Financial Fitness
The importance of financial fitness
to the United States Marine Corps’ Mission

A Final Report

Prepared for and Funded by:
The United States Marine Corps
In cooperation with
Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service,
United States Department of Agriculture

Prepared by:
The Financial Fitness Evaluation Team
University of California, Riverside
Karen P. Varcoe, Ph.D., Project Director
August, 2000

Findings:

Owning New Cars. Buying a new car as soon as possible after reaching the first duty station is number one on the typical young Marine’s list and also numbered first on the list of top financial problems at many of the state-side installations in our sample.

Car dealers and lending institutions are in unintentional collusion to make Marines buy new cars instead of more affordable used ones: the car dealers entice the Marine to buy on credit with little or no down payment and the lending institutions, as one staff NCO explained, are unwilling to give loans for used cars except over the long term at high rates of interest. "And the guy’s going to be leaving before that. Or they can’t afford the short-term loans the banks and credit unions will give them for used cars." A great many young Marines begin their careers by shouldering thousands of dollars worth of debt in this way.

Conclusions:

We found widespread agreement that when Marines have pressing financial problems, their performance in the field can be significantly compromised, even to the point of endangering themselves, their unit, and the mission itself.

Buying cars causes more problems than any other single financial factor.

Enlisted Marines simply do not receive sufficient pay to manage their households under particular circumstances (deployment, certain locations) and are virtually driven to operating on credit.

 

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