The must-read daily newsletter of the American Bankruptcy Institute yesterday linked to this extraordinary piece about debt among the military (link). Takeaway point: "The number of U.S. troops barred from overseas duty because of deep personal debt has climbed substantially in recent years...." [The linked account credits the Associated Press, but I never saw it in any general news source].
The index here is the security clearance. Apparently if the service person has too much debt, he loses his clearance--and the number of clearances revoked for financial reasons grew more than nine times between 2002 to 2005--from 284 to 2,654 (and apparently still climbing).
Apparently if you lose your security clearance, you may lose your chance to go overseas. As Buce's Wichita bureau points out, there's a rich irony here: as a device for getting out of overseas service, buying a new Hummer sure beats shooting yourself in the foot.
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>>As Buce's Wichita bureau points out, there's a rich irony here: as a device for getting out of overseas service, buying a new Hummer sure beats shooting yourself in the foot.<<
But Catch-22: You can't get enough credit to buy a Hummer in the first place if you're a rifle-toting grunt who otherwise works as a traffic cop or a postal employee. Nor can you get up the scratch to pay in full.
Exception: Very rich people who join the military for resume points, but who then transfer money to trusted family members except for the down payment on the hummer.
This enables them to go broke anyway (at least on paper) and avoid Bagdad, while insisting they served as infantry lieutenants during the Iraq war.
Somewhere in a Hummer showroom, a George W. Bush of the future is kicking tires this very moment.
SGH and I both separately listened to Elizabeth Warren on Fresh Air last week. He was struck by her insight when Terry Gross asked her if she looked for the credit card with the best rate: Warren said something along the lines of, "Heck no, even I can't puzzle out the actual rate they are offering and anyway they can change it any time without notice. I just don't carry a balance." This struck SGH as sound financial advice.
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