How WECU Members Spent $9.1 Billion in 2024 – Trends & Tips for 2025

Transcript

Keith Mader (00:00):
Hello, my name is Keith Mader, and this is WECU Expert Insights. It’s now 2025, a new year, and many of us are thinking about how to improve our finances, spend better and have better financial habits going forward. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And to lead this conversation, I have Reid Frederick, WECU’s personal finance expert. Thanks for joining me, Reid.

Reid Frederick (00:20):
Happy to be here.

Keith Mader (00:20):
Yeah. So I’d love to start by talking about WECU Wrapped, which is our report that we pull at the end of the year that talks about how our nearly 170,000 members spent, saved, and borrowed in 2024. So can you provide some high level insights on that? Just walk us through it.

Reid Frederick (00:38):
Yeah, I’d love to. So this is the second year doing WECU Wrapped where we analyze our member data. The highest level data point that we have is that our members spent 9.1 billion in 2024. Amazing amount of money. 82% of our membership live in Whatcom and Skagit County. So, you can think about the amount of dollars churning out from our membership. Next, we looked into where our members do their shopping, and I’m not talking about loan payments or tax payments, but where you’re getting your groceries and items like that, probably not a surprise for most Amazon comes in at number one. Number two also, probably not a surprise, was Costco. Average cost at Costco per trip was $121 per WECU members.

Keith Mader (01:33):
I definitely contributed to that number this year.

Reid Frederick (01:35):
I thought it was a little low. I would’ve guessed more than $121 for an average. We also spent $81.7 million on gas with an average of $54 per trip. Our members are caffeinated, unsurprisingly, $11.9 million at coffee shops for WECU members. For our 170,000 WECU members, $852,000 was spent with Spotify streaming music. Okay. So that’s pretty impressive. And another fun one, $99,000 on Disneyland tickets.

Keith Mader (02:16):
People paying a lot of money to go see the mouse.

Reid Frederick (02:18):
Exactly. Yeah. So it’s just interesting to see how our members are spending their money. Costco and coffee and gas. It’s a lot of money going out towards that type of stuff.

Keith Mader (02:31):
Absolutely. Alright, Reid, so that is spending, what about on the lending side of things?

Reid Frederick (02:36):
So lending, we looked at vehicles and then we looked at housing and on the vehicle side. One item that I thought was pretty interesting, I think if you asked a many people what the most stereotypical Pacific Northwest vehicle was, Subaru would be really, really high up my list. But the top four models, WECU members financed for number one was the Ford F-150. Number two was the Chevy Silverado. Number three was the Toyota Tacoma, and number four was the Ram 1500.

Keith Mader (03:11):
Wow. All trucks.

Reid Frederick (03:12):
All trucks, right?

Reid Frederick (03:14):
People love trucks. Number eight was the first Subaru that came in on the list.

Keith Mader (03:20):
Wow.

Reid Frederick (03:21):
So Subaru Impreza. Right. So I thought that was really surprising. Pickup trucks, big deal. Then we look at home lending. Unsurprisingly, WECU did the most home lending in Bellingham, and second was Blaine. When you look at appraisals for the houses we financed, the highest appraising area was Seattle.

Keith Mader (03:46):
No surprise

Reid Frederick (03:46):
Not surprising. $970,000 was the average appraisal there. Second highest was Bellingham. Also, probably not that surprising. The average appraisal for WECU members borrowing was $733,000. Okay. Maple Falls came in as the most affordable of locations that we had. At least three properties financed. Maple Falls was the most affordable and that came in at $349,000.

Keith Mader (04:10):
All right. Looking to get in the market, go to Maple Falls.

Reid Frederick (04:12):
Maple Falls is your entry point.

Keith Mader (04:13):
There we go. Great. Awesome. Alright, so what were some other trends that you noticed from WECU Wrapped?

Reid Frederick (04:20):
Yeah, one item that really popped out to me was just how much we’re paying out in dividends for members that are saving money with us, what they receive on their accounts. So through November, 2022, so this is not 2024, 2 years ago we paid out 3.5 million in dividends to our members that same amount of time in 2024. So last year we paid out 38 million. So we went from paying out dividends of 3.5 million to paying out dividends of 38 million. That’s significant change to how our credit unions operations are running based off of the dividends being paid out right now.

Keith Mader (05:00):
Yeah. It’s a good time to be a saver.

Reid Frederick (05:01):
Good time to be a saver.

