No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.
That’s from the second letter Paul wrote to Timothy: 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 4. Nice to know that First Command, purveyor of life insurance to our men and women in uniform since 1958, and now (thanks to deregulation) a full-service bank that understands the challenges of the military lifestyle, has taken Scripture to heart. Check out the terms of a basic checking account where a private could stash her paycheck:
First Checking Account
- A basic transaction account with no minimum balance requirement.
- Non-interest bearing.
- Avoid the service charge by having their full pay direct deposited into their First Account.
- May write an unlimited number of checks; however, only the first 10 per statement cycle are free. Subsequent checks are $0.50 each.
- First 3 ATM withdrawals per statement cycle incur no charge from First Command Bank; subsequent withdrawals are $1.50 each. (May be subject to additional charge by ATM owner.)
- ATM Rebates limited to 3 transactions. See ATM card details for more information.
- Overdraft protection of $250 is automatically assigned.
- Opening deposit—$25.00
- Monthly service charge—$3.00 any month full pay is not direct deposited.
That’d be all of her paycheck, mind. Directly deposited. But hey: that’s pretty much standard issue for a cheap-ass, ground-level, screw the plebes who aren’t paying attention checking account; college students get to sign up for them every day. Nah, skimble has the goods on First Command’s real money-maker:
If you know anything about mutual funds, you may be familiar with the load, or sales charge, that you must pay for investing in the fund. Two to eight-and-a-half percent is a range of fairly common initial “front-end” loads. But military personnel are being slapped with loads of fifty percent on their savings for retirement…
Well, hey. It’s a variation on cheap-labor conservativism: if you find you can’t cut the rate you pay for labor when all is said and done, you can at least let a crony skim some of the fat. Right?
Credit where credit is due: when a veteran gets soaked by one of those publish-your-own-book deals, First Command will let him place a a Bedside Reading notice. To help move some units.
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Wednesday Reading
Talk Left pointed us to Conclusive Evidence of Dave Cullen's Existence, who indicates that the Dean rally in New York may have topped the attendance at yesterday's American Idol open call which brought in 12,000. Additionally, an article about why a ga...
The occasional news about soldiers' families who would dare to question Rumsfeld's choices in matters such as troop rotation makes me yearn for a real "Support Our Troops" movement (as opposed to the "Support Our Damn-Fool President" movement).
A broad "Support Our Troops" movement would make short work of crap like First Command. The bigger challenge would be to support the troops by not sending them unnecessarily into harm's way.
Meanwhile I try to decide whether to start selling bumperstickers (at cost) which would say:
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
Send Rumsfeld to Baghdad