Military Saves: The Month, the Pledge and Super Savers

[MUSIC PLAYING] EMILY BIGHAM: Hi, and welcome to the podcast Making Cents, brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. I'm your host Emily Bigham, and each week, I'll be taking your questions to the experts to help you make sense of your money, pun intended. 

Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today's guest is Angela Caban. She is the Director of Military Saves. April is a very special month for Angela and her organization. It's the month of Military Saves. And Angela, first of all, I want to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining. 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for having me. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: So I'm really excited about this topic and I love that you have extended your themes for Military Saves from four themes to five themes, and I want to get into that later. But first of all, can you tell me a little bit about your organization and what you do specifically for Military Saves? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Sure. So here as a director of Military Saves, I feel like I have my hands in everything that's going on. So more than just a month, we are a year round campaign. However, Military Saves Month is really important because it's a nationwide savings campaign that's recognized annually during the month of April and that aligns with Financial Capability Month. 

So why have a whole entire month dedicated to savings is really important to us because we want to continue to motivate and to encourage the entire military community to use this as an opportunity to check in with their finances. So we always use the example of yearly-- one does go for their health check, so why not do a financial health check annually? Things are constantly changing in the military community, so it's really important to put some focus on that. 

So a little bit about what we do during the month. We provide some resources, tools, and some really cool online events for savers to help them think more about their savings as well as their spending habits, which I know is a really big one for most of us. 

And something that's really unique to our program is that we use the principles of behavioral economics, and a little bit about that is it really just makes you stop and think about what you do and why you're doing it when it comes to motivating that action for your savings and your spending behaviors, which could be a little scary for most with not realizing why. 

So the very first step during Military Saves Month, we encourage everyone to please take the Military Saves pledge. And this really is that foundation and the start of making a promise to yourself, and that is to create and adjust a simple savings plan. 

And once you're opted into the program, you're able to gain access to all of those tools and the resources, but also have us as an accountability check in, which is really great because I feel like everybody needs a reminder or a prompt every now and then to help stay on track and focus on their savings goals. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Awesome. So I have two questions for you off the bat. Why April, and what is the end goal at the end of this campaign for the individual participants? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Sure. Great question. So April, for us, it's mainly because it is Financial Capability Month and that is something that is being recognized, I think, by the entire country. Specifically for the military community, it's really important to be able to have the opportunity to engage with some fantastic organizations, nonprofits, for-profits, government entities that are already hosting events and just really having this broader conversation about what is financial capability and how can we, together as a community, really support the military service member, the military spouse, the veteran. It's for everyone. 

So that's why we decided to transition away from Military Saves Week. Not sure if you remember that. That's a couple of years ago. Into now what we call Military Saves Month. So I think the importance of participating in the month and what I would love everybody to take away from this program and this event, this month long campaign, is that it doesn't matter where you are in your savings journey. 

You might have not even started or you might be ready to retire and you're set for the rest of your life, which is great. However, everybody's savings journey looks differently. We always say here that savings is a journey, not a destination. So it's never too late to start. 

Little amounts do add up, so we really do hope that by engaging and encouraging those to take the pledge, you could really just take a step back and see where you are, whether you feel comfortable with it or not. We're going to be able to provide the resources for you and to help you on that navigating to the next step of your savings journey. So I think there's always something, no matter where you are in that savings journey. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: So you mentioned that a couple of years ago this was a savings week, right? You had one week dedicated to this campaign and then it grew to four, and now you're at five. From your perspective, obviously, this is a very important topic and it's grown so much that now you're able to fill five weeks with these themes. What have you seen over the years? Why did you decide to branch out into these five themes? And also, what are those five themes and what's the significance? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Yeah. So that's a great question because I think that having one day talking about this one theme, at least in my opinion, wasn't enough time. And what we've been able to do with these different five themes, being able to stretch them out into one entire week is not only just talk about that specific theme, but all the other underlying issues or components of that, which can be a lot. 

