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Road School.

That’s what my wife calls it.

In 2017 we tuned into Netflix’s new series Mindhunters, based on the book by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. In the premier episode, directed by David Fincher, the FBI agents in the series are traveling across the country and teaching police departments how to identify serious violent offenders. They called it Road School and it stuck with my wife.

By then I had been doing that very same thing, albeit the topic was a little different, for 17 years. She even had “Bye Bye BPD, Hello Road School” put on top of my retirement cake.

My second career since my retirement didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t retire on Monday and then start teaching on Tuesday…well, actually I sort of did just that, but in reality, the ground work had started 20 years earlier.

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It’s amazing what getting a job will do to you.

I was still taking classes at IU, but the Bloomington Police Department had already given me a call and confirmed that I was going to be hired in a few months.

My first full time job.

At the time I was working as a part time officer for IUPD while going to school and I was making about 7 bucks an hour. That was great, because at the time minimum wage was 4.25 an hour. Even then paying rent, putting gas in a car, and eating was about all I could afford.

That call changed everything. In just a couple of months I was going to be making 41,000 dollars a year as a first-year officer. That might not sound like much, but in today’s money that would be over 86K a year and I don’t think anyone would sneeze at that salary for a rookie.

That’s when my buddy hit me up.

Want to go to Florida for Spring Break?

Silly question, but in the past, I didn’t have any money, and while I still didn’t have any money, I had a big-time job coming and I had this little plastic thing in my pocket I had just picked up, a credit card.

I wouldn’t recommend putting a week’s spring break vacation on a credit card.

That was just the beginning of my troubles.

Right after swearing in, I bought my first brand new car. No more barely running rust buckets, but a nice shiny brand-new Geo Storm sports car…don’t judge me.

It was a budget sports car coming in at 12,000 dollars, see I was being frugal. And, just to put it in perspective that would be just under 30,000 bucks in today’s money.

My spending habits didn’t get any better.

As a matter of fact, I look back on about my first decade of policing and wonder.

“Where did all my money go?”

Financial Stability isn’t something that comes natural to cops. As a matter of fact, my story isn’t unusual. Actually, I did a pretty good job compared to some of the things we see new officers do with their money.

Since I decided to focus this season on retirement I new that I had to talk to a financial planner, someone who understood not only money, but the special issues that money brings to cops, and ultimately how to retire.

So, I reached out to Nick Daugherty at Financial Cop

Nick is the President/owner at FinancialCop LLC and Serve & Protect Financial Texas, a full service, fiduciary only financial service firm owned and operated by first responders for first responders. They are also the largest financial wellness training group for first responders nationally, having taught over 30,000 first responders from over 3,000 agencies, police academies, and conferences nationwide.

Currently Nick is a reserve officer for the Grand Prairie Police Department after 14 1/2 years as a full-time officer / sergeant.

https://financialcop.com/

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The Gold Watch

The Brass Ring

Retirement

You know … Winning

It’s a simple topic, one that everyone should be interested in and one that everyone should applaud. Ask a retiree if they regret getting out, odds are 100 to 1 that they will just laugh in your face.

Easy days of putzing around the house, playing golf, and waking up whenever you feel like it. No calls, no emergencies, no trauma, no adrenaline, just boring day in and day out.

I guess it’s a little more complicated than that.

With a decentralized law enforcement system in the United States, it is easy to guess that the retirement requirements and compensation differ across the country. Every state is different, and depending on the type of agency you are serving in, the retirement package for one officer in the county could be different from another officer in the county. Add in State Police and Federal Law Enforcement and retirement benefits quickly become difficult to navigate.