The economic basis of credit unions - finances of a household. The main objective of the credit union - to ensure financial stability of a household, to ensure the priority of their shareholders' financial interests. Credit unions also differ from the traditional consumer cooperatives. Contributions from of shareholders in credit unions in no way can be considered as borrowed funds, they come from the shareholders and for the shareholders and can not be used to provide services to third parties. U.S. credit unions have another significant difference from the credit cooperatives of farmers: the first have major proportion of short-term loans, the second - long and mostly in real estate. On the consumer credit market in the U.S. credit unions are on the third place after the commercial banks and finance companies and are ahead of savings institutions, not taking into account the loans on real estate. A credit union on its own initiative order is created by citizens (individuals) to solve their financial problems that they could not solve in other financial institutions.