When I first became a member as SSFCU, it was to get an auto loan for my dream car, but little did…read moreI know, they would become my family's biggest cheerleaders.
My greatest cheerleader being Mrs. Christine Cartwright. This woman is legendary. Read that again. Legendary. I've never had someone on the financial side of life go to bat for my family as hard as she has. She has pulled strings that I never thought existed. She listened to our story, heard our struggles that kept us from our goals, and make it her sole mission to help us overcome these obstacles. When you talk to her, the tone in her voice tells you how much she thrives off of helping people achieve the seemingly impossible. She cares deeply and takes you in under her wing like family. She finds joy in her line of work because it's life changing work that she does.
Here's our story. I became a SAHM for 6 months, so we were living on one income. We traded my car in, and got a family car, and financed it through SSFCU. Things got tight, and credit cards began going unpaid causing our scores to dip.
8/29/21, our family car was totaled in a rear end accident. We had no GAP insurance on our car, so we were left owing a balance, and SSFCU wanted to clear that balance before financing another vehicle which is totally understandable. We needed a family car ASAP so we went to a dealership and financed ourselves into a complete mess.
We couldn't afford two car payments so, I was told to call Christine at SSFCU to see if we could refi the balance of the totaled car's loan into a small loan. So I called her, asked if we could do just that, and she inquired about our situation, our new car, the terrible deal we made, and she immediately stopped me. She said "Here's what we're gonna do..."
She gave me step by step on how we're going to get us out of this mess we got into, and my husband and I were all ears. We knew she was our only hope, so we did everything she asked of us. She knew our credit was a mess and why. She went to bat for us, and thanks to her, we can breathe once again. She and several others that she recruited were able to make a loan for us that combined our totaled car's remaining balance, GAP insurance, warranty, and our new car loan all into one loan and made it to where it fit our budget just right with a far better interest rate than what we were given at the dealership. They said they had never seen a loan worked up like ours in all the years they worked there, but that just goes to show how dedicated Christine was to helping get us out of that deal.
We became faithful members of SSFCU that day.
When we finalized the loan, she told us that we would revisit our debt situation after a few car payments and help us reach our dream of being homeowners.
So fast forward to a few car payments later, and we received our settlement from our wreck. She was my first phone call after depositing the settlement into our account. She gave us the go-ahead to pay down credit cards, and told us that we will be in a home by the end of this year when our lease is up. She gave us a rough timeline of how this will play out, told us how much we needed to have seasoned in our account for a down payment, and we immediately jumped on board. We made a plan at home, made payments, did exactly what she told us, and I sent her proof of us paying down our debts. We wanted to show her that we were motivated and ready to make this a reality.
The story stops there for now because that's where we're at currently, but this gem of a woman has been with us every step of the way to a better financial position and a brighter future than we could've ever imagined on our own. She made our 5 year goal into a 1 year goal. She couldn't possibly understand the chains she broke for us that once kept us down.
The beautiful thing about SSFCU? Every employee there has a heart just like hers. She's not the only one that will go above and beyond, but she's our saving grace!
When you choose Southern, know that you'll never be just another account number, you become family.
