Tag Archives: Vinton County National Bank

Have You Heard About Rewards Checking?

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Ad for Inside eCommThis is a big day here at VCNB. That’s because we have released a new product to our customers and frankly, we couldn’t be happier.

This week marks the debut of VCNB Rewards Checking. With Rewards Checking you can earn UChoose Rewards® points just doing what you always do – buying things with your debit or Platinum Visa® card and by using bank products.

We’ll give you points for having direct deposit, for automatic loan payments and for some other things you may already be doing with us. The more you use your card and the more VCNB products you use, the more points you will earn.

Points can be redeemed through UChoose for cash back, gift cards, travel, concert tickets and all sorts of other great things! Essentially, we’re rewarding you for your loyal business with VCNB!

Many of our employees have been testing Rewards Checking this summer and are thrilled with their points earnings. To reward you even more, we are offering 5,000 bonus points if you sign up for Rewards Checking before December 31, 2015.

There is a monthly service charge of $7 which will be imposed each statement cycle. However, you can receive a $7 credit to your account each statement cycle by either completing fifteen or more debit card transactions per statement cycle or by maintaining a combined monthly total deposit relationship of $5,000.

Want to sign up? It’s easy! If you are an existing VCNB customer, just contact an account representative and ask to switch. If you’re a new customer, you can sign up either online or at any of our seventeen bank locations. Once you have signed up for Rewards Checking, you will need to take just a few minutes to login to the UChoose Rewards website to register your debit card before you will begin earning points.

You can learn more about Rewards Checking and the 5,000 point promotion by clicking http://www.vintoncountybank.com/rewardschecking/.

What are you waiting for? Rewards Checking is HERE! Sign up today!

Protect Yourself From Fraud

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How savvy are you when it comes to protecting yourself from fraud? Earlier this week we discussed what we do to keep your VCNB accounts safe. Today we want to talk about what you can do to protect yourself.

Protect Your Information
Sometimes you have to provide personal information for legitimate business reasons. For example, you are required to provide personal information when you open a bank account, apply for a credit card or enroll in college. However, you should avoid giving out this personal information unless absolutely necessary. Examples of personal information that should be kept personal include:

Address and Zip Code
Phone Number
Date of Birth
Social Security Number
Card or Account Number
Card Expiration Date

There is some information that you should NEVER share with anyone else. Passwords and Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) should absolutely never be shared and should always be kept private.

Using Your Card
Be attentive and vigilant when using your card at an ATM, in a store or a restaurant. Always cover your card and PIN and watch for anything out of place including:

  • Cameras, cell phones, mirrors or other instruments that might be used to view your card or PIN.
  • Individuals who are watching you.
  • Cashiers who take your card out of sight. Take it to the register yourself when possible.
  • Devices or items used to cover the card slots of an ATM, gas pump or other card machines. These devices can be used by criminals to capture your card information.
  • Any other unusual or suspicious activity.

Online Safety
Never respond to unsolicited emails that request personal information or that ask you to verify your card or account number. Legitimate businesses do not send these types of emails. Also beware of links to websites. A website may look legitimate but may collect data or even install spyware on your computer.
Plan Ahead
Are you traveling? If traveling abroad, contact VCNB before you leave. We can provide assistance and advice to help keep you safe on your journey. If traveling domestically, you do not need to contact us but it is wise to make some purchases along the way. Headed to the beach? Use your card to book the hotel and purchase gas along the way.

Also, make sure we can always reach you if we suspect fraud. Be sure to keep your current home, cell and work phone numbers on file with us. If we suspect fraudulent activity on your account, we need to reach you as soon as possible.

As we told you yesterday, we never solicit personal information via phone, email or text message. If someone contacts you requesting account information, your social security number, PIN, passwords or other personal information, do not provide this information. The bottom line is you should trust your instincts. If it feels suspicious it probably is. If you missed yesterday’s post, be sure to check it out.

VCNB Fraud Department: Protecting Your Accounts

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Fraud is on the rise, putting every American at risk of becoming a victim. This is why the security of your VCNB accounts is our number one goal. In everything we do, every decision we make, we first consider the risk involved and how our actions will affect your security.

