Military Car Loans for Bad Credit
According to the National Veterans Foundation, military personnel are more likely to suffer from poor credit due to factors intrinsic to military life: overseas deployment, frequent moves, and relatively low pay. Factors like these can lead to credit scores that are low and often misleading.
Military Factors Leading to Weakened Credit:
- Deployment: every soldier deployed on a combat tour knows the hardships of trying to manage finances from overseas. In addition to communication challenges, the distractions of a combat zone or just life in a foreign country can lead to unpaid bills, missed paperwork, and other issues that lead to weakened credit.
- Frequent Moves: creditors often look for 3+ years of time-at-residence when judging loan applicants. Obviously, military life leads to much more frequent, and longer distance, moves from base to base.
- Income: with four years experience, an Army or USMC sergeant makes about $27,000 / year (before combat pay and/or off-base housing stipends). This income falls significantly below the US household average of around $59,000.
Car Loans for Military Personnel with Bad Credit
Fortunately, there are finance companies who specialize in lending to military personnel and their families. Instead of relying solely on the score as reported by the three major credit bureaus, they often taken into account the unique challenges of the military experience to gain a better, and fairer, rating of a soldier’s credit worthiness. This, of course, leads to fairer and more accurate pricing of your auto loan.