Last week I was flying with a new hire First Officer and had a senior wide-body captain on the jumpseat.

 After all the nice pleasantries and taking off, our conversation turned to the last year's turmoil - the cost Covid-19 had on the airline industry.

The new First Officer thought he had made it - landed a pilot job with a Legacy Carrier.

 Both myself and the Senior Captain couldn't stress enough the importance of having a secondary source of income - just in case.

 In the airline industry, it's never "just in case." It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when - when the industry takes a nose dive again.

 It seems that aviation is hit with some sort of unpredictable and uncontrollable Category 5 financial hurricane ever eight to 10 years.

 9/11

 The 2008 recession

 Covid-19 lock-downs

 Several airlines didn't survive this round.

 Hundreds of pilots received the dreaded news:

“Due to current unforeseen business circumstances beyond our control, the Company has made the ...

Whew, did we hit financial wake turbulence last year!

Many pilots slammed into major wake turbulence in 2020 because they didn’t have a financial flight plan!

As pilots, we train for the "unexpected" so that when something goes wrong in our aircraft, we are ready and prepared. Flight instructors have hours of instruction on how to get out of wake turbulence, but no one teaches us how to recover from hitting financial wake turbulence.

In fact, in most cases, professional pilots get little to no financial education before taking the controls of their aircraft.

It’s imperative that we prepare for the unexpected in the cockpit and in our bank accounts, especially when it comes to financial wealth building. Last year’s downturn was caused by factors well beyond our control....like furloughs and layoffs.

But the devastation in the airline industry and our national economy jolted most households, while others took it all in stride.

What was the difference? Whether or n...