Author name: The Enlisted Money Guy™ - Brandon Lovingier, ChFC®, MQFP®

Life can be really stressful for enlisted service members. We can often get distracted with the mission, helping others, and just grinding it out. However, when we’re in the thick of things, we tend to overlook taking care of ourselves. Investing in your personal growth is critical. I’ll share my thoughts on how self-care can […]

Investing in yourself is one of the most overlooked, yet critically important areas to invest your time and money. As enlisted service members, we’re given a lot of opportunities to improve ourselves both inside and outside the military. There’s so much to cover here, so I’m splitting this topic into three parts: Education, Military Training

There’s so many different things we could focus on when it comes to investing, but time matters. It’s often overlooked too. In financial planning, we talk a lot about “time-horizon” and the time value of money (TVM) calculations we do. Bottom line: when you choose to invest your money in one place, you’re saying no

Your “why” for investing is one of the most overlooked, yet so important, pieces of your investing journey. Why? Great question! There’s a lot of technical aspects to investing, but we can get hung up on those and forget about what’s going to keep us pushing toward our goals. Striking a Balance Between Technical and

This is the second Enlisted Money Confession and I think more than one of us can relate to this story! Remember, we’re a community who shares our successes and struggles so we can all learn together. At the end we’ll discuss the “Credit Card Swiping Sailor’s” story and teachable moments we can apply to our

The “traditional” arguments on Roth versus traditional miss so much. I’m hoping to go beyond the typical “taxes now versus taxes later” argument to help you decide what’s best for you. (Hint: Probably Roth.) Enlisted service members in particular have some unique advantages making the Roth Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) or Roth IRA the best

You’ll never have it easier as an enlisted investor than when you’re an E-1. Why? Time. Time is on your side my friend! If I could go back in time, I’d tell my 18-year-old self to invest more into my TSP from day one. I’d also told myself, “You’ll be a millionaire if you put

Sometimes we find ourselves in a really tough spot financially. More often than not, debt plays a major role. So, what do you do when your debt is taking control of your life? In short, you need to get help and make some changes. Luckily, there are a lot of great resources available to service

Investing seems to be the one thing everybody gets excited about. That’s also one of the areas where I see people arguing the most about what’s the “right” thing to do. When I heard about the book, How I Invest My Money, I was really intrigued to hear how financial planners and professionals actually invest