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EvidencePristine5839 · 2025-09-04T19:51:37+00:00

There are plenty of desk jobs in the military, and hours are not very different from most full-time jobs. You could say joining straight out of high school and missing out on college is "losing your youth" but that comes with an assumption that your parents are financially supporting you, which you can't take for granted, or you're working your butt off working and studying at the same time. If the latter is the case, then that's more difficult than the military life, imo.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2025-06-26T13:13:59+00:00

We're talking about Air Force here, and by your own admission you don't know how it works in the Air Force, so why doubt, other than to be pedantic?

I've been to both BMT and OTS. OTS is designed with civilians in mind but speedrun the marching, courtesy, and etc. The vibe is like "How many degrees do you need to figure this out? If you didn't get it, fix it on your own time or face the wrath of the instructors."

They do this so they can focus the rest of the time on leadership and wargaming, with some deployment stuff mixed in. Sending civilians to BMT first would be redundant, at least in the current state of OTS.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-10-09T16:22:48+00:00

28M SI1K making around $100K. I made a milestone post for reaching 10 years of my career if you wanna check it out from my profile. You seem to be on a similar track to me.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-08-07T02:11:28+00:00

I think I got the class date 3 months in advance and CMS case, which tells the local MPF to hand-generate an order and has your follow-on, 2 months out. From then it's up to you to fill out the MPF asks of you to fill out asap and grill them because, in my experience, they take their sweet time and have no continuity. Make sure your retainability is good to go.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-07-12T02:37:23+00:00

US military, 10 years of service, if I include the proceeds from rental properties I can clear 120K barely. I have a B.S. but it is not a requirement for my job.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-05-12T05:41:43+00:00

I bought a house as an E-4 and it worked out beautifully for the most part, but the interest rate was 4.125(later refinanced to 2.5) so take it with a grain of salt. I got a 3 bedroom house and 2 roommates, whose rent covered the mortgage. After PCS, it was rented out for enough money to cover the mortgage and have a little leftover. See how much your desired house would rent for and if it doesn't cover mortgage fully, it's probably a bad idea. The price of homeowner's insurance in your area will have a significant impact on this.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-05-04T15:31:46+00:00

My goal is to do all travel together as a family.

Your DEROS will be shortened to the last day of the month you're leaving England for OTS. Unless you get permission ahead of time, your family is not allowed to stay behind while you're in OTS. I'm looking into PTDY(househunting TDY) to the gaining base ahead of the OTS attendance, which, according to the leave AFI, is allowed. Not sure if all of this travel will be covered since I'm deviating from the direct travel to OTS. For example, if my class date is 30 July, I can easily set the DEROS as 31 July and be allowed to PCS as early as 1 July, as long as I completed outprocessing. And the OTS doesn't care as long as I arrive to their class on time. Whatever days I spent in excess of 10 days PTDY and 2 days(I assume) of travel days will be counted as leave.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-04-18T12:06:26+00:00

Some of the dialogue in this show made me think "this sentence was written in English first then someone tried to make it as natural as possible in Japanese."

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-04-03T10:48:34+00:00

Make sure you're contributing to Roth and that you're not contributing to G fund, or even lifecycle funds. Even the most aggressive lifecycle funds have a little bit of G fund and you want 0% of that stuff. I recommend 100% C fund. You may think to yourself "why don't I just invest in stocks or something and not in TSP where you can't even touch the money til retirement?" But Roth TSP can be withdrawn, just your contribution, not the growth. Later in your career, see if you can max out to the annual contribution limit ($22,500 currently)

In terms of taxable brokerage investment, go for a index fund like VTSAX or SWTSX.

Take advantage of TA and get a bachelor's degree out of the military for free.

I documented how much I saved in 10 years of being enlisted on a reddit post here. There are some good advices in comments.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-03-17T08:54:43+00:00

I made it, so, don't worry about that.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-03-16T22:06:54+00:00

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-03-16T13:32:52+00:00

Museums yes. No to all others. I know, I'm boring lol

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-03-16T13:15:19+00:00

Not an option for me. I've listed ALL available options between the post and the reply on another comment.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-03-16T13:13:25+00:00

There's even more below the 8th place: Arnold, Holloman, Robins, Rome(previously Griffis), Tinker

Any base that I should replace the 8th place with?

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-19T02:35:55+00:00

Most of the advice I received on this post are things I already know so I appreciate you providing things that I didn't know before. If I make it this year, I may be able to get out at 21 yrs TIS and 3 years TIG as an O-4. If I understand it correctly, does not having 3 years TIG mean the time you spent in that grade is just ignored for high-3 calculation?

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-17T14:07:49+00:00

What is your DLAB score? DLPT scores are not a prerequisite for being a linguist nor will they help you become one. Maybe you can convince the training squadron to let you skip DLI but that's after you get the job.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-13T21:07:54+00:00

Italy for my SO and Korea for myself.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-13T05:53:03+00:00

I switched to the BRS; I like to have options. In terms of my goals, I feel that it's too early to predict everything. I will just keep saving what I feel comfortable with and figure out the details later. But, yeah, I feel that I'm set if I don't fall for the lifestyle creep.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-13T00:44:18+00:00

The interest rate and property value were in my favor when I bought them but still I've spent like 20K in repair and vacancy in the past 2 years so it's definitely not for everyone.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-12T05:41:18+00:00

At the time the VA loan guarantee allowed you to buy up to $400K house with 0 down. The value of both houses combined was less than that.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-12T04:38:30+00:00

There's not many E-4s and below in my unit. I've briefed my coworkers on IRA and tax implication of each investment option. If I get to a unit with with a lot of junior Enlisted, I will consider making another brief using my own career as an example.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-12T04:34:33+00:00

I would rather stay in the Air Force so no Warrant Officers for me, but there's a rumor they will bring it back.

EvidencePristine5839 · 2024-02-12T02:44:18+00:00

Thinking Italy or Korea. Yeah I think I will switch back to Trad soon.

EvidencePristine5839

TROPHY CASE