We have systems in place to keep your Debit/ATM card and your VCNB accounts safe and secure. To protect your account, we monitor your transactions for possible fraudulent activity 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

What is potential fraudulent activity? Some red flags include a string of expensive purchases inconsistent with your usual spending patterns or a sudden change of locale. We also look for patterns associated with new fraud trends around the world.

For example, if you purchase gasoline in Lancaster, Ohio just hours after a purchase is made in Florida, this would raise a red flag. A series of purchases for hundreds of dollars of merchandise may also be cause for concern.

If we suspect fraudulent activity, our monitoring agency will call you to verify the validity of your transactions. It is imperative that you respond to this call to prevent additional risk and avoid restrictions that we may place on your card for your protection.

If we contact you:

  • You will be contacted between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in your local time zone.
  • An automated call will ask you to verify recent activity on your card.
  • You will be able to respond via your touchtone keypad.
  • You will be provided a toll-free number to call if you have additional questions.

If we are unable to reach you, the transaction that triggered the suspected fraud may not be approved. Also, your card may be temporarily restricted to prevent your exposure to fraud.

It is imperative that we reach you if potential fraud is detected so please keep VCNB apprised of your correct contact information including home, cell and work phone numbers, email address and home address.

Also remember that our policy is to never solicit personal information via phone, email or text message. If someone contacts you requesting account information, your social security number, PIN, passwords or other personal information, do not provide this information.

If you are uncertain about the validity of a contact you receive from someone claiming to represent VCNB, please call our Customer Service Department at 1.800.542.5004 or the number on the back of your card.

Want to learn more? Stay tuned. Later this week we’ll talk about what you can do to protect yourself and your accounts from fraud.

Avoid Christmas Debt This Year

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Christmas and BillsLet’s talk Christmas. We know it’s only August but it’s time.

Christmas is now less than five months away. That means in just a few months we will be celebrating this joyous season. What comes to mind? Family traditions, delicious food, stockings filled with candy and buying gifts? The song tells us it is the most wonderful time of the year but that isn’t the case for everyone.

Unfortunately, Christmas also is the most expensive, most stressful and most debt filled time of the year for millions of Americans. As Santa’s Wish List grows every year, so does the amount of debt Americans owe every January. If you typically are still paying for Christmas when Groundhog Day rolls around, now is the time to think about how to avoid debt and the interest that comes with it, beginning this year.

There are several ways you can tackle this problem. The first is to shop year round. If you need generic gifts for co-workers or if you already know what you are giving someone, watching sales and clearance racks is a great way to pick up nice gifts while saving a few dollars. If you buy just one or two gifts a month, when December rolls around you’ll be ahead of the game. Start with after-Christmas sales, to save a bundle for next year.

Another way to go is to begin saving a little bit each month. Start by adding up all your anticipated holiday expenses: gifts, cards, stamps, wrapping paper, bows, food, travel costs and anything else that is an added expense during the holiday season. There are five months until Christmas. Is it possible to save a fifth of the total each month?

If the answer is yes, that’s terrific! Start squirreling away the money today!

If the answer is no, think about how much you can save. Are there expenses you can trim to get you to your goal? Maybe you have something to sell. Maybe you can cut back on the holidays some and lower your savings expectations.

Even if you can save just a small amount of your goal before the holidays, it will give you a leg up when shopping season arrives.

Speaking of savings for the holidays, in October we will begin enrolling folks for the 2016 Christmas Club. You decide how much you would like to save each month and we will automatically take your payments from your checking or savings account. In October 2016, you’ll receive a check from us for the full amount of your Christmas Club savings. There is a $20 fee for an account that is closed early. See an account representative for details.

Imagine starting the year without Christmas debt. It can be done if you get organized and begin in advance!

Simplify Money Management With VCNB

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This week is National Simplify Your Life Week. That sounds nice but sometimes simplification is the hardest thing you can do. Between work and family, it often feels like a struggle to just keep everyone fed and on time for school.