So for each week of Military Saves Month, there is that theme. So, for instance, week one was save automatically, and that's our launch, which is really kind of like our overarching theme for the month because at Military Saves, we do believe that the most effective way of saving is by saving automatically, setting and forget it. It's through automatic allotments, through either your employer, or even your financial institution. There's some wonderful opportunity for you to start saving in that way. 

And then we have week two, which is focused on saving for the unexpected. And in the military community, that's just a given. There's always something that's going to come up and I think especially with this past year with the pandemic, that was something that many of us were not expecting for all of us to be going through. So we touched on a lot of those different circumstances and the importance of having an emergency savings. And again, tying back in, saving automatically. 

One that's one of my favorites is week three. It's save to retire. And I think this conversation-- and I almost feel like it's not even enough. I feel like we need more time than a week. But this conversation is something that needs to be had within all of the components in the military, and most importantly for us this year, because we are touching on military spouses, one thing we've been hearing when we're talking to a lot of our community members is spouses are relying on their service members TSP, or their retirement savings. 

But it's important for us to explain that that is simply meant for the service member and it's most likely not going to be enough for two people to retire on. So we want to be having more conversations about what are some tools and resources that military spouses themselves can use and to ensure their own financial well-being later on in life. 

Then we have week four. Again, another personal favorite of mine. It's the save by reducing debt. And I think that this concept is not really thought of that when you're saving-- not saving, but when you're reducing that debt, you are saving money. I think a lot of people get overwhelmed with either not being able to do both at the same time, and that's OK. You can focus on paying down that debt. 

When you pay your debt down, you're saving yourself on interest, you're improving your credit score, which will then, again, in the future, help you by getting better rates when you're applying for certain things. So it's really important to, again, loop in some subject matter experts throughout all these different weeks to talk on these topics. 

And then the very last theme for week five is save as a family. And this is brand new for this year's campaign, and again, a really important topic because when we're talking about finances, I think there's a taboo where you just don't talk about it with your family. It's nobody's business. It's very personal. 

However, there are certain things that you should be engaging the entire family with when it comes to basic financial skills and savings. And this includes our children as well, our military children. It's Month of the Military Child as well in April, so it's going to be a really good opportunity for us to incorporate that messaging as well as providing some great tactics for those family members that might be a little bit uncomfortable talking about money. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: So I can tell that this is something that's very passionate for you, and me as well. I mean, the whole reason why I work at Navy Federal is because I love giving back to the military community, and this is just one way that you can do it without necessarily being in the military. So what is your relationship to the military? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: So I am an Army National Guard spouse of 15 years. My husband recently transitioned a couple of years ago, so it's always been really interesting for my family specifically, because he's been both Army Active Duty, Army Reserve, and then Army National Guard is how he ended out his service. And we've seen a little bit of everything throughout each component. 

And even though we haven't moved as a family in the military, we've seen a lot of different-- I should say different circumstances that affected us both personally as well as financially. We've lived the majority of our life together in a military-- I should say a nonmilitary community with lots of support from the civilian community. 

However, we've had to find our own ways to navigate through a lot of those challenges. So as a military spouse, I really took it for myself, like, just jumping into a lot of resources within the military community. And part of my work here with Military Saves is to be able to support others who might have gone through similar situations that I had gone through in the past. 

When my husband deployed for the very first time, we were not financially ready for that. We didn't have a savings account. We didn't have emergency savings. And we didn't realize that that was going to impact our finances. My husband took a $40,000 pay cut from his civilian job in order to deploy with the Army National Guard, and that really impacted our family. 

So I think using a lot of those situations I personally went through in the work that I do through Military Saves is very personal and it's why I really love this campaign and the work that we're doing because it really does impact so many military families. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Like, you said, each of these weeks, you could really break it down. I mean, you could have a whole year that could be dedicated to all the individual topics. But from your perspective, what are the big saving struggles or pitfalls that you're typically seeing from the military community? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Unfortunately, there's many, these pitfalls. A lot of the times what we'll see-- and from the perspective of the younger service member enlisting in the military, this is their first job. It's more money than they've ever had in their entire life, and at this point, they're not realizing how the decisions that they're making now are going to affect them later down when they're getting ready to either transition out of the military or, if they're staying in for a career, retire out. 

