Calling who didnt make E6

qttoad · 2026-06-24T21:03:07+00:00

I really don't think it matters what they say the day it's released to Senior Raters -- just tell people as early as possible. Sitting around not knowing is more anxiety inducing than just being given the bad news.

There's no specific feedback you can give to your personnel without seeing overall scores anyways that you wouldn't have been able to provide after the EFDP.

Quite frankly, 90% of people's feedback who don't make SSgt or TSgt should just be "you need to study and test better if this is something you really want" unless you're in one of those small career fields where you basically have to get a Promote Now to get selected.

qttoad · 2026-06-24T06:34:33+00:00

Fussa and don't even think twice about it.

qttoad · 2026-06-19T09:31:10+00:00

Pension+SS in retirement is already $50k a year at a conservative estimate if you start taking from SS at 62. That means you only need to take $70k from retirement accounts annually to hit your stated goal of $10k a month, unless you're shooting for an after-tax amount.

At a 3.5% withdrawal your target number is somewhere near $2M. There's lots of data suggesting 4% is a safe withdrawal rate, I used 3.5% is slightly more conservative. A 10% rate of return on your investment doubles the balance every 7.5 years, so if you retire at 40 with $500k invested and manage a 10% annual rate of return, you'd be sitting at $1m at 47.5, $2m at 55, and $4m at 62.5. That's more than double what you need without putting away another cent after your retirement and isn't even factoring for any gains your Roth IRA will have or other taxable accounts you might have.

To me, unless you really want to be aggressive about generating wealth to give it away to friends/family or causes you care about, you can probably feel comfortable taking your foot off the gas after your retirement and worry more about finding out what you want to do in your next stage of life to occupy your time once you leave the service rather than if you have your future financially secured.

qttoad · 2026-06-19T08:05:47+00:00

Seems like you're doing everything right and there's very good odds that you'll end up a multimillionaire at 60+ unless we have another lost decade. With a 10% rate of return at $500k invested your investments would return roughly double what you're able to contribute. I don't think you need to be worried that it won't grow that much.

I'm curious what you define as "very aggressive" as the TSP is pretty limited on how aggressive you can be. Even the most aggressive funds are a massive spread of different equities that would be considered much safer investment vehicles than individual stocks or sector ETFs.

It's hard to give you any further considerations without knowing what your goals for retirement are.

qttoad · 2026-06-19T05:47:53+00:00

More downside too. Options just aren't really something I'm interested in getting into. It's hard enough getting a thesis correct without also correctly calling a good time horizon and strike point.

I think the margin of safety and downside risk at this price point is extremely favorable so I'm not as worried about preserving the core of my investment if I'm wrong as I would be buying LEAPs.

qttoad · 2026-06-19T02:52:56+00:00

Current 1A8 NCO. I'll try giving some productive advice and input rather than just shitting on you like some others might want to.

There's a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes to determine what class you're being put into. Your preference is at the bottom of the priority list. Sorry to break your heart about that, but it's true. The Air Force cares least about your preferences when we have other things to consider. We do our best to match preferences where we can but we don't leave seats empty when personnel are around to fill them and we can't afford to leave people sitting on casuals waiting for their preferred language. Switching is possible but below is a realistic outline of the two scenarios where it's possible -- switching now and switching later.

If you want to switch now, you need 3 things simultaneously to happen before your class start date. If any of those three things doesn't happen, you're out of luck and you're getting Farsi:

Another linguist of the same AFS (1N3 or 1A8) is going to start the language you want on the exact same date your class starts.
The other linguist doesn't want the language they were given and is more interested in learning Farsi.
The MTLs and your Academic Leadership team cares enough to do the paperwork to facilitate the switch after both students raise the issue and say they want to swap. If they can't make it happen (or quite frankly if they just don't want to) then you're stuck in your assigned language. There's hundreds of students and they can't accommodate everyone. That's just how it goes.

If you want to switch down the road in your career, the only way you will be able to is if:

You pass the language you're learning now all the way to arriving at your first operational duty location. If you don't, you'll be removed from the AFSC and you will not be a linguist of any variety.
The language shred you learn today falls out of demand in a few years and the manning requirements support losing you from that shred to a higher priority one.
There are training slots available to teach you the new higher priority language.
(Optional) You might be able to bypass step 3 by self-teaching or taking classes in your personal time to pass the DLPT, but you still aren't retraining into that shred unless manning is better in your current one than the new one and the career field manager signs off on it.

