When he first heard about SD1’s new Financial Well-Being program, Derek Hunt was pretty guarded.
Having been the victim of identity theft, Derek pays more attention to his finances than the average person, so he wasn’t sure the Truist Momentum platform would add value to his life. But he figured it would be worth taking a look, if for no other reason than the incentives SD1 was offering.
Derek, a geospatial data scientist at SD1 since 2010, logged in and created an account right after the launch of the Truist program in March and he began exploring the educational pillars.
“I was kind of taking it as a survey,” he says. “OK, I have these things. This is in place, that’s good. Some of these things, I’ve taken steps. It’s really good affirmation that what I’m doing is on the right path. I was glad to see that.”
Some of his IT coworkers were diving deeper and really leaning into the Truist program, but Derek was moving slow and steady. As June approached, he decided to ramp up his activity on the platform to be eligible for SD1’s first incentive milestone.
All staff who have completed the first four learning pillars by July 1, 2022, will be invited to a Truist Momentum lunch and be entered into a drawing to win $250.
“That kind of spurred me,” he says. “You kind of had an incentive there and I was going to be out of town at the end of the month when it was due, so I was like, I’d better brush that up.”
For those unfamiliar, the Truist Momentum program is built around eight educational pillars: Save for Confidence; Organize and Automate; Break Through Financial Barriers; Plan for ‘What if?’; Invest for Happiness; Make the Most of Home Ownership; Enhance Your Career; and Give Back.
The first four pillars are considered foundational, and that is why SD1 created the first milestone incentive.
“Those first four pillars are really packed with information that can change your life,” said SD1 Director of Finance Ron Schmitt. “With strategies, skills and tools to help you get a handle on where you are and where you want to be, pillars 1-4 offer something for everyone, whether you are a financial planning guru or need help getting started.”
One of the items that stood out to Derek came from Pillar 4: Plan for ‘What If?’. As he was working his way through the Truist Momentum program, he lost his father.
“He slid fast and we were trying to go through his financials and get him a will,” Derek says, “and none of that happened. And I’ve told everyone – get a will as soon as you can. There are very defined laws if you don’t have one.”
He’s working with a probate attorney to try and avoid probate for his father’s estate, because the rigid probate laws would have some harmful impacts on his family.
“My mom and dad own two properties,” he says. “One is a property that is being kind of land contracted with my aunt. The other is a rental property with a tenant who loves the place and never wants to leave. They want to rent it for live. His wife’s mother lives across the street. They love the setup and treat it like it’s their own home.”
His aunt also loves where she’s living under the land contract. “But because there’s no will, those immediately get sold,” he says. “And then you divvy up the cost of the sale. None of the people want to leave and we don’t want them to leave, but that’s the law. If we set up an estate, that’s what’s going to happen.”
“It’s just a bunch of painfully well-defined regulations that, if we don’t have a will, that’s how it goes,” he adds. “That’s my biggest takeaway from the program: get a will. That was something you don’t think about until you’re in your fifties or sixties. You really need to have something in place if you have anything of value, no matter your age.”
Derek says he was also surprised to learn about problems created by credit card debt. “I’ve just never had a credit card, other than maybe a store card. For a lot of people, credit card debt is out of control.”
Having never had a credit card, imagine Derek’s surprise when he walked into his bank several years ago to talk about taking out a home loan and was told he didn’t come even close to qualifying for a loan.
“The first time I ever walked in and we’re talking about a house, the loan officer pulls my credit and was like, ‘I don’t know why you think this is something you can do.’ It was amazing, the change of tone from the loan officer. It was like I was some degenerate who was wasting her time.”
She told Derek there were eight or nine credit cards on his report that were all in collections.
“But I’ve never had a credit card!’ Derek says. “ And the loan officer replied, ‘If that is true, you need to report the fraud.’”
His journey to a near-perfect credit score would be a long one.
“It took me eight years to fix everything,” he says. “The loan officer actually helped me a lot because she gave me a path to follow that didn’t require a lawyer.”
So how does a victim of identity theft unravel such an abysmal credit report?
“Basically, you have to work from the ground up,” he says. “You have to settle everything on each account and then you go up to the next level. You get a police report and you have this to submit to every financial institution involved.”
Each time, he was asked if he’d ever lived at a particular address in Fort Mitchell, and he told creditors, the police, anyone who would listen that he had never lived at the address and had no affiliation with it whatsoever.
