New Marine on boot leave. Needs financial advice

[DonDuble]

Greetings,

I graduated from Parris Island on April 8th and am now on boot leave. Before entering into the Marine Corp I foolishly accured a very substantial amount of debt. Fortunately, now that I have made my transition from civilian I finally have some money in the bank and a reliable income which allows me the opportunity to finally start settling my debts. I asked both my SDI and my recruiter for advice on what services that are available to Marines that can help me set up a payment plan, but I am still not sure who to call. Can anyone here help me out? I would love to start this process ASAP so I don't have to worry about it while at ITB.

Thanks,
PFC Porter

[BGW]

There are services out their to help out Marines with these kind of situations but it will be very difficult for you to aquire them at this moment. Chances are you are going to have to wait til you get to your unit and then start talking to your chain of command to see what services you can talk to.

Going to ITB I dont know if you will have any opportunity to handle this. Your going to have to talk to whoever you owe money and see if you can work something out for the next couple of months until you reach your unit.

[Tennessee Top]

PFC Porter,

Good luck getting your finances squared away.

In the future, please spell Marine Corps correctly...it's very embarrassing when a Marine can't even get it right. And, we wonder why people in the other services call us dumb! Let's try not to prove them right OK?

[MD8724]

You can get, or at least apply for, a loan from Navy Fed to pay off your debts to others, and Navy Fed will take the new payments out of your paycheck automatically if you have them setup as your bank. Same with Navy/Marine Relief. That later may give you extremely low to no interest rates. One thing to watch with that though, is how much your payments will be. Sometimes it's better to use those services to combine just a few of your debts as opposed to all of them.

[Old Marine]

When you get to you get to your next command and if they start getting letters of indebtness from you crediters you will be in deep do-do. The Corps always frowned on those type of letters. Good luck to you.

[GSKI2035]

I would definatly tell you to look into the SCRA (Servicemembers Civil Relief Act) due to the fact you accrued the debt before you joined the Marine Corp. Basicly creditors have to drop the interest rate to 6% retroactivley from the time you joined. I would just google SCRA for more information/ how to apply it to you debts.