Commentary>>Airmen not immune to current financial slump

By Senior Master Sgt. Gregg Kollbaum
53rd Airlift Squadron superintendent

I am sure you haven’t missed the financial situation the country is in right now. This is a vast problem and Airmen are not exempt from it. If you haven’t already seen firsthand hardships, consider the following situation.

Does anyone still go inside to pay for gas? I recently heard a story that a person had to go into a gas station to prepay before pumping gas. That seemed almost unheard of with all of the plastic in the world today. This person had given in to the lure of card offers. She had made some bad choices and accumulated massive debt. Paying for gas was the beginning of her issues. She dealt with a house being repossessed in addition to difficulty with buying a car and paying day to day bills. Now, she can’t get credit for big purchases and she can’t trust herself to use anything but cash. She ended up in a difficult situation. Her mismanagement of finances and failure to plan had been devastating to her. Frustrations overcame her as credit requests were denied or high interest rates were offered because her credit score had deteriorated.

Many things are based on the credit score. Anything from getting an apartment to buying insurance is determined by that score. The worse the score, the more it will cost you to do the things you want to do. Credit building is a long term process. It is difficult to establish but easy to destroy. Failing to pay debts or late payments quickly erode the rating and make financial management difficult.

Airmen don’t have to go through this experience. Though we aren’t paid a lot of money, we do have the resources to manage what we do get paid. In March, the Department of Defense sponsored the Military Saves campaign. The campaign brought to light the tremendous base and community resources we have to teach money management techniques. I hope everyone had a chance to participate and learn during that week but we aren’t done. Budget planning, credit buying, and money saving courses are constantly available to us and we need to utilize them. Effective planning now will keep you paying at the pump and keep us all focused on the mission.