We have its chief master sergeant Allen usry and he's a retired command senior enlisted leader for North American aerospace defense command in United States northern command from Peterson Air Force base. He also served as a principal advisor to the commander on all enlisted matters. He also currently serves as the board of directors for the Air Force enlisted village as a military relations consultant for pioneer services a division of mid-country bank. He's also been a guest columnist with Fox News the Hill and the Virginia pilot. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome retired chief master sergeant W. Allen usry. Thank you sir. All right. Good morning everybody. All right hey boy now that is loud. Once again good morning everybody. All right so as he said I and it's on the slide I'm Allen usry retired command chief out at NORAD Northcom retired about eight years ago for what for what that's worth but you know I share in your excitement at this moment because I know when you looked at the agenda and you saw financial resiliency you stopped everything you were doing you contacted your family and you said this this is why I became a chief you know and as you know this is the first time we've done this combined for the last six years I've gone out and done this brief with individual magic comms but I couldn't hit them all I would hit three or four now I'm not saying the Air Force consolidated this just so you could all get my briefing but the evidence is pretty self-evident and you know and they put me first I wasn't first and then they thought about it and I'm sure they said you know what nobody's going to be able to pay attention to anything until they get the briefing they really want so so now that I have set the appropriate level of expectations let's get on with this take a look at that up on the screen I saw I saw this on Facebook I don't know it's probably two or three years ago and everybody thought it was pretty funny but with anything it's funny why because there's an element of truth to it and it stood out to me because it had two things on there it had relationships and money and both of those things are kind of intertwined we'll touch on that in a minute let me go ahead and tell you what it is we're going to talk about we're going to talk a little bit about very briefly what is financial resiliency why it's important and then we're going to get into I'm going to provide you a little bit of background over finances in the military from a kind of a strategic level over the last 15 years or so but I'm hitting a hit on the military lending act I don't include the I'm not including the like the servicemen civil relief act in there because I think most of you are familiar with that most of you may not be familiar with the military lending act and that's the protections that we have out there for service members so I'm going to talk about that a little bit I'm going to spend most of my time probably on the next two slides on considerations for leaders and more to know and then I'm going to do a fun little exercise on compounding interest it's something that really stood out to me way back in the day when I first saw it so I'll share that with you but I promise you this I will give you some information you probably haven't had out of one of these briefings before I will try to be as upbeat and entertaining as I can be if you snore I will wake you up got it all right so let's start I mean we all know what resiliency is it's really the ability to withstand what life throws at you and keep moving forward with a certain level of stress that's appropriate not letting it it overwhelm you but why is it really important do we really see financial readiness as a mission essential thing and the one thing I always point out especially for leaders is you have to remember that this is the number one reason that members lose their security clearance and more importantly it's the second leading contributing factor in service member suicide what do you think the number one factor is relationships absolutely and those two factors are so intertwined at times that you really can't separate them and that goes back to that slide that I was showing you they the relationships and the money impact each other let's move on let me give you a little bit of background and and frame the problem here in 2001 Navy and Marine Corps relief gave a total of five thousand dollars to nine service members who had been the victims of predatory lenders five thousand dollars nine members just five years later in 2006 that amount had gone up to 1.37 million so around that 2006 time there was a lot of discussion on Capitol Hill about why this had become such a problem there was a lot of discussion in dod i was a numbered air force command chief at the time and i remember this is where it really started having a lot of conversations about those outside the gate businesses and how they financed and and those kind of things and Holly Petraeus the wife of general Petraeus she was also the head of the military division of the consumer finance protection bureau and she testified before congress and said that researchers had gone out and looked at the counties and zip codes that had the highest concentration of payday lenders and what they found they all had one thing in common they were close to large military populations and the researchers went on to describe this environment where service members were literally surrounded by companies that were willing to finance things and charge an annual rate average average of 450 percent you know some were a lot higher than that that was just the average and so what that led to was the military lending act of 2007 it was signed into law in 06 went into effect in 07 and basically what it did was two things it provided some protections for service members the biggest one being the prohibition against mandatory allotments but it also capped interest rates on 36 at 36 percent but only for certain products and those products were three types of loans you had payday loans auto title loans and refund anticipation loans why did it really cover those three well according to the national foundation for credit counseling 60 percent of service member families have borrowed money from non-traditional ways of borrowing i don't know better way to say that and those were the three but it had some stipulations to it for the payday loans if it was more than two thousand dollars or longer than 90 days the mla didn't apply if it was an auto title loan if it was longer than six months it didn't apply some pretty big loopholes interesting back story to this is congress who normally writes laws actually went to do d and said we want you to write this well why did do d write something that only provided for three types of loans and then had loopholes in it i can't answer about the loopholes i can't answer about the three things the fdic has said that service members are underserved when it comes to banking and so there was a concern that you can have the unintended consequences of tightening up the rules so much that now young service members don't have any place they can go so they went after the three that they saw as the biggest problem areas but they left those loopholes in there and what happened was that it resulted in things like this the spouse of a wounded warrior in the illinois national guard takes out a loan for $2,500 her annual percentage rate is 300 a little bit better than the 450 but i wouldn't call it good right so she ends up paying over five thousand in interest lands up paying over eight thousand dollars for a $2,500 loan and the military lending act did not apply why because it went longer than six months you've got a travis air force base airmen and you know we like to say airmen are a little bit smarter right he did a lot better than 300 percent he got a hundred percent interest rate 102 percent interest rate he took out a loan for six thousand he paid over seven thousand in interest and again the military lending act did not apply why because it went longer than six months so we went back we we re-looked at this and they updated it in 2015 it went into effect in october 2016 about two and a half years ago so this is still relatively new the first thing they did was they closed those loopholes the second thing they did was they said this should apply to more things than just those payday loans auto title loans and refund anticipation loans so now it also applies to credit cards credit union loans installment loans bank overdraft loans so really most of the financial products that are out there are now covered by the military lending act the other thing it did it established what's called the military annual percentage rate the mapper a term that had as far as i know hadn't really been used before the reason they did this is so let's say i'm a lender who's out in town and chief here comes to borrow money and she gets a loan and let it's just it's below the 36 cap well while we're signing papers i say wouldn't you like to have some credit insurance you know just in case there's an emergency and something happens and you can't pay it'll go ahead and pay it she says you know that sounds really good so i add on that debt protection well that i don't have to i don't have to comply with 36 percent for that so i loan her the money at 36 but i add on the ancillary product of debt protection and i charge her 900 for that okay so they came back and said look if you're going to loan money to the military whatever ancillary products you want to add into it it's still got to come under that 36 percent rate so it also added some more prohibitions it it prohibited rolling over a loan that had a balance to a bigger loan because it just continues that cycle of debt and it gets bigger and bigger because they're rolling over an old balance into a new balance it also prohibited mandatory arbitration and i like this one it's interesting why because most of you know an example of this uh the samsung galaxy phones they had the problem where they a few years ago they were exploding right well they're and it's to the best of my knowledge last year it was still going on in court why because they brought a class action lawsuit and samsung is arguing that in its terms of use you know the terms of use that you click on after you read every single word in it in that terms of use it said