Yeah, Aaron McCullough is here from marine credit. You need to be back. Good to be back.
Thanks so much for having me. I have reign of everything for you today.
What a beautiful Wisconsin morning. You know what? I wake up and I say, at least it's not snow,
because I think upstate they had like one inch of ice last night falling and I'll take the
rain any day of the week. I'm here. I mean, I can don't have to shovel rain. So that's good.
So I was everything in marine credit. You're new and good.
Doing great. Doing great. It's crazy how fast the years are already going here.
Already in April. It feels like just yesterday we were chatting up in December.
Yeah, well, here we are. And now you, you're in charge of the community lead. Why don't you
describe what that is for people? Yes. So in my role, I really seek to serve, support, and engage
our community in various ways, but mainly through financial empowerment and being an ambassador for
financial education and promoting community resources and opportunities to get involved in
supporter community. Now we were talking about you the other day. We had somebody from the,
they actually the head of the library, Nick Demsky was in here and we're talking about you.
What was he saying about you? It was a good thing by the way. Yeah, it was a good thing.
I heard that. I don't know when it was. It was so great to hear that and shout out to Nick and
his awesome team. We do a lot of awesome things at the library of financial education workshops
that week before he came on, we had the digital literacy that they've hosted. That was their
third annual one and it was a great time. I want to say something like 200 attendees. Yeah,
it was great to see the second floor library. Yes, it was to clean that everything to get those
people in. It was well attended. It was a great time. I know that their team worked really hard
to organize it. There's a lot of great community organizations that help put it on and help sponsor
it. And it was just a great time. Let's go through the list here on some of the things here.
The core values of marine credit union, especially your job, let's go over some of that stuff here.
Absolutely. So we call our core values as the four Cs and really there's a fifth one.
I was about to say there were five of them. Yes, yes. So the core four, if you will,
a commitment, compassion, collaboration, and courage. We want to be committed to our community,
committed to doing the right things for our members, for our community in a compassionate way,
seeking to understand, helping you navigate your future, not just where you are now,
but helping you get to where you want to be. Collaboration, we seek a collaborative approach,
both internally and different departments, been externally collaborating with awesome
organizations, nonprofits, businesses, having the courage to do things a little bit differently,
doing things that maybe other folks aren't doing or looking at things from a different perspective.
And at the heart and soul of all of that is our community. We have a commitment to our community
and a passion for our community. We always say our community is what makes our organization.
Let's talk about the beginning of marine credit union. There's a reason the word marine is
in there. It's not the US Marines, it's more like water marine. Marine credit union was founded
in 1949 in Fondelac, originally serving employees of Mercury Marine, a manufacturer of outboard
motors. It evolved from this industrial roots into the community charted financial institution,
headquartered in La Crosse, focusing on serving members across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa,
Illinois. All started with those motors, huh? Yes, Mercury Marine, great organization,
worldwide organization, headquartered in Fondelac. And going even before that, we have roots
in the Eau Claire area with a postal credit union. We call ourselves a workforce credit unions.
The history of credit unions are by people for people and not for profit. And so we got our start
in serving communities and serving employers and employees. What's the difference? And people
bring this up all the time because there are credit unions and there are banks. And there is a
different, a really marked difference. What is it? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is that
credit unions are for people not for profit and that people first community centric both are great.
We both play nice. We both have a passion for serving people. But the biggest difference is that
credit unions give any revenue and any profits back into their shareholders of members. You know,
you cannot buy stock per say in a credit union. If you wanted to buy stock in a bank, you can do
that and banks have a jurisdiction to pop up anywhere. And when you belong to a credit union,
you are a member. We'll never call you a customer. We don't say the C word at credit unions.
You are a member and we are a member owned and operated. So our board members are exactly that.
They're members of the credit union. You can be a member of the credit union and apply it to be a
board member. Board members of banks are, you know, hot shots and they make tons of money to be
sitting on the board of the bank. Not a bad thing, but just a little bit different perspective. And so
we seek a diverse board, whether that's a geographic location, income, education, all sorts of
different areas. Remember savings and loans? I don't think they're around anymore. Are they
savings and loans? Yeah. Didn't they get, wasn't there some big to-do and they get rid of all
the savings and loans at one time? I could be wrong on that. I'm not so sure, but Marine, we have
something awesome. It's called My Loan Rewards, which is a wait for you to save money
by making your payments on time. We give 10 percent back. But I remember the names of the places
used to be like Bob savings and loan, whatever it was. And they got rid of them during some big
money problem and whatever. So now it's credit unions and banks. All right. Let's talk about some
of the things that are coming up here. April, National Financial Literacy Month. Oh, there's
two things I don't have. Financial and literacy. Let's talk about those. Yes. Also called
Financial Capability Month. And it's all throughout the United States. Banks and credit unions
recognize it. It's been really awesome. Part of my role is to collaborate with organizations and
help support and raise financial awareness. And so there's the Department of Financial
Institutions has been collaborating, helping lead the charge here in Wisconsin and working to promote
financial education. So it's a month-long awareness. Next week is actually April 5th through the
April 12th is what they call Money Smart Wisconsin Week. So it's a cool initiative throughout
Wisconsin to do different areas of financial wellness and education outreach through all areas,
all ages, whether you're in elementary school or a senior citizen, finding different opportunities
to support and raise awareness and help you chart your course to financial empowerment.
