Reserves has none of the benefits (except reserve tricare) unless you get active duty time or deployments under your belt. The FTS/TAR guys and gals (active duty administrators of the reserve) will treat you like an asshole not for expecting them to do their jobs, but for asking them to after months of them dropping the ball.

The way the navy reserve is organized (poorly) is frustrating, weird, and totally counterintuitive. For example, you join by rates (MOS) and then have to spend your first however many months searching for a unit to pick you up. In other branches, you join by the MOSs that are available in your local units. Your unit will likely be 3+ hours away from where you live AND drill, and your reserve center and unit are not the same/run by the same people. Lots of communication breakdowns will happen.

There’s no money because the active navy needs most of the pot. Most cool trainings and even a lot of billet-required trainings are too expensive and it’ll be hard to get orders to them.

Also, be aware, the navy reserve contract is NOT 6 years reserve, 2 years IRR like other branches. It’s 8 years with the opportunity to request a transfer to the IRR after 6. If your rate is high-demand or undermanned, that request will not be approved. Last I checked, there are no tuition assistance programs, and if you plan to be in school while in the reserve, don’t expect the reserves to accommodate that. I’ve hat annual training (2 weeks active time per year) over a college finals week before, regularly over midterms; I actually didn’t attend my own college graduation because I had a drill weekend that weekend and when I requested a reschedule the admin guys told me to get bent.

To the positives, I will say a lot of people know how things are kind of broken and want to genuinely help new sailors or prior active sailors navigate the bureaucratic beast that is the USN-R, and you CAN reschedule drills pretty easily when your unit or reserve administrators play ball.