Canton Co-operative Bank VP/Senior Loan Officer Anabela Vargas saw on Facebook that a friend had posted they had “evicted SallieMae!” Meaning they had paid off their college loans and were now free of that debt.
“Many people – especially younger people – believe it’s impossible for them to get out of debt. But that’s not true,” Anabela Vargas said.
In his “Smart About Money” column in the Canton Citizen, Canton Co-operative President & CEO Nick Maffeo often writes about how it’s a good idea to aim to be debt-free.
“I talk to a lot of people who are tired of being in debt,” Operations Manager Mary Bocash said. “They really want to get away from those endless bills. I tell them that they’ll have to chip away at it and make some simple life changes. Getting rid of the ‘money drains’ is a big one.”
“One woman came in with a Starbucks coffee in her hand. I asked her how much she’d paid for it. She didn’t know but since she’d just put it on her debit card and she had online banking, we could look up the price. It was $6.51. And she was buying one of those coffees every day – that’s how she’d been ‘treating’ herself. But when she realized that coffees were costing her more than $2200 a year – money that could be going to paying down her debt – she quickly saw the huge difference that awareness and those simple life changes can make.”
According to one end-of-year news report, the top two New Year’s resolutions for 2020 are “Getting out of debt” and “Spending less.”
That’s obviously something we’re all about here at Canton Co-operative Bank. If you’d like to talk to someone about ideas for getting out of debt and spending less in the New Year, feel free to call Mary Bocash at 781-828-8811 x12 or come see us.
Canton Co-operative Bank has been Canton’s hometown bank since 1891 and is rated “5-Star for Strength & Stability” as “one of the strongest banks in the country,” according to bank-rating service BauerFinancial of Coral Gables, Florida. All deposits are insured by the FDIC and the Share Insurance Fund (SIF). The phone number is 781-828-8811.