look if there's a dispute you agree to arbitration what's the problem with that the arbitrator uh is almost always paid for by who the lending organization so where do you think they usually land when they make a decision so they prohibited mandatory arbitration the the next one i think is kind of funny but it's it had to be done they would were some blending institutions would require you to provide a signed blank check when you got the loan so if you didn't make a payment they could just fill it out and and and go ahead and cash it themselves and and a lot of places did that not your reputable places and then they got rid of prepayment penalties and that's important because for a lot of these companies they were charging 450 average now they can only charge 36 they did not want you to pay off early so they would add a hefty prepayment penalty so if you walked in and said i got to get out of debt here's the money they go oh well you owe me x amount because you paid off early that way they could get as much money as possible so those are all covered in the military lending act let me ask you something show hands i want to see it from everybody how many of you have had heard of the military lending act before today that's really not too bad better than i expected good job all right so now we're going to spend some time talking here i'm going to hand this to you because i'm and but you can't forget that i gave it to you okay all right no no i don't want you to click i just want you to hold it because i want my hands for you got to talk all right so considerations for leaders the first thing is we don't recruit bad credit bad credit is a disqualifying factor now if you have some minor things maybe there's a waiver but bad credit is disqualifying we do take in folks who have debt like student debt and i think i had read somewhere and you guys have seen this where the average enlistee now or the enlistee is coming with an average of over twenty thousand dollars in debt man i couldn't get anybody to give me credit when i was 18 years old much less have 20 thousand dollars in debt but that comes in we also have folks who have shallow credit which is what i was when i first joined which is you just don't have very much you know you may have one or two little things but there's not enough to really give a good view of your credit for so if we don't recruit bad credit where is it that they really go wrong and i would argue that it's in the first three to six months after they get out of basic because i mean let's let's think back these folks are what typically 18 19 years old it is typically their first real job and it's a good job and it pays well and it's got good benefits and it's secure they know they're going to be doing this job for the next three to four to six years hopefully unless something bad happens right businesses know that too and there's nothing predatory about that businesses want to do business with a young military person why because it's a good job it's secure military people pay their debts so this young 18 or 19 year old airman they get to their first duty station maybe even before that what are some of the things they start to buy they got to buy a car got to have a nice car maybe it doesn't have to be a corvette but you want a nice car that your friends will think will cool and maybe help you get a date right and you need to have a stereo in that car that can be heard in the next state um what about the dorm room what do you need in there you got to have a tv not just any tv you got to have an 80 inch tv because you got to be able to see it from across your across the room right what about a gaming system maybe two gaming systems because you've got you know sega and you got playstation i those may well those may be the same thing i have no idea why that was funny but okay um but you've got to have a laptop you've got to have a smartphone you got to have all these things now i'm not not knocking those purchases the next time you go to a chief's group meeting i want you to look in the parking lot see how many fifty sixty thousand dollar bmw is mercedes f250s with roll bars and fog lights that will never see off-road because they're too nice but again i'm not knocking the purchases the point that i'm trying to make is everybody wants their bling but hopefully by the time you're well i started to say before you're our age but that would be a disservice to you by the time you're a chief you've learned how to buy things smartly you either learn through hard knocks or somebody taught you a little bit of how to buy things wisely right so for arguments sake if we don't recruit bad credit and we know that it's in that first three to six months that they get into debt above their head there is a window of opportunity there for us to engage now it is a tough window because sometimes they come to us at their first duty station out of tech school already badly in debt right but there is a window of opportunity now what we do we tend to do is we set no expectations for them you know i had a friend of mine he was command chief out at packf some of you may remember him chief tony bishop used to say if you set the bar so low that a dead man can get across it why are you surprised with mediocre and and uh... substandard results but we don't set expectations for finances we do for fitness we do for education we don't for finance the reason i mentioned those three things if you go out and do the research people who have an education people who are healthy and people of their finances in order live longer and so we don't pay there are a lot of tools that are available out there now much more than when i was a young service member but it's kind of like having a parade that nobody comes to it's like having uh... the greatest web page in the world that nobody uses there's got to be a delivery method in that and we set no expectations is an expectation is it not okay so go with me here for just a minute i want to give a couple of examples of differing expectations one is on the officer side one is on the enlisted side i don't mean to make it sound us versus them it's not it's just a very good illustration so for our young men and women that go to the service academies when they are in their junior year there are two large financial institutions that do a lot of business with the military that offer what is called a career starter loan the name career starter loan even implies that there's expectations this is to help you get started in your career so when you're a junior at one of the service academies you can take out a thirty six thousand dollar unsecured personal loan and pay point seven five percent interest not seven point five point seven five now why would a business do that well obviously the same reasons they want to do business with the military it's a great job they know you're going to be in it for a while you're you're looking to make this a career but more importantly they have a discussion with you that says look with a personal loan of thirty six thousand point seven five percent interest if you take that money and invest it with us you'll earn more in interest than you're having to pay if you add to that x amount over 20 years this is what you'll walk out with at 20 years at 22 years so there is automatically this expectation that not only will you be financially sound but that you will build wealth throughout a career now on the enlisted side and i understand this there's a lot of tools available now and i'm going back 37 38 years to when i came in i had formal and informal financial education and i i think you guys will find this interesting maybe humorous my formal education was a correspondence course that was focused on how to balance a checkbook now when i came in there wasn't you didn't even have to have direct deposit there weren't atm's there weren't debit cards that kind of thing so everything was done by check right so how to balance your checkbook man that that's it now my informal financial education when i got to my first duty station somebody actually did one of my staff nco's i started in the marine corps grabbed me and said look let me give you a little financial education said do not ever write a bad check and land up in the first sergeant's office because you know some of you may remember back in the day if you got into trouble with that stuff it went to your chain of command right do not write a bad check now my corporals they were even better they gave me some informal education they pulled me to side and said hey man we got the secret to this don't get a checking account said why not so if you have a check can't can't write a bad check can't write a bad check can't get in trouble made perfect sense to me so i would take my check over to the px i would cash it get my cash in and i would live life for the next two weeks i'm 18 years old i got friends who want to do stuff i don't have a car we would go out and i would spend my money and i would run out of money before payday so thank god for those corporals because they really had my back they would loan me $20 whenever i needed it but i had to pay them back 40 on payday so what is that but a hundred percent payday loan is it not i didn't have to worry about the predatory lenders outside the gate they lived in the barracks with me and i never understood why corporal brown said hey now if anybody asks don't say anything about this because i thought he was doing me a favor and i'm not dogging him now because i was the consumer i wanted it i thought it was a great deal give me 20 bucks and and i can go to the club for the next two nights but i got into a cycle of debt where with my own corpals where half my paycheck was going to my corpals it all comes back to expectations that you said whether it's to build wealth in a career or whether it's don't you dare get in trouble there's a huge difference every time i do one of these classes someone will come up afterwards and go man when i was young somebody pulled me inside got me saving and i did that for the rest of my career now i'm set that's what we have to do as a chief maybe you don't sit down with every person but you can make that an area of emphasis because go back to the fact that it is mission related it is the second leading contributing cause for service members suicide it is the number one reason that service members lose their security