Whether you are active duty or a Veteran, starting your first job or well-established in your career, it is never too early to start repaying your debt and investing in retirement plans. I know that these topics can feel daunting. So I will be sharing a few of my strategies to pay off your debt and invest in your retirement.*

Part One: Pay Off Your Debt 

The money that you borrow charges interest compounded daily. If you only pay the minimum, the debt will keep getting larger. Instead of throwing money at your debt every once in a while, you need a consistent plan to pay it off. 

I recommend trying the “Debt Avalanche” or “Debt Snowball” methods.

If you have high-interest loans, list all your debts from highest to lowest interest rate. Pay all the minimums, and then pay all you can to the highest interest debts first. Once you’ve finished paying off one, continue down the list to the next highest and repeat the process until you’re debt-free.

If you have lots of loans with relatively small balances, try listing out all your debts from lowest to highest balance. Pay all the minimums, and then put all you can towards the loan with the lowest balance. Once that is paid off, continue down the list until you’re done.

Part Two: Invest to Retire

Investing is when you put away money now with the expectation (not the hope) that it will grow into more money later. This could be buying a house, paying for your kids’ education, and retiring one day.

The two retirement investment accounts you should start as soon as possible are an Employer-Sponsored Plan (ESP) and an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). When you begin these accounts, the younger you are, the more the investments will grow over time due to compound interest.

If you are employed full-time, you are eligible for an ESP for retirement, like a 401k, 403b, 457b, or TSP. When you contribute to an ESP, the money is taken directly from your paycheck to the plan. Employers may match your contributions up to a certain percentage, and you can contribute up to $20,500 per year in total.

You can start an IRA through a bank, brokerage company, or credit union if you max out your ESP. IRAs allow you to make financial contributions with tax advantages. You can contribute up to $6000 to an IRA per year and access these funds without financial penalties after 59.5 years old.

Both employer-sponsored and individual retirement accounts come in two flavors: Traditional and Roth. 

Traditional contributions are not taxed until you use the funds later. The interest is taxable when it is withdrawn, and the tax rate depends on when you take it out.

Roth contributions are taxed when they go into the account. As a result, the interest and growth are never taxed. The tax rate on the contributions depends on where you earn them, so they are best if you believe you will have to pay more taxes when you withdraw your funds.

However you invest, you will likely go through Vanguard, Fidelity, or Charles Schwab. These big brokerage houses offer a target-date retirement fund, where they invest your money in a medium-risk combination of stocks and bonds. I recommend you start a target-date retirement fund, choose the year closest to when you want to retire, put your contributions into that fund, and walk away.

Part Three: Put Your Personal Finance Plan to Action

You should have everything you need to get started with taking control of your finances. I know this was a lot of information, so I have compiled a list of action items below. Consider assigning yourself the following homework:

1. List out all your debts with the amount and interest rates, choose a strategy, and pay it off!
2. Contribute to your workplace retirement plan and start a target-date retirement fund
3. Open and contribute to an IRA and start a target-date retirement fund
4. Choose between Roth and Traditional contributions

If you have any questions or want to receive personalized financial advice, please contact a financial advisor.

To learn about budgeting and the best banking options for the military community, check out my other blog post The Veteran’s Guide to Budgeting and Banking.

Jonathan is Code Platoon’s Director of Education and a Senior Software Engineer at Venmo. He has taught nearly every Code Platoon graduate personally and is dedicated to student success. Before Code Platoon, Jonathan taught special education math in Chicago’s Harper High School, which was featured on NPR’s “This American Life.” Jonathan received his BS from Northwestern University and his Masters’s degree in Teaching during his fellowship with Teach for America.

*Disclaimer: This guide is for informational purposes only. Neither Code Platoon nor I am giving you financial advice. Please contact a financial advisor if you have specific questions.

According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, between 11% and 20% of Veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have post traumatic stress disorder, including combat PTSD and military sexual trauma. When Veterans have a traumatic experience, like combat or sexual assault, they can be left feeling powerless. That’s when PTSD can take hold.

