DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Lawmaker wants to make 100,000 active duty troops reservists & National Guardsmen

**ArrichMer** · 09-25-2011, 03:43 PM

Only about 1% of the US population are in the military it shouldn't hurt private industry too bad.

I think the military retirement is superior to your scenario and here's why:

You start receiving it at around 40 (that's about 20-25 years before that civil service position and about 22 years before that reserve retirement kicks in at a lower rate) for me at my retired rank that's about 825,000.00 if I never get another COLA raise.
You still have to pay into your retirement plan..... how much? I still have all that money too. The military has the TSP as well.

I have the freedom to do anything I want at this point now, for another 20 years.

There's allot of ways at viewing retirement plans and each model doesn't work well for everyone but I would say I have a pretty sweet deal having served 23 years AD and now just traveling abroad.

But here's the problem with military retirement - you CAN'T stay in as long as you want. 30 years, and you're done - and that's only if you reach the highest enlisted or officer paygrade. In the typical case - let's say someone retiring at 20 years as an E6, or even 23 or 24 as an E7 - your military retirement is not going to be enough to live off of. After retiring from the military, you STILL have to work. And you've still got a lot of time before you're eligible to draw social security.

The common argument might be to retire from active duty military after 20 years, then go into civil service. The only problem with that scenario is that if you retire from active duty, you can't count that military service toward your civil service unless you waive your military retired pay and have those 20 years merely used in your calculation of the federal annuity. However, if you DON'T retire from active duty, and then opt to go into the reserves, you can count that active duty time toward both your civil service and reserve retirement, without either affecting the other.

If you actually did the 20 years active and then went ahead and sucked up 30 years of civil service on top of that, assuming that you joined the military at the age of 18 upon graduation from high school (which sure as hell isn't everybody who joins) and IMMEDIATELY landed a civil service job upon retirement from active duty, you wouldn't be fully retired until the age of 68.

I, on the other hand, can still retire at the minimum retirement age (57) as long as my 30 years of service are met by then (which they will be).

Might your full active duty retirement + full 30 year civil service beat out my 11 year active/9 year reserve + 37 year civil service retirement? I doubt it, but if it did for argument's sake; here's the dealbreaker: TSP. Sure, the military has it - but the military doesn't have the matching contributions that I was talking about earlier.

09-25-2011, 03:43 PM	#15
ArrichMer Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 570 Senior Member	Only about 1% of the US population are in the military it shouldn't hurt private industry too bad. I think the military retirement is superior to your scenario and here's why: You start receiving it at around 40 (that's about 20-25 years before that civil service position and about 22 years before that reserve retirement kicks in at a lower rate) for me at my retired rank that's about 825,000.00 if I never get another COLA raise. You still have to pay into your retirement plan..... how much? I still have all that money too. The military has the TSP as well. I have the freedom to do anything I want at this point now, for another 20 years. There's allot of ways at viewing retirement plans and each model doesn't work well for everyone but I would say I have a pretty sweet deal having served 23 years AD and now just traveling abroad. But here's the problem with military retirement - you CAN'T stay in as long as you want. 30 years, and you're done - and that's only if you reach the highest enlisted or officer paygrade. In the typical case - let's say someone retiring at 20 years as an E6, or even 23 or 24 as an E7 - your military retirement is not going to be enough to live off of. After retiring from the military, you STILL have to work. And you've still got a lot of time before you're eligible to draw social security. The common argument might be to retire from active duty military after 20 years, then go into civil service. The only problem with that scenario is that if you retire from active duty, you can't count that military service toward your civil service unless you waive your military retired pay and have those 20 years merely used in your calculation of the federal annuity. However, if you DON'T retire from active duty, and then opt to go into the reserves, you can count that active duty time toward both your civil service and reserve retirement, without either affecting the other. If you actually did the 20 years active and then went ahead and sucked up 30 years of civil service on top of that, assuming that you joined the military at the age of 18 upon graduation from high school (which sure as hell isn't everybody who joins) and IMMEDIATELY landed a civil service job upon retirement from active duty, you wouldn't be fully retired until the age of 68. I, on the other hand, can still retire at the minimum retirement age (57) as long as my 30 years of service are met by then (which they will be). Might your full active duty retirement + full 30 year civil service beat out my 11 year active/9 year reserve + 37 year civil service retirement? I doubt it, but if it did for argument's sake; here's the dealbreaker: TSP. Sure, the military has it - but the military doesn't have the matching contributions that I was talking about earlier.
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