Military pay day loans not necessary as troops will still get paid

Congress has gotten its act together and approved the federal budget for fiscal year 2011. If it had not been passed or another emergency measure made, there would have been a government shutdown. Among the concerns concerning the shutdown, military service personnel would have to work without being paid and could have possibly had to turn to payday cash advance loans to keep the bills paid. The next quibble in government waits, though the federal shutdown was thankfully avoided.

How military personnel would have been effect

For Fiscal Year 2011, Congress upheld a bill. There was lots of stress about a government shutdown during all of this. Thankfully, the shutdown was averted, however it was well known that Congress would have continued to receive their pay while thousands of government employees would have gone on a forced furlough. Thousands more would have been forced to work without pay. Members of the military, for instance, wouldn’t be paid for their work during a shutdown. MSNBC states that military families may have had a really hard time though with this shutdown, especially since service personnel are not allowed to get subprime credit goods for instance payday advance.

Military personnel salaries

Nearly three of every four individuals in the armed services are in the six lowest ranks and are paid $31,000 a year or less. Mean earnings in the United States was estimated at $44,901 while median earnings were at $36,587, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Military personal are making less than the average person no matter which scale you take. Service families tend to have debt issues, the Washington Post reported a 2008 Department of Defense survey saying. There are also issues with bankruptcy as shown in a 2004 study the Government Accountability Office did. It showed that bankruptcy was filed by 1.2 percent of military members that are on active duty. Last year, over 1.5 million people filed bankruptcy, which when compared to the U.S. population is only 0.5 percent.

Dire straits for those in harm’s way

The people who elect to serve this country do not get rewarded much for their efforts. There are also incentives to not go into debt; service members can lose their security clearance if they fall into unmanageable debts. Granted, had the shutdown occurred, there would have been options for a lot of people. The Naval Federal Member Bank offered low interest personal loans to members in case of a shutdown, like other credit unions and banks for federal employees have done in previous shutdowns.

Articles cited

MSNBC

msnbc.msn.com/id/42559366/ns/business-your_retirement/?gt1=43001

Washington Post

washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/military-pay-faces-uncertain-future-troubling-for-financially-strapped-families/2011/04/08/AFHV311C_blog.html

Bureau of Labor Statistics

bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/nctb1346.pdf

U.S. Courts

uscourts.gov/uscourts/Statistics/BankruptcyStatistics/BankruptcyFilings/2010/0310_f2.pdf

Government Accountability Office

gao.gov/new.items/d04465r.pdf

Government Accountability Office

gao.gov/new.items/d04465r.pdf