clearance the other thing that we do we set no expectations and then we tend to blame the member what i mean by that is not that we you tell them it's all their fault but we tend to discount or look down on the things that they buy you don't need that that why do they spend money on that that's stupid well remember we all want our bling greatest example i can remember this as a young first sergeant i remember at a first sergeant council meeting all right we had a big discussion about spinner rims remember spinner rims yeah i'm old enough now to swear some of you had them and uh but you know spending two thousand dollars on rims for a two hundred dollar car you know we we were dogging them for what they bought but yet we're driving a bmw my point here it's not on what they buy it's how they buy it does that make sense i looked at a contract several years ago for a young young army e3 who had bought an iphone 5 that'll tell you about how long ago it was and at the time it was probably a 450 or 500 dollar phone right by the time he finishes financing it it was going to cost him $2,300 you know i do believe our young service members do pay attention to their money on a monthly basis they don't necessarily look at what it's going to cost them in the long run what i tend to try to do when i sit down with a young person is go look i know you want your bling you can either have your bling and be broke or we can sit down and talk about how to have your bling and have some money left over then you can decide if you want to invest that or if you just have money left over for the weekend instead of buying that iphone 5 and financing it and paying four times let's go out on the apple website and let's look what an refurbished last generation iphone cost because you may not have to finance that and then that's a monthly payment you don't have to worry about again it's teaching people how to buy things smartly and that kind of leads right into the next bullet of our financial education often misses the mark and not to say that it's not good but we have you know really good briefings most of you probably had it i know i had it at least three times in my career how to make a million dollars in a career in the military right but the hard-fast truth the one solid rule that will never fail in investing never fail you cannot invest what you do not have and so i can talk to you all day long about investing but if you're broke and not knowing how you're going to get to next payday and you're having to think about borrowing money from your corpals like i did well that's going to sell right over your head even if you are thinking about retirement long term there's nothing you can do about it you know my daughter is in her thirties now and she's a financial advisor and she's really got it together with her money uh and when she was young i talked to her a lot about money and the fact that money can't buy you happiness but it'll darn sure lower your stress be smart with it and uh she got engaged and her her fiance went off to basic before he went to basic i said boy you got to enroll in tsp just do it he came back from basic said did you enroll in tsp no but i'll get it i'll hit it when i go to tech school so he goes to tech school comes back said did you enroll in tsp she says no but i'll get it my first duty station the dent in my forehead is getting stronger because i'm beating on this kid you need to enroll in tsp finally my daughter calls me she goes dad lay off we enrolled in tsp i said all right good deal february rolls around and she calls me and and says hey we got our tsp statement we got this much in there next year february rolls around she calls me and now she's excited she goes dad you won't believe how much we have in tsp this is great but i'm paying attention because you know we're friends on facebook and i'm seeing things as many of you parents do you may see some things that concern you the thing that i saw was a two door red Mercedes Benz coupe and i called her and i said how could you afford this and she goes dad don't worry about it you raised me right it's three years old we got a good deal on it it still has warranty it's low miles and we can afford this i actually got our phone going that's my baby girl you know and uh but then over the next few months they bought a Chevy avalanche and a couple other things and i'm starting to go and then i see a four-wheeler you know recreational four-wheeler and so i immediately got on the got on the computer and and pulled up the pay chart just to make sure that e3's hadn't gotten some huge pay raise that i didn't know about and i called her and said hey you know there's no way i you know because i know what you guys make and uh and after a while she tells me well we got in a little bit you know over our head a little bit but you taught me to always you know have you know to borrow from yourself and and so what we did was we took a loan out against our tsp and you know what that's not necessarily a bad thing but i told her i said honey you realize that you're losing interest twice now you're losing the interest you would have earned on the money that would have been in there and you're also having to pay interest on on the money that you borrow which was your money to begin with and again that just makes the point that you need to have an emergency fund you need to have money put away that you can touch on your own and so uh again with our financial education well and i the the moral of that story is it really hit me that you can't teach somebody to be smart with their money until you teach them how not to be stupid with it and that may sound harsh but go back to you can't invest what you don't have right so how much good does it have to talk with somebody about retirement when you really need to be talking to him about how to just purchase something without overpaying uh and then the last one nothing is more vital than nco engagement i would use myself and then my daughter is an example but i go back to to my early days when i owed all my money to my corporal and i finally decided hey i'm going to cycle a debt here i've got to get out of this and so i was paying them back i wasn't borrowing any money and corporal brown my primary lender my preferred lender uh came to me and said man i hadn't seen you what's going on i said man i'm trying to save to get a car i need to get a car it takes 40 minutes to get off camp pennilton and my gunnery sergeant that i worked for heard the end of that conversation and later on in that day he goes hey us three come here i said yeah gunny what do you need because i heard you talking to corporal brown and said you were going to buy a car so yeah that's that's what i was talking about gunny so when are you going to buy a car i don't know for sure i got to save up a little bit of money because well before you go out and buy a car come see me we'll jump in my truck and ride out there i know a couple of places that are reputable won't rip you off i'll make sure you get a good deal i cannot overemphasize the impact of that three-minute conversation because here is what was really going to happen i was going to save out about up about 200 dollars i was going to go get on the bus with my 200 dollars in my hand and i was going to spend 30 minutes or 40 minutes riding off base when i got off base in ocean side california i was going to get off that bus i don't have a car so what am i going to do i'm going to look around for what the first car lot i find and i'm 18 19 years old i'm going to go there and i'm going to pretend i know what i'm doing i'm going to kick the tires i'm going to look at the engine like i actually know how it operates and then i was going to make a deal for a car that i liked and and i undoubtedly would have overpaid both in the short term and the long term but because of a three-minute conversation i went back to the barracks saying yeah the gunny's got my back he's going to take me out make sure i don't get ripped off i mean that's all it takes is a three-minute conversation that says hey before you do anything come talk to me man i'll help you out and they see that their nco's are on their side so again the power of nco engagement i think is probably one of the biggest messages in this presentation and you've got my clicker all right i'm done with that so now some other things to know and i try i do try to pick things that maybe aren't you know the run of the mill that that you you've heard about before i know you all have heard about debt to income ratio how much debt do you have compared to your income the reason i put the 40 percent in there because that's generally the line somewhat drawn in the sand uh by lending institutions where they will not lend to you anymore uh 43 percent for mortgages about 40 percent for regular personal loans that kind of thing banks start to back away from you so it doesn't matter that you have paid everything on time i want you to go back and i want you to think about our young airmen that went and bought the tv the laptop the two gaming systems the car all those things their debt to income ratio now is 70 to 85 percent now if they want to get a loan to consolidate it they can't get one from a traditional bank usually they have slipped from the prime market to the subprime market most of you probably in general understand what prime and subprime means the reason i put it on there is there is no line in the sand for credit score that drops you to subprime but generally speaking it's about 650 most banks will start backing away from you if your credit score is below 680 and so it and it doesn't matter again if you made all the payments in time if your debt to income ratio is completely out of whack and so i'm going to skip a bullet here and go to the credit reports you all know that you can pull a credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies annually there's two things i want to share with you on this first of all we normally only do this when when there's an issue right what i would recommend that you do is you set it up to where every four months you pull one report from one of these agencies so you're seeing your full uh disclosed credit report every four months the other thing i would tell you a lot of you in here pay a few dollars a month for credit monitoring through your bank okay so there was a law and i wish i could remember the name of