Newly Separated Veteran

Hi Bob,

I also was a 6 and out Navy Veteran, I served the majority of my time at the Sub Base in New London. I separated in 2003 and moved to the Boston Area. I have been working in the Biotech industry since.

From personnel experience try and focus the newly found free time you have on productive and positive experiences. My mistake was spending a lot of time out partying to try and make up for the time I spent underway and on duty. It wasn't very productive……

My finances (and spending) really improved once I figured out was important to me. I eventually re-found a love for the outdoors and spending time with my girlfriend and dog. These activities are not that expensive and eventually the savings really started to stack up.

-Mike

As @Roberto Sánchez wrote, @Bob Scarlett, it's easier to find good habits to replace the bad ones than it is to simply stop the bad habits.

Instead of denying yourself the pleasure of an old spending habit, try to persuade yourself that you're now a different person who does [new habit] instead. Take it one expense at a time and give yourself some grace along the way. Cut out the spending on the things you don't care about (or that don't spark joy?) and buy quality on the things which truly add value to your life.

When I retired from active duty we did a complete scrub on our spending to decide what was important to us. A little at a time, we dialed our spending into those activities which we still enjoyed and cut back on the things which we didn't particularly care about.

Some of it was minor changes like cooking extra portions of everything at mealtime so that we'd have leftovers for the next day or two. Other issues were easier to handle (like cutting out our junk food and exercising more often) because we were getting good sleep at night (instead of midwatches & weekend duty) and able to make plans instead of being cognitively zombied-out.

If you're not already tracking your spending, start using monthly reviews of your spending vs budget. It's a lot easier to keep those new habits when you can see that you're spending on the things you value… and you can also see the new savings piling up.

Here is a bit of a reframing on spending. It isn't specific to the military/veteran situation, though.

Essentially, every dollar that passes through your hands you spend. You can spend it on some good or service today, or you can choose to spend it on your future freedom (i.e., save/invest). It becomes a bit more concrete if you have a target portfolio value/target annual spend figure or something like that, since then you can get a rough timeline into the thought process. "Do I want to spend $X on thing ABC today, or would I rather put those $X dollars into my portfolio so that in Y months or years I no longer have to work on somebody else's terms?"

There are probably a million variations on this general theme, but the core is still the same: every dollar is spent, and what you spend it on reveals your true priorities.