Since much of your life hinges on money – paying bills on time, buying groceries, saving money and the piece of mind that comes with knowing these things are done – we want to give you a quick overview of how you can simplify your money.

If you’re a VCNB customer, you have access to several of things that will make your life easier thanks to Online Banking and VCNB Mobile. Accessing accounts electronically really is a lifesaver for a lot of our customers. Need to save money? You can automate it and forget it. Have trouble paying bills on time? You can automate those too! Do you sometimes overdraw your checking account? Get a balance alert via text or email when you go below a certain balance!

Here are some features that will simplify your life:

Save Money
Experts say you should save ten to fifteen percent of your income toward retirement. They also recommend having an emergency fund to help with life’s little surprises. But are you actually saving? Schedule on-demand transfers from your checking to your savings. Better yet, set up automatic transfers to ensure it is done regularly. Automatic transfers can be scheduled for any amount on any day of the month. Just set it up once and watch your balance grow!

Think you won’t be able to leave your savings alone? A lot of our customers use Christmas Club accounts as a means to save. Regular transfers are made from your checking or savings account into a Christmas Club account. Since there is a $20 fee to access those funds before the Christmas Club cycle finishes, most customers successfully reach their savings goal.

Track Money
Do you sometimes overdraw your account? Wonder if your direct deposit hit your account? Forget to make a loan payment? Set up account alerts for these things and more. There are nineteen different account alerts that can be sent via text or email. If you need a gentle reminder that your car payment is due or if you want to know that a check cleared, we will let you know!

Do you have a lot of plastic in your wallet? Between credit cards and store rewards cards, most Americans are carrying a lot of plastic. You can personalize your VCNB debit card to make it easy to find. Upload your own picture or use one of ours for a $5 annual fee! Locating your debit card has never been simpler!

Pay Bills and Spend
It’s a fact of life. Busy people often pay bills late. Whether it’s a lack of time or stamps, or simple forgetfulness, it’s easy to incur a late fee. Streamline your bills with Online Bill Pay. You can put your payments on autopilot and schedule them to pay the same day every month or you can manually schedule payments as needed. Either way, the service is free as long as you use it at least once a month. Otherwise, there is a $3 monthly fee.

If you use Online Bill Pay, you also have access to Popmoney ® personal payment service. Popmoney allows you to send money to anyone with just their email or mobile phone number. Best of all, other people can send you money too! So the next time you split the cost of a gift for your boss you can just send your share via Popmoney. If you buy concert tickets for the gang, they all can send your share to you! The cost is .50 per transaction for the person who sends the funds.

Save Time
Online and on your mobile device, you can save yourself time by checking balances, paying bills and keeping things straight. But did you know you can also save yourself a trip to the bank? Use our mobile app to deposit a check for just .50! You can do this by logging into your mobile account and taking a picture of the front and back of the check. CLICK HERE for complete instructions and details. (W/LINK TO WEBSITE)

Still write checks? You can reorder those online as well!

Keep Us Close
Keep us close – on your computer, on your mobile device, in branch or over the phone. You can also chat with our Customer Service Department during business hours. Just visit our website and click the Green Chat Now button to start a conversation!

Phew! That’s a long list! How do you use VCNB to simplify your life? Tell us in the comments section!

Lower Summer Cooling Costs

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Is this hot, humid weather starting to impact your budget? At VCNB we are always looking for ways to save a little money and to use our resources more efficiently. So today we are talking about ways to lower our summer cooling bill.

If you’re like a lot of our customers, you cool your home using either a central air conditioner or window units. Or maybe you simply use fans to keep the air moving and the windows open. Either way, there are methods you can use to keep air conditioners running efficiently, to prevent heat build-up and to prevent energy waste.

Here are some tips to get you started today:

Close the blinds  Anything that prevents the sun from beating in and creating a greenhouse effect will make it easier for your AC unit to maintain cooler temps. If possible consider planting leafy trees or bushes that will provide shade for your home.

