Military Tactics Can Enhance Personal Finances

Let’s face it: the use of military tactics doesn’t seem the most likely way to solve personal finance problems. It’s not apparent that the five tactics discussed below would be a good fit, but let’s take a look:

There are many sources and listings of military tactics, but for our purposes, here are five military off the top of my head that we can use in personal finances:

• Rapid Reaction
• Enhanced decision making
• teamwork
• eye contact
• Resilience

This list underscores the military’s raison d’etre: to kill the enemy. In truth, the military would argue that their tactics are to gain a competitive advantage, which sounds much better in using it here.

Your personal finance’s mission is to manage and save money, not kill the enemy. Still, you may want to gain a “competitive advantage.” but making money is not hermetically sealed around our community. Climate change knows no boundaries, and the global economy is likewise. So, every buck you make goes toward your personal money situation.

In fact, military tactics help you better achieve your goals and define your relationships with the people and institutions you relate to. And military tactics have proved flexible enough to be of value to both business and politics. So why not apply them to your money picture?

Start with an Overall Strategy

To be sure, military wisdom dictates that the military define an overall strategy before considering tactics, and this would correspond to your decision to identify a comprehensive approach to your finances. That goal is to set up sound ways to manage your money and identify opportunities to increase your wealth.

Rapid Reaction

Do decisions in your personal finance require a rapid reaction? Sure, they do! And when you need to react to something, it can mean a lot of things, some negative, and some positive, but the faster your reaction time, the faster you solve problems. The sooner you move problems off your plate, the better, right?

Applying them to negative financial behavior is one way to use rapid reaction. In this case, the negative behavior, squandering money on gambling, could be where you react to the habit with an urgent response. Call it a behavior modification tactic.

The first virtue of rapid response is preparation. If you have all your tools in line — your budget, income numbers, receipts from spending, and numbers from your long-term and short-term accounts, like savings and checking accounts, all up to date and at your fingertips, you are prepared to make a decision.

Crisis points can come from anywhere, from an emergency to a loss of income from an unexpected expense. By looking at it rationally, you can make a quick decision, cut a cost, borrow from an account to make a payment, whatever remedies the problem, and move on to other things.

Enhanced Decision Making

By enhancing your decision-making capability, you can make better decisions about your money. Financial decisions are complicated, but information is one of the best enablers of good decision-making. In the information economy, there’s plenty of that. Using critical thinking skills, you can easily pierce the veil of good information and distinguish it from insufficient news.

The two critical pieces of information to have include:

• Relevant factors: consider those with the most influence on you and those around you.
• Consequences of acting or not acting.

Taking into account all relevant factors, rising from your self of morality, what’s the best way to process information, indeed, to ask yourself, what are the premises of the argument I’m listening to?

The conclusion is proper if the first premise is true and the second premise is true. If Politician A argues that part of the economy is in trouble, we must remedy the problem to save the World. The conclusion you should reach is that you should send more money to Politician A. If countless investigations have rejected the idea that a problem is severe or accurate, an enhanced thinker will leave the first premise because it is false.

That should end the matter, and none of your hard-earned money will be sent to Politician A. In fact, you could conclude Politician A is a liar, which would align with enhanced thinking. You may still like the politician and agree with him about many things, but your money won’t be wasted on a dishonest policy. It’s your personal money, after all.

The idea that your current decision-making may not be adequate for the task will significantly benefit you.

Teamwork

Teamwork in personal fiance is strictly for families or people living communally. The common goal of a family ought to be defined: You want to save money for education or retirement, to save money for a bigger house, or to move to a better neighborhood.

In the military, the troops believe they’re in business after a grenade clears away barbed wire, allowing troops to advance. They’re embracing a common goal that everybody in the company feels to take the objective and progress toward the overall plan. Everybody knew their job and contributed to this success.

It’s about teamwork!

The point is that you can reach your personal finance goals in a family because everybody understands where you’re going and can help make it happen. For instance, two-hundred-pound bombs were used to take out beach defenses at Normandy on D-Day. That made the job of landing Marines easier. That’s just one task that, combined with many other efforts, led to success.

So, why can’t your personal finances be a family affair, respite with teamwork efforts to cut spending, increase income, or guard your savings?

The soldiers of the German Wehrmacht were amazed at America’s propensity to drop so many bombs on them in the Falaise Gap later in the war.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is an intense and effective means of communication, and communication is essential to reaching your goals. The best way to inspire subordinates who agree with you is to use eye contact and make yourself accessible. You don’t want to use this in your competition, but it’s a definite winner between teammates.

Resilience

Resilience is the military’s quality or behavior when faced with subversive behavior from the enemy. When a provocative act is identified, it improves the chances that the army can show toughness in the face of it, but subversion must be routed out.

How often have you heard the comment that we out-lasted them after a battle is won? This is an excellent example of resilience.

In personal finance, you’re confronted with conflicts that you can win with resilience at the turn of every significant event. Whether it’s marriage, a new job, a death in the family, or anything with significant meaning in your life, you’ll be deluged with relatives’ advice, cultural trends, and buying opportunities, seemingly once in a lifetime.

You’ll also get crazy credit card offers, sweepstake opportunities, coupons, and many other ways to persuade you to do whatever the advertiser wants. Maybe she wants you to subscribe to multiple magazines, and your name is entered to win money. The mailing says you’ve already won; wait to read the small print.

It takes resilience to apply critical thinking skills to each and every offer made to you. You could consider each one “subversive” until proven otherwise and proceed with caution and suspicion.

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