Keith Mader (05:02):
Yeah. Interesting. Alright, so if you’re not saving, you’re missing out a little bit. Great. All right. So I guess based on what you saw in all the data from our members this last year, what would one piece of advice be?

Reid Frederick (05:16):
Yeah, so I would say is your spending, we talked about spending, is it sparking joy? Is it draining your wallet? Think about that. Right? So I take a good hard look at where your money is going in 2024, here’s some more data points for you. $5.8 million was spent on streaming services, and I think most of us either have at least a few that we don’t even know exist or are not getting that value from. So is it sparking that joy for you? Are all of those items that are automatically coming out of your account giving you value? A whopping 12.5 million was spent on food delivery, probably the most expensive way to eat. And so that’s something to keep an eye on. You can think about culinary and finances. So that was all about decluttering your life. Does this item that you’re spending money on really spark joy?
(06:14):
And, you could apply that to your spending so you can review your transaction history, pull out maybe three months, go line item by line item, is this item still sparking joy? Does it still bring worth to your life? And that’d be a good way to identify some nice opportunities. The other thing that comes in at the beginning of the year is what psychologists call it the fresh start effect, which is, for whatever reason, we humans can kind of struggle to create goals and follow goals. But one thing that you can leverage is this fresh start effect birthdays, new school semesters, new jobs, and the new year are all these times where people tend to have a little bit of innate inspiration for change. And so maybe the new year can be an opportunity to leverage this fresh start effect towards some goals that’re going to be important in your life.
(07:14):
Second, because like I said earlier, we’re paying out historically significant dividends to individuals is if you haven’t built that savings practice and those savings habits, now’s the time to do it. We talked about how it’s a historically significant amount of dividends being paid out at WECU. So if you can feed that savings, for instance, we have a product called a Stash Savings account designed for emergency savings. You receive 6% APY on the first $2,500. Earn that 6% so when your tires blow out or you have an issue with your hot water heater, you have cash on hand to help you absorb that. Because on the other hand, when savings rates are high, so are borrowing rates, so it’s more expensive to borrow money when an emergency happens. So use that to your advantage, use that knowledge to your advantage, save money, and that’ll make you have a smoother new year.

Keith Mader (08:15):
Any other interesting tidbits of the data before we move on?

Reid Frederick (08:18):
Okay, so we had 20 cars. There were over a hundred thousand dollars financed in 2024. Seven were Porsches, one was a Bentley, one Rolls-Royce, and one McLaren, and one person got a model A built in 1930 and they got a car loan for it.

Keith Mader (08:41):
Wow. Okay. Interesting. People are still buying model As apparently.

Reid Frederick (08:44):
Yeah. Yeah. It gets to work.

Keith Mader (08:46):
I want to turn our attention to something that we hit on in our last Expert Insights interview with you towards the end of 2024. But this continues to make headlines. So it recently came out that credit card defaults has reached its highest level in the last 14 years. It’s at its highest level in 14 years. And so default is basically when somebody hasn’t made a credit card payment for 180 days and the bank is basically saying, I don’t think this person’s going to end up paying on this debt. And so a lot of experts are calling this concerning. I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Reid Frederick (09:22):
Yeah, well, I mean definitely the situation is where it’s hardest when there’s hard times with inflation felt the hardest by folks on the lower income and the spectrum low to moderate incomes. And that’s what we’re seeing now is those folks are getting hit hard and they’re definitely using credit cards to fill in the cracks and that can be unsustainable.

Keith Mader (09:52):
Right, right. So let’s say that you are someone who’s finding yourself hard to make ends meet. Maybe you are putting a little bit more of money on credit cards just to get through the end of the month. What would your advice be to that person?

Reid Frederick (10:06):
Well, obviously oftentimes the way to save more is to spend less, right? It’s pretty straightforward math. One way that I think you can think about it that I think is kind of motivating is, let’s say you’ve been doing this in this pattern where you’re adding $300 a month, your credit card balances and you look back and that’s about what you’re adding each month and you’re going in that direction. It can be motivating to see, okay, if I find $300 in savings monthly, I can work back from that and at least reverse this trend where it’s increasing. And I think that could be a motivating way to look about it is obviously as cashflow comes in and expenses go out, you’re using the credit card to bridge the gap. And if that’s at a $250 a month level, your balance is going to be going up that much each month. Find $250 in savings and reverse that trend. And that can be a way to go about it.