it that was signed last year goes into effect and as of may this year the three major credit reporting agencies must provide active duty military to include active garden reserve a free credit monitoring so come may you can contact them you just have to show that you're active duty and then you will get free credit report monitoring the other thing that i recommend is something where you can kind of keep an eye on it every day it costs nothing is these two apps and i know there's other like it i use these i'm not recommending them but i am saying that i use them experience gives you a good view of your experience credit report and credit karma covers equifax and trans union and i've actually had an instance where an on post credit union drop did something to my credit report that dropped the score by a hundred points i knew it immediately because of the credit karma app i went to that institution and said this is wrong you need to fix this and they said no we're not going to fix it i went back to him said this is why you need to fix it they said no you need to fix it and i went back to him again and they said well if you'll pay this and this and this we'll put a note on your credit report and so i went to the consumer finance protection bureau down at the bottom and filed a complaint and within two weeks i had a letter from the vice president of the bank saying sorry we fixed your credit so i know i'm jumping around here a little bit but the consumer finance protection bureau hopefully most of you have heard about that one of the things they have on their website that i highly recommend is they have a complaint database so if you're getting ready to take out a loan with somebody you can go in there and you can type in the name of that company and you can see all the complaints that have been filed against them there were 19 000 complaints filed last year so you go in and type in whatever it is and you see what kind of complaint sale uh it gives you an idea of whether you're dealing with somebody that's reputable or not going back to credit score and debt to income ratio when you get to that point that you can't use a traditional bank to take out a loan then you get pushed down to using things like finance companies i don't have anything against finance companies but there's something you need to know about finance company versus banks banks are federally regulated by both both the OCC the office of comptroller and currency and the CFPB those two federal organizations proactively come out and go through your books on a regular basis why so that consumers fill a level of security with the banking institutions that they do business with finance companies are regulated primarily at the state level and many states only inspect finance companies in a reactive measure when there's been a problem when there's been complaints so obviously anytime you want to borrow money you want to try to do it uh through through a bank um let's see oh and the last thing which seems to be pretty popular that 1885 opt out you all have heard about the uh the national do not call registry this is the national do not send me credit junk and so you can either go to that website or you can go to that phone number and that will stop all the free credit offers that that you get in the mail all right a couple of examples i know the principles of this you understand but i think it always helps to put it on a screen person a on the left is in prime credit they have a 730 credit score person b is in subprime they have a 599 they both go to the same car lot the same salesman they both buy a 2016 Toyota Camry with the same term look at the difference in interest rates basically 2% versus 15% and in the long term that works out to a total of $10,000 more to pay for the exact same car the next one is is uh same type of thing but for revolving credit versus installment credit and the reason i put this on there is you know almost all of us when we were young had credit card debt uh when i sit down and talk with young people about saving and those kind of things one of the first things they always say is i'm going to start as soon as i pay off these credit cards we pay for something on a credit card and we have every intention of doing what paying it off quickly and then it hangs around for a year or two or three till we finally get fed up and say i can't deal with this anymore i got my tax return i'm going to pay it off but both of those are for the same amount three thousand dollars the installment loan actually has a higher percentage rate but the the total that you're going or the total time that you're going to pay is two years versus up to 10 years and you save about a thousand dollars in interest sometimes it's just smarter to go out and say hey i'm going to take out a personal loan for a year year and a half two years then running the risk of putting it on a credit card and carrying that forward quite honestly i have a business credit card and i probably put somewhere between 70 to 100 thousand dollars a year on that but it is paid off every single month uh with business expenses all right basic tips for budgeting i know you know some of this but i'm i'm i'm sharing this stuff for a reason and you can find stuff similar to this out on the internet pretty easy a lot of places recommend that you track your spending for a week or two weeks i recommend 30 days because doing it for a full month gives you a good view of what you've spent over the entire month what do you think the biggest surprise for married couples when they sit down and they track it for a month and go back and look at what they spent what do you think the biggest surprise is eating out absolutely chunk of change on eating out that's probably the easiest thing to cut back on but there's other things that you can that you can work with and lower those payments so after you've done it for 30 days you sit down and you really analyze where your money's going do it you know if you've got a significant other spouse you do it with them you go over it and you start to make those cuts okay we're going to eat out once a week but also you know i'm going to look at should i refinance my car with another location where the payment will be cheaper i'm going to look at my cable bill i'll give you a personal example of this i hate my cable bill absolutely hate it and uh and to get a package that has the channels you want you have to get more channels than you need and i'm trying to get that cost down i'm talking to the cable guy and i got the dent in the middle of my forehead and uh he says well you've got hbo what do you watch on hbo it's a game of thrones so we got showtime what do you watch on showtime what's ray donovan so well you know those are all a car right that's what are you getting at says you don't have to sign a contract for those you can turn those on and off anytime you want so why why do you have it if that's the only thing you're watching and you're paying for it all year around you know that's pretty smart so i cut off showtime i cut off hbo i'm not even gonna put showtime back on there but when game of thrones comes on next month i'm gonna have me some showtime or some some hbo uh but then start to have competitions with it my wife and i we used to we'd get our groceries and we'd fill up the car on on saturday or sunday and then that week we could we would see who could go without spending any cash you can have competitions for who can go the longest who can spend the least and all of a sudden you start having money and you get better at it month to month i'll tell you what i really recommend is that you do this for an entire year because you have uh certain things that only come up once a year right the other thing on there that i skipped over is the don't use cash now what i i don't mean use credit cards what i'm saying is when you go to the atm and you take out 60 bucks unless you're really good at saving receipts we don't know where those that 60 bucks went most of us have banking apps that if we use the debit card as long as there's not a fee associated with that we can pull up that banking app and we can see every little thing we spent and so every day i would pull that up and i would see what we spent a lot of them you can even go in and categorize it to where it'll start categorizing things for you automatically month to month the whole purpose for this slide isn't to tell you the you know three level budgeting it's to get to that last bullet develop an attitude of defending your money you earned it why would you give it away there was a marketing research firm and i can't remember the name of it but just recently they did some study did some research on this and came out and said your average american sees up to 5 000 ads a day is exposed to them now that seems high to me but i want you to think about this whether it's on the radio whether it's on social media whether it's on tv whether it's in a magazine i don't care where it's at every advertisement in the history of man has been designed to do one thing to separate you from your money you earned it why would you give it away without thinking about it one of the tips i always give young folks is if it costs more than a hundred dollars sleep on it for at least a day walk away from it sleep on it because tomorrow you may realize you don't really need it all that much so again develop an attitude of defending your money there's a difference between earning money and making money earning money is the amount that shows up on your les that's the amount i'm paying you for the work that you do making money is what you do with it after that point are you taking your money and putting it into things that will generate more income or are you simply taking the money that you earn and spending it because if you do as an e9 you're no different than an e2 you just have bigger bills right so take a look at this compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world he who understands it earns it he who doesn't pays it absolutely brilliant quote einstein probably didn't say it snopes says it showed up about 20 years after he died but i still like it so i still use it so what i want to do is i want to do a quick exercise with you as we start to wrap this up some of you may have seen this before if you haven't i think it's pretty powerful so i'm going to come over here to first sergeant