Navy Personal Financial Training Case Study

Insufficient financial training can expose Sailors' to economic ruin. Senior Leadership should understand the consequences of the elementary financial training that Sailors' are presently receiving. This paper will cover the identified problems with the U. S. Navy's current Personal Financial Management (PFM) Program, give a discussion on why it may fail to effectively train Sailors', and provide a recommendation to optimize the existing PFM training and tools.
The Problem with the U.S. Navy's Personal Financial Management Program is that it is not comprehensive.
On October 9, 2007, the Department of the Navy instructed the establishment of "The Navy Personal Financial Management (PFM) Education, Training, and Counseling Program" (U. S. Department of Defense, 2007). The reason for the instruction was that the Department of the Navy had determined that personal financial matters were worrisome to Sailors and their families, and money problems were affecting mission readiness and retention. Within command's, a Command Financial Specialist's (CFS) was assigned to train and counsel Sailors' about their financial
Due to the lack of any measure that is used to check for personal financial literacy, it is recommended that Navy Personnel Command implement a mandatory computer based financial course with standardized testing and certificate upon completion of each course. The Navy Knowledge Online Portal already offers courses that are designed to increase knowledge through "e-learning", therefore the added component of certification would not be problematic. This recommendation allows the quantitative measure of knowledge to be entrusted to an unbiased testing environment. Since the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 requires financial literacy and readiness, proof of compliance would be readily