General Advice for Baby Pipehitters

First piece of advice is don’t be like either of these posers… one has four chins and the other forgot to put a magazine in his weapon. First rule of thumb is that OPSCORE does not = baller status.

Now that’s out of the way, we can move on to more important things. The military loves its silly acronyms, but one that I hate hearing aloud but loving seeing enforced is putting the Bottom Line; Up Front (BLUF). If you are like me, you hate having to dig for information, and especially hate writers who bury the point of their article under a thousand fluffy words.  For that reason, I will structure my articles in the BLUF format. I’ll give you my recommendation, and you can decide if you want to read the additional amplifying information.

Taking it a step further, I will use this article as the BLUF for this website. Some people don’t care about details and shit; they just want to be given a recommendation. This post is simply a list of my personal recommendations to get a new freedom-loving, pipe-hitter on the “gainz” train to success. Amplifying information and my rationale will be provided in separate articles.

Money

Nothing is more eye opening then discovering you could end world hunger based off your wife’s spending habits at Starbucks

1. Read If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly by Dr. William Bernstein. Make your wife read it. Then make your kids read it. Then read it again whenever you feel like you are screwing up financially. You can download it free here.
2. Figure out your no-shit compensation package (direct & indirect). So many young soldiers know their base pay and nothing else. Log-in to your MyPay and print out your Personal Statement of Military Compensation. This document breaks down ALL compensation the military gives you, both direct: Base Pay, BAS, Special Pay, Bonuses, Housing, etc. and just as important, indirect: Pension, SGLI, Tricare, Dental, GI-Bill, Tuition’s Assistance, etc. This way, you won’t be surprised when you get out of the army and discover you actually have to pay to get your teeth fixed.
3. Track your spending. If you don’t know where your money goes, you will not be able to make adjustments. Nothing is more eye opening then discovering you could end world hunger based off your wife’s spending habits at Starbucks (JK honey, I love you!). This is actually pretty easy. You don’t have to save all your receipts and you don’t need to create the mother of all spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel. I recommend www.mint.com (or something similar). It’s free, simple to use, will track all your accounts, and will automatically create categorical graphs of your spending.
4. Make a general budget. This makes some people cringe (including me). The key word is “general”. It doesn’t have to be “we will spend only $226.23 on groceries every month or we’ll die poor.” Take baby steps by budgeting your money into broad categories such as Housing, Transportation, Food/Groceries, Entertainment, Retirement/Savings, Debt repayment, etc. Once again, I recommend using www.mint.com.
5.  Start investing in your Thrift Savings Plan immediately (like yesterday).  I don’t care if it’s 3%, 5% or 15%. Obviously more is always better, but just start investing SOMETHING! Allocate your TSP allotment into the Roth option of the C-Fund, S-Fund, or L-Fund (or combination of all three) since you have a long time until you reach your 60’s (more on this in future articles). This is something you won’t care about now, because you are young and going to live forever. However, I guarantee you one day you will care, and you don’t want that time to be when you’re 35. When you’re young is absolutely the most critical time to start investing in your retirement because #compoundinterest and #nodependents.
6. Use your GI Bill. I am constantly blown away by how many soldiers get out of the army and don’t use this amazing benefit. If you don’t want or need to use it, stay in at least 10 years and give it to your spouse or kids.  If you don’t, you are literally pissing away between $65,000-$90,000! Not to mention the thousands of dollars you’ll be missing out on from getting a higher paying job due to your (or your dependents) advanced education. When I say advanced education, I don’t specifically mean going to Yale. This can be a trade school, flight school, law school, grad school, nursing school, maybe even space ship door gunner school!
7. Go to Ranger School. Like no really, GO TO RANGER SCHOOL! Some will punch me for not making this #1 on the list and for that I apologize :-). Besides the obvious reasons to go to Ranger School like leadership, professional development, and learning valuable lessons about how you handle personal suffering and sacrifice; there are financial reasons as well. If you are a PFC, you will automatically get promoted to Specialist…boom pay raise! If you are a Specialist your promotion points to E-5 will be waived and all you have to do is pass the board…boom pay raise! If you stay in for a career, the promotion rates for tabbed NCO’s is astronomically higher than non-tabbed…boom pay raise after pay raise! If you are a non-Infantry guy, nothing else will set you apart more from your peers than getting your Tab, and SMU’s will no-shit actively head-hunt you…boom pro-pay! Plus you’ll be walking in the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, and Walker Texas RANGERRRRR! If this video doesn’t convince you to go to Ranger School, nothing will.

