Guidance

MoneyForce: financial advice for serving personnel

A financial awareness website for service personnel and their families.

From:
Ministry of Defence
Published
12 March 2013
Last updated
1 March 2017 — See all updates

This guidance was withdrawn on

This page no longer contains relevant information. For up to date information visit the financial top tips for service personnel page.

Overview

MoneyForce is the official MOD channel for money advice for UK service personnel. The website provides easy online support for service personnel and their families, to help them make informed financial decisions and plan their finances better, both while they are in service and once they leave the armed forces.

MoneyForce provides information on:

  • managing money: useful information on borrowing, saving, budgeting and spending, as well as planning for the future
  • your career: useful financial information about different stages of your military career, including pay and career structures, allowances, managing finance as you deploy, assignment in the UK or abroad and making plans for when you leave the service
  • life and family: useful information on managing life’s challenges, setting up home, marriage, divorce, children
  • managing crises: useful information and guidance to help people through tough times, including debt and emotional issues, drug and alcohol problems as well as war pensions, compensation and bereavement
  • debt: explains your options for getting out of debt and signposts to free, confidential help
  • tools: a budget planner, a car cost calculator, a credit card calculator, a goal saving calculator as well as a home buying tool to help you make informed decisions and plan for the future; the MoneyFit Challenge takes you through various scenarios and gives you your own tailored action plan at the end

MoneyForce is specifically designed for the armed forces, to give service personnel and their families useful information and tools in plain English to make informed financial decisions that will have a positive impact on their future.

Access the MoneyForce website.

Why MoneyForce?

Managing your money, saving for the future and being financially secure is important to everyone, but military life brings some specific challenges (mobility, deployment) that can make financial management particularly difficult for some service personnel.

Our armed forces need to be physically fit for duty but they also need to be ‘Moneyfit’. Personal finances are the individual’s responsibility but money worries can also lead to distraction and under performance [1] at work, as well as welfare problems for families.

Defence has a responsibility to seek to address the disadvantages of service life through the Armed Forces Covenant. It also wishes to encourage sensible personal planning so that personnel remain financially secure throughout their career and when they leave the services in order to reduce the likelihood of finances becoming a welfare issue that causes distress and potentially impacts on their ability to perform.

Delivering the MoneyForce, a financial awareness website and training programme, is set out as a commitment in the Armed Forces Covenant Annual Report 2012.

MoneyForce is delivered by The Royal British Legion in partnership with the Ministry of Defence. The Standard Life Charitable Trust funded the project until 2016.

The Royal British Legion has provided management and their experience of supporting the armed forces. The Legion has also taken over funding the programme from Standard Life Charitable Trust.

The Money Advice Service has provided over 50% of the money management content offered in the project.

The MOD has provided guidance, military content and has endorsed the website.

The website was built and developed by Reading Room.

  1. Source: Society of Human Resources Management: 83% of HR professionals report that personal financial challenges have a large or some impact on employee work performance in their organisations. Ability to focus on work (47%) and overall stress (46%) were reported to be the performance aspects most negatively affected. View the findings.

Updates to this page

Published 12 March 2013
Last updated 1 March 2017 + show all updates

  1. Updated all information.

  2. Updated Related information with link to 'Tax when leaving the armed forces'.

  3. First published.

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