I leave for Basic next week as a Nuc.

Since I will be in school for so long would it be best to keep my car, or should I get rid of it ASAP.

couple of questions come to mind. Is your home near Nuke School? Is the car paid for?

But me personally I'd ditch it, and then use my signing bonus to get a new one.

a couple hundred miles, I owe about 2k on it.

I got sum1 who want to finish the payments.

its an '01 with about 200k ;-P, im thinking ditch

Personally, I would hold on to it. When I joined many moons ago I had a 1972 Oldsmoble Cutless with a 454 4 barrel carb. Dummy me I figured that I wouldn't need it and gave it to my best friend. Boy that was a mistake, anyway with a new car you have a high payment and high car insurance. With a used car no payment and low insurance. Also check the deal with your sign on bonus, which might depend on you finishing nuke school. Remember that the drop out rate for Nuke school is 80%.
Over in San Diego back in the 80s, I was paying $202.00 a month for my car and $199.00 for car insurance. This was because I was under 25 and not married and in the Navy. I had never had a ticket and was driving a little 4 cylinder 4 door. Yes, I got hosed. If you do buy a car do not buy one from a lot by the base. Go home and get one there. Those car dealers outside the base know that you have money and are young. What ever you decide, Good Luck to you.

do what you want but my advice is to ditch since it so many miles
what i've been hearing is that you wont be able to USE it until after phase 1 of nuke school anyway which can be from 6-9 months. now w/ the advanced paygrade and everything taken care of you should be able to easily save 6-9 thousand if there are no other bills. 3k at the most for 6 months of insurance and a nice little down payment. Now after another 5 months you get 1/3 of your bonus (granted you pass) should be about 6k and the process starts all over again

Can't comment on surface nukes but I can for submariners in general.

BUYING a car before reporting to the boat is dumb. Period.
Your signing bonus and even with the E-4 paygrade means you can't afford much better than a Honda civic NEW.(remember add gas, insurance, maintenance when calculating)
You can supplement your signing bonus by SAVING it until after you do your first patrol/deployment/underway.

So you buy a new car at nuke school (and you may not graduate still) and then they ship you to Hawaii. Now you have to deal with shipping the car out there. The Navy pays for that. . .but the car needs to get to Jersey or SanDiego to be loaded on. The Navy WON'T pay for that transit.
Or say you go to a continental port. . .in which case the Navy will reimburse by mileage from nuke school to your duty station. You report on board and go for a 3 month Trident patrol or 6-month fast attack deployment. Said brand new car goes into storage, while you go tax-free during part or all of your trip.
You can save a lot of money in a six month deployment.
Even if you don't go underway right away you will be so busy qualifying watches and fish that you don't get free time to drive your fancy new car anyways.

My advice: keep the beater. . .or just go car-less for a year or two, at least until you know what your final destination will be. Your sea-dad can hook you up with a ride if he actually lets you have some liberty.

1. Phase one of A school is not 6-9 months. try 6 weeks. Makes no sense. The longest of the A schools is 6 months long, how could phase 1 be longer than that? The only way you would be in phase one that long is if you repeatedly got into trouble (not entirely unheard of, either), but if that's the case you're probably going to get thrown out of the program at some point anyway.

WHere do these rumors get started?

2. Don't spend ANY bonus money until you graduate prototype. If you fail out of prototype you have to pay back the initial 1/3 you get from power school.

3. New car is way more expensive, especially once you count in insurance. Take the car up to NY for prototype, and it goes up even more, because insurance rates are so much higher there. YOu really need the car for prototype, but keep the beater for as long as you can, so you can save as much money as possible. Having a car in charleston is nice, but not like you'll use it THAT much in A-school and power school (less of a chance it will break down anyway). Too much time will be sent at the school studying, even on weekends (mandatory study time sunday night)

i was actually talking about phase 1 of Nuke school and here's my calculation
Basic 2 months
A school 3-6 months
phase 1: 1 month
comes out to about 6-9 months before you can use again i stress USE. now getting a BRAND NEW car may seem futile since Brandolf is correct. But you may want something more dependable and w/ fewer miles on it. something that can actually sit for a while to have you come back to w/o putting more money into it to get it up and running again.
Whether it be a brand new car or a used you can do better than a Honda Civic (if you want) One can afford a civic on full time minimum wage w/ bills.
I have thought about it long and hard and personally thinking about getting a brand new car not just for me but for family to ride when i'm deployed
Aldo during those 9 months build your credit so you can get better finance offers especially thru NFCU.
just my 2 cents

Voice of experience here you can buy and use a car within 6 weeks of arriving at Aschool, assuming you don't get into trouble. 2 months at boot plus 6 weeks is less than four months before being allowed to use a car. Thank you, I know what I am talking about. Been there, done that, wrote the book. Phases apply based on when you arrive, not off nuke school (your calculation assumes phase one ends in power school, which is beyond incorrect). Do you even know what the phases are?

Financing is not the problem, its the insurance. Trust me, I have seen more than one student get into trouble forgetting about insurance rates in high risk areas (like near bases).

I stand by my statement. The temptation to get a car will com AS SOON AS you are allowed to use one, and the longer you wait the better it is. If you can financially pplan and buy a car with a large down payment, go for it, but the average junior sailor will spend their money without regards to saving any of it, and bonus money in power school should not be tapped into until graduation from prototype, lest you fail out (or otherwise leave the program) and have to pay it back

yeah just saying it's better to wait since you will be studying. and then have a curfew until phase 3. that is why i stressed use. if you're in class and then studying (for those that need to) when are you going to drive.

one may want to get thru "a" school before getting a car since then goes to E-4 (approximately 100 dollars increase).
sorry for confusion about the phases not really saying phase 1 is a phase in nps but just the first part after you get comfortable.(study habits in order, may not have many mandatory study hours and therefore have more time to use it.)


and if insurance is too high, especially for under 25 which you have to be to even be in nuke, saving on financing should help on the other end. and better credit lowers insurance rates even though not significantly but save money where you can

now we agree on the temptation. that is why i am saying wait 6-9 months after shipping when you actually get to NPS.

but to each his own. just take the advice that suits you and hits home. work out your own thing. just hope you do get thru and everything works out

im not vain ;-P

I have a '01 SC2 with near 200k miles, runs ok i guess, I think I will keep it.

I didnt plan on buying a new car anyway, I was just curious if not having a car was a real pain

quote:

Originally posted by 15960054:
One can afford a civic on full time minimum wage w/ bills.

Which is roughly what you will be making. Minimum Wage.

E-4 under 2 years: 1699.50
Divide by 4 weeks: 424.87 per week.
Assume 5 work days: 84.97 per day.
Assume 8 hours/day: 10.62 per hour.

Thats before the deductions for MGIBill, Fed Taxes, State Taxes, and SGLI

Realistically you will work 10 hours a day and have a duty day thrown in occasionally. In CT Mc'D's employees make more than that.
Granted, in some of the lower cost of living states you will feel like you are living like a king. That typically tempts people who are unexperienced with money to spend it like its going out of style.

So whatever brand of car suits your fancy I highly recommend not buying jack and squat until you pay off your MGIBILL (-100 dollars a month), get sea pay (+100 dollars a month) and make E-4 (+100) or go over 2 years of service (+100)