8. Get a credit card and pay off the balance every month. If you are an 18 or 19 year private, chances are you don’t have a credit card or a credit history. Building a credit history and a solid credit score is absolutely vital to leasing apartments,  purchasing vehicles, or buying a house without paying thousands of dollars in extra interest. That being said, it is equally important to pay off the balance every month in order to build that credit score and not incur interest on your own money. I personally recommend the Blue Cash Preferred Card from American Express. It gives you a whopping 6% cash back on groceries and 3% cash back on gas, the $95 annual fee is waived for active duty military, and you get $250 cash back if you spend $1000 in the first 3 months. Read this article to learn more: The Four Best Military Credit Cards.
9. Buy a used car. Dave Ramsey will tell you to buy all vehicles used and with cash. That is actually great advice and if you can do both, then do it! 9-month deployments are great opportunities to save a shit ton of money, especially if you have no dependents. Stop looking at your vehicles as monthly payments and instead look at the actual price. Anyone can afford a $50,000 car if they stretch out the loan term long enough. However, that doesn’t mean you should. The fastest way to lose all that hard-earned money is to come home and blow all your money on a brand new yellow Bugatti. Just because you buy used doesn’t mean you have to get a piece of junk. You know what the difference is between a 2017 Black Ford F-150 with 0 miles and a 2015 Black F-150 with 30,000 miles? Oh nothing except about $7,000.
10. Save half of your new pay raise. Live below your means. If you continually raise the cost of your standard of living, you will never actually get ahead and will always be treading water.  Think about it, if you get a $200 a month pay raise, but then go and get a new car that is an extra $150 a month and a new iPhone X that is $50 a month, you are exactly where you started. You might have nicer stuff and technically make more money, but you aren’t actually building any wealth. Take your new pay raise, get something nice with it, maybe take some extra dates nights with your significant other, and then save the rest.

Health

If you work out constantly, but have plateaued and never see any strength or weight loss gains, then your diet probably sucks.

1. Read the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris. The dude is a human guinea pig. I can think of a no better one-stop shop for transformational nutrition, health, and fitness advice that produce immediate results. You can find his E-book for free at different places on the internet, but I highly believe he is an individual you should support with your wallet. You can download the Kindle version here. I also recommend listening to his free podcast at https://tim.blog/podcast.

2. Proper Nutrition is the key to performance. The boys over at Mountain Tactical Athlete say it best. 6 days a week: Eat lean meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and drink a lot of water. Don’t eat fried meat, carb heavy food (bread, spuds, rice, pasta, etc.), or refined sugar. Don’t drink dairy, gatorade, or alcohol. 1 Day a week: EAT WHATEVER YOU WANT! Eat pizza, ice cream, donuts, and drink all the beer you want. The cheat day is crucial to making a long-term lifestyle change vs. a short-term diet blip. Try to be too perfect and you’ll fall off the wagon. I used to believe that as long as I worked out hard, I could eat whatever I want…then I reached my late 20’s…gross. If you work out constantly, but have plateaued and never see any strength or weight loss gains, then your diet probably sucks.  I saw a huge transformation (both in performance and visually) when I started to think of my food as fuel and followed the above advice. *note: “event” nutrition will differ from “baseline” nutrition. Read this article to learn more: The “Food Pyramid” is Bullshit and it’s Making You Fat.
3. Cook your own food. Not only will you save a crap ton of money by not constantly eating out, but you will avoid the temptation to eat those amazing free peanuts and buttered rolls that Texas Road House shoves in your face. You don’t have to become a gourmet chef; making some grilled chicken, black beans, and broccoli really isn’t that hard. Save the eating out for your cheat day. If you are adventurous in the kitchen check out www.thedomesticman.com. If your wife is super into cooking have her check out www.paleomg.com (it’s full of whimsical, “pinteresty” stuff but has great recipes).

Fitness

“That two hour cardio session was SO MUCH FUN”…said no-one ever.

