Jessica Quindlen: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Sound Cents Podcast. I'm Jessica Quindlen. Today we're discussing financial coaching. I have with us today our Supervisor of Financial Coaching, Emma Protsik. Hello, Emma.
Emma Protsik: Hi, Jess.
Jessica Quindlen: And Louie Biales, our Financial Coach and Lending Consultant. Hello Louie.
Louie Biales: Hi, Jess.
Jessica Quindlen: All right, so let's just get started right away. Emma, what is a financial coach?
Emma Protsik: So financial coaches are individuals that are certified to help you better your financial quality of life through education and guidance.
Jessica Quindlen: That sounds fabulous.
Emma Protsik: At Ent, our financial coaches are certified credit union financial counselors through CUNA's Financial Counseling Certification Program (FiCEP), and they are available to meet both members and non-members at no cost.
Our coaches are not there to sell you products by any means. They are there to give you the tools and the knowledge you need to better your financial quality of life. Financial coaches are always unbiased and non-judgmental as well.
Jessica Quindlen: I love this. So people you can go to talk to about your money for free and they're not going to judge you for your money stuff.
I love this. Alright, so Louie, how does this differ from a financial advisor? [00:01:00]
Louie Biales: A financial advisor is someone who can help you develop your investment strategy and your long-term financial plans. Someone who's more so invested in wealth management. While a financial coach can help you reach near and long-term goals, they provide financial education and they help you determine better ways to manage your money.
It's a much more personalized approach and much more down to earth, I would say.
Jessica Quindlen: I love that. Alright, so Emma, at Ent, what are some of the areas that our financial coaches can help you with in this sort of day-to-day spending and habits?
Emma Protsik: Our financial coaches can help you in really kind of four main categories there, so we'll break those down. The first one is definitely budgeting. So, thinking about spending plans as well as the cash flow analysis. Are there areas that we can cut expenses, or even possibly increase income?
Savings is the next piece of that. So long-term and short-term goals are something our financial coaches can chat to you about. You know, how much do I need to save? What's the plan to make sure I can save that amount? As well as emergency [00:02:00] savings. That's its own special category. It's really the most important part, I would argue, of our financial wellness. Getting that in place is going to always be the number one priority if you don't have one already.
After that credit is another big category that our coaches are able to help you out with. Our coaches have access to a lot of great credit monitoring tools. They can help you review your credit report and get a plan in place to either build your credit, maybe if you're just starting out or it's been a while since you've used credit products, they can also help with that rebuilding side. So, if you want to get your score in a better place, you know, you're looking to apply for some loans, then our financial coaches can help you understand the best ways to do that.
And then the last thing our financial coaches can help us out with is debt repayment. They can talk through different strategies, whether it's kind of a do it yourself, like the snowball or avalanche method, getting a plan in place that makes the most sense.
Our financial coaches are also there to connect you to other resources within Ent. So maybe it's getting you over to a lending [00:03:00] consultant to chat through a debt consolidation loan. Can also look like connecting you to one of our partners, like Green Path Financial Wellness to get enrolled into a true debt management plan.
Jessica Quindlen: I love that. Awesome. So, quick question. Do I have to pick which of these four I want to go to a coach for or can I go for any and all of these, to any of our coaches?
Emma Protsik: Great question. Really anything. You don't necessarily need to know what exactly you're looking for. If you're feeling overwhelmed with your finances, again, maybe you just want a little bit more education, some pointers on how to get the right route, just schedule some time with one of them and they'll help you get that plan in place.
Jessica Quindlen: Fantastic. And then really quick on that emergency fund, because I know it is our favorite topic. What is that exactly? That's three months, right? We want three months of living expenses.
Louie Biales: Yes, exactly three months of living expenses.
Having some kind of emergency savings is extremely important as you never know what's going to happen in the future, and having something to fall back on can help alleviate a lot of anxiety, especially around finances. So you do want to try and figure out how much you [00:04:00] spend per month and then get around three months or so. Of course, anything more is always appreciated.
Jessica Quindlen: Of course. Won't say no to that. All right, so Louie, let's stay on with you. So as one of our financial coaches, how do you feel that you have helped make some positive changes in people's financial lives?
Louie Biales: That is a fantastic question. The first one that comes to mind is I've been working with one of our members for a couple of months now. She came to me with a lot of financial anxiety. A lot of that comes from not understanding how to budget feeling like your money is slipping away from you and having all of these different things build up over time.
Especially if you have things that are very important to you hobbies or subscriptions that feel like they're necessary for how you want to live your life and you don't want to get rid of them. So, I've been working with her for the past couple of months and a lot of it just came from not understanding what was a need versus what was a want.
