Should I stay or should I go now?

[oil pan 4]

How many points do you have?

[mcrews]

Originally Posted by Xist

If I put in twelve more years, I should receive at least a thousand a month, but not until I turn sixty, although I thought it was sixty-five, so it is at least better than I had understood.

Our retention sergeant says you start receiving benefits once you complete twenty years.

Let's say I reenlist for six years, take the $12,000 bonus, and with six months to prepare, barring ridiculous mandatory on-line training, I prepare myself adequately to get promoted, make $6,000 a year, and then get promoted to Staff Sergeant four years later, one bonus for six years. That would total around a hundred thousand. I would be forty-nine. If I live to be eighty-four and receive $1,200 a month for twenty-four years, I would receive $345,600 in retirement. Arguably, the average of $8,333.33 I would make a year would technically be $37,133.33.

I can replace Guard pay with Saturday clients, right? What if I worked enough to put money in retirement?

With the goal of doubling the investment every twelve years, I calculated that I would need a 5.95% investment rate (pretty close to the rule of 72).

Three hours a week would cover drill pay, but I would need to work eight hours every weekend, and invest five-eights of it, in order to invest enough to yield as much as the Army retirement for twenty-four years.

He who retires with the most wins.

You stike me as a 'hard worker'
your going to do fine.
but why give up on an 'extra income'
Back to my buddy.
He's a computer geek. now he's 'retired' from the service at 55 but works fulltime w a civilian contractor making $150k
but he still have his military retirement and benefits, his ss AND what he's socking away At BoozAllen.

THe one component of this that you are NOT factoring in financially is the increasing cost of private health care.

[ME_Andy]

If you can find more clients, especially on the weekend, I would focus on the speech thing and forget the Army. It sounds like the Army is a dead-end job but speech therapy could take you far. Plus the Army is disruptive. I imagine it's hard to live when you might ship out at any time.

[freebeard]

Fallacy of the excluded middle. If you couldn't do either, what would be your heart's desire?

[Fat Charlie]

Being in part time isn't worth the money. It costs money- in direct expenses, lost (real world) work time and lost (real world) opportunities.

Do you like being in? Then it's worth it. They even pay you something and if you keep deciding you like it then you'll see some retirement benefits. If you enjoy what you're actually doing and can accept the overall use of the military, stay in.

I loved everything I did, but wasn't going to keep going back to try and get blown up because we just had to keep invading people and all that. But that's why I always recommend extending for the shortest stint so you can review your priorities sooner: a lot can happen in two years, much less six.

[freebeard]

a lot can happen in two years, much less six.

Quoted For Truth.

I completed ROTC in my 4th year of college. By the time I graduated in my 5th year we'd gone from 50K to 500K pairs of boots on the ground in sunny SE Asia.

So I watched the Democratic national convention in Chicago on TV and then drove to Ft. Lewis.

[oil pan 4]

I hate tricare I pay about 100 more a month for real insurance.

[Fat Charlie]

In 2002, people were screaming about how we had to invade Iraq. It made no practical sense except to get Murricans to the polls- nothing to worry about, I re-upped for three.

In 2003, guess what? No worries though, nobody's going to send towed artillery to a mechanized war. Later that year the Administration unveiled Operation Fait Accompli: Gee, it turns out this is going to take a while longer... And everyone who could correctly identify a rifle got handed a brown uniform, and not much else.

In 2005 we made it home. Everything else we did got met with a cheerful "Don't matter to me, I'm out in October!" I looked hard for some other duty position, but the root was that no matter how much I loved being in I wasn't willing to go back and back and back to the same stupid damn war. I wasn't going to spend my time until retirement scamming out of deployments, either.

Taking the shortest hitch meant I only had to do one year of dehydration, back injuries, IEDs, hillbilly armor, corrupt command and KBR contractors making more money than any soldier ever will. After I got out my unit kept training on its howitzers while repeatedly sending its troops over as MPs. I had to go to a funeral this spring for one of the guys I had been there with, he killed himself not long after his third trip over there.

So while I really miss being in and recommend staying in if you like it at all, it's more important to not commit yourself to any more time than you have to. You can always extend, but it's wrong to back out once you've committed.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

In 2002, people were screaming about how we had to invade Iraq. It made no practical sense except to get Murricans to the polls.

Sure, politics was a motivation in attacking Iraq, but it was unavoidable regardless. Heck, I'd have sent some bombs to negotiate with Saddam the moment he breached the terms of his surrender treaty when he kicked out the weapons inspectors. His mind was writing checks his country couldn't cash.

[Fat Charlie]

And so our response was to do the same.