1. Again, read the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris. Tim subscribes to the “less is more / minimum effective dose” theory (as do I).  This means, using the smallest dose that the will produce the desired outcome. A popular analogy is that water will start to boil at 212* F. Adding more heat will not make the water boil faster.  Most people assume that getting in shape requires hours upon hours of weekly exercise and rigid meal planning. It doesn’t. You can get in excellent “Army shape” with 3-4 days of short, max-effort work out sessions and 1-2 longer endurance sessions. “That two hour cardio session was SO MUCH FUN”…said no-one ever.
2. Your “sport” is combat. Just like the tape test is a terrible method for determining whether someone is fat, the APFT is a terrible method for determining physical fitness as it relates to combat. I’ve been on countless dismounted missions and been in a fire fight or three. Never once did I run towards the enemy on a paved road wearing PT shorts, running shoes, and a PT belt. I did walk really slowly up a big ass mountain followed by climbing walls, sprinting between buildings, vaulting through windows, crawling through ditches, carrying litters, and dragging a casualty all while wearing 60 lbs of bullshit. Below are the Fitness Attributes of a Tactical Athlete. I promise you that if you train these attributes you will still crush your APFT.
   • High Relative Strength to your body weight
   • High Work Capacity for Short/Intense Events
   • Stamina for multiple short events over a long duration. Also stamina for a single long event
   • Mental toughness
   • Durability for a long career
3. Fix your running form. Running injuries have plagued the Army since the 80’s when Jogging (silent “J” of course) became a fad, old ladies hit the roads in their new Nike’s, and the pinnacle of physical fitness in the Army became your ability run run a 32 minute 5-mile. Many of these injuries are caused by overuse, but even more are caused by super shitty running form. Everyone knows you shouldn’t do deadlift, snatches, or backsquat with crappy form because you will injure yourself, but for some reason they don’t think that concept applies to running. Film yourself running on a treadmill with shoe’s on and shoe’s off. You will see that your running form will change from landing on your heel to landing on your forefoot. That is because your body naturally knows that landing on your heel is TERRIBLE for you. Proper running form is called the “Pose Method”; read about it here and watch video analysis here.

4. Buy proper running shoes. If your running form sucks, no shoe will prevent you from injuring yourself, but proper shoes can certainly help assist you in training proper form. Your shoes must be light (less than 10oz), comfortable, fit well, have just enough cushioning, a wide toe box that allows your toes to spread, and minimal heel-to-toe drop (less than 5-6 mm). This means the heel cushioning of your shoe should not be drastically higher than the forefoot, thereby encouraging heel striking. Read this article on how to pick out proper running shoes.

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5. Start programming your fitness. Stop showing up for PT on a Monday morning with no idea what you or your soldiers are going to execute for PT. Figure out what goals you want you or your squad to achieve and program out how you plan on getting there with benchmarks to measure progress. Laying out an 8 week plan allows you to prevent overuse injuries and see gaps in your training.  I don’t care if you follow Sealfit, Crossfit, Military Athlete, Gym Jones, Four-Housemen, Lift Big Eat Big, Ranger Athlete Warrior, etc. Just follow SOMETHING that gets you in the gym a few times a week and trains the attributes listed above. Read How to Actually be Army Strong to learn more.
6. Don’t forget Mobility & Recovery. The ability to move well, train with correct form, and perform basic maintenance on yourself is just as important as the actual workout. Preparing your body for movement allows you to give your Max Effort during a workout without injuring yourself. Recovery after a hard workout allows you to keep working out like a boss for the long term without injuring yourself. Your greatest asset is your own body; you are no good to anyone if you are injured. If you can’t hold a proper unweighted “ass-to-ankles” squat for more than 5 seconds, check out Kelly Starett over at Mobility WOD; I cannot recommend him highly enough. You can find a ton of his videos for free on YouTube.  Must have items for recovery are a foam roller, a lacrosse ball, and mobility compression bands. If your gym doesn’t have any of these, then you probably are working out at the wrong gym.

That’s it

As mentioned above, this is a broad catch-all for general money, health, and fitness advice. Many of these topics deserve their own articles, and will get them in the near future. However, if you only ever read one article on this website, I want this one to be it.

You’re Welcome