I am set to ship to Navy OCS in February. Currently in a crappy employment/financial situation and i’m looking for advice on the best route to take at the moment as i approach/am in OCS. Long story short due to unexpected changes at my work i’ve been left with hardly any income for the past month and likely until i ship out. I’ve had no choice but to use credit cards and spend as little as possible. I had around 5k in CC debt prior but by the time i ship out i assume it’ll be closer to 10. I have no car payment or student loan debt. My debts as a whole is between 2 credit cards.
I’m aware this is an extremely unideal situation but it’s the one i’m stuck with at the moment and am basically just trying to do damage control and survive until i ship. As far as recommendations, i’ve seen new officers qualify for the 25k career starter loan at low interest , would it be best to hold off until graduation and use that to pay off my Debt?
Any thoughts/ideas are appreciated.
Advice needed (prior to OCS shipping)
byu/PsychologicalSale137 inMilitaryFinance
Posted by PsychologicalSale137
1 Comment
5k/ 10k debt ain’t too bad man. Don’t sweat it too much, just try to avoid paying crazy interest on it if you can.
Years ago I did the starter loan at a very low interest rate (can’t remember, maybe 1%) and I remember paying it off early as a LT. I think for your situation it’s ideal. You need to have a safety fund even with mil paycheck (broke car etc). The sooner you can get the debt paid off (whenever you qualify for the starter loan) the better, but you can do min payments to avoid interest, which is probably best for your situation as you still gotta pay for basic stuff to live
Focus more on OCS and doing well there, then doing well at your job. You’ll have all sorts of opportunities to make more money in the service (TDY, deployments, etc).
One thing is when you sign up for tsp it goes into g fund so make sure you go into my pay and allocate to what you want. Many people contributed to tsp only to realize years later it was all in G fund and basically did nothing there.
Really though don’t sweat the little bit of debt you have. You have a long runway ahead of you to make good financial decisions, save a lot, and easily overcome the debt in short order. Congrats on making it to OCS!