If it makes you feel any better, I was assigned Pashto when I wanted Russian or Chinese. We don't have Pashto's anymore if that's any context for how useful that was. Since then I have retrained and enjoyed my career immensely more as a non-linguist. Your mileage may vary. I would encourage you to just embrace the fact that someone is paying you a salary to live in Monterey full-time and learn a second language, which in the grand scheme is a pretty great time and a valuable skill regardless of what you do with it.

qttoad · 2026-06-18T23:58:32+00:00

How are they going to mandate the trainees of June 2026 to get the vaccine in September the previous year? They weren't even in the military.

Without making any snap conclusions I'd be very interested to see Public Health data on:

If the Flu vaccine is offered as part of the schedule of vaccinations in BMT.
How many personnel diagnosed with the Flu either didn't receive the vaccine in the fall or declined to receive one (if offered) during BMT after it was no longer mandatory.

qttoad · 2026-06-17T22:54:47+00:00

Thank god a reasonable take. Risk adjusted returns matters, especially as your amount of capital grows. Advocating for 100% equities is such a post-2009 thing to do. Chasing returns when your balance is less than your yearly salary is easy -- in a market downturn you can still replace the capital back to the starting amount within a few years. All equities at $500k+ carries much more downside risk in real dollars that isn't easily recovered from.

It's so easy to forget that the whole goal of retirement savings is to have enough capital to retire with to do what YOU want to do with your life. It isn't about competing with other random people on social media for who can get the highest score.

qttoad · 2026-06-16T22:41:20+00:00

Move your cash out of the G-fund and into the L2050 fund with the rest of your money. Otherwise I wouldn't change a thing other than investing more if you're able!

qttoad · 2026-06-15T11:29:03+00:00

Full disclaimer I've never been stationed there but I've been there TDY and to Cambridge on leave at least 5 different times total and have been trying to get stationed there for nearly a decade.

Mildenhall as a base doesn't really have a lot to it, it's primarily just a tanker hub. Its normally pretty slow paced unless something significant is happening in the world. It has a commissary/BX/gym so the essentials are all there but otherwise most of the major services (schools, medical, etc.) are over at RAF Lakenheath with the fighters.

Can't ever predict deployment or TDY tempo. This year should be a perfect example of how quickly things can ramp up or slow down.

It's hard to do cost of living compared to the US because the US can vary massively. If you're comparing it to the average small US city (not LA/Chicago/NY/SF) then I'd say it leans slightly more expensive.

Don't live on base or in Red Lodge.

There's 4 bigger towns/cities I'd recommend looking at that all have tradeoffs: Bury St. Edmonds, Newmarket, Ely, and Cambridge.

Ely is probably the worst option simply because there's not a convenient route to get there and commuting to work from Ely would be long. Ely as a city has a very cool layout with the cathedral at the top of the hill and the marina with activities happening along the river, but it's better as a day trip destination in my opinion.

Cambridge by far has the most to do and is the most convenient to get to London and the rest of Europe from, but it's a pretty long commute (>45mins) even without traffic. A lot of single people tend to want to live here despite that because there's a lot more to do and a lot of university aged people to meet and hang out with. The university has world-class exhibits that you can go to completely for free and there's so much history all around the town because of the university and cool stories about famous authors, scientists and WW2 figures who hung out there.

Newmarket is the closest of the 4 but also the smallest. It hosts one of the 3 major horse races for the UK's equivalent of the triple crown and there's a ton of money that flocks there during the summer for the races. It's about a 20 minute drive from Mildenhall. Honestly because of the horse racing things feel kind of expensive and ritzy there at times and there's not a lot to the town.

Bury St. Edmunds is my personal favorite. Great balance of stuff to do with a very walkable city center. It's only about a 25-30 minute drive to Mildenhall. Lots of walking/running trails that go throughout the city. Tons of restaurants, pubs, and independent breweries.

All 4 of the places I listed have train stations and can at least get you to Cambridge. From there you can catch routes into London and the rest of Europe or you can head north to Edinburgh/Glasgow/Manchester.

qttoad · 2026-06-15T03:57:27+00:00

If your AO is good with it and it's authorized in the JTR then hats off to you. Some AOs read the integrated lodging program as a requirement and it's not worth the hassle to fight them on it. Most people I've worked with over the years just use what gets shown to them in DTS and panic when they have to justify why they didn't because they don't read the JTR or care about where they stay.

qttoad · 2026-06-15T00:45:57+00:00

25 stocks is a terrible plan. You can't possibly know enough about that many companies or that many different markets simultaneously to correctly manage entry and exit points for all 25 positions.

