After thinking about it for a moment I was not surprised to read in Frank J. Diekmann's column about our Apex, N.C. membership in his Oct. 2nd piece, "What Do Consumers Want? What's Ahead? Google Knows" and find that we are "googling" for "credit card debt" quite a bit! In fact, I'll bet folks in Apex tend to "google" for everything a bit more than the average community. Still, it is real nice to know that we are on the map for something (anything!) other than the huge fire we experienced last month.
We here in Apex, "The Peak of Good Living"-our claim to fame for being at the highest point on the Seaboard Coastline railroad-are ready to move on to something new.
All in good fun, let me defend our Apex members for a moment. Mr. Diekmann's article made me stop and try to think of alternative reasons why so many folks in Apex, N.C., a fairly affluent zip code, would be searching out information about credit card debt. Sure, we have a little credit card debt, but I rarely see situations that are all that bad. I would like to think that we lead the country because we here in Apex are pretty savvy and always looking for the best deals! Actually, I would bet that this is at least partially true. Folks in Apex are probably just trying to locate a better credit card deal.
From the SECU perspective, our Apex office has delinquency and charge-off ratios to die for! Our delinquency and charge-off ratios are among the lowest in the industry. So, I do not think we are on the edge of a cliff here. One consideration is that Apex is only about 15 miles from one of the largest technical employment centers in the country-Research Triangle Park-where the average worker probably has elementary school children with better computer skills than I have. These folks use computers, Google, and on-line banking, more than the average. So, you might find that Apex residents tend to Google many topics more than average. This is an interesting question.
Chris Martin
State Employees' Credit Union,
Apex, N.C.
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