After reading responses from my post from yesterday, it makes no sense to leave the Military in hopes of making more money on the outside. Is this incorrect?
Hard to beat out a retirement with free or reduced cost healthcare with a guaranteed pension.
I don't understand how leaving the military is a better choice financially.
byu/Glittering_Fig4548 inMilitaryFinance
Posted by Glittering_Fig4548
12 Comments
Just depends on how good of a plan you have/how marketable you are for high paying, in demand fields
There are far too many individual variables at play to be able to accurately say “staying in the military is always better than getting out.” Everyone’s situation is gonna be different.
Most people with a useful degree/trade can make more money on the outside than in the military.
Note I said *most* and *can*. Doesn’t mean all and will.
If you fall into that bucket, then it absolutely makes sense.
The military pays rather well, when you consider the value of all the benefits.
While many can make more on the outside, there is significantly higher risk in the unknowns. Will you land a job with equal or greater pay? Will you get laid off? Will the benefits (medical and retirement, for example) be as good?
There are a lot of reasons to stay in and a lot of reasons to move on. Each decision is unique to that person’s skills, risk tolerance, and lifestyle.
Because your post generally assumed a static salary for the civ side and we didn’t have a location to go off of which heavily influences bah rates.
A Civ after being in for 6 years would also get reduced healthcare from tricare select.
Lastly, 20 years is a long time and people can get injured to just straight up be unfit to serve and get separated early and there goes your 20 yr retirement. It’s pretty hard to make it to 20.
A few reasons why you would be right:
1. You pay less taxes while active duty for the same amount of income as a civilian job.
2. You can easily make multiple streams of income while having a stable military job for stability.
3. You can save 70-90 percent of your income since everything is essentially paid via military. Civilians cant barely save anything.
4. Its hard to get fired in the military. Ive worked with some ass people in the military, wasn’t worth a cent….I had to adjust and work around them to support mission. Civilian world they would be fired.
5. Tsp. You get to invest 24,500 into retirement per year. Civilians can only do 7000.
All that to say if you are amazing in the military….that go to person with integrity. You will succeed and out do civilians in the workforce. Happy Saturday 🫡
Leaving is just a trade off for stability and potentially job satisfaction.
You can make more on the outside, but you’ll actually have to grind for your money. If you want high pay in the civilian sector you have to constantly bring value to the table for your employer or you and your high salary will be the first to get cut to save costs.
Depends on the options but generally, financially, you’re right. Our retirement is worth a lot, especially including health insurance.
I’ll be making six figures next January, and have a guaranteed pension and health insurance. And I’m not in the military (anymore). I work in local government. I don’t have to shave, I don’t have to deploy. My time away from work is my time, I’m not on call 24/7. I’m free to leave my job at will and go find another one.
Pro’s and cons. I spent 13 years in the Army before my body decided it had enough and I was med boarded out. I think it’s foolish to look at making a career in the military from a purely financial standpoint, because the military is not a job: it’s a lifestyle you get paid for. If you love the lifestyle, have at it. For me, by the ten year point I was ran ragged by the Army. My marriage failed, my mental health was in disarray, I was drinking heavily, my body was beat up. Would it be nice to be drawing my pension at 44 instead of waiting until 65 like I am now? Of course it would (my VA disability check makes up for it though so that is kind of a wash in my case). But you really need to do an analysis of lifestyle, financials, opportunity cost of staying in the military vs going into what could be a lucrative civilian career. Ultimately this is going to be a very individualized decision. But any advice you get asking people still in the military is going to be heavily skewed in favor of “it’s stupid to leave”, because the vast majority have never been civilians. They just parrot what they hear, or see their loser friends from high school and think that’s what civilian life is like. The civilian world is what you make of it, while the military is basically life issued to you.
I think when you look at it in a vacuum military sounds like the no brainer. Then when you have a military job that’s all but guaranteeing two deployments in 3 years, sleeping on the ship every 4 days, multiple underways, and getting a phone call in the middle of the night cause your sailor got a DUI that’s somehow your fault you start to see the other side.
I will gladly take a pay cut to never sleep on a ship again, never deploy to the Middle East for 10 months, and spend time with my family. Also with my career field I can easily make more than what the military gives me. I’m still happily doing 20 but not a second more
A lot of assumptions with the retirement. It’s assuming inflation doesn’t continue to run rampant, and the guaranteed monthly income will be worth the same (purchasing power) from the date of your retirement to death.
I got out at 12 years to maximize my USD income in civilian sector to buy real assets with it. My biggest fear is inflation and Ive been proven right so far.
Had I retired at 20 years AD in 2020, the income from my retirement would have ALREADY lost 20% of its purchasing power in just 5 years. 5 years! Now for me to expect that income to last me 20+ years from now? Yikes. Don’t rely on that TSP is my recommendation.
You have to leave the Military eventually. For some people the right time is in 15 years. For some it’s right now.
It just depends on the person and their plans/needs for the future.
I think the misconception is probably comparing standard earnings/compensation package with *potential earnings*. Because of how the military functions, potential earnings are theoretically capped. Sure there are plenty of opportunities to increase pay through various duties and your pay increases with time in service, but there is a hard cap in how much you can earn because military pay structure.
In the civilian side, your base pay is probably higher for a variety of reasons but to your point, your compensation package will change drastically and often act as a counterbalance to military pay. However, there isn’t really a theoretical cap on earning potential. You can hold multiple jobs if you really want to grind, and if you’re exceedingly good/get in the right market/find an idiot willing to overpay you, you have the ability to make a lot more.
I suppose it depends entirely on market saturation and perception of the availability of money to maximize the potential.