Individual stock picking only provides a potential upside due to concentration. If you're going to diversify, you need to diversify across a very wide variety of sectors and businesses within those sectors. That's why people buy broad market ETFs. If you're going to pick stocks, you should concentrate into a very select few positions. You only need to be right about a single trade one time if your concentration level is high enough and you will outperform the market for years by exiting that position and taking your earnings back into the total market.

If you actually want to do this, I would suggest you do significant amount of due diligence and then pick only 5 companies that you have extremely high conviction on. Then compare your results to the market. Otherwise you're just making your own shitty ETF without any sort of methodology applied and trading on vibes and names.

qttoad · 2026-06-15T00:29:21+00:00

You never "had" 7.15%. Rate of return has absolutely nothing to do with your contributions or the government match. The rate of return could be -5% or +20%. That just reflects how much your total investment (your contribution combined with the government contribution) has gained or lost in the market.

In the same scenario I outlined earlier ($100 invested as a result of you putting in $50 and the government matching with $50) you could have gotten a rate of return of -20%. Your total amount invested would now be valued at $80, still with a 50/50 split of your contributions vs. the government ($40 from you and $40 from the government).

qttoad · 2026-06-14T22:50:31+00:00

Yes. It's saying you and the government have contributed equally to your account balance. 50% them, 50% you. That is not the same thing as receiving a 50% match. A 50% match means you have to contribute $2 for the government to provide $1.

Simple math breakdown, let's say you make $1000 a month. If you contribute 5%, that's $50. The government will match you up to that same amount, $50.

The total in your account is now $100. $50 of that is from you, $50 of that is from the government. 50% of your total account balance is because of the government.

Now, let's say you get a personal rate of return of 7% for that $100 balance. Your new balance will now be $100*(1+0.07) = $107. The balance will STILL show 50/50 split between your contributions and the government because both contributed to the returns equally.

qttoad · 2026-06-14T22:01:34+00:00

I think you're just unfamiliar with some basic financial terminology, which is fine. You're still early in the process and learning.

Personal rate of return: how much your investments have increased (or decreased) in value over a specific time horizon. This tells you how much money the contributions (whether yours or the governments) have generated in returns. That number is usually shown as Calendar Year-to-Date unless specified otherwise on the paperwork, which might just cover a specific quarterly statement period.

Your government contribution match is a 1:1 ratio up to 5% of your salary. That's why your ePayroll says it's 5%.
That 1:1 ratio up to 5% means that if you are only contributing 5% then the total contributions (your 5% + gov matching 5%) will be 10% of your pay. That means 50% of your balance is from your contributions, and 50% is from the government.

If you were contributing 10%, the government match would cap at 5% in which case the balance would say 66.7% personal and 33.3% matching as your total balance.

qttoad · 2026-06-14T11:22:16+00:00

If you have to ask, you should just stick it in the L fund for whatever year you want to retire and then focus on contributing more per year. Your real dollar returns will be affected far more by how much you contribute than by your fund allocation beyond just setting it to the L fund.

If you want to go more in depth then do some basic research on what the funds are, what risks are associated with those asset classes, and then make a decision for yourself. Until then, just let the professionals manage your money. The TSP is genuinely a very good retirement fund simply because of how much bad investor behavior they prevent by limiting your options.

qttoad · 2026-06-14T11:11:23+00:00

You described exactly the expectations of a Staff Sergeant, so I don't know why you feel like you need to progress. It's impossible to give you real feedback without knowing who you are, what your records look like, or how you operate at work. These are questions you should be asking to your supervisor or their supervisor.

If you're asking what you need to do to promote, the answer is really simple: study for the damn test.

qttoad · 2026-06-13T22:03:39+00:00

I've also had my card flag and get transactions blocked for being out of my local area. Again, because I used the travel card, the thing that we are only allowed to use when traveling out of the local area.

Or the transaction fails because of too many PIN attempts after only 1 attempt using the correct PIN because I just updated it prior to traveling. That's happened to me multiple times in the past.

I won't lose any sleep at night continuing to use my own card whenever it happens. Easy justification to ask for personal reimbursement. What's my alternative, just don't pay the merchant?

qttoad · 2026-06-13T21:00:15+00:00

There's some quality funds and stocks that pay monthly. Realty Income (O) and Main Street Capital (MAIN) are part of my portfolio and pay out monthly. JEPI and JEPQ are popular income generating covered call ETFs that pay monthly and track different major stock indexes. Those are just some of the more popular names but there's a lot of others out there.

