As a junior enlisted soldier, I have to endure the occasional class on managing my finances. As it is with many briefings in the Army, most of it does not apply to me. I do not have a wife and kids, and since that's the most complex part of Army bureaucracy, all the questions asked have no bearing on my personal situation.
But I understand why the Army has to do this. My peers are not exactly the best with money. There's the guy who lost like $300 gambling in week 1 of the NFL this season because "well I'll win at least some of the games" and proceeded to choose like 6 losers. There's also the guy who came back from block leave, got all his bags stolen at the airport (including all his uniforms), and had to borrow various pieces of uniform from other people until the next payday because "yeah when I was at home I just went bowling everyday with my girlfriend and my old friends from high school, and yeah I paid for everyone every day for 2 weeks." Let's see - you don't need to buy a television/stereo/XBOX from the store, because if you wait until 3 days before payday (especially if it's say, Friday, and payday falls on a Monday), someone will be desperate to unload his own stuff at a low price. And I won't even start with the number of E-3's who make $1534.20/month and have car payments of $800/month plus insurance plus gasoline. You shouldn't buy a car whose price is more than your annual income. Especially if it's a Hummer H1, which is pretty much the same vehicle that you have to drive around all the time at work. Never while I was sitting in a Humvee did I ever say to myself, "You know, these are nice to drive and maintain. I think I'm going to pay $50k for a used one." Yeah, most of my peers spend 100% of their disposable income on cars, electronics, firearms (that's a big one), and alcohol. Which is fine. It's not like I have a bunch of savings, either. But it's still sad to see people being dumb with their money - like the guy who got ripped off buying something on ebay for $100 and not getting anything in return, THEN being too lazy to get his money back or even reporting the dishonest seller, because "I guess I don't really need the money that much." Idiots.
Then there are the payday lenders you see off post. If you are relying on interest rates of over 100% to finance your expenses, something is seriously wrong. You're better off getting a credit card with a comparatively cheap APR of 25%.
Of course there are the opportunists who prey on these 18-21 year old soldiers. There's the guy upstairs who charges $20/month for access to his wireless router, and 4 people have taken him up on it. Internet plans around here start at $40/month. There are the aforementioned payday lenders and pawn shops near the front gate of the installation. Then there's the sleazy 21 year old who charges the underage guys just enough to subsidize the beer that he's buying for himself. Maybe I'm one of the opportunists, too - I bought all my camping gear from a friend at like 50% of the retail price, since he wanted to upgrade to nicer stuff.
But my point isn't that young soldiers are stupid. The point is that the Army spends all this time and money putting together presentations and classes on finance, and yet we still do ridiculously foolish things. I don't think they're working. I spent $3k last year on photography equipment.