And you don't have to live beyond your means. A lot of people do that. They get into trouble.
And it's very difficult to get out of trouble once you're in it. You can. People, you know,
you go to somebody at your place at Marine Credit Union. They'll put you on a plane. They get
you back into business again. But you gotta be careful. You can't spend more than you take in.
It doesn't work like that. Yeah. And credit cards make it so easy to do that. They've been.
It's been surprising. Put it on there. Then you got to pay. They really do. And I think that's why
I'm a big advocate of the term financial empowerment, financial education, because we are all literate
in some capacity in terms of finance, right? Hey, we know that we shouldn't spend more than we
with them. We make, but it's easier said than done. So in my opinion, the more financial
education that we receive, the more confident to our empowered, we become to make those
confident and informed financial education decisions. And then through that empowerment,
we become more financially well. We've become more at peace with our finances. There's so many
studies that show people stress out about finances, whether it's how much or how little they have
and what to do with it. And that's a big cause of loss of sleep or divorce is because people
aren't having healthy conversations when it comes to their money. And that comes from a lack of
empowerment. Did they all start with credit cards? Because I didn't know how you can get in trouble
if you don't have a credit card because that's a rack of big money. And then the credit card
bill comes due and you can't pay it. Before that, you couldn't really, there was no way to
rack up big expenses. I mean, you had to write a check for something or you had to pay cash for
something. Those are your two options. Don't get alone on that, but the credit cards really did
us in. People didn't know how to use them right? Yeah. I mean, they make it tantalizing, right?
Credit card companies are very creative with how they market their credit cards,
giving you cash back or certain rewards. Even the design of the credit card, how it feels,
how it looks. It's almost like a status symbol, right? I got this big bulky. What's the American
XR's black card? The black one gives you unlimited money or something like that?
Yeah, unlimited money. Just open up the vault. But yeah, you can use credit cards as a form of
empowerment, but using it responsibly. And that is where it comes from the education piece of,
hey, if I know that if I pay off my credit card bill before the payment ending date closes,
I don't have to pay interest on it, right? The dangerous part is where it becomes,
if I have that balance, they call it revolving line of credit, because whatever you don't pay
in full, just revolves to the next month and 20% interest or more. If you're lucky, 20% interest.
What is it now? I think from last year, 2025, I saw a study that showed the average American
credit card is over 25 and a half percent. That's Al Capone. That's interesting.
It adds up. It definitely adds up and all for what? For maybe 5% cash back, if you're lucky,
if you have certain rates, but they can be beneficial. Sometimes you'd need that because that could
be helpful. People don't have savings. Karen McCullum, community lead for marine credit union
this year. But we talk about some other things. Give some of your background because you
been around here in school and so forth. Absolutely. So I'm a first generation college student
and graduate. Went to UW-Whitewater, studied marketing and business. My daughter went there.
Great school. Internationally recognized. It's one of the best, better business schools. So
go war hawks if you're a war hawk. Funny story. I actually started as an intern at marine credit
union. What led me to marine was actually I had an internship offer with a minor league baseball
love baseball. I wanted to pursue sports entertainment marketing. Being a first generation
college student, I was a broke college kid. So I had six jobs throughout all of college.
And I couldn't afford to pay to work for free at an internship. And so once I found out that
that was an unpaid internship, I had to respectfully decline that offer, which led me then to marine
credit union was great because I got to learn about credit. That's how I learned about credit and
financial education. I didn't have the avenue or the education from my family to learn about
what it is and how to succeed in this world and that capacity. And so it was great to help people
learn and build credit. At the end of our internship, we had to give a presentation. If you were
the boss, if you were the CEO, what would you do or bring to the organization? And I presented in
front of our executive leadership team at that time, I would love to have community ambassadors
everywhere that we serve and support. And we have an office having individuals much like my role now.
