Other than an intellectual curiosity, why are you so worried about them?
This is America ... we all get to do whatever stupid things we want to ...
freedom to do dumb things is part of our national culture.
Well, these people are grownups. I'm not worried about them any more than I worry about a kook paddling out in 15-foot surf while I'm heading for the parking lot. But it's like having a front-row seat at a train wreck-- even if you don't know any of the passengers, the disaster evokes a certain amount of empathy. Of course it'll never happen to you, but you also want to know how to avoid having it happen to other people.
First, regardless of the reality, it's easy to feel superior to those who don't share your background. You can comfort yourself that you were raised better or you went to better schools or you had better career mentors. But these two share an awful lot of our background and training. Same schools, many of the same commands. Different warfare communities but similar billets. Same longevity & seniority. Similar security clearances. These people had to sit through, and even deliver, the same "financial responsibility" general military training that we did. I wonder what other bullets have whizzed by my head without me noticing.
Second, they are not stupid. They were leaders in their active-duty careers. They executed a horribly complex home renovation, replete with demolition/construction permits and many difficult contractors, bureaucrats, and "community servants", on budget and on schedule. They're coping with life better than some of our financially-literate shipmates who are pursuing ER. They just cannot see how their angst and financial distress is coupled to their ignorance. They think the solution to their problems lies in finding a better advisor, not in actually taking some responsibility for contributing to their decisions.
Third, I spent eight years at military training commands. I didn't just teach, I developed curriculum and tackled special problems. I was the guy who got the phone calls like "Hey Nords, these guys just failed their inspection and the survivors need some corrective training as soon as the fires are extinguished and the court-martials are disbanded. Can you come over here, figure out what needs to be done, and then do it?" This is the training challenge of the year, perhaps the decade.
The culmination of those first three factors is a target audience for a book on military ER. If indeed a veteran's ER is as simple as a COLA'd pension and cheap healthcare, then why do fewer than 15% of the veterans bother to do it? There's an important lesson to be learned here, and it's worth figuring out how to explain it to someone who thinks they make so much money that they can blow off paying their bills. If I can reach that group then I can explain it to anyone. Of course these kind of people might never read the book, either, let alone buy it, but that's only important if I use an actual publisher.
Fourth, my spouse and this woman will be spending some time together over the next year or two. It's possible (perhaps less likely than I thought) that the woman will step into the job to be vacated by the shipmate who persuaded my spouse to volunteer for this nonprofit. It's hard enough to work with this woman under these circumstances, let alone "for" her.
Finally, if this couple is so financially illiterate then I can only imagine how their kids are doing. We can't blame the public-school system for this situation.
I'd offer some constructive advice, but the couple themselves seems unwilling to make the sacrifices they need to right the ship, so I will pass......
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"...........
Well, sure, they're screwed and they're unlikely to change their behavior, but that certain knowledge didn't keep me from starting this thread. Someone else might be reading it and saying "Hey, honey, maybe we shouldn't roll over our TSP to that advisor's EIA IRA after all..."
So-- as a professional finance dude, what advice would you give to others who may stumble into this sort of situation and might be motivated to extract themselves? It could happen!
