Most Veterans treat references like an afterthought. Three names scribbled on a sheet the morning of the final interview, handed over because someone asked, with zero thought put into it beyond "these people will say something nice." That's a mistake, and it's an easy one to fix. A reference isn't just someone who picks up the phone and confirms you worked somewhere. A good reference reinforces everything you already built into your resume. A bad one undoes it in thirty seconds, without...
10 days ago • 3 min read
Most Veterans think they get one retirement. Military, if they made it to 20 years, and that's it. That assumption costs people real money, because a second retirement is sitting right there for the taking, and it has nothing to do with what job you land after the uniform comes off. It's called a Roth IRA. Not employer sponsored. Not tied to TSP. Not tied to any job at all. You open it yourself, at a brokerage of your choosing, and you fund it with money you've already paid taxes on. That...
24 days ago • 3 min read
Give six people from six different branches the exact same order, and you'll get six completely different outcomes. Nowhere is this more obvious than in one of the oldest jokes in the military: "secure the building." Watch what happens. Army surrounds the building with heavy infantry, sandbags, tanks, and enough razor wire to make a hardware store jealous. Nobody's getting in or out without a lengthy conversation at a checkpoint. Marine Corps doesn't surround anything. The Marines storm the...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read