“When I was in the Marine Corps, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for my squad,” Chris Miller, a combat Veteran and Community Outreach Coordinator at The Road Home Program, said. “But you don’t leave the military with your team, so others have to pick up the slack. It’s important as a military community to come together and help each other.”

Chris has worked at The Road Home Program since 2013. In his current role, he connects Veterans suffering from PTSD with the program’s free, evidence-based outpatient mental health services. 

Chris can personally attest that recognizing Veteran PTSD can be complex.

“When I left the military in 2003, I didn’t have flashbacks, so the VA practitioners didn’t recognize my PTSD symptoms. When I moved back to my hometown, my family saw something was wrong and helped me get help.”

The Road Home Program has a list of military trauma response symptoms, including isolation, anxiety, substance abuse, disturbed sleep, and more that can indicate undiagnosed PTSD in Veterans. But these symptoms can be hard to spot, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“When dealing with PTSD, two of the more identifiable symptoms are isolation and avoidance,” Chris said. “So when everyone’s quarantining, it’s harder for me to find those who need help.”

“As such, one of the most important things to do if you think a Veteran is struggling is to connect with the family members. They’ve known the Veteran for a long time and know their baseline behavior. They notice something is off first.”

If you know a Veteran experiencing PTSD symptoms, what can you do to help? According to Chris, you have to ask a bit more than “Are you doing alright?”

“You have to have tough conversations and probe deeper,” Chris said. “If someone you know has symptoms that impede their daily functioning, you should encourage them to seek professional help. No matter how hopeless it can seem, PTSD is treatable.”

“Physical healthcare is normalized, and it should be the same for mental healthcare. Some parts of the military still have a stigma around Veteran mental health, but the situation is improving. The VA now collaborates with private sector groups, like The Road Home Project, to provide more Veterans with mental health services.”

The Road Home Program emphasizes military culture in their three programs: weekly outpatient care, weekly virtual outpatient care, and an intensive 3-week outpatient program in Chicago called “PTSD bootcamp.” Their programs are free for all Veterans, regardless of discharge status.

To learn more about the services available, visit The Road Home Program website. 

If you or a Veteran you know is in crisis, contact the Veterans Crisis Line for 24/7 confidential crisis intervention and support. Call 1-800-273-8255, text 838255 or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat. 

Kayla Elkin is the Marketing Content Specialist at Code Platoon. In this role, she uses her marketing, writing, and editing skills developed from previous positions in higher education and educational technology. Kayla has degrees in English and Sociology from Clemson University and completed the Study in India Program (SIP) at the University of Hyderabad. She lives with her partner in northern Chicago.

Imagine a small town. Every day, the townsfolk gather in the same field to let their cows graze. While popular research suggested that the cows would overgraze the pasture, research by (Nobel Prize winner) Elinor Ostrum shows that these communities ably manage their own resources.

People often do their best work in small, communal teams. But as time passes, teams have gotten larger and messier. The tech industry recognizes this, and it is pivoting to Agile teams and a focus on workplace culture. This transition is marked by trust that technology companies place in their employees to manage themselves.

Tech Teams Work Differently than Military Teams

Tech team structures can confuse the outsider. Luckily, Kelly Cronin, a lead ThoughtWorks consultant and Code Platoon Beyond Tech workshop leader, is here to help our students understand how tech teams form and empower them to build better teams. 

“Code Platoon students have such a breadth of teamwork experience already,” Kelly said. “That’s why I focus on what their future tech teams look like and the psychology behind them.”

Many of the military teams that Code Platoon students have been part of are what Kelly calls “Command and Control” models. Military teams are traditionally formed around a rigid hierarchy: the top makes the decisions and information flows down from the leaders like a waterfall.

While some tech companies use such rigid models, many workplaces have focused instead on Agile structures. Agile teams are built around motivation, community, and trust instead of structure and control. Agile team members are still given goals and problems to solve, but they are encouraged to develop their solutions and control their projects from end-to-end.

“You will likely end up in a hybrid between silos and Agile teams,” Kelly said. “You will need to push for clarity, define your teams’ roles, and try to be as cross-functional as possible.” 

