re a bigger. So, you really got your hands wet on a lot of different marketing things. So you were the one updating the website and sending out email and making this brochure just because that’s what was available. So, I think that was a great experience for me in terms of really learning the different skills and marketing things and what I was good at but gave me a really broad perspective on what all the different kind of tactics and channels were.

 

11:21 LJJ: When you decided to have children, tell us a little bit about what goes through your mind as a young woman in the workforce. It still is… It’s a juggle.

 

11:32 BL: I think one of the initial conversations and I don’t think there’s ever a right or wrong, whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or not or you go back in the workforce and certainly financial… There’s some financial consideration to that, for sure. For me, I talked with Nick. I was always an achiever. I had a lot of this success in academically in college. Not that I would feel that it was a waste, but I was worried particularly in marketing that if I got out and was away for three to five years, how much things would change. Facebook was not there one moment, and then suddenly it is, and how much all the technology changing. And I was really worried how I would fit if I took time off, and I wanted to work outside of the home, and I found a lot of meaning in myself by doing that. So, we had a lot of heart-to-heart like, “Hey, can we make it work financially and what does this look like?” But I just remember when I… We did find a daycare solution and I did go back to work. But I remember I was tired all the time. I just remember a long commute. You got up early, fed, got the kid ready for daycare, then office… Off you go. And I just remember taking a PTO day within a month in because I just needed to sleep for a day and not have anyone need me. So, it was nice to be needed in a different way than our kids did, but then still find fulfillment to be with our kids.

 

13:03 LJJ: And fast forward the kids are growing up.

 

13:05 BL: Yeah.

 

13:05 LJJ: Your career is so good. One of the things that you mentioned that to me is, I think, a key for anybody listening, and it doesn’t matter your age, is the learning that has to keep happening in careers, which is really what you’ve shown.

 

13:26 BL: Yeah. I mean, today is the first day of school for lots of kids and my kids including… So, I think it’s exciting. They’re excited to come and visit me at work and see me growing. And I think that’s exciting for them to say, “Hey, my mom is a professional lady and look at what she can do, and I can do that too.” So, it’s neat to kind of be a role model for your kids. And that’s something that’s… I wouldn’t have thought about necessarily, but it’s true.

 

13:52 LJJ: Thank you Betsy. Money, I’m Home from finance to fitness. Today was all about you. Think about yourself and where you are in your journey. There are success steps along the way, and it sounds like support for you, Bets, has been there as well as your own passion to succeed.

 

14:10 BL: Thanks for having me.

 

14:11 LJJ: This is Consumers Credit Union, Money, I’m Home. Thank you, Jake, for your production skills. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson. Join us next week.

Learn more about careers at ConsumersCU!

Check out our careers page and find your next job with Consumers Credit Union.

Find your career today

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  1. Lorrie Loeks says:

    Great job Betsy! We love you and are proud of you!

  2. Julie Baltmanis says:

    Love this!! Betsy, you’re amazing. 🙂 Great choice on a feature, Lynne!!

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