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Travis signs 1,800 for Military Saves drive

  • Published
  • By Tom Bradley
  • Airman and Family Readiness Center
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  More than 1,800 Airmen took a pledge to save money, pay down debt and build wealth over time during the Military Saves Campaign at Travis this year. Second Lt. Travis Hollin, 60th Logistics Readiness Squadron took the reins this year as the wing point of contact.

Through the diligent efforts of his group and squadron POCs, every Airman on Travis was informed. Savers pledges, financial classes and individual appointments combined to bring up the level of our financial readiness.

The savers pledge was a competition between the military services to get their personnel to check out the resources available on the Military Saves website at http://www.militarysaves.org. This is where individuals can take the pledge, find personal financial resources and receive informative, quarterly emails with relevant financial information. The 1,800 Travis Airmen who signed up were more than 25 percent of the entire Air Force total. Travis was by far the top Air Force base in the competition. This is due to the efforts of Hollin and the individual POCs. They got the pledge forms signed and informed individual Airman about the upcoming classes and events at the Airman & Family Readiness Center.

The classes offered at the AFRC were put together and organized by Tom Day, a financial counselor for almost 20 years, whose combined service to the Air Force is more than 50 years. He has overseen the personal finances of more than 10,000 young Airmen.

Day worked with Travis Credit Union, Armed Forces Bank and the staff at the AFRC to present a schedule of 20 financial classes and events attended by more than 400 active duty, Reservists, family members and retirees during the week. The POCs got the word out on the classes which included one-on-one financial counseling, free of charge, at the AFRC.

The AFRC has two certified financial counselors on staff who are available to work up an individual or family budget, debt reduction plan and provide expertise on the Thrift Savings Plan. During the last four years, more than 1,000 individuals have signed up for their Thrift Savings Plan with the financial counselors. Several have already amassed more than $10,000 in their accounts and gone on to influence others to start saving in their own TSP accounts.

The success of the Military Saves week will reverberate throughout the base and Air Force to change the financial readiness culture of our service. Mission readiness cannot be accomplished without financial readiness.