Thanks for serving...:). Always respected you guys...
In the Navy, if you weren’t married, you weren’t allowed to get the food allowance instead of a chow hall pass until you were E-4. Well, when I got to E4, I just couldn’t resist buying some damn thing for my first car I ever bought, and...came to grief on the rocks of having no chow hall pass and being broke!
I know. Completely stupid. But...I always had to learn some things the hard way.
When I got out, I went to college using the GI Bill (I was one of the LAST ones to get the old style way back when) and my folks let me live at home. I went to a State College, and always had a job working nights and weekends...so I was never completely broke, but never rich, either!
I credit my wife for teaching me how to save. I could do it, but...it was never easy for me. Once I married her, it became MUCH easier...:)
Doesn't sound like a lot today but back then, it was about enough to pay the tuition at a typical State College for four years.
Well you could only use that $8,100 over four years so I took my lump sum of $2,700 in cash and used it for a Technical School that I took at night while I worked during the day. Was a good decision. Got my certificate in Electronics and Basic Computing and that got me a foot in the door in the high tech industry just as it was starting to take off back in the mid 1980s.