So one of the things that we really focus on here having these conversations is putting the picture behind, well, what would it look like if you start investing now or if you started saving just a little bit of that pay each cycle, and what would that look like in five, 10, 20 years. 

And you'd be surprised at, when you're making that visualization, that picture of what that looks like, how it hits them a little bit harder than them just sitting there talking and getting a briefing from their financial counselor, which is also very helpful. 

However, if we could just take that and show them how it can affect them, to help them throughout their military career, it'll make such a big difference, especially for the military family when you now are married, whether you're young or you're a little bit older, because again, you can have money and just not know how to manage it and still be in the same situation of someone who's a really good saver, but doesn't make a whole lot of money. So we always like to mention that. 

So it's really unfortunate that a lot of these situations could be something that they can prevent. However, it's OK. Part of the program is to talk to them about assessing where you are and not really dwelling on what you could have done in the past. Unfortunately, we can't go back and make things better for ourselves. 

I've made plenty of those mistakes throughout my almost 17 years of marriage and we've learned from them. So it's about focusing on what you're doing now. So I think taking a lot of the negative and trying to put a positive spin on it is extremely helpful, and that goes back to the behavioral economics piece of our program as well. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: So going back to the transition from military to civilian. You guys-- there's a lot of different stages that you probably have to work through with these various military, active duty, or civilian people come to help with you. 

And I'm trying to wrap my head around the question that I want to ask because I have, like, 50 on this topic. But number one, I mean, you've covered so much right now. How big is your organization? Do you have partnerships with other organizations that help you? What kind of stuff you guys do during the month to really-- what's the outreach look like or how can people find you? Like, what's that engagement with the military community and other supporting organizations? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Yeah. No, and that's a really great question because I don't think people realize that just aside from working directly with that saver community, and I use that word because that is someone who has taken the Military Saves pledge, we have an entire support network. 

For Military Saves Month alone this year, we have over 500 participants, and that includes partnerships with Navy Federal, nonprofits, military installations, government entities. I always like to bring it back to the old saying, it takes a village, because that applies to a lot in our lives, especially when we're talking about financial readiness. 

So in this space, we do rely on organizations to help spread the word about the campaign. And not just for Military Saves Month, but for 365 days of the year because that's something we should be talking about all the time, right? 

But, however, with Military Saves Month, it is that opportunity to closely engage with these organizations that are already doing so much for the military. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We're just really trying to align our mission and what we want to do with all the great work that others are already doing, you know? 

Again, with Navy Federal, you guys have this podcast. You're reaching so many members within your community that perhaps have never heard of Military Saves. And it's all about just really being able to join the forces together because if I think of myself as, you know, recently married, 20 years old, my husband slapping deployment orders down on the table and me thinking, like, what does this mean for us? 

You know, back then, I didn't think of the financial implications, what that strain would look like for my family. I'm much older now, so I'm a little bit more experienced. So knowing back then that these programs, and organizations, and the support, even from your financial institution, are there. 

Back in 2019, our Military Saves Saver Survey did show that our savers go to their financial institutions for information and for that support and that guidance. So I think it's a lot about trusting that mission. So for us at Military Saves, it's very similar that we really do have to just work together as a military support community. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: So the military does a really wonderful job of taking care of service members and their families. I mean, they do. There are so many benefits. I've said this a million times, but my dad was in the military for 27 years. We've lived overseas on bases. 

And what you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast was how you personally have never had to move overseas, but I'm sure you notice the difference between when you go on a military base and you know the community on there when you live on base. There are schools on base. 

I went to an elementary school in Japan on base there and it was almost like it was our own little special community, and they really do take care of you and they teach you about the different currencies. And I wonder if-- there are so many benefits. 