Support and engage with our community promoting financial education, not just what we do and why
we do it, but helping understand the needs and fulfilling those needs within our community. And so
once I graduated at that winter there, I became a consumer loan officer and then eventually a
senior consumer loan officer in the Milwaukee area worked in different roles, business developments,
and then in May of 2024 is when this position was created. I stepped into this role, one of three
community leads. I serve, we're seen, but also Milwaukee, I really like to say the eastern side
of the state because I'm here to support. Well, we're in Milwaukee now, yeah, 1290 and 107.3 FM,
yeah. Absolutely. So we're seeing Kenosha Milwaukee find the lack area. She'll boy again, and then I
have awesome counterparts on the other side of the state and her headquarters in LaCrosse. She
supports LaCrosse in Alaska. And we have another teammate who supports the Chippewa Valley area. So
Eau Claire and Chippewa and all the good stuff there. And it's just a blessing to serve. It's kind
of cool to see the full circle aspect. I don't know how much my presentation affected this role
today, but I like to say it planted the seeds. Be honest now. I want to complete honest. We have
so get to a line detector. If you don't, if I don't think you're honest, when the players take the
field, do you ever think that could have been me? Oh, I don't know if I was going to ever be a
to a point of playing. I'll be honest, forcing entertainment marketing side of things. So like
the ticket sales. I would love to be a fifth grade air in what I thought he was playing first
base for the Yankees, but I think reality set in real quick in high school. Now taking the field
number 16, Aaron McCollum McCollum. It's funny. I was number 16 in my freshman baseball team.
How do I know that? You did your research. Let's talk about, um, can we talk about the money smart
Wisconsin week? Yeah. So yeah, again, that's help and lead and organized by the Department of
Financial Institutions. And it's really cool to see, you know, people often think banks and credit
units don't play nice. We hopefully did and we're collaborating to do awesome community engagement
financial empowerment workshops and opportunities all throughout the whole state. Let's talk about
some upcoming events in our community of the April 8th, navigating your journey to financial
empowerment. Now, where's that going to be held? Yes, all these workshops coming up in April are
going to be held at the Racine Public Library. So they're good friends at a Racine, the
Racine Library are so gracious to host and have a passion for empowering our community and
finances. And so from four to six PM on on Wednesday, April 8th, we're going to talk about
the journey of financial empowerment. What does that look like? It's not necessarily a destination,
but it is that journey. What's coming up? It's coming up April 21st. April 21st, the day before
Earth Day, we will be doing following up on that April 8th workshop, a little practical steps
to financial wellness. Hey, talking about financial wellness and empowerment, they're similar,
but they're also different. And given practical steps, what does that look like day to day,
month to month, year to year, and certain developed a proper mindset to think futuristically.
At these workshops, it's free, free for all, bring your family. You missed the best part.
The best part, I should say, is free food. They're free food, gentleman. Hey, yes, yes, who does
it love pizza and good conversation. And great resources. This is really our passion at Marine
Critines giving back to the community. So the agenda is in the room, what we say, come as you are
bringing, bring a friend, bring your family and have just great conversation. We have good
conversation. Then afterwards, we have individuals come up and want to ask questions one-on-one,
serve as a financial coach in my role as well and helping individuals not just in group settings,
but in one-on-one settings, helping them navigate spending plans or long-term. Stay at a money
trouble. Yes, that's the goal is to stay at because nothing gives you more anxiety at night
and sleep was like the money trouble. And this will help you stay out of it. Yes. Because
everybody can stay out of it. You don't need to overspend. It's easy to do, but yes, you're right.
You don't need to. And if you are in a spot where you're not feeling empowered or you're not feeling
fully confident, it's only temporary. We're here to help support this. I told you during the
break when in my problems I had. Yeah, I got out of it. Never went back to it again. It's a real
life situation that many of us have felt are currently are feeling and having the resources,
having a support system is very important to help you chart your course to that financial
empowerment. So I don't want to meet you. You're at which location? On our Racine office,
we have offices all throughout the state, but I mainly work out of Racine and Milwaukee.
Racine is my home office, right on Green Bay Road, Green Bay in Durant, 30, 39 South Green
Bay Road. How can being your right? Actually, Cudoba. Yes. So if you're getting lunch at Cudoba,
feel free to stop by. That's so convenient. That's amazing. Yes. They'll take great care. We like to
say that we're like cheers, or when you walk in, everyone knows your name. You're greeted with
the smile. And when you are remembered, Marine Credit, and you are family. Thanks for coming in.
Thanks for having me. Next month. Absolutely. Okay. Aaron McCullough,
it can be the lead for Marine Credit Union.
