Financial Stability

Financial Stability

Financial stability is an essential consideration in strategic future planning. It involves creating a financial plan that supports your goals and aspirations, including saving for retirement, paying off debt, and investing in your future. When you have financial stability, you are less likely to be stressed about money and can focus on pursuing your passions and achieving your goals.

            When we moved to the United States, I lived with my mother, who was then a single parent, and she had to take care of four children on her own. Without the help of anyone else she held three to four jobs at a time. We were not able to go on any lavish vacations or spend a lot of money on material things. When I saw other classmates planning for a ski trip because they were in the ski club, I did not think “Oh, why can’t I go?”

            It was just not something I was consciously concerned about because my mother had to make ends meet on her own and that was that. She missed a lot of our activities, such as sporting events and school award ceremonies, but she never missed an opportunity to feed us or make us feel like we were well taken care of and loved.

            Toward the end of high school, she told me and my sister that she did not have enough money for us to go to college and she had even been forced to file for bankruptcy during this time. Knowing this information, my sister and I looked for recruiters to join the military, and we settled on the army. We both went to basic training and advanced individual training around the same time.

            Around November of that year, my sister was on leave, and she called me at my first duty station to tell me that our brother Luis died. I was at my first duty station, and I went home and saw my sister, who told me she had been able to save more than $2,000 while she was in basic and AIT. I, on the other hand, during that time frame, wasted all my money at Fort Sam Houston at the Hacienda, which was basically a place where trainees would hang out during their downtime. I spent my money on frivolous things, like popcorn and sodas.

            I learned my lesson and started saving as much as I could. I also started planning better for what I wanted to spend my money on, such as my education, and a car and a house. When I left my first duty station, I had already finished an associate’s degree and had saved enough money to put a down payment on a condo. My second duty station team was really surprised because they said they had officers who did not even have as much money as I did for a down payment for a home and here I was, a mere Specialist, who was able to do it. 

            I learned from my grandmother that it was important to own real estate, so throughout my career, whenever we moved from one location to another, we bought a home that was affordable for a mid-level, non-commissioned officer. Whenever we left a duty station, we kept the home as a rental property. When we moved to another duty station, we purchased another home and were still able to pay for the rental property if it was temporarily empty and had no tenants.            

Although we are now downsizing our real estate properties, for a time we owned four or five homes and only had to rent a home once, and we lived on post once because it was mandatory. We have also paid for our children’s education through 529 plans and maintaining TSP and Roth IRAs for our retirement.

            Financial independence is one of our big rocks. It was also important for us to be able to afford what we want to do when we retire and help our children pay for their education.

How did you grow up around the subject of money? How do you manage your finances now? What do you need to do now based on what you want to accomplish in the future? It is never too late to start.