Like, do you see that when people come to you and they ask the questions, like, you really need to start with the basics because when your benefits are taken care of, when schools are taken care of, when your spouses are taken care of, all of those things are just-- you're able to kind of relax and focus on your job because those other things, mostly finances, are all kind of taken care of, like the set it and forget it benefits. 

Do you see that people are coming to you for the most basic savings questions and what are those? Like, I'm kind of-- I want to be in the mindset of, like, who is the person who approaches you? Like, what was that person? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Yeah, so that's a couple different things there. Obviously, as a program, we're always using-- tapping into those resources and benefits that are already there, as you had said. You know, the military does such a great job at providing these resources for the service member and their families. 

A lot of it is just knowing about it. You'd be surprised how many people will come to us and don't even realize that there's free financial counseling on their installation. Whether or not they want to utilize that, that's obviously a personal choice that they have to make for their family. 

However, it's there and those counselors are more than happy to sit down, and they actually use the Military Saves program, so part of that is incorporating that messaging of savings, but it starts for them just really understanding basic savings and spending habits. 

They don't even realize that just because they're making x amount of money, what is the appropriate amount to put towards savings or towards that debt for their monthly expenses. They're noticing that a lot more is going out than is coming in. 

There's lots of different struggles and if we can touch just on the COVID-19 piece as well, because I think we've all, as a community, have seen the stress that COVID-19 has had, not even just on the military, but the entire community, but the military being a very vulnerable population because before COVID-19, as you mentioned, there's a lot of different challenges that we face. 

Unfortunately, a lot of times when military families are PCSing, a lot of those expenses are not covered or it takes a really long time to get reimbursed. And if they don't have that money saved, they're looking elsewhere to help them with those expenses. So we also see military spouse unemployment, underemployment. We see education, child care, and most recently, food insecurity. That's a really big issue in the military community. 

So I think COVID-19 has complicated these issues. But then there's this other side that we're seeing as an organization. So when you're asking me what we're hearing, we're hearing either the most basic not knowing what to do, where to start, but then we have what we call these super savers that, because of COVID-19, they've seen it as an opportunity to save more money than they have ever been able to save. 

Like, almost actually hoarding it into savings accounts and then asking the questions of, well, what are the right ways of saving this? We don't really get into the specifics of investing and things like that. We have a lot of really great partnerships and subject matter experts that can give them that advice. 

However, it's amazing to see this new community almost where they're taking the opportunity to pay off years and years of debt that they never thought they would get cleared off or just actually being able to put in a couple thousand dollars into a savings account. So that's us hearing that is amazing. 

And we're getting ready to launch a survey after Military Saves Month in May. It's called the Military Saves Saver Survey. And we launch this every other year and one of the things that we're going to be analyzing other than the normal savings and spending behaviors that we normally would ask are some COVID-19-specific questions on how it's impacted their savings. 

Were they able to save more? Did they have to deplete their savings? Just really get a little bit into what that look like for them. And I think we're going to be really impressed with the results that we see. Because again, we're just really seeing a lot of the community saying that they have more opportunities because of the stimulus checks, or we always say save the extra here at Military Saves, whether it's your tax refund, any money that you weren't expecting. If you don't have any debt or any immediate need or expenses, save it. It's an opportunity to really get that savings going. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Do you think that there are any misconceptions about financial security? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: No, I'm sure that there are. I mean, me personally, for my experience as a military spouse, I would say, yes, there are misconceptions. I think-- just a little personal story. Like, when I married my husband, for some reason, my family thought we had it all together. 

You know, we're military. You put that uniform on and my husband's proudly serving his country. We shouldn't be struggling. I think that's a misconception a lot of America has with the military and I always like to say, you know, we're people just like everybody else and my husband said, I made this choice to put this uniform on and serve my country, and this is my job. 

Just because we're military doesn't mean we're smart with money. Doesn't mean we're set for life. I think there's definitely a learning curve, especially when you're not used to the everyday active duty lifestyle. So for us as a National Guard family, we had to learn the hard way about how to prepare for those next life cycles, whether it's a deployment or whether my husband's on TDY, away for training. 

