Welcome to another Military Monday! Today I’m bringing you a quick post to share a product built by one of my friends, Jason Gargan. Those of you who are members of the military financial independence Facebook groups like Military FIRE and ChooseFI Military may recognize the name – he’s pretty active.
A couple of months ago he gave a personal finance presentation at his deployed location and it went over very well. Recently this presentation came up in conversation in one of those Facebook groups and several military members asked Jason for a copy. Rather than him email it out each time, he offered it up to me to be permanently stored on the blog.
Military Financial Independence Presentation
By storing this presentation on the blog, we’ve created an easy way for all of you to access it any time you want. You can either take the presentation as is (enjoy the pictures of his hobbies!) or modify it for your own needs.
This presentation covers the basics of financial independence with a slight military tilt. It also offers up a “Deployment Challenge” for anybody in a combat zone tax exclusion area to really beef up their finances during a deployment.
This presentation can be used to spark some ideas for your own planning, and/or you can use it at your own unit to motivate friends and coworkers (if allowed…make sure you aren’t going to piss off your supervisor!).
The ppt only includes the slides, not a voice track, so I’ll quickly write up some notes here to help you prepare in case you give this presentation to anybody. I’m including some links so you can do further research, but if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments or join The Military Dollar Community on Facebook and ask us there!
Military Financial Independence Presentation Voice Track
Slides 1-3: Introduction
These should be pretty self explanatory. Modify as necessary.
Slide 4: What is FI?
This slide quickly defines FIRE (financial independence retire early) since most people aren’t familiar with this concept.
For the “why do I keep putting quotes around ‘retire'” bit, the voice track there is that retirement isn’t just golfing or sitting on a beach sipping iced tea. It can be whatever you want. Some people will write a book, others will turn a hobby into a business. Some may even play golf and sip tea! The point is to shake people out of the thought of “retirement” that has really only existed for the last couple of decades, and get them thinking about what retirement could mean.
Slide 5: The Why of FI
This slide is to showcase all the things you love doing that make pursuing FIRE worth it. As we look at this slide, you can see Jason is interested in homebrew, being a dad, podcasting, grilling I guess, and…a board game? Maybe?
My own version of this slide would probably include pictures of my dog, a screenshot of this blog, some travel and hiking pictures, some friends and family pictures, and maybe a picture of the library. And food. Definitely food.
If you decide to download this presentation and use it for yourself, make sure you replace Jason’s pictures with your own! Show the world why you care about being financially independent.
Slide 6: How you know when you are FI
This slide breaks down the basic math (super simplified) behind financial independence. The link at the bottom will take you to the first in a 4-part series to explain it in more depth.
Slide 7: Why the 4% Rule Works
The following slide gets more into the math behind financial independence, and includes a link to Mad Fientist’s famous blog to explain it more. You’ll want to read that post – it’s a good one! It can really help you understand why using the 4% Rule to determine when you are financially independent is a good measure.
Slide 8: How to Achieve FI
This next slide offers some ideas (inspired by ChooseFI) to widen the gap between your income and expenses. The larger the gap between those things, the more money you will have to put towards achieving financial independence.
Nobody has to do everything on this list, but the more you can do the wider you will potentially grow that gap. Choose the ones that make sense to you and implement them. Then, as you progress towards financial independence, you can decide whether you want to add more tools to your tool belt.
Slide 9: The Deployment Challenge
This is one Jason came up with on his own, and I like it! This is a list of steps people can take during a deployment to move themselves closer to financial independence. Remember, Jason created this presentation for a deployed environment. What better place to get your spending under control (if that’s an issue) and focus on paying off debt or investing?
As someone works through this challenge, they’d find themselves making some great changes to their financial picture. Imagine if someone was able to get through all 6 steps in, say, a year-long deployment? That’d be major!
Slides 10-11: Conclusion
Self explanatory again. Slide 10 wraps up what you’ve discussed previously and gives your audience some things to take action on. If you wanted to expand the slide deck with more information, you could certainly do that. Talking about how you need to account for employer contributions if you plan to max out TSP while in a CZTE and are in BRS, or how to take advantage of SCRA and MLA offers, are definitely ways to add more to the conversation.
The last slides shows places to go for more information, including this website. If you do end up giving this presentation to military coworkers, please point them towards my Guide to Military Money! I’ll keep expanding it until it’s the most comprehensive source of military money information on the internet (I hope).
That graphic on the right side of the screen is my FIRE Flyer which you can use to motivate yourself on your path to financial independence. Please download a copy and share with your friends!
Want to use this presentation for yourself?
Download the entire presentation in an editable format by clicking here: Military FI and Deployment Challenge
Thanks to Jason for sharing this presentation and helping motivate military members to better their finances!
Leave a Reply