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NEWS | Nov. 20, 2007

Debt seminar held to inform, prevent

By Pacifica Chehy staff writer

'Tis the season to be jolly ... until January when the bills from holiday shopping start rolling in. 

The Airman and Family Readiness Center in conjunction with the Andrews Federal Credit Union held "Money Mondays," a 90-minute lunchtime seminar on Monday.
This month's topic of money management was Plastic Surgery: Repairing Your Credit and Starting Fresh, a briefing designed for military members and their families who have had problems with their credit history. 

This workshop covered credit reports and credit scores, discussed how to improve credit and dispute errors on reports, reviewed ways to reduce debt and control spending urges, and discussed ways to keep spending down during the holiday season. This seminar supported recent efforts by the Department of Defense that link financial readiness to mission readiness. 

"This seminar was important to the Andrews community because a large debt load can affect your job and, in the long run, what your career options are going to be," said Suzanne Curren, Andrews Federal Credit Union, director of Member Education. "A lot of times, people don't track their income and don't know what they're spending in a particular area. We went over developing a spending plan, ways to control spending urges and paying down debt - areas that are especially tough during this time of year."
Ms. Curren said that debt needs to be paid off piece by piece. "People need to look at how debt can logically be paid down. Just the overall experience of having debt is very overwhelming to people. If people take debt in bite-size pieces, it's an easier way to look at reducing debt." 

People need to be aware of get-it-fixed quick schemes. "At the seminar we reviewed how some of the credit repair places are scams and some places even encourage people to get new social security numbers and that's illegal," said Ms. Curren. 

A 2006 Associated Press review revealed thousands of U.S. troops are banned from overseas duty because of their personal financial debt and those numbers are climbing. Troops with these financial issues are seen as a security risk. As a result, their clearances are revoked out of concern that these financially-strapped troops might be tempted to sell secrets or equipment to the enemy. Last month, the Department of Defense implemented a new regulation that protects service members and their families from high-cost, short-term loans. According to the Oct. 1 DoD news release, "The regulation limits the fees and interest that creditors can charge on three specific types of loans: payday loans, vehicle title loans, and tax refund anticipation loans. These three products were targeted because they have high interest rates, coupled with short payback terms." The DoD news release further detailed that "the financial stress service members and their families suffer in turn causes a decline in military readiness." The new regulation is "part of wide-ranging DoD efforts to increase 'financial literacy' among servicemembers and their families." 

In addition to services available through the Airman and Family Readiness Center, a service member's chain of command, legal assistance office or military aid society, the DoD offers several online resources to service members and their families including Military OneSOURCE, which offers free, confidential financial planning. Counselors are available toll-free at any time at (800) 342-9647; Military HOMEFRONT at http://www.militaryhomefront.dod.mil, which offers reliable quality of life information to help servicemembers and their families, leaders and service providers. See the 'Personal Finance' section of the website. The DoD also recommends the Armed Forces Legal Assistance Services Locator at http://legalassistance.law.af.mil which provides easy access to the nearest legal assistance office. There are also several interactive, online tools available at www.andrewsfcu.org/education available to members and non-members. 

For more information regarding the next Money Matters seminar, please call Pamela Naylor, Airman and Family Readiness Center community readiness consultant, at 301-981-5623.