What about me? I had to quit my full time corporate America job to stay home and find the work from home hustle's, and side gigs, and all these things that would bring some income into the house because he was always gone and child care was too expensive. 

So yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of misconceptions and I hope that through the Military Saves program and my work here and my team, which I should mention, we're all military spouses and our senior program manager is not only an accredited financial counselor, but she's also a veteran. She has a lot of insight and personal perspective on what that looks like. So yeah, I hope that the messaging and the work that we do here really can resonate with that military service member no matter where they are currently. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: OK. So tell me about the fun stuff. So what are you guys doing this month that-- tell me about all of the fun things that you have going on because I know that they're there, and you and I got really serious because that's always kind of how I-- I love to dig into this stuff and you've been so wonderful talking about all the different things that you guys do and the struggles and pitfalls that you help with. But what's the fun stuff? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Yeah. So with the themes that I had mentioned earlier, we have a Facebook Live event every week that will have those subject matter experts from different organizations come on and touch on the different themes. 

Really fun for us is some Facebook giveaways, which is new again for us this year. So if you tune in and you just mention your favorite takeaway from that event, take the Military Saves pledge, of course, you are entered into a $50 gift card giveaway and that's a gift card to anywhere that you want. You just tell us where you want it and we'll purchase it for you. 

So that's really fun for us this year. We have a couple of different guests this year, which we're really excited, from different organizations, touching on different topics that, perhaps, we as an organization have never spoken on. One of them is Wounded Warrior Project, because there's a lot of unexpected expenses that come with that lifestyle, which we're really excited to be able to talk about. 

Another thing that we're doing too, working closely with other organizations, for instance, Navy Fed. You have an embeddable pledge form over on your website, which is really great to be able to reach members as well as those who might not really be familiar with the Military Saves the program and everything that we're really featuring. 

Something else that we do is our text messaging platform. And we've noticed that everybody has their phone on them, right? What is the preferred method of receiving information? It's usually your cell phone. We do have email marketing, which works fantastic, and our social media. But we've noticed that military spouses specifically really love getting those tips, and those prompts, and those reminders. And we usually send those a couple days before payday. We have some really fun polls on there. 

And then another really fun thing for this year is we're doing a $500 sweepstakes at the end of the month, and there's three ways to enter that. You take the Military Saves pledge, you join our Facebook group, and then you share your savings goal with us to let us know what you're saving for, why you took the Military Saves pledge, and then you're entered into this $500 giveaway which could be a great jumpstart to someone's savings. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Absolutely. So the text message platform, how do you get enrolled in it? Do you guys have a specific number that we would text or-- 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Yeah, absolutely. So Navy Fed actually has its own keyword. So if you're a Navy Fed member, you would text the keyword power up savings to 877877. And that's a really great way to not only opt into the Military Saves program, but again, it's kind of like an accountability buddy. Everybody kind of needs that person to remind them of their goals. 

And I should mention too that, base on the pledge that you're taking to yourself, we have different goals that you can sign up for. So one person might need to be saving up for retirement while another person wants to save up for that vacation that they probably haven't been able to go on in quite some time. 

So there's different goals on there. There's also general savings if you just want to learn some really simple strategies to get that started. So yeah, I think that that's definitely-- one of my preferred methods of receiving communications is that texting. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: So the text message platform, just to reiterate, to join in on all the fun, you would text power up savings to 877877, just right from your phone? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Correct. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: That's awesome. And then to get involved in the Facebook Live, would you just go on Facebook, search Military Saves, like the page, and do you have a schedule of the different live events or-- 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Yeah. If you head on over to militarysaves.org, you'll see it right there on our homepage. It's our featured blog post and we have every single event for the entire month. We also are trying to feature some of the different events that our partners and organizations are featuring as well. So any time that we have that, we'll be sure to share it over on our Facebook page, which is Military Saves, or you can join our Facebook group called Military Savers. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Great. So militarysaves.org for more information and also to take the pledge. For the Facebook Live program, what are some of the top things that you guys will be discussing? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: So for Facebook Live, for instance, this next one that we're doing this week, actually, since it's week two, save for the unexpected, we're going to be talking about some of those unexpected circumstances in the military. 

