I’m a strong believer in not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I know a ton of service members who view their time in the reserves as a place to pass time and hopefully get out one day. While they view their time in the service as an inconvenience, I’ve always seen it as a way to develop my education, career skills, leadership, and my finances.
Here’s why.
#1. It’s a Part-Time Job with a Pension
Did you hear about the new pension McDonald’s was now providing their cashiers who work nights? How about the car wash down the street, for their weekend workers? Yeah. You didn’t. Because it doesn’t exist.
While the pension for us M-Day service members may not be quite as glamorous as the High-Three, 50% of your base pay for life that Active Duty members receive, it’s still a good benefit. The dirty secret about the reserve component is our “time in service” doesn’t stop when we “retire.”
Upon retirement, most reservist enter into the Retired Ready Reserve, where you don’t gain any additional retirement points. Your overall time in service keeps ticking, though. If you enlisted at the age of 18 and don’t pull your pension until age 60, you have 40 years of creditable service. Assuming you ended you career at 20 years with 1800 retirement points, that’s 5 years of creditable service, which works out to 12.5% of your base pay. For an E-8 with 40 years, that’s $774 a month. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
Where Active Duty personnel pull their numbers from the middle of the pay charts, ours are all the way to the right.
#2. Your Insurance Woes are Over
I’ll keep this blog as non-political as possible, but I think it’s fair to say our healthcare is a bit of a soup sandwich. Regardless of your opinion on how to fix it, Tricare Reserve Select is one of the lowest cost healthcare plans on the market right now. As a guardsman, you get the benefits of subsidized healthcare without having to deal with Military Treatment Facilities and the associated referrals. All for the low cost of <$250 for a family.
This gives you major flexibility in your job selection in the civilian sector. You’re able to take a job at a smaller firm without great benefits, scratch your entrepreneurial itch, or do some independent contracting without worrying about a fall costing your $20,000, plus income.
Further, once you hit 20 years, you’re eligible for Tricare For Life in your retirement. One of the largest unexpected costs in retirement is medical expenditures. If our healthcare situation hasn’t been fixed 30 years from now, this retirement benefit will help you protect your assets from an illness that’s out of your control.
Thanks, Uncle Sam.
#3. Paid Job Training
Although it’s my opinion that youngsters should go active duty for a few years before transitioning to the reserves, the job training aspects in the military are awesome. Where else will an organization take someone with just a high school diploma and teach them to speak foreign languages, manage computer and network infrastructure, and perform maintenance on aircraft or tracked vehicles? Oh, by the way, they pay you to do it, too.
This is nuts! It’s awesome. Also, the guardsmen are notorious for having multiple MOSes/Rates while serving. A service member can easily volunteer to attend additional training to pick up an additional job skill identifier. This benefits your military career by making you more versatile while serving your civilian career by developing your skill sets.
#4. Pivot from a Civilian Job
Stuck in a civilian job you hate? I’ve been there. You don’t have one career as a reservist; you have two. Side by side, your civilian career and military career are often in conflict.
Use them to feed each other, instead. I was in a rut in a civilian career and realized I was in a field where I was competent, encouraged, and completely unhappy. I just couldn’t see myself doing that job for 20 more years.
Some old contacts offered me a position on temporary orders and it turned into a longer-term gig. Not only did I end up in a lower-stress job, I also got a 50% pay bump, worked better hours, and more than doubled my paid time off.
While temporary orders don’t lend themselves to job security, they do allow you to develop new skills through new opportunities. Over the course of the past few years, I’ve started developing skills that will make me very employable in the civilian world. Additionally, I’ve been able to place myself into new fields within the military. That’s a win for the service and a win for me.
Final thoughts?
The military is a powerhouse of opportunity for someone beginning their career, trying to develop it further, or someone playing the long game with pensions. If you play your cards right, you can enter into an exciting career field with no training, no education, and no work experience and end up with all three in just a few years.
You know what else is funny about this list? I didn’t even mention college benefits.
GOT SOMETHING ELSE TO ADD?
Write a comment below about a misconception you had, or something you’d like me to add as an article! You can also e-mail me at ReserveFI@gmail.com