Soft Skills Build Strong Teams

During one workshop, Kelly asked students what qualities they appreciated the most during their military service. Some students defaulted to skill-based qualifications, but many others pointed to soft skills like “listening” or “having each other’s backs.”

The tech workforce also prefers these qualities. According to a 3-year multimillion-dollar Google study, the highest-performing teams were the ones most committed to psychological safety and equal air time, not the ones with the strongest skills. 

“The best team members feel safe to ask questions, make mistakes, and be vulnerable with each other,” Kelly explains. “Every team member has the same amount of time to voice their opinion. When team members disagree, they engage in constructive conflicts, and everyone votes together on how to proceed.

“You don’t have to be friends or even like each other very much to make this work. You just have to have established norms, mutual goals, and an understanding that you are there to fail or succeed together.”

Learn More Beyond Tech Transitioning Skills 

Kelly’s teamwork workshop is just one of eight topics covered in Code Platoon’s Beyond Tech curriculum. Beyond Tech teaches our Veteran, active duty Servicemember, and military spouse students the norms and conventions of the civilian technology workforce. Other interpersonal Beyond Tech topics include overcoming imposter syndrome, diversity and inclusion, and interview prep. Learn more about our Beyond Tech curriculum.

Kayla Elkin is the Marketing Content Specialist at Code Platoon. In this role, she utilizes her marketing, writing, and editing skills developed by previous positions in higher education and educational technology. Kayla has degrees in English and Sociology from Clemson University and completed the Study in India Program (SIP) at the University of Hyderabad. She lives with her partner in northern Chicago.

Most of us who served in the military have been in a place where we ask ourselves, “what kind of civilian job does my military experience translate into?”

For some, transferring military experience is more straightforward than for others. If you were a nurse or a motor pool mechanic and want to remain in those fields, the experience transfer is obvious. Internal medicine and combustion engines don’t magically change outside of DoD purview.

But for many Servicemembers, this is no easy thing. I was an Airborne Infantryman who became a PSYOP Team Chief, which is pretty limited outside of military life (except for being a mercenary and a politician, but I digress). Those in a similar position have to think a bit more, and that can often seem daunting, given what little messaging is out there on this subject. 

Transferring your military experience is more simple than many people make it, and here’s why. Consider the world of software development. This seems like a stretch for some Servicemembers, as there aren’t a lot of military specialties that directly correlate to programming, but that’s thinking about it the wrong way.

Here is the better way of looking at it: your military service sets you up for success in numerous ways. Chief among them are the educational opportunities available to you. Servicemembers now have more options than ever for learning a new skill, and they already have a foundation for doing that quite well.

When you went through Basic Training (or boot camp, or equivalent), you entered a world you had never been a part of before. It was entirely new, and you were suddenly immersed in an all-day, every-day newness – a flood of novel information streaming at you in a way you had never experienced. 

And yet, you succeeded. Despite the overwhelming nature of your situation, you adapted and adjusted to your new normal. 

More than anything else, this background is what can prepare you to learn new skills and transition into a new career. It doesn’t matter that your military specialty doesn’t transfer directly to another job – what matters is that you have a foundation upon which to build.

Most students who attend Code Platoon haven’t been software developers before or even written that much code. 

Our students come out of everything from the Infantry to the motor pool, from the medical field to linguistic analysis and military intelligence. They succeed because they know how to adapt to a fire hose of new knowledge hitting them in the face. They’ve done it before, and so have you.

Don’t let your military specialty define the rest of your life. You can choose to move beyond that, and Code Platoon is a place of like-minded people who can help you enable that transition. 

Greg Drobny is a former Airborne Infantryman, PSYOP Team Chief, political consultant, professional mil blogger, and is Code Platoon’s Student Outreach and Recruitment Manager. He holds a BA and MA in history, as well as a Masters of Science in organizational psychology. He is married with four children who keep him more than slightly busy, and is passionate about helping Veterans find their paths in life and develop the skills needed to pursue their goals.