And I had mentioned Wounded Warrior Project is going to be one of our guests and we're also going to have FEMA come on and talk about some of the emergencies that a military family member might experience. They sound like really heavy, heavy topics, but we do add some fun twists to that because, again, we know that in the military, we're always just kind of waiting for that next something to happen. 

So we're definitely going to be talking about the pandemic, how it's affected us, but also some different situations that, whether you're currently serving or maybe you've transitioned out, and how we could really put the emphasis of emergency savings on that because I think that always ties back to if you're prepared for that emergency, and unfortunately, a lot of the community is not. So we're going to definitely be talking about some really great strategies to help them get prepared for that. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: You mentioned that these are kind of heavy topics, but they're really important topics. And these are a lot of topics that add a lot of stress and strain and potentially unnecessary stress and strain. And so you guys are creating a community where people feel safe to talk about these kinds of problems and ask for advice, and they know that they can trust you and the organizations you partner with, so I think it's absolutely wonderful. 

And I love that there are a million different ways that the community can reach you guys and I assume that, on these Facebook Live events, you can also ask questions and kind of engage more with what's actually happening on the Facebook Live event, right? Is that kind of the purpose of the events? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Absolutely. And that's-- they're very laid back, conversational. It's not-- while we have these subject matter experts, they're also a part of the military community, so they're going to be sharing their personal experiences. And we encourage engagement on there. We'll be answering questions. That's also kind of part of our give away. 

But please engage. Let us know what your thoughts are, your experiences are. We would love to feature those stories too. So I should also mention that when you do come over to Military Saves and you share your savings journey or your saver story with us, you have an opportunity to also get $50 for your savings account and we will feature you on our website, militarysaves.org. 

So it's also a really good way to share with the community, right? Your experiences and what you've been through as a military family, which I think is-- like you said, it's important to have those conversations knowing that you're not alone, and we're all human and we make those money mistakes, you know? 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Right. Absolutely. And that there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. And so if you happen to miss the Facebook Live event, will you be sharing the recordings on your website? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Absolutely. Another thing too, when you are opted into Military Saves with the Military Saves pledge, you're going to receive a recap of all of the events for the entire month. I know a lot of people are busy. It's usually during the workday, so everything will also be on our YouTube channel, which is Military Saves. So feel free to check it out after the event. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Awesome. Well, this has been just a spectacular conversation and I can honestly go on forever talking to you about this because I'm passionate about military and I'm passionate about savings and all the different things that you guys are doing. I just-- I think it's wonderful. But before we wrap up here, is there anything else that you want to mention that we haven't talked about? 

 

ANGELA CABAN: No. I mean, just a really big thanks to Navy Federal. You guys have been a really great supporter of the Military Saves program, so we're just so excited for this podcast. And to get more information about Military Saves and the work, as well as any events that we have going on, just please visit militarysaves.org and feel free to check out our social channels as well. 

 

EMILY BIGHAM: Great. Well, I will let you get back to your probably very, very busy day, seeing as though it is the month of Military Saves. But I just want to thank you again, not only for coming on today, but also for all of the work that you do for the military. It is such a special thing that you do, honestly. 

I mean, you've sacrificed a lot. Your husband as well. Thank him for serving, but our military spouses also sacrifice a lot and it's great that you guys are providing support for them as well. So thank you again and good luck with the rest of the month, and I look forward to talking and seeing you again. 

 

ANGELA CABAN: Thank you, Emily. I appreciate it. 

 

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NARRATOR: Navy Federal Credit Union is federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration. This podcast is intended to provide general information and shouldn't be considered legal, tax, or financial advice. It's always a good idea to consult a tax or financial professional for specific information on how certain laws may apply to your individual financial situation. 

References to and participation with the military community does not constitute organizational endorsement. Navy Federal is an equal housing lender. Navy Federal Credit Union, our members are the mission.