“Once everybody has agreed and accepted, then you move up to the next level and the next level until you’re finally at places like Experian and the big credit check agencies. Then you initiate the investigation on that end, and as long as there’s nobody who says, ‘Oh, no, I think that was really him’, then it actually does get resolved. It takes some time. Eight years before the last thing was off my account.
If Derek had access to Truist Momentum back then, he could have avoided most of the hassle. Truist offers a simple “soft” credit check tool that gives users immediate access to their credit score. (A “soft” credit check means your credit isn’t impacted by the inquiry, as opposed to a “hard” credit check, which can impact your score.)
As he worked his way back to good credit, Derek and his wife bought a house and took out the loan in her name. “She has excellent credit too,” he says. “And she does have credit cards, but she’s on top of all of that.”
He says that he and his wife keep independent finances. “I don’t know if it’s normal, but my wife and I have these things that we share and pay, but her money is her money and my money is my money,” he says. “That causes a lot less – you’re not just constantly asking what the other is doing with the money.
When Derek heard about Truist Momentum, he was understandably gun-shy. “My basically…I don’t know what you’d call it – Holy Grail, silver bullet, get out of jail free card – on all of this fraud investigation was that I had one checking account since I was 16 years old. I was able to say, ‘Hey, I don’t have these accounts because I’ve never had an account anywhere else but here.’”
Without multiple accounts across different banks and financial institutions, Derek doesn’t need some of the more robust tools Truist Momentum offers, such as My Money Desktop. Truist has partnered with MX Technologies, Inc., on a handy resource that lets users see all of their accounts, transactions, budgets, investments, debt and more in a single view so they can take better control of their financial future.
But even without using all of the platform’s tools, Derek says the SD1 Financial Well-Being program is a wonderful benefit.
“The benefits are like a mile long here,” he says, “and this is just another thing. It’s a strong tool. If you don’t have a hold on your finances, you’re basically living paycheck to paycheck. You’re only throwing money wherever it pops up. You don’t know what you have until payday.”
He says while he’s never felt compelled to open a second account, Truist is one of the banks he’d consider for setting up an emergency savings account.
“Maybe this is going to be where I set up an account and put in maybe $50 per paycheck and build the safety net they talk about,” he says. “The safety net, I think, is probably the biggest lesson that is going to make everybody’s financial lives easier. And doing that makes your entire life easier. Because when relationships are strained, it’s usually about money. If you can eliminate that, that’s a huge factor in just reducing stress in your daily life.”
Derek knows a thing or two about how money can strain relationships. Not long ago, he was talking to a relative of his aunt’s husband, a man he was close with growing up – who Derek says was like a grandfather to him – but who vanished from his life when Derek was in his twenties.
“We were chatting one day and I was wondering whatever happened to him at the end,” he says. “We’d even lived together for a few years when I was out of high school. He moved downtown to the Lytle towers – the little ones, not One Lytle Place. We got him settled in there, and I’d visit him any time we were over that way.
“And then he was just gone,” he continues. “He vanished one day and was out of the apartment. I had no way to reach him. So when I ran into his nephew several years later, I asked about him and he said, ‘Yeah, he eventually wound up in hospice out there in Fort Mitchell.’”
Derek froze.
“It was just…like…immediately...that was the address,” he says. “When they were investigating the fraud, they had frequently asked, ‘Did you ever live at this address?’ and I hadn’t. It was the address of his hospice.”
It turns out the man who had been like a grandfather to Derek, and one of the most generous people he’d ever known, had been in some deep tax trouble and was basically financially dead. He wasn’t even allowed to open bank accounts or apply for credit. So he had used Derek’s name to exist in a world where it is increasingly restrictive to use cash only, never intending to hurt anyone.
The man kept all the accounts current and there were no issues until he died. No one knew about the accounts that weren’t in his name, so no payments were made and eventually the accounts were sent to collections, leading to Derek’s eight-year journey to clean up his credit.
Derek has qualified for the SD1 Truist Momentum lunch and will be entered into a drawing for $250. It’s not too late for anyone who has registered with Truist Momentum to complete pillars 1-4 to qualify. Even if you haven’t signed up yet, if you do so and complete the foundational pillars before July 1, you will qualify for the SD1 Financial Well-Being program’s first milestone incentive.
You can register today at http://TruistMomentum.com. Just enter your name and email address, enter “SD1” as the registration code, create a password and click Register.
Details about the SD1 Financial Well-Being program lunch and prize winners will be announced in July.
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