That comes up a lot in financial coaching. Things that you feel like are [00:05:00] necessary for your life versus things that you desire can be very confusing for a lot of people. As we worked through everything her anxiety surrounding her finances has alleviated hugely. She's become a lot more confident talking about her money and managing her money.
She's figured out a lot of different ways that she can budget and save. She started developing that emergency fund, which is fantastic. And we also just talked through a bunch of different other life things that were coming up, like employment, how much income is coming in, what she's interested in doing in the long-term, what her long-term goals are financially.
She's looking at starting a business. And of course I'm not super knowledgeable about businesses, but I can definitely point her to other people in the company and hopefully that'll get her the right direction.
Jessica Quindlen: That's fantastic. I love that story. And I think too, when it comes to needs versus wants, it can be interesting too, to even within the wants category, sort of categorize those wants. So, you might feel like you want all of these things, but sort of ranking them so that you can figure out what you [00:06:00] want so badly it feels like a need. And maybe you keep those and then there's others that you work towards or you plan for.
Louie Biales: Exactly.
Emma Protsik: I would say too, Jess, that's kind of the beauty of financial coaching. It is 100% personalized. You know, you're sitting down with one individual, it's one-on-one. Financial education is great. There's lots of articles, videos, things you can check out to get a better understanding but being able to sit down with someone like Louie and go through that plan.
Because even going back to the needs and wants, there's things that I would consider a want that, you know, Jess, you might consider a need in your life, right? And that's perfectly fine. It's all about understanding your values and how to apply that personally to your finances.
Jessica Quindlen: Yes. I love this so, so, so much. All right, so Emma, how many coaches do we have here at Ent?
Emma Protsik: Yes, so the coaching program actually officially launched last year, so it is a little bit newer. Currently we have a financial coach in 24 of our service centers. And I promise that list is growing.
We'll have another class graduating this year, December 2023. And we'll be adding 13 service [00:07:00] centers on onto that list, so we're getting more folks trained. Getting that certification with CUNA ready to help our members. Another really exciting thing that we just started offering with our financial coaching is if you cannot make it to a service center that has a coach, we do offer virtual appointments now.
Jessica Quindlen: Oh, great. So there's no excuse not to.
Emma Protsik: Exactly.
Jessica Quindlen: So, I know this is a completely free service. Anyone can do it. Member, non-member. But how do you make an appointment?
Emma Protsik: Yeah. So the link that you'll want to definitely go check out is going to be Ent.com/coaching.
Jessica Quindlen: And we will have that in our show notes.
Emma Protsik: Thank you, Jess. So from there you can kind of get an overview of what coaching is. Some of the things we talked about that our coaches can cover at the beginning of this podcast. When you do get to that page you're going to scroll down a little bit and you will see a list of all the centers that currently have a financial coach.
You can schedule an appointment with them right there. If you scroll a little bit past that center list though you will see a red box and that's where you can schedule those virtual times to see what's available there.
And again, just a [00:08:00] reminder, you do not need to be a member at Ent. Our financial coaches are not going to require you to open up an account at Ent to sit down with them. Again, completely free to our community members.
Jessica Quindlen: I love that so much. All right, Louie, back at you. Can you tell us something that you wish people knew about financial coaching? Aside from all the wonderful things we've discussed?
Louie Biales: Something that definitely comes up a lot is that financial coaches are just human beings like everyone else. Even though we've gone through trainings, through Credit Union National Association, and we've had all this knowledge imparted on us that we can then impart on other people.
The fact that all of our coaches are non-judgmental in their approach also comes from the fact that a lot of us have had specific and personal experiences with our own finances that we can then bring into our sessions.
I, myself, know that I struggled a lot when I was younger and I made mistakes, and that is a perfectly okay thing to go through. No one expects you to get things right the first try. And so that's why we're trying to impart as much knowledge and comfort[00:09:00] with people. So that we can work together and have a better financial quality of life.
Emma Protsik: Louis, I think that's a really great thing to bring up. We understand that talking about finances can be very overwhelming. There might be some shame attached to it, but like Louis is saying, you definitely are not alone in this.
Jessica Quindlen: Well, that brings us to the end of our show. Louie, Emma, thanks so much for being here. It was great to have you.
Emma Protsik: Thanks, Jess.
Louie Biales: Thank you for having me.
Jessica Quindlen: Thank you for listening to Sound Cents from Ent Credit Union. Be sure to follow our podcast as well as rate and review us. I'm Jessica Quindlen. I will see you next week. Same time, same place.
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