The next time a shutdown is threatened and officials say they’ll take our pay and close many services, I expect to see them with a plan they can stick with.
(You know there will be a next time).
Dear military leaders: next time, please make up your minds early — and not often.
Like a good military spouse, as soon as the drama of the last few days ended my mind started racing with my own personal After Action Report. This wasn’t an examination of how I handled it – my thoughts were on leadership.
Let’s ignore for now the fact that proclaiming servicemembers’ pay a non-essential expense sends the message that our government absolutely does make the welfare of military families a priority.
Instead let’s focus on the chaos, rumor feeding and confusion our leaders created by not announcing a shutdown plan and sticking to it.
Take the commissary situation, for example: yes it’s going to close, no it’s not, yes it is, well it may not, oh it’s going to close in some places but not others, oh! It’s not going to close at all! (!!!) And still SpouseBUZZ readers were reporting their commissaries had hung signs announcing closure.
And all that before a shutdown was for sure.
Very unspecific DoD service shutdown guidance was issued Thursday, with a follow-up guidance changing some of the things they said at first issued late Friday. And lets not forget about the LES drama.
I understand that the pay threat was unprecedented and that leadership had to start a shutdown plan from scratch with relatively little notice. But their lack of succinct, coordinated planning fed an atmosphere of panic among military families, particularly those who live paycheck to paycheck.
Is it really too much to ask that those we trust with our well being live up to the responsibility they created for themselves?
About Amy Bushatz
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We tend to forget, because our own loved ones are so focused and squared away and awesome, that the military is an enormous bureaucracy, like any other in government or the corporate world. In this case, I think the people who should've been making decisions simply weren't, because they didn't *really* expect the shutdown to happen and even they don't understand the enormous complexity of the military services. No one wearing a uniform, from E-1 to O-10, had any clue because the folks in charge of the clues never had any themselves.
I think the best lesson anyone can take from this is, if you can't survive without a paycheck for a month or two, it's a problem that YOU MUST fix. Too many people act as if an enlistment contract is guaranteed income, but I have friends here who went from "Yay Navy, we'll be around until retirement" to "medical discharge, moving in with Mom and Dad" in the space of weeks — it can happen to any of us at any time. Talk to financial advisors at your family center or another advisor who doesn't get a commission on your investments and let them help you get a financial plan and an emergency fund in place.
No one can do it for us and no one is taking care of us…
Off topic, but along the lines of going from feeling confident in your job stability to not having a job afterall, I would love to hear someone take on the Perform to Serve program in the Navy. I've seen so many GOOD sailors suddenly essentially 'fired' in the last few months that it makes my stomach hurt.
Past that, I agree that an emergency fund is needed. It's also, sometimes, very hard to establish.
Well said! I think this situation brought to the forefront the need for planning all around. Nothing is guaranteed, and the only way we can make sure we're in the best situation if and when the unexpected happens is to build that security for ourselves as best we can. If that means having a list of emergency resources, making sure we have an "emergency kit" of some kind, or giving up extras to build up emergency savings, we need to do it. And start now.
I do agree that the information coming out (such as it was) could and should have been better coordinated. Surely *someone* at DeCA knew what would happen in the event of a shut down…I'd hope.
I wonder if part of it was due to the 'instant information' that we have now as opposed to previous shutdowns. When this happened in the Clinton administration I'm sure no one could check MyPay to see what was posted. I'm NOT saying that they shouldn't have had a plan in place and that they didn't feed the rumor mills and keep everyone wringing their hands in ridiculous ways. I just wonder if one of the reasons they were so frazzled at the grappling for information was that this hasn't ever happened where the news would be INSTANTLY in front of everyone.
Thank you, Amy. Well said!
We sure as heck can't control the DoD, but we can prepare ourselves for whatever gets thrown at us.