As we are about to enter the new year….leaving the “barracks fire” that is 2020 behind in our wake, questions abound about the future of the Blended Retirement System.
While the Blended Retirement System got off to a rocky start, far less DoD members chose to “Opt-in” than had been anticipated, the Blended Retirement System has now been around for nearly 1-year. There have certainly been some challenges ranging from information gaps to financial literacy availability for DoD servicemembers. Fortunately, there has been a lot of positive changes and increased resources made available for DoD Service members. For example, the US Navy has recently increased its Financial literacy program available to sailors via the Navy e-learning website.
Questions still seem to abound that our website and many others field quite consistently that we would like to see answered more aggressively by the DoD. For example, one of the number one questions that we field is about “Continuation Pay.” This specific aspect of the Blended Retirement System is constantly an area of discussion on forums and is inconsistently addressed by the various branches. For example, the Army has a dedicated website about Continuation Pay while if you go to Google and type in USMC Continuation Pay, you will see multiple different versions of information that differ slightly. The most recent MARADMIN around the Blended Retirement System is from 2019….so seeing an updated version would be nice.
Regardless of anything our website or any other 3rd party website may tell you about anything related to the Blended Retirement System, the source of all truth is only: https://militarypay.defense.gov/blendedretirement/
The website, while simple in its layout, covers the essentials of what DoD Service members and their respective family members need to know.
So what will 2021 bring for the Blended Retirement System? Here are some of the things that our team would like to see:
- Now that the Blended Retirement System has been in effect for one year, we would like to see the DoD create financial literacy content around the top 50-100 questions that they receive from customers. This isn’t a difficult request to field for the DoD and I think most would agree this makes sense. For example and as mentioned above, the Continuation Pay is consistently one of the top questions we receive on a weekly basis. Answering the top 50-100 questions from DoD service members and their families by proactively pushing out content around it, would reduce the number of inquiries various entities need to field by well over 30% at a guess.
- A “What Happens Now” series on the Blended Retirement System. The majority of individuals who are enrolled in the Blended Retirement System are still in the service, be it active duty or reserves as the system has only been around for one year. Over the next two-three years as individuals start finishing their three-four year commitments and leaving the service, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of “what happens now” questions ranging from “how to transfer the Blended Retirement System” to “how to continue contributing to it as a civilian” will be asked much more frequently.
- More information for family members to consume and consider. Many of our staff were married while in the service and recognize that a large number of decisions made in the household around finances are not solely the purview of the DoD Service member. Having content around the Blended Retirement System customized for family members would be a great evolution to content that has been created and would increase engagement with the desired goal of increasing the financial resiliency of DoD service members.
- An honest top to bottom assessment by DoD leadership on the positive and negative impacts that the Blended Retirement System has had on DoD service members and their families to date. This may sound trivial, but remember that every single officer or leader in the DoD currently in charge is NOT enrolled in the Blended Retirement System. In fact, the next 5-10 years of DoD leadership is almost certainly not going to be actual enrollees in the Blended Retirement System and will still fall under the legacy retirement system. Why is this important? Imagine being in charge of a program that didn’t actually have any impact on you individually…would you be as vested in its success?
- The time to see if this system is working and is being effectively implemented and used is NOW…before the majority of DoD service members and their families are so deep into the system that it can’t be updated or improved. Even if everything is going absolutely perfectly, let’s have a top to bottom review rather than leave the retirement of millions of DoD service members and their families up to chance.
The Blended Retirement System was implemented for multiple reasons ranging from the recognition that hundreds of thousands of DoD service members left the service before reaching a 20-year pension point to the goal of the US government being able to save money in pension funding over time. Now that the system has been implemented for almost exactly one year, revisiting its successes and failures to date will only improve the Blended Retirement System in the years to come.
As always thank you for reading and best of luck to you and your families.