 Look for leaks  It sounds silly but you can lose a lot of cool air through small openings around doors and windows. Another major source of loss is around window air conditioning units. A few minutes sealing small drafts can help with energy bills year round. If you have a little extra money, consider adding insulation to your attic as well!

Clean the filters  Keep your air conditioner in great working condition by cleaning the filters once every month and replacing them when necessary.

Program the thermostat  While you may like your house at a comfortable 75 degrees when you’re home, there’s no need to keep the house so cool when you aren’t there. Invest in a programmable thermostat and set it to increase five to ten degrees while you are away from home and to return to a comfortable temperature an hour before you return.

Turn off the oven  Turning on the oven heats up the house, forcing your air conditioner to work harder. Cook on the grill, in the microwave or on the stop top!

 Set your air conditioning fan to auto   This turns the fan motor off when the unit is not cooling. Using Auto rather than On can save you $15 to $25 a month during the summer.

Use ceiling fans  Set ceiling fans to blow downward during the summer to circulate air rather than lowering your thermostat.

Thinking ahead  When it’s time to replace your air conditioning unit, talk to a qualified air conditioning specialist who can determine the right size cooling system for your home. A unit that is too large for your house will operate as inefficiently as one that is too small. Also choose a higher SEER unit. SEER stands for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio and basically rates the efficiency of a cooling unit. The higher the SEER number, the more cooling you will get for your dollar.

What are your techniques for keeping your home cool and your cold, hard cash in your wallet? Comment below!

The Thirties: Time To Get Serious

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We have retirement on the brain this week. Every day this week we will post retirement advice from NerdWallet on the various stages of life. Today, we are focusing on the thirties. These folks have been working a while and are more stable in their careers but do they know how to prepare for retirement? Read about your twenties here (w/Link) 

There’s one truism about retirement that has stood the test of time: It’s never too late, or too early, to start saving. Whether fresh out of school or winding down in a career, there are things you can do to successfully prepare your nest egg, as well as places where it’s easy to stumble. Financial institutions such as Vinton County National Bank can help you set up a retirement account and personalized plan. But it’s up to you to do the heavy lifting throughout the decades.

If you are in your thirties, now is the time to get serious about your retirement savings.

By Cait Klein, NerdWallet

If you hit your thirtieth birthday and you haven’t started thinking about retirement, you’re not in the danger zone yet, but you are starting from behind. Consider meeting with a financial planner to see where you’re spending more than you need to and discuss how to redirect some of that money toward retirement. Create a budget and consider trying to divert 20 percent of your income into savings. If the company you work for provides a 401(k) account and matches a percentage of employee contributions, make sure to participate with an eye toward contributing at least enough to get the full match.

Before making big purchases, look into a crystal ball and envision the future. Don’t saddle yourself with a level of debt that could distract from your retirement down the line. If you’re about to buy your first home, and you made good strides in building your retirement fund in your twenties, you might be tempted to draw on that money for a down payment. Although the Internal Revenue Service allows first-time homebuyers to draw on a portion of their retirement savings to pay for a home, doing so results in a double hit. Not only are you reducing your plan by the amount you withdraw, you’re also causing the dividends that that money would have accrued to evaporate. As a result, though you might have a beautiful house, you might also find that you have to delay your retirement because you have to work longer to make up for the withdrawal and those unrealized dividends — or, you might find that your later years end up being less golden than you’d anticipated.

NerdWallet

“When it comes to credit cards, insurance, loans or expenses like hospital costs, consumers make almost all their decisions in the dark. NerdWallet is changing that by building accessible online tools and providing research and experts that can’t be found anywhere else, all to help consumers take back control of their choices in a marketing-driven, trillion-dollar industry. Find out more at www.nerdwallet.com.”

 

Saving for Retirement at Every Age: Your Twenties

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Retirement piggy

This week we are talking retirement. Every day we will post retirement advice from NerdWallet on the various stages of life. Today, we are starting off with the younger set. If you are in your twenties or have a child in this age group, listen up! Retirement may seem far away but this is the ideal time to start preparing.