hansen i'm going to get first sergeant hansen one penny and then how do you say your last name okay so yeah uh chief yarborough i'm going to get chief yarborough a million dollars now if i asked you straight up who wants the penny who wants the million dollars of course she'd want the million dollars right but i tell you what i'm going to do i'm going to double his penny every day for 31 days i want to see a show of hands from everybody who wants the million dollars nobody oh a couple people what about the penny that's going to be doubled every day for 31 days show of hands okay i said everybody show your hands come on guys okay so well let me let me make the deal let let what was that show let's matter make a deal or something i'll make this two million how many of you want the two million how many of you want the penny okay and so many of you got your hands down and i'm going to assume it's because you're so enthralled with this you're forgetting to raise your hand okay final offer three million three million how many for the penny how many all right well let's see how this thing goes all right so there's 10 days of this challenge i'm going to double that penny every day and at the end of 10 days you don't quite have enough for a super sized extra value meal you're close you can get one of the five dollar boxes from Kentucky Fried Chicken but you don't have enough to pay the tax okay uh so the important thing of this is we're one-third of the way through this exercise one-third and Chief Yarborough has a million dollars first Sergeant Hanson has five dollars and 12 cents we're one-third of the way through let's keep going so now we're to day 20 we keep doing this every day we keep doubling that penny and on day 20 the first sergeant has 5200 dollars Chief Yarborough still has a million so with 5200 dollars i guess you can buy a fairly decent used car but Yarborough is sitting over there with a million dollars still so let's keep going with this through day 25 all right first sergeant you're starting to make some headway here 167 thousand dollars that's a nice little nest egg is it not but it's not a million dollars is it look how far through this challenge we are we're 25 days through this challenge and there's a difference of over 800,000 but now's where it starts to get interesting day 26 300,000 day 27 600,000 almost 700 and then on day 28 bam the first sergeant's finally in the money he's got 1.3 million dollars Chief Yarborough's got a million both of them are very lucky right but 1.3 is better than one but wait there's more day 29 2.6 million day 30 5 million bam almost 11 million dollars now the obvious lesson in this is what the snowballing effect of compounding interest you all know that you're going Chief why are you telling me this this is the real message i want to get across on day 16 when you had about 350 dollars if you went oh man the the refrigerator broke down i got to take my money out of my investment i got to fix the refrigerator i'm going to pay this bill and then i'll start saving well on day 31 when Chief Yarborough had a million the first sergeant had 11 million you've got 163 dollars and 84 cents because you rated your investments and that's an important message i think that's probably the more powerful message in this when you talk about the power of compounding interest and you say yeah chief but you know nobody doubles their money with this stuff well you may be familiar with this the rule of 72 take the number 72 divide it blah blah what it comes down to is if you earn 10 on your money you will double it every 7.2 years and i realized we don't probably make 10 but over the life of the dow Jones it has never averaged less than 10 over the long term so all right i am actually a little bit ahead of schedule which is always a good thing for you now come on when you saw financial resiliency on your agenda you kind of went oh boy you know but hey i set high expectations did i give you guys stuff you maybe hadn't heard before maybe a little bit different perspective all right remember this is mission related again we've got to teach our service members to to take care of their money because it does impact mission you know the the second bullet on there is really one i use for the first sergeant academy but it applies to all of us we're supposed to provide that commander with the mission ready and listed force you know one thing i forgot to mention and i will jump back here real quick when i joined the marine corps and first time i went overseas was 1984 if something happened back home often by the time i found out about it it had already been fixed because there wasn't social media there wasn't cell phones i had to go to a pay phone bank to call home so really things were fixed before i even found out about it is that the way things are today absolutely not our airmen deploy and they take all of that with them because they are in most places they go to connected and so when they're having that conversation with home and and the refrigerator is broken or the engine in the truck went out and you're an e2 or an e3 that creates a distraction that prevents them from focusing on the mission that you as chiefs need them to be focused on again i've mentioned it several times the number one reason service members lose their security clearance second contributing cause and service members suicide but nothing absolutely nothing makes as big as an impact as an nco who i'm not kidding takes three minutes and goes hey before you do that come talk to me i'll help you out so all right folks uh i usually do the dry drop mic and walk off stage but anybody have any questions comments you know i realize that you are going to be in awe for the rest of the week so i've agreed to stick around for the rest this week so i'll see you tonight at the social and i'll be hanging out here all week thank you very much i appreciate it


Well, a very good morning to you. Thank you so much for being part of this morning show. This is why in the morning Welcome back. It's all about matters concerning youth and politics today on this particular Monday morning My name is Ram Agucco. It's a pleasure being with you.  That's www.okbc.co.ke We value your feedback. Let us know where you're watching us from. And of course, we shall sample your feedback as we continue with this morning show It's all about matters concerning youth and politics. We want to take a look at what has been taking trends in the past few days and in the past one week And what should we expect in the coming week? To help me in this conversation, I am joined by two my far-right Gerald Minishi and next to me, I am with David Wiper. Both political analysts and youth leaders, Karibunisana gentlemen Was a lendo. Let me start with you, Gerald. Tell us a bit more about what you do Currently, I'm Gerald Minishi. Currently, I'm working for the United Nations Human Settlements Program. I'm also a Global Youth Ambassador for Diwali Charity Organization And I'm happy to be on the show and to make some significant contributions Thank you. Thank you so much for coming, my brother. And David Wiper, tell us a bit more about what you do Thank you so much, Ram. By name, I'm David Wiper, just like you put it. I am a political scientist by profession I am a former comrade's boss at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa Currently, I consult for a young tax under the auspices of one Kenyan coalition That is chaired by Rayla Molo Dingo, our boss So it is a pleasure to be here because this is an enabling environment to distill issues and to give Kenyans and the entire globe real facts And what we would like to see as a country Thank you so much for coming, my brother. We talk facts. And of course, the Ashlagi is the one in the morning at Ram Maguko and at Y254 channel That's why you are able to find us here on Facebook page on Facebook, that's at Y254 Follow us on that page, like the page and of course engage with us Keep talking to us. This is youth and politics. Let's talk about matters concerning you And of course, let us know what you think about the stories making headlines We have a copy of the people daily gentlemen. I believe you have your copies with you And of course, I also have mine here online. We are going to take a look at this particular paper And dissect a few stories here. One story that is making headlines in this particular paper is concerning the flag bearer We mentioned it earlier on today, this morning, conversation in this morning show before we went on that break The deputy president William Ruto and Azimio Wan Kenyai, leader Ryle Odinga are bracing for a tablet week With only seven days to the deadline for naming their running mate And this is the week that will either make or break their presidential bids Because the person that they will choose to bear, to be their running mate will either bring good tidings or bring problems So the question is, who will it be? How will they sort it out? And how will they manage to pick the right person for themselves? Remember initially the IBC had given until 28th of April this year as the final date for presidential hopefuls Those who want to submit their names alongside those who will be coming with their running mates But after consultations with Ryle Odinga and Ruto Camp The period was extended to 16th of May and 16th is next week So the question is, how will it be? How do we expect to see tablet times? Let me start with you David Wyber, your thoughts on that Okay, thank you Ram and thank you for the beautiful conversation, for the topic that we want to delve into this morning So the question of the choice of the deputy president, more so for the two forefront runners, for the August polls It's not just tough but also interesting, because indeed it is the key determining factor Who is going to become the next president of this country? And basically like we have seen it, the other day there's Mula Umorja, where I belong We stated very clearly and categorically that the only method that we're going to use to decide on whoever becomes the deputy president of Mula Umorja Whoever is going to depute Israel is to consider the person that do not have the character of the current deputy president that we have in Kenya That is the only factor that we are going to use And to speak of that, we are simply going to check on the loyalty The biggest consideration that we