One of This Year’s CU Foundation of MD & DC Scholarship Winners!
Winning Essay By Connor Rose
Essay Topic: In life, things can happen fast. Describe a sudden change in your life, real or imagined, that presented a financial challenge and describe how your credit union helped you get through it.
After having finally been able to put in the practice hours and successfully passing my driver's test during junior year in the spring of 2021, I was excited to have my driver's license for the summer. My parents had recently handed me down the car they purchased in 2009, and with COVID starting to settle down to more manageable numbers, I was super excited to have the freedom to drive around - I was really looking forward to spending time with my friends without working around my family's schedules and asking for yet another ride. This was a great set-up for a fantastic summer, but it was instantly thrown for a spin in the early AM of May 23rd, when my car was totaled in the middle of the night by a delivery driver.
Before dawn that morning, my father & I woke up to police knocking on the door to tell us that my car was hit by the newspaper delivery person. This was hardly the start to my morning that I wanted, especially when we could tell right away that with the amount of damage that existed, the car would not be repaired by insurance. As we discussed what to do next, what really made the situation worse was the prospect of actually looking for a new car. Due to supply chain problems and other factors, prices in the car market, both used and new, were up substantially - it was a really bad time to need a car. This is where the credit union really helped. My dad had just recently financed a new car to replace our old one, and was very familiar with the different ways to get loans. Conveniently, he and I are both credit union members. After visiting many car lots with a lot less cars available compared to normal, we decided we needed to look farther away from home. Once we found a car in Richmond, VA, we were able to secure an Auto Draft loan (or as my dad explained, a blank check loan) to buy the new car I have now. He had to take both a train and Uber well over 150 miles to get the car, but this was not a problem with the pre-approved blank check. Thanks to the credit union, buying a car so far away was no problem at all; without the loan we would have never considered an option that had to take us so far away. Not only did the Auto Draft loan make it easy to shop farther away, it also saved us money. The loan had a fixed low rate; lower than any rate at the car dealer or commercial bank, and also had the flexibility to finance it over a longer time, which made these new payments in our family more fitting for our budget. The accident happened in literally an instant, and because of it my situation changed fast. Because of the loan from the credit union, our family was able to get through it much more easily and quickly than without them, and as a result my summer plans with friends were back on track!
JHFCU CEO Keith O’Neil congratulates winner Connor Rose