The Marine Corps places a very heavy load of responsibility on the first termers. In most cases, this is their first taste of being away from family, home, and friends for an extended period. The "pogue" Marine often works 60+ hrs a week, and those who go to the field spend weeks at a time there. The deployment tempo is rather high, and it is not uncommon for a det to be out 6 to 12 weeks. Work ups for 6 month deployments start 12 months before the deployment comences, so the Marine can expect to be away from the spouse about 6 of those 12 months. And then there is also the 1 year unaccompanied tour to Japan. Combine all of this time away from the spouse and kids with the very low pay and you as the leader are left with a Marine who spends a large percentage of their time worrying about how they are going to pay the bills, buy enough food and clothes, keep the clunker running, get the spouse/kids to the doctor for their 0900 appointment when the Marine has to report at 0445 for unit PT and they only have one vehicle...the list is endless. The amount of time these Marines spent away from work was tremendous and the burden they placed on their fellow Marines to take up the slack was very great indeed.
In 1997, The SNCO's and Officers at MCAS New River went to the Air Station Gym and listend to the CMC. Gen. Krulak spent 40 min talking about first term non EAS attrition. At that time 1 out of 3 first term Marines were not successfully completing the entire term of their enlistment. Of course there were many reasons, but the data showed the vast majority of those separations from service was directly related to marriage/kids/money/ops tempo. In a nutshell, I could expect to loose 1/3 of my junior Marines before the ship left the dock or the first round was fired in anger. The mission still had to be completed though, so everybody had to pull the extra weight.
The Marine Corps tried to get new enlistees to sign an agreement that they would remain single for the first 4 years of service or until they reached Corporal, but the media and the "Mother's of America" got to the legislators and demanded "fairness" instead of "readiness" and the Marine Corps dropped the idea.
I stayed single for my first enlistment. And even as a NCO over 4yrs TIS, with no kids and a working wife, there were times when we had more month then paycheck. A Pvt/PFC/LCpl under 2yrs TIS makes a lot less money, but has the same ability to generate the bills.
The single Marine living in the barracks has it made. They can blow every penny of their check and not worry about food, shelter, medical or dental. Or they can save every penny. A very few "Barracks Rat's" do save a bunch of cash, and a few provide "loans 'til payday" for a tidy bit of interest.