put in place to decide on the next deputy president of this country is the loyalty To who? And to the Republic of Kenya Is he or she a person that owns the same aspirations for the country with the Riala Molo Dinga Is he or she a person that is more compatible with the Riala Molo Dinga? Because you know the president is a unit So basically that is the only consideration, the major consideration that we have As long as somebody doesn't have the traits of the current deputy president of this Riala Molo Dinga And a person who is going to work left, right and centre justifying or rather castigating his boss So basically that is what we are going to look at But forget about that, we live alone that There are also other weighty and a major consideration that we have to put in place Like it is all about winning an election, it is a coalition So we want to win this election and not just win but to win by a landslide So you have to be a person that carries with him or a numerical strength A person that has fought for something in this country A person that stands for constitutionalism A person that stands for the rule of law And a person that would complement Riala Molo Dinga in his nature Because currently as the conversation is towards the election that we are going to take It is a liberation and it is an economic one Do you have economic credentials to revitalize Riala Molo Dinga? Do you have economic credentials to revitalize our economy? Because basically that is what we are as a state and as a country today Okay, you are open in the max and rest of that, your thoughts? Okay, the Bismarck of Germany said that politics is the art of the possible Meaning that in politics, never say never With regards to the identity politics in Kenya right now We realize that this running mate issue has become conspicuous And it is an issue which has been undertaken with the painstaking excellence And some kind of seriousness If you look at, for example, as a Mewan Kenyaland scum And when you look at the Kenyakwanza, all of them they want to be strategic Whoever they choose to be their running mate And my colleague here has touched on some issues, the issue about consideration If we are going to consider, for example, let's say for example Riala chooses Kallonza to be his running mate Are we going to experience the kind of fallout that we are experiencing right now Between President Uru Kenyatta and the President Roto? Those are the kind of issues that are at the table right now So in matters to do with which is the best candidate With regards to these two horses as per our media I think it is debatable, it is debatable based on a lot of factors And remember, politics is all about interest Yeah, it is not about all the common one, it is about interest Now let me come to you Waipa There is something you said that I would like to really discover As long as someone is loyal to Riala Molo Dinga Is that what is important for Kenyans? Especially for the U And you mentioned that if they are loyal to Riala And two, as long as they are the opposite of the DPT President William Ruto Where does the common monlincy come in this area? I am a political scientist and just like my brother has put it That politics is all about interest And whatever matters in politics is the interest of the common man And I believe that in the camp that I watch for And that is as Mula Umoja Whatever we have there is to fight and to liberate Kenyans From the one ton economic ravage that we experience currently As a country So generally, it is a conglomeration of the interest of the common man So whatever we are looking for is a government that would operate very peacefully A government that would work with the unity that we expect as a country But if you don't want to answer the question Where does the common monlincy work? Come into play because all you are looking at is loyal to Riala And whoever is coming is going to be the opposite of DPT William Ruto Whatever we are looking for, if we talk about loyal to Riala Molo Dinga We don't want a person that is over ambitious We don't want a person that would bring mayhem into the government We want a person that, if at all you are ideological You feel like there is an idea that you want to be implemented Then you share it with your boss Basically that is what we are looking for We are not looking for a person that would start to campaign On the second day after swearing in over Riala Molo Dinga and him at the DPT As some of them have said that once we are sworn in And once we have taken over as a unit and as a government Then on the next day I would start to campaign To become the next president or the sixth president of this country One of the things that we do not want to see or to encounter And that is why we need somebody that is loyal We need somebody that is going to be rational And we need somebody who is not going to become a challenger That you know you want to compete with your boss You need a psycho fund? Not necessarily a psycho fund Whatever I have said do not have any relationship with psycho funds As far as politics is concerned It is all about giving yourself to the commitment Giving yourself to the country And basically executing your roles as the DPT president Of the Republic of Kenya But where does the common monarchy come? The common monarchy Whatever we are talking about is the interest of the common monarchy And that is why we are looking Or we are pursuing the government of the Republic of Kenya So in this case, what you are saying is For a deputy president Just be loyal to your party leader And be the opposite of DP Ruto You are good to go Absolutely What do you think about that, Gerald? Okay I think that is a very important question That you have asked Where does the common monarchy come? That is the question I think Where does the common monarchy come? And if you look at our political leaders If you ask me I will say almost all of them Most of them are around three quarters They are demagogues And demagogues what basically they do They just come to play with the minds of the common monarchy They know for example you want something Or you are lacking something So they are using your need to To exploit the other two Pursue their selfish interest And when you look at identity politics Right now in Kenya Being for example These two horses as I have mentioned earlier Relo Dinga and DP Ruto You realize that they have Attracted a lot of psychophants by the way And even if you look for example at DP Ruto Which candidate do you think can you choose? Look at his history Look at his political pedigree Look at Kinture Kintike All of them is just about power sharing So the common monarchy The common monarchy is left It's left on the blues It's left hanging because It's about sharing cake, national cake And these political leaders Fighting for their political positions So inasmuch I think Remember we are not a mature democracy We are a partial democratic state Freedom house categorized us So they still allowed to learn And they still allowed that we need to do And we need to embrace as a country I'm looking at Kalanzo Musioka Is he a possible candidate For this particular position Because yes at some point Kalanzo Musioka said that you know what He should not even be put In a position where he's contesting To be the deputy because He was a vice president He has led the country in so many positions before Is he a possible candidate For this particular position? David Talking of the political stature Of Kalanzo Musioka Is something that should be held high And as one of the members Of the new Laomoja I just empathize with Kalanzo Because of his Late reactions and character Because he was the best suitor To deputies Raula Molo Dinga Owing to the fact that His more experience in politics Has been the vice president of this country He has held various positions In the government as a minister As a foreign minister Kalanzo Musioka was there during the Canwera who worked together with Moe Kalanzo Musioka lately has been a Diplomat Championing for peace Even in South Sudan He is a global diplomat And so he carries with him A lot of huge political experience


What's up everybody? Jason here for jasperjasecasebrakes.com 2021 flawless kalija football just sold out This is a one box break brief case break picker teams number six and again guys We go by college rules meaning that the teams that they're currently on if they're retired Example as Drew Brees would go to the Saints if they're currently active. It'll be Tom Brady Going to the box not the Patriots since he's currently active and there you go Here's everybody in the break itself And then here is the customer names in the random number block for the Jaguars Niners Jets and Chiefs As the customers there for the 11 teams their dolphins packers Cardinals colds ramp seahawks feels Raiders Lions Titans and a Washington football team There you go Let's put that down right there Put that over her put this right here awesome. Oh And Again, this was number six And again, I believe the middle card actually in this product hasn't been the best card it's always on the right So we're gonna cover that up And the diamond is usually on the left All right first one guys good luck Very nice bolt that looks like a senior ball patch Kellan maund three out of five and I believe that's gonna go to the Minnesota Vikings Which is Eric double check that as well nice patches there first one Next we have is a Justin Herbert Nice three-color patch one out of 15 Sean Maddock actually took this team Right as I was about to take him off the website and put him in a little round on the block again. There you go Herbie going to the Los Angeles Chargers Sean Maddock We have a patch autograph of Jacob Harris One out of 25 two-color patch is on both Which Jacob Harris I believe was a ram the last time I checked them earlier Which if that is the Rams that'll be going to spot one and mark Let's go mark on the board already next one We have six out of 25 Khalil Herbert Which I believe killer might be bears I remember the Little check right now Yes, actually that is bears There you go Chicago bears straight up Matthew. Wow. Is that the Sean Watson? Wow, that is the Sean Watson Collegiate addition to Sean Watson, which is of course will still be going to the Houston Texans one out of 15 and Houston Houston Texans going to Ryan and actually This is an update from 