This week on Yahoo Finance’s podcast Warrior Money, hosts Patrick Murphy and Dan Kunze are joined by Brendan Duebner, founder and executive director of the non-profit Life Skills for Soldiers. A Wharton MBA graduate, Duebner launched the organization in 2019 in the hopes of better preparing service members for life outside the military.
For Duebner, that mission began as a platoon leader in the US Army, when he decided to leverage his money skills to help his soldiers. One success story in particularly inspired him to continue his efforts. “We had this one soldier… who [had] a lot of disciplinary issues,” Duebner recalls. He discovered that the soldiers’ issues were rooted in financial insecurity, spurred by bad money habits that were preventable.
After a budgeting class, the soldier “quickly became one of our best soldiers,” Duebner says. “His actual behavior improved… He had less stress in his financial life, but more important is that he realized… we cared about him. We wanted him to do better.”
“That’s just one bullet point where we could do that for thousands, if not millions, of our soldiers,” Duebner adds.
The Life Skills for Soldiers team created a series of courses on specific topics—such as budgeting, choosing the right credit card, and buying a car—aimed at junior military audiences. Using a “train the trainer” model, those service members can then, in turn, lead courses themselves. The model was designed in the belief that “the best people to train soldiers are their leaders,” Duebner explains. “The people who know them.”
Life Skills for Soldiers’ learning management software is “the brain of our organization,” adds Duebner. Aside from the material, the courseware provides any leaders who may be struggling to grasp a certain topic with the ability to connect with other trainers for assistance.
The organization offers entry-level learning modules free of cost to all military leaders. It has also been holding pilot programs with military units, conducting independent research to test the efficacy of its programs.
Duebner details the vision behind Life Skills for Soldiers, its offerings, and what lies ahead for the nonprofit in his full conversation with Murphy and Kunze.
Hosted by former Congressman Patrick Murphy and veteran investor Dan Kunze, Yahoo Finance’s Warrior Money is a weekly vodcast dedicated to uplifting military veterans transitioning into civilian life. Through insights from fellow veterans and high-ranking government officials, Murphy and Kunze are helping set vets up for success through financial education and inspiration.
This post was written by Nick Riccardo.
