Beartooth NBC: Financial challenges for service men and women
Senator Jon Tester, Attorney General Steve Bullock and Holly Petreaus of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau held a roundtable event at Fort Harrison on Tuesday to talk to service men and women about financial challenges they and their families face.
Petreaus is a lifetime military family member who works to protect members of the military from predatory lenders and financial scams. She says the younger military members have more financial problems because of managing money they receive when they join the military, or they have more debt coming out of school. She says teaching financial literacy and keeping a strict budget while on deployment would help service people in the long run.
“There’s no doubt about it, we even see the wounded service members who come back. They get a large amount of money from what’s called traumatic serviced group members life insurance and for many of them that money-which can be as much as $100,000-is gone within a year and it’s gone on things like cars and electronics,” says Holly Patreaus.
