nzachman
Yeah, well. The Dude abides.
Military Star Card?
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sTUPID qUESTIONS aBOUT ocs
- Thread starter TheBubba
- Start date
Military Star Card?
NYYanks
Tweaking off my coffee
Star card gives you 10% off of your first purchase. The general train of thought is to open up a card and use it for the purchase. You should save yerself somewhere in the ballpark of $200 doing that. Just pay it off (which you should have the money for) last time I checked (which was awhile ago), the APR is around 11% for the card
Sticking with the Dave Ramsey way of living, huh? Good for you. Keep it that way. You'll have less headaches later in life.
Maybe there is a way to open the account, pay for the uniforms, then close it immediately after? Or just cut the thing up after you buy uniforms? You'll have to read the fine print on the card application WRT early termination. Your FICO score may take a little bit of a hit for closing it. I'm not an expert on these things.
Or, just eat the $200 and don't get another credit card.
Good call on the USAA thing, too. Good company. I won't go into the USAA v. Navy Fed argument, but I have been pleased with USAA during and after my time in the Navy.
If you have no debt going into OCS, i.e. no monthly payments to make, I'd just pay if off with the money you make while there and skip the star card. You're not going to be buying much except uniform stuff, and maybe a pizza or two the last two weeks.
If you're like me and have tons of student loan debt, a car payment, insurance, etc, and loose money at OCS, yeah, get either the USAA commissioning loan, the star card, or both.
If you're like me and have tons of student loan debt, a car payment, insurance, etc, and loose money at OCS, yeah, get either the USAA commissioning loan, the star card, or both.
gtwhitegold
New Member
It is better for you credit score to just leave the account open even if you do not maintain a balance on the card. When you apply for new credit, one of the things that they look at is the percentage of use of your revolving credit lines such as credit cards.
Glad to hear my logic is headed in the right direction. Hurting my score by closing a card is exactly what I would like to avoid as I don't so much have bad credit but just very little credit. So it could be a big hit.
Yeah, I think that's what I'll do - just take the hit and pay it outright, not worry about the card.
I thought inactive cards shut themselves down after 12 months or something and will still incur the closing credit ding.
Afterburner209
Good muster guys.
I have personal experience with this. I had about six credit cards out in my name, but only used one or two of them. One day logic told me that I should close the ones I don't use to boost my credit because i would have less credit in my name. Well long story short, closing the accounts I didn't really use actually dropped my credit score big time that I have just about recovered from. Stupid as F*ck but that's the way they operate. I monitor my credit now with USAA and I don't close credit cards, I put them in a box and forget about it.
Afterburner209
Good muster guys.
I think you might be right but another thing they look at is length of the open account, so 12 (plus payback time) months is much better than opening and closing within a couple. Also what gtwhitegold said, they look at your available credit (good or bad thing because if you have too much they say you don't need anymore) and how much of it you are using.
usnavytron
New Member
So is there an initial uniform allowance???? if so how much? as of now i have almost half the items i need for OCS (Active Duty), trying to plan for it if you know what i mean. i have a wife and three kids so $2500 is alot of money for us, on a good note just got my clothing money ($500 this year) so i will buy some more cammies.
R/
tron
R/
tron
Travis2688
New Member
Does where you finish in your OCS class carry over to API or anything like that? Or does everyone start on an equal playing field after OCS?
Nope. Nobody will ever know - no records are kept that follow you around. The only difference is your lineal number - but that's not important for rankings or anything.
Travis2688
New Member
this might be a really stupid question (hence the name of the thread), but what is a 'lineal number'?
Not stupid at all.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but I believe it's only used for promotion boards. It gives you seniority within your rank. So the guy who was commissioned in June has a lower number than the guy who commissioned in July. Then when there are promotion boards, they give the lineal numbers of the people who are eligible. And for OCS, the guy who graduates first gets the first number for the class followed by the #2 graduate.
Also used for SORTS reports (you don't wanna know what those are!!).
Per my first LES, I got $1358 for "Initial Clothing" the first month I was in. Not sure if being a prior effects that or not. On a plus note, you'll continue to get what you make now, or E-5 Pay (whichever is greater), plus BAH, BAS, Sea Pay, etc that you earned as enlisted. Single non priors get jack except base pay.