GREGG K. KAKESAKO / GKAKESAKO@STARBULLETIN.COM
Debbie Blount and Frank Tomaszewski, two money management specialists at Pearl Harbor, discuss financial planning with two Navy officers.
Sailors get lifeboat
for financesA Pearl Harbor center helps personnel
with money management
and debt matters
Retired Navy Master Chief Petty Officer Frank Tomaszewski easily recalls the numerous businesses and pawnshops that used to thrive outside the gates of the naval bases around the world where he served.
"There was absolutely no one in the military assigned to help us with our finances," said the 30-year Navy veteran. "We were ripped off at times. We lived from pay check to pay check.
"I remember insurance agents combing the bases trying to sell us whole life insurance policies just outside the gate.
"Sometimes you wonder how we survived."
Debbie Blount maintains a candy dish at her office at Pearl Harbor. But instead of brightly colored M&Ms or peanuts, it's a dish that contains nearly five year's worth of shredded credit cards from sailors and their dependents whom she has helped.
"I get them all the time," she said.
Both Tomaszewski and Blount are money management specialists with Pearl Harbor's Fleet and Family Support Center whose jobs are to help Navy personnel and their dependents with financial assistance. Besides budget counseling, the center provides debt liquidation, and money management classes to all Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard personnel and their families stationed here.
The National Consumer Law Center in May released a report which said military personnel are particularly vulnerable to quick cash schemes. That is because many of them don't make much money and are under pressure by their superiors to keep their finances in order.
Many times, the report says, these younger enlisted military members react to unexpected expenses, such as car repairs, by grabbing the first quick fix cash offers, only realizing later that they are barely able to keep up or ahead of loans and end up in a cycle of high-interest loans.
Blount added service members also are attractive targets because "their paychecks come from a stable source -- the U.S. government."
"They are not going to get laid off," she added, "but on the other hand they are young and impulsive. For many of them it's the first time away from home."
Blount said that all sailors below the rank of petty officer second class must take a mandatory two-day money management course after being assigning to the Pearl Harbor Naval Station and Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station in Wahiawa.
"The class even covers the proper way to maintain your check book," Blount said. "We tell them they have to keep up that check register or it will backfire on you."
Besides the basics on savings and investment, the two-day "Million Dollar Sailor Course" teaches the enlisted sailor and their spouses establishing and maintaining credit and understand their credit report, how to create a spending plan, the different types of insurance, how to buy a car and how to be a smart consumer.
Since January 1999, when the center began the two-day course, more than 3,000 sailors and dependents have completed it.
Blount said these young enlisted sailors need to be taught that "they have to make the smart and right decisions. You can't always blame the businesses ... You can't always say the car dealer ripped you off, since you paid for it."
Blount said the sailors are told that they should have the contract they are about to sign reviewed by a legal services officer at Pearl Harbor.
Tomaszewski also said that sailors should be leery of money lenders whose business names sound like they are military affiliated or make pronouncements like " 'specialists in military financing' ... what does that mean?"
Petty Officer Daniel Gaucin, 37, was required to take the two-day course after being assigned to Pearl Harbor recently as a security officer.
"I've been in the Navy 17 and a half years," Gaucin said, "I never had anything like this. I wished I had this type of class when I got out of boot camp ... It would have helped me invest my money much more wisely."
Besides sailors voluntarily seeking financial assistance, the center also deals with those who are required by their commanding officers to get their finances in order.
These can be cases where sailors have bounced checks, are late on their rent payments, failed their security clearances or sometime spousal abuse charges because there is no food in the home, Tomaszewski said.The sailors are placed on the Navy's "power pay program," which was developed by Utah State University, where all their debts are assessed and a payment schedule developed.
"If they just take $100 each month," said Tomaszewski, "and apply to the credit card with the highest balance and interest, they can whittle the debt on five credit cards in 36 to 42 months. That's compared to nine years if they were just to pay the minimum balance."