2020 I was about to say I don't think he signed anything at all this year, but that's a 2020 flawless collegiate So they actually put that as an update He might have been like a redemption or something We have a beautiful is that a Goodyear patch Ian book Seven out of ten for the New Orleans Saints Eric with the Saints Nola last one here is wow Troy Paul Amalu Six out of 25 for the Steelers, and I believe it's going to Louise straight up Troy Paul Amalu just inducted into the Hall of Fame as well USC standout at USC nice Still doing the head and shoulders commercials as well All right, I feel like being case cards gotta be fire right Jesus What's going on here? All right, we're gonna go with the left side first and we'll go middle then we'll go right a One of one diamond and wow that's a bigger diamond than usual One of one say Quan Barkley diamond Look at that diamonds are usually much smaller They're definitely increasing the size of the diamonds And again, letting you know the guarantee of the diamond Mine and not lab grown That's gonna go to the Giants and Dan straight up purple It's a rookie and it's Jamar Chase. This is a Jamar Chase case Two out of 25 and that's a much smaller diamond. You see that so the one-on-ones are much bigger diamonds Look at that. I Want this on my ear not that one There you go Cincinnati bangles. That's going to Sean Maddock Two diamonds. Well, we got here guys. Good luck 17 out of 20 It's a rookie. Oh, I think I know who this is Trevor Lawrence 17 out of 20 Whoo for the Jacksonville Jaguars R and B Mark Spot seven baby.  That was the break Again, I'm gonna post up another one of these right now number pick your teams number Seven and eight. So if you guys want to grab some of your teams, you can post another one Appreciate it guys. Jasper's case rates.com


Hello, I'm Dr. Mara Carlin, and I'm the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Although I'm unable to join you in Bucharest today, I appreciate the opportunity to virtually address this distinguished group. I'll share a few words today about how the United States views the strategic importance of the Black Sea region, the challenges we are facing, and what the United States is doing to address those challenges in close partnership with our allies and with our partners. First and foremost, the Black Sea region is an area of critical geostrategic importance. It links Europe to the Middle East and beyond, and it is a key node for transit infrastructure and energy resources. It is also a key frontline for transatlantic security. Today, it is the site of the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. Europe, in the world's response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, is nothing short of extraordinary. Together, we must continue to impose costs on Russia for violating the core principles upholding global peace and security by seeking to change the borders of a sovereign nation by force. As many observers have noted, Vladimir Putin did not expect the robust U.S. and NATO response across the Eastern flank, Germany's new defense posture and the accession of Finland and soon Sweden to the alliance. Secretary Austin every month has convened for more than a year the Ukraine Defense Contact Group of some 50 nations, and they have garnered international support for Ukraine, resulting in more than $55 billion in lethal assistance for Ukraine's military. This community of action has facilitated an unprecedented level of cooperation to meet Ukraine's immediate and longer-term needs. Allies have doubled NATO's battle groups on the Eastern flank to a total of eight, supporting a strong deterrence and defense from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In Romania's leadership in the Black Sea and Black Sea security has been critical to advancing NATO priorities. I had the privilege of seeing firsthand just how much Romania does when I visited last fall. We are especially grateful to Romania for hosting an increased U.S. and Allied rotational presence from Devaselu to MK Air Base to defend NATO's Eastern flank and the Black Sea region across all domains. We continue to encourage deeper cooperation among Black Sea allies and partners to deter and defend against Russia's ongoing aggression in Ukraine and the broader Black Sea region. This cooperation includes further efforts to increase information sharing to build common awareness in the maritime domain and beyond. The United States and our allies and our partners are committed to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine will continue to require the steadfast support of the international community to protect its skies and regain sovereign territory. There is a stark contrast indeed between the immense support for Ukraine on one hand and Russia's isolation on the international stage on the other. Our approach to these challenges is guided by the U.S. National Defense Strategy which was released last year for the first time in an integrated way with the nuclear posture review and the missile defense review. This has led to more seamless approaches to deterrence and to risk management and a tighter linkage between the Department of Defense's strategy and resources. The central premise of our National Defense Strategy is the urgent need to sustain and strengthen deterrence with the pacing challenge from the People's Republic of China and the acute threat posed by Russia. In dealing with these challenges, the National Defense Strategy identifies our allies and our partners as our center of gravity. It is a call to action for breaking down barriers to working with our allies and our partners on common objectives. As part of our implementation, we are working closely with our allies to align our defense strategies and we are working hard to align our activities across all of the theaters, the domains and across the entire spectrum of conflict to allow each stakeholder to bring our comparative advantage to bear. Our robust cooperation surrounding the war in Ukraine is a profound example of our strategy coming to life as we work across the U.S. government and with our allies and partners to provide Ukraine with asymmetric capabilities to support its self-defense. In line with our strategy in the Black Sea region, the United States will continue to work with our NATO allies to advance military modernization to address Russia's military threat, including through our enhanced posture and exercises to improve security and prosperity for the region. The security of the Black Sea region will require a common approach to threats. Specifically, we must strengthen defensive anti-access area denial capabilities, indications and warnings, readiness through joint training and exercises, and resilience, including against gray zone and cyber actions. Our security environment in the Black Sea and beyond continues to evolve, fueled by not only aggressive behavior from Russia and the People's Republic of China, but also the rapid pace of emerging technologies of climate change, of epidemics and other global challenges. With our clear and focused strategy and in lockstep with our allies and partners, we are acting to meet the moment today. Together, we will shape a safer and more just world for generations to come. I'd like to thank the Romanian Ministry of National Defense and the New Strategy Center for organizing today's event. I'd like to thank them for their continued partnership and for all of their important efforts on these issues. And I wish you productive debates in the remainder of the program. Thank you very much and have a good conversation.


The most visible transformation will be in the rebalancing of the global economy and consequently the cultural and political hegemony. Macroeconomic imbalances and high levels of debt are likely to weight on developed economies for most of the next decade and the balance of power will swing towards developing economies. This will lead to growing pressure on publicly financed social security networks in the developed world with particular implication for healthcare and pension entitlements that will need to be met in the private sector, competition for natural resources and environmental challenges and the emergence of new financial and industry titans in the emerging world. Our customers are facing increasingly complex interconnected challenges that require integrated holistic solutions. As we saw from the tragic disaster in Japan in March of 2011 disruption in one region can have serious repercussions for the global supply chain. Businesses are increasingly operating across borders and are thus more at risk from global events. To meet the needs of these cross-border businesses insurers will have to operate globally but respond to customer needs locally. That will take scale, state-of-the-art infrastructure and systems and will require a new level of risk assessment, capital management and underwriting. Insurers will have to bulk up and develop new capabilities to meet the changing needs of their customers. Innovation is a product of culture. It is all about having the right people with the right skills working collaboratively in an environment in which they feel their ideas are listened to and acted upon. But it is also about taking risks, investing in new ideas, reaching for the stars. And for that to be sustainable, those risks have to be appropriately assessed and managed. To be successful, truly sustainable next-generation innovators will not only focus on profitability but also on developing and harnessing human capital, people power and implementing effective risk management. The insurance industry can be very influential because we serve so many different stakeholders from governments to corporations and private individuals and have a diverse range of technical skills. We employ a lot of engineers and policy experts, for example. This global insight combined with our industry's strong focus on risk positions us as an active contributor to debate around how various stakeholders come together to address the enormous challenges facing the global economy and the world at large. We are facing a complex and interconnected series of global risks that demand a coordinated, multi-stakeholder response. The insurance industry is uniquely positioned to assess those risks and develop, together with relevant stakeholders, proposals for integrated holistic responses.


