Education Articles

Financial Wellness Planning: Building and Maintaining an Excellent Credit Score

Step 8 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness Establishing and maintaining a healthy score is a crucial part of financial wellness. What’s a healthy number? Most lenders consider 670–739 to be an indication of stability and reliability. As such, benefits of such a score include: Better interest rates on credit cards and loans. Improved chances of...

Financial Wellness Planning: Knowing When and How to Indulge

Step 7 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness At this point in your financial fitness journey, you might be wondering if it has all become a little too restrictive. You’re saving whenever you can, you’re mindful about your spending, and you’re sticking to your budget. But what if you want to cut loose once in a while? Living a life of true financial...

Financial Wellness Planning: Paying Yourself First

Step 6 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness Every ounce of work you’re putting into earning, budgeting, saving, and investing helps you “look out for number 1.” And you’ll want to stay on this path by learning how to “pay yourself first” by prioritizing your personal savings above other discretionary expenses. For step 6 of your financial wellness...

Financial Wellness Planning: Practicing Mindful Spending

Step 5 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness In this day and age, every impulse buy is just a swipe or tap away, making it more challenging than ever to rein in your spending. You may not be able to avoid spontaneous purchases completely (nor should you), but you can prevent an occasional indulgence from becoming a bad habit. For step 5 of your...

Financial Wellness Planning: Having the Money Talk with Your Partner

Step 4 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness Your spending and budget are on track and a debt-elimination plan is in place. So, what’s next? It probably isn’t high on anyone’s list, but now’s the time to have a serious talk with your partner about money. If one of you is from Venus and the other from Mars (financially speaking), this conversation...

Financial Wellness Planning: Paying Down Debt

Step 3 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness Paying down debt can be one of the biggest challenges you’ll face. As you try to keep your credit card balances in check, it can often feel like you aren’t getting anywhere. But with intentional action and commitment, the road to being financially independent is possible. In step 3 of your financial...

Financial Wellness Planning: Creating a Budget

Step 2 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness Budgeting systems are designed to help you understand and evaluate your relationship with money. For step 2 in your financial wellness journey, you'll want to establish a budgeting system that fits your personality and money management style. These are four of the most common: 50/30/20 budget . This is a...

Financial Wellness Planning: Tracking Your Spending

Step 1 of 10 Steps to Financial Wellness Mastering the skill of tracking your spending is easier said than done. How can you track every dollar you spend when you make multiple purchases each day? For the first step in your journey to financial wellness, we've outlined a relatively stress-free way to track your spending. This is a crucial first...

Making the Most of Your Oregon Tax 'Kicker'

Record $5.6 billion revenue surplus will be given back to taxpayers as a credit on their 2023 state income tax returns As an Oregon taxpayer, you may be in line for a much-larger-than-usual state tax refund in 2024. Thanks to a record $5.6 billion revenue surplus, the state of Oregon will apply a credit, called a “ kicker ,” to taxpayers’ 2023...

Link Digital Checking: The Rewards Account That Pays You Back

SELCO now has checking accounts for everyone If you’ve transformed your daily routine through digital technology—like making payments online, using a card for routine purchases, and gravitating toward digital banking transactions—you’ll love our digitally-optimized checking account. Link Digital Checking is a connected rewards account that pays...