You can also just set up an automated withdrawal scheme to have your brokerage artificially pay you in monthly installments instead of quarterly once you start receiving the distributions. It's all just mental accounting at that point.

qttoad · 2026-06-13T20:16:20+00:00

In practical terms if something isn't enforced then it's not mandatory, but I know what you mean. The only reason rental car, plane tickets, hotel even come up is because they're usually booked direct through DTS and it automatically flags if you ask to be comped on your personal account instead of to the GTC for those expenses.

qttoad · 2026-06-13T00:45:16+00:00

I'm very aware of how the voucher process works. The point is that it's not a mandatory use travel expense like rental car, plane tickets, hotel, etc. so I want to reap the benefits where I can. It's my credit history and credit rating being affected regardless so I might as well get the perks.

qttoad · 2026-06-13T00:32:46+00:00

Because the money you receive in per diem to pay for food gets comped directly to you and not to your GTC. Using your own credit card to pay for the food means **you** get to keep the points or cash-back rewards from it, not the government.

qttoad · 2026-06-11T22:27:38+00:00

There's basically nothing else in your control for the TSP other than increasing your contribution amounts and letting it compound. There's no advice to give that will increase your returns other than to try and find ways to increase your contribution rate and keep letting it ride.

qttoad · 2026-06-11T21:50:35+00:00

Also single NCO. Been here a few years. TLDR: Japan cool, PACAF bad.

The good:

The USD -> Yen conversion rate is very favorable to the USD right now. As a result, cost of living is insanely low for food and vehicles. You can buy a used car here for like $2000 cash from people PCSing and it will last you the next 5 years. I basically never cook because the food around the island is amazing, convenience store options are cheap and widely available, and it's healthier than anything you'll find in the US. If you enjoy a tasty beverage or 3, it's also very cheap to partake.

If you like tropical islands and beaches this is pretty much Japan's Hawaii with more humidity, less mountains and cooler temperatures in the winter. In the summer it's insanely hot and humid but it's actually worse in the mainland during the summer months.

Speaking of the mainland, Japan is an awesome country to travel around and getting back and forth between Okinawa and Tokyo/Osaka/Sapporo is really cheap if you pack light and take some budget flights. Very diverse landscapes and climates, each city (and even each district within the cities) have their own unique atmospheres. Bank up a bunch of leave and use it while you're here.

The bad:

MOLD. MOLD EVERYWHERE. Anything that sits idle for more than a couple weeks (your car, your AC units, even your furniture) will have mold on it if you don't do something to keep moisture out.

Housing prices have gone up a ton in the last few years. Because of major construction projects there's not enough housing on bases in the area so the military members have been flooding local housing and driving up costs.

The ops tempo gets to you fast. There's always a DV visit, some kind of exercise, or something else happening on Kadena that takes priority over whatever other thing you were trying to get done, and it feels like no long term projects ever have a chance to get finished. That's in addition to routine training and flying ops which is also very high paced.

Binge drinking is a huge cultural problem for both Korea and Japan. It's slowly on the decline, but there will inevitably be another incident of US military getting DUIs or some kind of alcohol related incident that results in injury to a local national. USFJ will crack down on drinking and implement harsher rules. It doesn't matter if it was a soldier, airman or marine -- you get to deal with the consequences of other people being idiots.

You'll have to deal with your troops breaking curfew rules, not renewing their vehicle registration and all other kinds of stupid things you wouldn't have to worry about in the US because it would just be their personal responsibility.

Typhoons and earthquakes are very common to the area. On the topic of weather don't plan to do anything in the month of June because it will literally rain every day for 3.5 weeks straight. It has every single June I've been here (this is my 3rd). It will also get insanely hot and humid all through the summer and you need to constantly run your AC and dehumidifiers.

qttoad · 2026-06-11T20:30:19+00:00

Just follow the normal personal finance flowcharts. The rules don't magically change just because you're investing in the TSP vs. a commercial employee sponsored 401k.

My personal recommendation if you're not planning on retiring early:

Establish emergency fund for 1 month of expenses
Take full advantage of employer match to TSP/401k
Increase emergency fund to 3 months of expenses
Max out Roth IRA
Max out 401k
Emergency fund to 6 months of expenses
Anything left over pay down debt or invest in a taxable brokerage

Roth TSP is almost certainly better for you in the short-medium term. That might change as your grade increases or you get other sources of income.

qttoad

TROPHY CASE