INDIANAPOLIS–In January of this year Financial Center First Credit Union launched a personal finance podcast, Carpe Dime, that seeks to offer a fresh, realistic take on finances without intimidating industry jargon or judgement.
The podcast offers 15, 20-30 minute episodes and examines financial topics from all angles: generation, gender and socio-economic status.
Recently, the podcast received local recognition from Circle City Broadcasting by joining the All Indiana Podcast Network, as well as from “Now Hear This,” an Indianapolis-based IHeartMedia radio show and podcast that shares the work of impactful non-profits that make a difference throughout Central Indiana.
The program is co-hosted by James Davidson, AVP of financial literacy, and Dusty Simmons, VP-membership development, with the credit union. Simmons and Davidson have been a big part in shaping Financial Center’s adult financial literacy program, a six-time national winner of CUNA’s Desjardins Adult Financial Literacy award.
Below, Simmons and Davidson speak with CUToday.info about the podcast.
CUToday.info: How did this podcast come about?
Simmons: Carpe Dime was born from a brainstorming session of how our credit union could help people have more open, down-to-earth money conversations.
It’s no secret that people are either afraid of talking about their wallet or they assume that learning about money is going to be boring. We’re here to change that thinking with realistic, sometimes funny, and always personal conversations about how upbringing, family dynamics, peers and lifestyle influence how we think and act with our money.
CUToday.info: How do you go about determining the most valuable questions/content to explore?
Davidson: We’re not afraid to cover topics that we know people might be ashamed to talk about because they were taught not to talk about money or because they think they should already know more about it. We like covering the hard topics – things like bankruptcy, relationships and money, or how to stop financially supporting your adult children. And we try to do it in a way that says, ‘Hey, we’ve all been there or thought the same thing... Here are some ideas you could try to improve your situation.’
A lot of our episodes come from real-life financial issues from our own experiences or those of members that we’ve helped through credit counseling. Our topics are fresh and usually relevant to what’s going on in the world – which is what I like best about the show.
CUToday.info: You obviously want listeners and podcasts have boomed in popularity—what sorts of things are do you doing or do you believe are necessary to ensure an audience?
Simmons: No one wants to listen to a boring financial podcast or hosts that put them to sleep. First, we keep it short – aiming for the commuter drive of less than 30 minutes. And then, James and I usually take opposing viewpoints, or at least the male/female perspectives, and provide ‘how to’ or ‘how NOT to’ advice based on our differing family dynamics, money beliefs, and personal experience.
We also research our topics – providing facts that support either the importance of the issue itself or our views. Rather than just taking our word for it, we like to bring statistics into our episodes to show people how significant financial problems can be.
We also hope we keep our audience engaged with our banter. We’ve been coworkers and friends for years, and we’re able to keep a positive energy in all of our episodes, and we hope our listeners catch that, too.
CUToday.info: How much feedback do you get, and on which financial topics do you find the greatest confusion/misunderstanding?
Davidson: I like to compare financial misconceptions to dieting. People know whatthey need to do, but they don’t always know how to do it. But usually it comes back to the fundamentals: you know, eat well, exercise, be disciplined, find balance. The same principles apply to your finances. No matter the complexity of the topic–understanding credit, bankruptcy, retirement planning, talking to your kids about money–it usually boils down to practicing the financial fundamentals of budgeting, saving, and staying disciplined in your everyday life.
Our goal is for Carpe Dime to help listeners cut through the financial noise out there and reinforce with them those simple, applicable fundamentals.”
CUToday.info: Why has Financial Center CU made this kind of investment in financial literacy, and how do you know the efforts are having results?
Simmons: Financial Center’s mission is to improve the financial lives of the communities it serves, and the fact that our organization continues to grow membership and build our brand in the financial literacy space tells me what we’re doing is working.
But, we’re also big on analytics, so we jumped at the opportunity to track a couple of measures to demonstrate our literacy program’s effectiveness. We’ve seen the average credit score of members engaged in financial literacy increase from 695 to 708 from 2018 to 2020. It’s not a huge jump, but it’s seeing people move in the right direction even in this challenging economy.
We’ve also built a custom loyalty score metric that measures member engagement on a scale of 1 to 100. It weighs things like length of membership, number of products, total assets, and online engagement. Our average member has a loyalty score of 48, whereas an average financial literacy member has a score of 69 – indicating those who rely on us for financial literacy are more deeply engaged with us.
Davidson: Yeah, Dusty likes the hard facts, but as a credit union, we’re supposed to be ‘people helping people’, and that’s what we’re doing through Carpe Dime…
Simmons: And maybe providing a few laughs at your hosts’ expense.
For more info, go here.