Hello everybody, Stless Hatra all the way from South Africa and you're watching Trucker George Vlogs on YouTube. Enjoy. Good Monday morning everybody. Good morning whenever you're watching this. We're here in Rapid City, South Dakota. There was no video from yesterday. It was Sunday yesterday for me so I didn't film nothing. Didn't edit nothing. Just drove about 500 miles. Ended up here at this flying J. Our load is still all here, still all into this stuff. So I mean I got all the straps going over the pieces of wood. I got very specific instructions for that. There. This isn't a problem. Barely even touching it. It's not going to do anything to it there. Thin pieces, eh? Bringing them on up to Red Deer, Alberta. We've still got two days to get there. Today and tomorrow. We unload Wednesday morning. So it's been really nice. And then we'll take my time. Not in a rush. I've been driving about 500 miles a day trying to keep my hours on duty close to around 8. Because then I don't have to reset. I can just keep recapping. Because then I don't go over my 70 hours in 8 days in the US or 70 hours in 7 days in Canada. It's keeping me under there a little bit so I don't have to stop for a whole day. From Red Deer we got to reload. Where is it coming out of? It's coming out of Alberta somewhere I think.  Sundra, Alberta. Notarp required. I picked that up as soon as I'm empty on Wednesday. It says before 2 o'clock. That shouldn't be a problem. It's going to Hortonville, Wisconsin. And I've got to deliver that on the 10th. Which is next Tuesday. Or I could probably get away with bringing it there on the Monday. But we'll see. I have a barbecue at our house this weekend that I don't want to miss. I'll deliver that on the 10th, on Tuesday. If I get a reload out of there, I could be back by the end of the week because I've got to be back for the next weekend because that's our anniversary weekend. Two years married. It's an important one. They're all important ones. I don't want to miss that. I'm really far away. I'm way in the back of the parking lot here.  A little something to eat. I'm trying to eat as many whole fruits as possible. It's a little difficult when you're an international driver though because you can't take fresh fruits and stuff across the border.  I don't know why they don't like fruits crossing the border but there's a very good reason for it, I'm sure. But I think it's a little silly. That's why I'm not in charge. Alright, let's go get our coffee. I'm just going to meander my way up a little closer. Looks like I'm going to have to wash the windshield too. Let's get our sums on here. Nose didn't weigh in the back corner. I was all by myself. It was a nice quiet night. This parking lot is ginormous. And all the parking spots are just like extra huge. Just awesome. Grab one of their squeegees.  It's going to be a good day though. Yesterday was a beautiful day. I went through the back. I found this travel plaza. Pretty much in the middle of Nebraska. I think it's at the corner of US 218 and the I-80. Travel plaza. It's just a paradise. And travelers of any sort. It's amazing. My RV. My motorhome. The guy's just taking care of it for the next 35 years until I can afford it. This guy just parked straight in the middle of the drive. It's not really nice. Look at this Kenworth coming up on the right here. The orange one. Look at that. Oh, it's pretty old actually. Still nice though. Custom sleeper on it. All right, here we go. We're just going to roll ourselves into the pumps here just off to the left. It's a big travel bus that came in the pumps the wrong way over there. For Vs out here I've noticed lots of them. I wish we were camping. We're just coming into Bell Forge, South Dakota here. Taking a little bit of a shortcut across the back country. We're going to sneak right through the northeastern corner of Wyoming. Slip right into Montana. Remember what I was saying the other day about how I loved the south so much and how I felt at home there? Oh, come on, go. Go. There you go. There you go. Good. Good job. I was saying how I love the south I feel at home there. And I said that I would feel the same out here. I do. I love this place here too. South Dakota is awesome. Montana, Wyoming, all the western states. It seems like wherever I go I want to move there. It's always greener, I guess, in other places, but it's just so awesome seeing the world out here. Beautiful place, beautiful. If you ever have a chance to visit the western United States, it's so different from the other side of the Mississippi. Everything there is so condensed and people everywhere, and out here in the west it's so wide open. It's more like Canada where there's just huge distances between population centers. In three kilometers, turn left on North Asida Road, US 212. So right now I believe we're right, we're pretty much south of Saskatchewan. And we're going to make it close to the Canadian border today. We're going to cross at Coots Alberta and Sweetgrass, Montana. So I've been doing, like I said, about 500 miles a day, not full days, but long enough. Slowly making our way there and then tomorrow we'll have a short day. We'll only have like five hours of driving to do tomorrow. Something's going on here.  Looks like there's an RV. It's waving me through. Oh, there was an accident. I wonder what he hit. There's more people down here. It looks like the truck was pulling a fifth wheel camper. He hit something. I wonder if he hit. Oh, there's a motorcycle here. No way. Oh no. Oh, I hope everyone was okay. It looks like the ambulances must have taken that motorcycle or motorcycle guide to the hospital by now. That motorcycle was just mangled. How did that happen? It almost looked like the motorcycle got rear-ended by the pickup. I wonder if maybe like a deer or something, some wildlife jumped out on the road in front of the motorcycle and the motorcycle stopped for it and the pickup behind it maybe didn't see that the bike had stopped plowed into him. That's a mess. And I have a feeling someone got hurt there. It's hard to imagine no one getting hurt when there's a motorcycle involved, right? Stopped here in Hardin, Montana. There is a casino on every street corner. Casinos out in Montana here are like Tim Horton's in Canada. There's just one everywhere you look. We must be on an Indian reservation or something. One here seems to be of Indian heritage. McDonald's was really slow, too. I just gave it away that I'm eating McDonald's to shoot. It was really slow. It took them like 20 minutes. Oh, well. They had all kinds of pictures. Come on, Karen. Tell them the story here. They had all kinds of pictures of big Indian chiefs in the McDonald's. It was pretty interesting. No pictures of Elizabeth Warren, though. Montana Sunsets. Montana sort of reminds me a lot of Alberta. It's right beneath Alberta. There's no sales tax here and stuff. Just like in Alberta. I think Alberta still has no provincial sales tax, right? It used to be that way. Back in the day, Alberta, their budget was always... They always had a surplus in their government budget every year. And then they would give the surplus back to all of their residents. You'd get a check from the government at the end of the month and they'd pay you. If they wouldn't keep the surplus, they would give it back to their people. It was amazing. And that's with all the transfer payments that the East is sucking out of Alberta. We got this crazy wealth transfer system going on in Canada where Alberta gets sucked dry and the federal government relocates all of the money that they make off their oil to the other countries. The other provinces that don't make as much. Manitoba being one of them. We do. I'm not really proud of that, but I don't think that's really fair. I don't think that's fair at all. Manitoba has tons of natural resources. It's just we can't go dig them out of the ground because we have roadblocks all over the place. But oh well. What's the word I digress? Just enjoy the scenery. If you can see past the bugs. I did wash the windshield. Just last time I stopped. Any of you from Montana? I'm sure there's a couple of you from out here. I'm jealous. I would love to live here. But at the same time, we're going to give up our home. I like to run from too. You know, one day I've got to travel outside of Canada and the United States. We're hoping to go to Mexico sometime soon. But that's just going to be going to an all-inclusive resort. That's not really like Mexico. That's sort of like Canada and America got a little piece out of Mexico and built a resort and we just go Americans and Canadians. It's not really Mexico. It's just in Mexico. I don't know. Britain and I, we both have big dreams of going to Europe. We want to go see Europe one day. I don't want to go to Eastern Europe. Australia. Pretty much the English-speaking world. I wouldn't mind going to like Japan or South Korea. I'd really like to see how their society works out there. Especially Japan. They have a city, Tokyo. You know that that city has more residents than all of Canada in one city? I'd love to go see how they pack all those people together. Let's get this on you there. I need to hook you up here, buddy. Just in case for your own safety. Hard to do this with one hand. All the steps, all the steps. Or just three of them. Okay. So we made ourselves home tonight at this rest area. I'm not too sure what the town is. But this is where we're going to sleep tonight. We're probably about an hour or so from Great Falls, Montana. We've got about 500 miles to do again tomorrow and then the day after we unload first thing in the morning and then go in the afternoon and reload and head home. It's an excellent pole diesel. Excellent choice. I would have picked that one too. No, actually, you know what? I think I would have taken that. I think I'm going to take that one. I'm actually looking forward to seeing this whole area here once the sun comes up tomorrow. Looks like there's this big rock formation here. It doesn't look like the camera's quite picking it up. I have to show you in the morning. It looks awesome. Looks like almost like a cliff or something. You can just climb up, do some rock climbing. All right. Well, that's it for today, everybody. It's a beautiful night here in Montana. Perfect temperature. I'm going to sleep great. Thanks for joining me today. Don't forget to hit that like button. Subscribe. Leave me a comment down below. Let me know what you think. If you didn't like the video, if you hated it, hit the thumbs down button. It's okay too. I'll see you guys tomorrow.


Over the last few days, we've been moving personnel and equipment down here, really a complex operation. If you consider the journey of a single soldier or a single piece of equipment from Colorado, Fort Carson right in the center of Colorado, down to Beaumont, Texas, onto ships, up to the Port of Breverhaven, and then here about 6,400 miles to get all of that journey to assemble it all here. The purpose there again is to demonstrate that we can quickly move a formation from the continental United States and then assemble it here quickly in Eastern Europe. Given all the complexity, given all the movements, it's coming together quickly. Soldiers are very proud to be here. The formation is great. They've been training for this for over a year. And so to move an armor brigade combat team here is a very visible, credible expression of our commitment to further ensuring the deterrent, an already strong deterrent capability that's resident in Eastern Europe with NATO and with our allies.