The Nuts and Bolts A Giving Challenge

The Nuts and Bolts: A Giving Challenge

By Keith Bunn Jr.

I want to tell you a story that happened last week. While at work, an elderly lady came up to me on her scooter with a problem. The lever on her scooter that makes it go forward and reverse had come off. The 2 bolts that hold it on, fell out and got lost and she wanted to know if we had bolts to replace them.

To make a long story short, I found bolts that worked and put them in for her. The only problem was, they came out out of a package of 195 piece nuts and bolts. Even though the package wasn't expensive, she only needed 2 bolts and I didn't feel right to charge her the $5 the package cost for just 2 bolts, so I just told her not to worry about paying for the bolts.

Which led to a moral problem for me. I couldn't put a package of 195 nuts and bolts back on the shelf knowing it only had 193 pieces in it. So the only solution was for me to buy the package. Again, it wasn't expensive. It was only $5. But it was the only solution. Now, the lady is happy to have her scooter fixed, the store got their money, a future customer didn't get cheated buying a package that was short pieces, and I was happy to have helped someone out. All that for $5!

Now I didn't tell you this story to brag in any way shape or form. I told you this to challenge you. I challenge you to get your finances in order enough to do some spontaneous giving, no matter what the dollar amount is. Like a woman I read about who bought a airline ticket on the spot for a single dad and his daughter. That ticket cost her over $700 and she did that happily.

I've said it more than once, giving is the most fun you'll ever do with money. So who's for excepting my challenge and give like never before. You won't regret it.

Why I Do This

The reason I do this is to inspire and give hope to people. To make them think about their finances, whether they are young or old, so they can win financially.

If you find any of this information useful, please share it with others. You can also find more money news, facts and ideas, on my Facebook pages. I'd be grateful if you followed me. Thank you!

You have an opportunity to do so much more Part 2

You have an opportunity to do so much more: Part 2

By Keith Bunn Jr.

Part 2: Married Service Members

As any married couple will tell you, being married can be tough at times, but it is my opinion that being married while serving in the armed forces is even tougher. It is already a fact that money issues are the #1 cause of divorce in this country, but when you add the stress of having to move often all over the world and being separated for long periods of time, the odds of having a successful marriage drops significantly.

This topic was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I found myself having dozens of thoughts of what I would and wouldn’t do over and over again going through my head. So the simplest thing I came up with was to do some bullet points that I thought would help both your marriage and your finances.

•  Communication: As I stated before, money issues are the #1 reason couples get divorced, so if you and your spouse talk to each other and get on the same page about your money, that opens other doors of communication in other areas of your lives, which in turn sets a good foundation in your marriage. With all the different ways we can communicate with people today, it is more important than ever to learn how to communicate with the person beside you in life.
  
•  Sacrifice: The civilian world can’t even begin to understand all the sacrifices a military family must endure, especially these days. With that said, what I’m about to suggest will seem small in comparison. You need, as a family, to learn to sacrifice some small things in order to win big in the future. Sell some stuff to help pay off debt and develop a plan to live on less than you make by trying to live on your base pay only. Service men and women who receive Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH), Basic Allowance for Separations Rations (BAS), and Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), just to name a few, can find themselves dependent on those funds to live on and can later find themselves in a pinch when they get deployed somewhere and lose one or more of those allowances. Buy used vehicles instead of new. And also, rent homes instead of buying or live on post when possible. This will save you and your family a lot of headaches, as well as money, when you get orders to move.

•  Plan: Where do you and your spouse see yourselves 5 to 10 years down the road? You need to dream about where you want to be and plan on how to get there. There is a lot of uncertainty in the military. Making plans on what you want to do, grounds you to your family and helps you make decisions when some of that uncertainty surfaces.