Keith Mader (11:12):
Yeah, that’s good. Alright, next question. So let’s say that someone says that 2025 is my year to get rid of credit card debt.

Keith Mader (11:21):
What would be just three steps that that person could take to do that?

Reid Frederick (11:25):
I would say get a clear picture. Number two, check your rates. Number three, see if there’s some way to increase income.
(11:35):
When I say get a clear picture, by that I mean get out your Excel spreadsheet or just a piece of paper. Write down your credit card name. Mmany Americans have two or three, four credit cards. Write them all out, put down the balances of the credit card, what you owe on each, put down the interest rates that you owe on each credit card and you’re getting charged on each credit card. And then put down your minimum payments. Just having that clear picture written out, your stress levels will go from a nine to about a four, see? And you’ll start to see a path open up. So the uncertainty, which is so wreaks havoc on a stress level, uncertainty does, it’s going to be really, really reduced. And you’ll start to have a clear picture of what the work that needs to be done.
(12:23):
Second one, check rates. If one of your rates on your credit cards, it’s 35% or something, it’s very possible that you could go out into the marketplace of credit cards or of loans and find a lower rate. So you could know pretty quickly, maybe there’s a better loan I can get and move that balance to a different loan. And then finally, making more money. I know that if I were in credit card debt and I thought I had to take on a second job, I’d be pretty quickly depressed and not want to do anything. Bury my head in the sand, right? But alternatively, if I said for three months I’m going to work on Saturdays, I want to tackle this. By having that defined timeframe that now it seems much more manageable to make more income and goal setting should be done with that specific managed timeframe. And that’s one way, especially if you know that in three months working Saturdays, my credit card situation that’s been keeping me up at night is going to be in a much better position. That can be really motivating.

Keith Mader (13:30):
Yeah, that’s super good. I know for me, anytime I’m getting stressed out, it is that whole, not staring at the problem and looking at it from start to finish because you’re just kind of stressed out. You don’t really have a grasp on what you need to tackle. So I really like that first step. So next question for you, Reid. I know this applies to a lot of people out there, but let’s say that they’re somebody who’s never really been a budgeter, budgets feel constricting and the idea of spreadsheets, but they know that they need to do some sort of planning with their money this year. What would your advice be to that person?

Reid Frederick (14:06):
I very much, I tend to think in quotes and just about what you just said, one of my favorite quotes, and I think I landed upon it when I was in that mind state of uncertainty, anxiety, what do I do here? And it’s a quote from Arthur Ashe and it’s, start where you are, use what you have and do what you can. And if you’ve never budgeted before, you maybe never grew up in a household where you witnessed people budgeting, you’re going to be learning and that’s good. But once you learn these habits, first of all, they’re not rocket science. You can do it. Once you learn these habits, you will transform your life. You’ll have much more control over your life. And if you have someone like kids, that’s something that will be passed on generationally, you will show them that competency. You will show them the value in it. It’ll be modeled for them. So that’s why I’d say to a person that’s thinking about, okay, I’ve never really done this work. You can do it and just get started.

Keith Mader (15:13):
Yeah. Love that. Alright, well Reid, thank you so much. To end this on a high note, I know that for a lot of people, they talk about New Year’s resolutions with your money, that people are done with them by week three. So what would your words of advice be for people listening that are trying to make these changes?

Reid Frederick (15:32):
Alright, so New year, new you, right? But we all know that inspiration fades and you got to create habits and systems to take it to the next level. So the fresh start effect, leverage it. New year, use it. But how do you take it from that inspiration to lasting change? You do it through habits and systems. Think small everyday shifts. Think about making coffee at home, saving money there. Think about going to the library, taking out a book there. Instead of buying a book every time you want to read something new. That’s a habit. Those habits will become a commonplace and normal for you, and you’ll be saving money day over day, week over week. The other side of it is systems. So systems would be, I want to save more money. I’m inspired to do that. Set up automatic transfers into your savings accounts. That way when the inspiration wanes, the system carries you forward. Pay off debt faster, add a hundred dollars to your mortgage payment, add a hundred dollars to your credit card debt, automatically put it in. That system will carry you into transformation financially over the course of months, years, and you don’t have to worry about inspiration at that point.

Keith Mader (16:52):
Awesome. Awesome. So good. Well, Reid, thank you so much for your time and your insights. I hope that anyone listening really makes this the best financial year they’ve ever had.

Reid Frederick (17:01):
For sure. Yeah. Thanks