Million dollar Sailor – The complete financial picture

Debbie Blunt, Janice Crawley and Graziella Panetta

Accredited Financial Counselors, Warfighter and Family Services

Warfighter and Family Services (WFS), formerly Fleet and Family Support Center, offers a two-day course, Million Dollar Sailor, to help service members and their families develop financial management skills to actually become a ‘million dollar Sailor.’ The primary goal is to provide participants with the necessary tools to increase financial awareness, develop skills in managing personal finances, and enhance their quality of life.

The program emphasizes a proactive, career lifecycle approach for service members by providing long-range education aimed at preventing financial crises before they occur. This preventive and educational approach allows service members to focus on mission needs and helps to increase retention and readiness for the services. Security clearance issues, horrible credit scores, and just not knowing about personal financial management were exactly what prompted the development of the course.

The Million Dollar Sailor class was developed by the accredited financial counselors at Pearl Harbor and with its success, it was adopted as a Navy-wide program now being offered at all Navy installations.

The two-day course covers a variety of topics, including the need for personal financial management; understanding military pay and allowances; car buying strategies; insurance (including car, home, renters, etc.); creating a spending plan; savings and investment basics; Thrift Savings Plan; how to be a smart consumer (predatory lending); establishing and maintaining credit; and understanding credit reports/scores.

Debt has a different meaning to everyone. According to the counselors, some individuals may not see a problem with a debt of $30,000, but others cannot sleep at night if they owe $1,000. Thereêisêaêwayêtoêpay off debts, and students are given the program to take home to be able to prepare a spending plan and put the program to work to pay off debts.

The counselors have seen clients who had more than $21,000 in debts and became debt free in less than two years. Just by preparing a spending plan (another name for a budget), families can automatically give themselves a 10 percent raise. Most individuals say they are struggling paycheck to paycheck. The counselors prepare the budget and families have a surplus of $500-$600 a month that they can’t account for.

The counselors teach students to treat their personal finances just like a business and the main goal for their business would be . . . profit, the same as the goal for their

budget doesn’t have to be restrictive. The counselors explained that families just need to know and decide where they want their money to go, and said that without a good budget, a person is just guessing.

Here are some comments from evaluations received from previous classes: “Wish I would have had this information earlier in my career.” “The instructors were very knowledgeable about financial management and were available for discussion after each session.” “Excellent car-buying tips, such as recommending that we “sleep on it” and do our “research” to know exactly what we should be paying.” “I feel I can decide where I want my money to go, and plan for an early retirement.” “The best class I have ever attended, instructors made it interesting, never bored for a minute.” “I feel I now know about mutual funds, IRAs and other investment options.” “I never participated in Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) because it was never explained to me before. I signed up today during lunch for TSP. Thank you for everything.” “This class may have just changed my life … thank you.”

The class is open to all active duty, reserve, retired personnel, family members, and Department of Defense employees.

Visit www.greatlifehawaii.com to register for any of the classes or call 474-1999 for more information.