[quote=briansd1]Regardless of the semantics and the details, $1/2 million NPV for the pension is in the low range. Add medical, spousal benefits, educational subsidies, VA mortgages, etc… and we end up with much more.
As harvey mentioned, can we afford this largesse?
BG, BTW, my good buddy is a retired Navy pilot and we talk about it. He knows he got a great deal.
As the real estate “expert” in our group of friends, I even helped him buy his house with a no money down VA loan.
He did sleep on ships and barracks in his younger days. But later in his career, when he was in Korea for 2 years on assignment, the government rented him a luxury $3,500 per month (nomimal money in the early 2000’s) apartment in central Seoul.
The government trained him straight out of college, and gave led him all the way. He had a lot of time off and goofed around a lot.
Most of us in the private sector have to provide our own training else companies won’t hire us.[/quote]
brian, your “Navy pilot” friend was an officer. Always studying was an enlistee who entered the service right out of HS. There is a chasm of difference. Did your “Navy officer” friend remain single throughout his career? The typical “enlistee” marries and has kids early and if their spouse proves not to be self-reliant and supportive of their “career” (incl repeated and back-to-back deployments), their “civilian lives” can easily spiral into a living nightmare. To spend likely their entire military career earning 6+ years worth of college credits part-time is asking A LOT of their spouses and family. Even in the rare instances when they are actually home for long-stretches, they are studying. This is NOT the norm for enlistees. Most of them return home to a mismanaged quagmire that needs to be unraveled (mostly financial mismanagement by the spouse and spouse desertion … yes, even with the kids :=0). I don’t have to tell you that the divorce rate is sky-high among enlistees.
Active-duty military are eligible for “housing,” but it is not “free.” Their housing allowance is garnished from their pay when they live in housing. It can be a “hardscrabble existence” for a spouse stuck in housing with kids as the vast majority of enlisted spouses are not “locals” and have never lived away from “home” and many have even written a check in their lives! Many, many of them abandon military housing in the middle of deployments and move back to their “home state” to parents’ houses with their kids in tow, leaving their sponsors to “clean up the mess” upon return. Some never move into military housing at all. They remain in their “home state” with parents and await return of the deployed spouse.
It’s a culture shock for an 18-23 yo military spouse with kids from rural USA to be dumped in the middle of a SD military housing project days or weeks before their spouse deploys.
