My nephew the Army Ranger has invited me to his West Point graduation on 26 May. He'll jump right into a bunch of Ranger schools and maybe Special Forces training, or else he'll be back in the desert by early 2008. He just wants to take care of his troops and pay forward the help he got from his old sergeants and, other than an appropriate obsession with edged weapons & martial arts, he really has no hobbies or interests.
Women tend to come & go so he'll likely be single for at least a few more years. He has nearly three years of enlisted service so he's been living independently and has a handle on personal property, a car, equipping an apartment, and so forth. For the next few years he doesn't want the burden of owning his own home. Not much left to do there.
Of course if he ends up at Schofield Barracks we'll greet him at the airport with his own longboard, but otherwise I'm stumped for a graduation present. My own college graduation was replete with feuding relatives and military formations so I've told him and his mother that during Graduation Week it's my job to keep the rest of the family entertained (and off their backs). If by some miracle I get a hotel room near USMA then he's welcome to stash his stuff there and crash anytime. But that doesn't count as a "gift".
So far my best idea has been financial advice. Unless things have changed drastically over the last decade, the military academies bank about half a cadet's pay in a short-term bond fund and hand it over with the diploma. He'll probably graduate with $10K-$20K in his bank account and, if he's anything like I was, absolutely no idea what to do with it. He'll be pulling down about $36K/year salary with essentially free housing & food (tax-free allowances) and of course I'll advise him to sink 15K in the TSP stock funds and another $4K in his IRA. Even so, considering his lack of free time and his meager spending habits, he'll probably have about $10K/year left over from his paycheck. With guaranteed employment and near-zero expenses he'll be the DCA investor from hell for a couple years, long enough to lay in a good compounding foundation.
He's a voracious reader and will happily chew through any books I give him, but he's not interested in learning anything more about investing than he needs for his own self-defense. He'll probably be a lifetime buy & hold equity index investor. I think the "Boglehead's Guide" is as much as he'll ever need, which again is good to have but doesn't exactly fill the bill for a graduation gift. I'd get him a free financial plan or consultation but he doesn't really need to be pestered by sales staffs that at this point in his life.
I've asked Fidelity what they can do for family discounts, but again his portfolio's overall expense ratio will probably already be down in the .10-.15 range. I don't know what other fund companies have to offer a grad.
So... any suggestions on what to get for the grad who has everything?
Women tend to come & go so he'll likely be single for at least a few more years. He has nearly three years of enlisted service so he's been living independently and has a handle on personal property, a car, equipping an apartment, and so forth. For the next few years he doesn't want the burden of owning his own home. Not much left to do there.
Of course if he ends up at Schofield Barracks we'll greet him at the airport with his own longboard, but otherwise I'm stumped for a graduation present. My own college graduation was replete with feuding relatives and military formations so I've told him and his mother that during Graduation Week it's my job to keep the rest of the family entertained (and off their backs). If by some miracle I get a hotel room near USMA then he's welcome to stash his stuff there and crash anytime. But that doesn't count as a "gift".
So far my best idea has been financial advice. Unless things have changed drastically over the last decade, the military academies bank about half a cadet's pay in a short-term bond fund and hand it over with the diploma. He'll probably graduate with $10K-$20K in his bank account and, if he's anything like I was, absolutely no idea what to do with it. He'll be pulling down about $36K/year salary with essentially free housing & food (tax-free allowances) and of course I'll advise him to sink 15K in the TSP stock funds and another $4K in his IRA. Even so, considering his lack of free time and his meager spending habits, he'll probably have about $10K/year left over from his paycheck. With guaranteed employment and near-zero expenses he'll be the DCA investor from hell for a couple years, long enough to lay in a good compounding foundation.
He's a voracious reader and will happily chew through any books I give him, but he's not interested in learning anything more about investing than he needs for his own self-defense. He'll probably be a lifetime buy & hold equity index investor. I think the "Boglehead's Guide" is as much as he'll ever need, which again is good to have but doesn't exactly fill the bill for a graduation gift. I'd get him a free financial plan or consultation but he doesn't really need to be pestered by sales staffs that at this point in his life.
I've asked Fidelity what they can do for family discounts, but again his portfolio's overall expense ratio will probably already be down in the .10-.15 range. I don't know what other fund companies have to offer a grad.
So... any suggestions on what to get for the grad who has everything?
