The changing terrain: Blended retirement
Early this week the Department of Defense released the Personal Financial Counselor-Educator Course, the second part of a four-part educational program on the new military Blended Retirement System (BRS). This course is for financial counselors, educators and other financial professionals who will educate eligible service members on the differences between the current system and the BRS. The course is available via Joint Knowledge Online and Military OneSource. Throughout the course, test-takers are repeatedly reminded that it is their duty to educate service members on the two retirement systems, but not to advise them on what decision to make.
The course includes a short pre-test, to test one’s knowledge of the new system. This is followed by two lessons: one on the differences between the systems and one on understanding the BRS. A longer post-course test is the final part of this online training program.
The next part of the DoD’s educational program will be for eligible service members themselves, scheduled to begin in Jan. 2017. “Eligible” means any Active Duty service member who, as of Dec. 31, 2017, has 12 years or less of service, and any Reserve Component service member with fewer than 4,320 retirement points. Everyone in these categories will be grandfathered into the current system but will have the opportunity to opt-in to the BRS, thus the reason for all of the educational materials being provided to service members. (Part one of the four-part program was the leader training, which was released this summer.)
The final part of BRS training will be for all service members who enter on Jan. 1, 2018 or later. They will automatically be placed in the BRS.
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