Tampa resident Jodi Wood mentioned she often struggled with her finances soon after she joined the Air Force two decades ago.
She knows how tough it is to seek aid.
“It’s type of scary,” said Wood, 41, whose most recent deployment was stateside duty at MacDill Air Force Base earlier this year.
“For a long time, I lived paycheck to paycheck. Lots of younger airmen aren’t willing to open up about their finances. They’d rather go to anybody else but their commander for assist.”
Trust isn’t effortlessly earned.
With that believed in mind, two Tampa Bay area residents a short while ago founded a nonprofit called VeteransPlus. Working in partnership using the National Foundation for Debt Management, the group provides financial counseling and education to active duty troops, veterans and their families.
VeteransPlus, fueled by $437,000 in grants to conduct economic outreach to troops from Florida and 21 states, is based in Clearwater. Its founders say their aim would be to have veterans counseling veterans. All services are free of charge.
“I think veterans have a specific amount of compassion, knowing what military life and sacrifice is all about,” stated John Pickens, a VeteransPlus co-founder who a short while ago retired from the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he most not too long ago was a VA spokesman in St. Petersburg.
“Everybody’s got a unique set of circumstances. And from time to time it’s not simple to relate all those circumstances to a total stranger. But veterans get far more comfortable when they come across out the individual they’re talking to has been within their boots.”
Last month, VeteransPlus announced a partnership with the American Legion — the nation’s largest organization of services members — to supply a range of economical services to active military personnel, veterans, members of the National Guard and Reserves or their families.
Part on the agreement calls for economic seminars at Legion posts around the nation. Issues VeteransPlus will cover consist of simple budgeting, debt management, identity theft and mortgage counseling.
“Thousands of veterans face financial challenges, specifically those people with loved ones deployed in harm’s way,” claimed Clarence Hill, the Legion’s national commander.
Pickens, who founded VeteransPlus with Christopher Fitzpatrick, said his group is increasingly being hired by other nonprofits to evaluate veterans and program personnel who have applied for aid elsewhere to be certain an economic will need exists. Pickens said other groups generally do not have the time or resources to do that.
Since January, the group has conducted 32 “outreach” events to produce financial counseling and expertise.
Pickens and Fitzpatrick claimed the assistance branches from time to time pay as well little attention to economic basics like balancing a checkbook and handling a credit card responsibly.
Troops who are deployed into war zones for instance Iraq and Afghanistan, they claimed, generally return after a year with thousands of dollars within their bank accounts since they didn’t have the opportunity to invest it overseas.
Once house, that dollars tends to burn a hole in their pockets. Too numerous of them splurge without a believed to economic planning.
“They just will need a tiny but of guidance that it’s okay to go out and treat yourself, butlet’s not go whole hog. Let’s form of back off and maybe invest some of this cash, grow it,” said Ralph Dyer, executive director of the National Foundation for Debt Management, VeteransPlus’ partner.
The basis also is based in Clearwater.
A group of 11 licensed economical counselors supply advice, including seven at the foundation. Of individuals, most are either veterans or related to one.
“Our goal is that they will all eventually be veterans or military moms and dads,” Pickens claimed. “They comprehend the military acronyms and also the stories. They just get it.”
Incoming search terms for the article:
VeteransPlusRelated posts: