Caila Holm, LMSW的动态

Transcript

Hey everyone, We recently had to buy a new car because as you've probably seen in a recent video, I am very pregnant and we outgrew my CRV, which I'm going to miss so much. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to do a video about what services and programs and benefits might be available to service members in regards to the purchase of a new vehicle. The short answer is not a lot. The first thing that comes to mind to me are the financial readiness services available through like your Military Family Readiness Center or your marine and family program, so on and so forth. They have financial advisors there who can advise you on the process of buying a car, let you know what is and is not a good APR, and some places even have a consumer affairs. It might be a separate office who can help with that too. The second thing that comes to mind? Is that some installations have a blacklist of local businesses who might have predatory practices toward military members. There have been stories about service members going to a dealership and getting an incredibly high APR. That's just outrageous. So you can check that list and see if any of the places you're planning on going are on that list, and then obviously avoid them. And the third thing that comes to mind is Scara. Which stands for the Service Member Civil Relief Act. SCARA does a lot for military members. I could do like a dozen videos about all the things it does. It's federal legislation that essentially protects service members. One of the things that SCARRA entitle service members to is to break a lease. For example, if the service member has to deploy, it can break a lease on their vehicle and return it to the bank. Or for example, if you are stationed in, I don't know, North Carolina and you get orders to Alaska. You have to somehow get both vehicles to Alaska, and the military may only ship once. SCARA would allow the service number to terminate the lease on one of those vehicles so that they don't have to take responsibility for it anymore and they can buy a new one once they're up in Alaska penalty free. You can also check local laws and regulations that might give you a break on wheel tax or car titling or registration fees. That's going to be handled on a state by state, county by county. City by city basis. So that's another thing you can do to research prior to buying a new vehicle as a service member. And the last thing you can do is always ask when you go to buy a vehicle, do you have a military discount? It might not be a lot, it might be 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, but hey, that's something. So you can always ask. It doesn't hurt to ask. I'm sure there's more. So if you have any other ideas about how active duty service members can get assistance when purchasing a vehicle, go ahead and drop it in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.