There’s one truism about retirement that has stood the test of time: It’s never too late, or too early, to start saving. Whether fresh out of school or winding down in a career, there are things you can do to successfully prepare your nest egg, as well as places where it’s easy to stumble. Financial institutions such as Vinton County National Bank can help you set up a retirement account and personalized plan. But it’s up to you to do the heavy lifting throughout the decades.

By Cait Klein, NerdWallet

Albert Einstein once declared, “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” But you can capitalize on the magic only if you start early and stay consistent. The earlier you begin, the more time there is to maximize returns, giving the account time to grow into a significant sum. Here’s an example. Assuming a four percent return, if you were to fund $5,000 a year in a Roth individual retirement account starting at the age of 20, by 65 you’d have a nest egg of approximately $660,000 from an investment of $230,000. But if you put it off until age 30, it would require annual savings of $8,400 to get the same end amount. And you can usually withdraw the earnings tax-free when retirement rolls around.

Habits are hard to break for better or for worse, so make sure the financial ones you develop early on are good. After having a great decade of fun and splurging, it can be hard to change your behavior and start saving. Get used to putting away a steady stream of funds in your youthful years, so that doing so for the rest of your life won’t be so hard.

NerdWallet
“When it comes to credit cards, insurance, loans or expenses like hospital costs, consumers make almost all their decisions in the dark. NerdWallet is changing that by building accessible online tools and providing research and experts that can’t be found anywhere else, all to help consumers take back control of their choices in a marketing-driven, trillion-dollar industry. Find out more at www.nerdwallet.com.”

 

What Do You Really Want?

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We all have something we wish we could do – if only there were enough money. Maybe you dream of someday owning a home. Maybe you want to take a European vacation or renovate your bathroom or buy your dream car or retire at 55. Maybe you only want a new tv.

There’s always something that’s just out of reach because you can’t save enough money. Most Americans will tell you there’s never enough money. Many people make enough money to live on and still save a little back. They just don’t do it because they dwindle away these extra funds on things that aren’t that important to them.

Handle Your Money
When you have a major savings goal, it is a good idea to set up a separate savings account where you know all funds are earmarked for that goal. At VCNB you can automate transfers from one account to another. This is a free service that you can take advantage of to ensure you actually save the money you say you’re going to save. Another simple trick that many people find helpful is the good old fashioned change jar. Get a jar, a piggy bank or some other container to stash your change in. At the end of the day, just dump whatever change you have in your pockets into your jar. When you have some saved, drop by one of our VCNB locations that has a coin counter. The coin counter is free to use if you are a VCNB customer. We can either give you the cash to take home or deposit the money into your account.

Visualize
It is much easier to stay on track with a savings goal when you can visualize that goal. Create an inspiration board electronically or with pictures cut out of magazines. Refer back to it and consider how great it will be to own that home or to be on that big vacation. If you are planning a vacation, picture yourself in a deck chair or sightseeing your destination. If it’s a new kitchen, imagine how great it will be to have your family gathered around for your next holiday. Visual reminders can be very powerful and can carry you through even the worst moments of weakness.

Cut Back
This is simple. Look for ways to save money and then put that money you saved toward your goal. That means shopping sales for necessities and avoiding the purchase of things you don’t really need. Do you remember the difference between a need and a want? A refresher on this lesson will serve you well.

Mae West said “I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.” Avoid temptations by staying out of stores, removing your credit card information from online accounts and by shopping with a list. If it isn’t on the list you don’t really need it. If you really want to buy something, force yourself to wait thirty days to make the decision. Chances are you will have changed your mind after a month.

Here’s one last tip on cutting back. Try cutting out something you know is bad for you. Whether your vice is cigarettes or too much chocolate, cutting out a bad habit will help you save a few bucks.

Adjust your attitude
Sometimes all we really need is an attitude adjustment. Before you buy something, ask yourself a simple question. “Is this worth more than my savings goal?” Instead of buying more, focus on taking care of the possessions you already own and be happy with what you have.

And remember to never give up what you really want for what you want right now.