Financial Advice for Midshipman/cadets

I have often pointed our USNA midshipman and young alumni sponsor family to this free guide from the Armed Forces Benefit Assn, link below. It provides clear explanations of types of life insurance and other personal financial mamagement building blocks. Useful read for parents unfamiliar with military pay and benefits as well.

online.flippingbook.com

2023 AFBA Financial Planning Guide

Our annual Financial Planning Guide provides information on retirement, health and survivor benefits, social security, and personal financial and estate planning.
online.flippingbook.com online.flippingbook.com

AFBA is a well-regarded non-profit serving military members for almost 75 years. They got their start providing life insurance to military members when other life insurance comoany policies had a combat exclusion and hazardous duty clause.
www.afba.com

Armed Forces Benefit Association (AFBA)

Insurance for Those Who Serve
www.afba.com www.afba.com
 
ROTH IRA is a great investment tool once you have earned income, it actually is better than a non-matching 401K long term. Just set it up with a quality place, not some trendy APP place like my nephew did and the place closed down.
 
AA787DRIVER said:
ROTH IRA is a great investment tool once you have earned income, it actually is better than a non-matching 401K long term. Just set it up with a quality place, not some trendy APP place like my nephew did and the place closed down.
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Currently planning on investing my stipend into a S&P index until I learn and practice (via fake money on an app I have) trading individual securities.
 
iskekeirhtj said:
Currently planning on investing my stipend into a S&P index until I learn and practice (via fake money on an app I have) trading individual securities.
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You should rethink this. Unless you are assured that you will reliably stay connected and be able to move in and out of your individual securities whenever the market is open, you are just about always better off staying with quality mutual funds. They have full time staff who monitor the markets and changing conditions and can react quickly for opportunities or catastrophes. MOST military people and quite frankly, even civilians are not always online and ready to react and face the results of missed opportunities or sudden problems when they're deployed, take a vacation or even spend time in a hospital.
FWIW, I got my sons started investing when they were in middle school and after a couple of years, they pooled allowance and odd job money to buy some "can't miss" stocks that they knew about. Basically tech/emerging companies. Bottom Line is that they lost it all. On the other hand, I maintained some investments for them that did just fine.
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Mutual finds, there are literally thousands of them. There are places to go that rate them so you can examine non-sales/marketing info and evaluate their track records, investment goals and other pertinent info. A good place to start is a rating service such as Morningstar or ValueLine. Due to the costs of subscriptions, you might want to go through a library/college library for access.
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Some investment houses offer the research on their sites for free. Before the sold off their investment division, USAA was a great place to evaluate a wide variety of funds as are many other investment companies.
 
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