May 22, 2009 
By Jacey Eckhart
My husband’s commanding officer drove a Mercedes SL convertible. OK, it wasn’t exactly fresh off the lot, not even on an 06’s salary. But it was a sweet ride just the same. The fact that the CO himself looked like Tom-Cruise-circa-Top-Gun was a really good thing, too. The whole package meant that Brad could see himself behind the wheel of a Mercedes later in his career. It meant I could see myself making out with some hot old guy in a uniform. Gave a girl cause to hope.
That is, I thought it gave a girl cause to hope. Instead, I just found out that old man’s car is probably the source of my husband’s mega car note. That old man’s car (or something just like it) could be the source of your military family’s overspending, too.
This week I got to talking to Ronald T. Wilcox author of "Whatever Happened to Thrift: Why Americans Don’t Save and What to Do About It." Wilcox is a Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. He also consults with Navy Federal.
According to Wilcox, we military folks may have an extra niggle when it comes to the way we spend our money. Like every other American, we each have what marketers call a “reference group”. This is the group of people who give us spoken and unspoken messages about the kind of goods that are appropriate for us to consume. Reference groups are the things that make your little girl want her birthday party at Build-A-Bear workshop just like the rest of the first grade. Reference groups are the things that make your teen ashamed of his cheezmo cell phone. Reference groups make you really want to mow the lawn.
Which is fine. But it turns out that we military folks might be a little more susceptible to our reference group than our civilian counterparts. Like civilians, our reference groups are made up of our siblings, our neighbors, our friends. Unlike civilians, however, we also have a reference group made up of every person in the unit, every sailor on the ship, every individual in a military uniform in the country.
“The key is that if my next door neighbor buys something expensive, there is always some uncertainty about sources of income,” explained Wilcox. “But in the military, everybody knows down to the dollar how much you are bringing in. That desire to have what someone just like you has increased.”
That means that every time you or your service member walks from E6 and below parking, through the chief’s lot, past the line of Suzukis, Yamahas and…is that a 2009 Moriwaki MD250H?? Then through the officer’s lot and the CO’s parking spot, his or her brain has picked up thousands of messages about what kind of vehicle is appropriate for their rank. The message gets picked up twice a day, every day—whether you can afford it or not.
“When someone (at your rank or below) consumes something like a new sport motorcycle. It seems eminently reasonable that you should get one too,” Wilcox said.
What makes this even more costly to those of us in the military is that we can’t even rely on our brains to pick up the whole message. Wilcox points out that we notice the things we like more than things that are not interesting to us. Our brains only like to remember the new BMW, the red convertible, the megatruck, the sexy sportsbike. Our brains take no notice of the fleet of 89’ Honda Accords with the rusted tail pipes and missing fenders. Our brains are blind to minivans.
You would think that just knowing our susceptibility to the message of our military reference group would make each of us more cautious about our spending. More careful. More logical. More skeptical. Probably not.
“I don’t think you are going to combat it. I don’t think peoples brains are gonna change. Education is held out as panacea, but I don’t think it is going to change this,” said Wilcox. “You and I are still going to have trouble.”
But trouble is something we military folks can deal with. We’re used to it. We adapt. We overcome. So I hope that if you are one of those chicks married to a thrill seeker who just has to have that sportbike because “everyone” who just came back from Iraq bought one, I hope I’ll see you at the base actually counting brands and bikes. I hope you’ll see me there, too. I’ll be making a survey of the actual numbers of convertibles in the parking lot…and the number of hot old guys still in uniform who look anything like Tom Cruise.