•  Serve: This alone falls directly on the service men and women themselves. Serve your family with the same honor, commitment, and a sense of duty as you do serving your country. The military isn’t always a safe work environment in peace or at war, so make sure you have your affairs in order. Make sure you have a Will, make sure that your family knows exactly what needs to be done and how to do it if something were to happen to you. Don’t buy a lot of stuff with payments on it just because you were off somewhere defending us. You and your family have sacrificed enough without the extra stress of possibly going broke if something were to happen to you.

I have seen a lot of service men and women hurt themselves and their families financially because of making selfish and childish decisions and racking up debt in the process. You don’t deserve that! With the topic I laid out in Part 1 of this blog series and with the bullet points above, You have an opportunity to do so much more, in both your marriage and finances.

Why I Do This

The reason I do this is to inspire and give hope to people. To make them think about their finances, whether they are young or old, so they can win financially.

If you find any of this information useful, please share it with others. You can also find more money news, facts and ideas, on my Facebook pages. I'd be grateful if you followed me. Thank you!

You have an opportunity to do so much more Part 1

You have an opportunity to do so much more: Part 1

By Keith Bunn Jr.

This morning’s posting is to my fellow service men and women out there...

Folks, there isn't a DAY that I don't kick myself for not getting more out of the time I was in the service. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud that I served, and I'm glad that I got to see and do all kinds of things all over the world, but there is one area I wish I would have done better on & that's in the financial area.

As some of you may or may not know, I was in and out of the Army for a total of 8 years and I've served as both married and non-married in my active duty days. So I will break down my financial "regrets", so to speak, in both those areas separately in a two part blog series. 

Part 1: Non-married Service Members

This is where I have my biggest regrets, because as a single soldier living in the barracks, I really did have it made! I know you may not think so right now but you do. You have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, three meals a day provided in the Mess Hall, all your medical, dental, and vision care provided, as well as all utilities provided. All that is FREE!!  A lot of people out in the civilian world don't have that. I understand that this varies for you from time to time, depending on if you're in the field training or somewhere in the world on combat duty, but you have an opportunity that most of us out here in the civilian world and some of the married service men and women don't have, and that is, you can bank and/or invest just about your whole paychecks. You don't have to buy a brand new car with a payment attached to it, you don't need to party your tails off each and every free night you have, and you don't need to buy all kinds of crap that you just have to pack up anyway every time you get deployed somewhere.

Now I did some checking on the current military pay scale and the base pay for an E-1/Private with 2 years in the military is $1,599.90 per month. If you just took $400 per month, every month and invested that in good Growth Stock Mutual Funds for just a three year tour of duty, which would be $16,852. That still leaves you with just under $1,200 a month to live on. Or you could invest $1000 each month for three years, which would be $42,130! In either case, you still have money left over to buy other items you need to live on every day.

Now here’s the thing, experts that are way smarter than me have said that if you are to be a true investor of your hard earned money, you should leave it alone for five years or longer to get the full benefit of the investment. So let’s say after the three year tour was up and you stopped putting money into that investment and never touched it until you were 65 years old. For the $400, that would be worth just over $1.3 million and for the $1000 that would be worth just over $3.3 million. Now here’s the kicker… These numbers are for an E-1 for 3 years. You’re not going to stay an E-1 that whole time unless you‘re just a loser, and even then, you should make at least E-3. And what if you were like a friend of mine who made it to E-9 and retired with over 20 years under his belt. Those numbers would be significantly higher, plus receive your military retirement! These are the things no one told me when I was in the military, but now wish someone did. 

I would very much like to hear the input of the retired and/or active duty soldiers out there about what I’ve posted here today. Also, if you’d like to run your own numbers of what you’d like to invest and where you’d like to be at retirement, I have put a link to the investment calculator I used.

Why I Do This

The reason I do this is to inspire and give hope to people. To make them think about their finances, whether they are young or old, so they can win financially.

If you find any of this information useful, please share it with others. You can also find more money news, facts and ideas, on my Facebook pages. I'd be grateful if you followed me. Thank you!! Part 2 coming next week!