Sam said:
Not sure I understand this one. Sounds like you're saying the optimal time to get out is right at 20 years? Could you elaborate?
I'll go even farther than that. The time to get out is when it stops being fun. I gritted it out for about eight years past that point, and if I'd had
any idea what the Navy Reserve had to offer then I would have been gone in a heartbeat. I wasn't blissful but we sure were ignorant.
Again I may not be speaking for the other services, but let me tell you what happens in a typical Navy career path. You make O-4 at about 9-11 years of service. You start competing for O-5 at about 15 years of service. If you don't select for O-5 by the second try then you'll probably never make it. The result is that you're at about 16-17 years of service, at least a full tour short of a pension, and all the "good" O-4 billets are being saved for O-4s who actually have a chance of making O-5. However the assignment officers are always looking for someone to be that U.S. Naval Liaison Officer in Chinhae, South Korea. If you want to start homesteading in your current port, then that might be a problem.
If you make O-5 then life is still fun-- you're heading off to a sea command and finishing that tour at about 18-19 years of service. You'll earn the types of fitness reports that send you on to the next highly professional developmental fun job or... you're not. If you're not, the assignment officer can tell if you're hanging on for a pension. (Guess what billets he's saving for that situation.) If you're gung-ho to develop a specialty that'll take you to 28 years that's a different story, but there will still be a certain amount of dues to pay before the fun comes back.
If you stay past 20 and select to O-6 then you're still having fun and you have no worries about the billet choices. But if you stay past 20 and don't select to O-6, there's plenty of jobs available for you with words like "Deputy" and "Assistant" and "Watch Officer". A couple of them are even in America. Sometimes that's fun, but if you have kids in American high schools then the family might not see it your way.
If you're an O-6 hanging on for that huge over-26 pay raise but you don't select for flag officer (the vast majority will not) then you'll end up in another one of those staff jobs with a high frustration quotient and a low quality of life. Sometimes by that point you've forgotten what fun is like, so it may not matter to you.
However it's possible to find some fun jobs. O-4s like me scurry into the training community and spend a few years teaching thousands of students (some of my most enjoyable tours). I know O-5 aviators who will spend the rest of their careers (up to 28 years) in various NAVAIR and BUWEPs jobs. They'll run experimental detachments, oversee weapons development programs, and maybe even get some flight pay. Many submariners go into the "acquisition professional" community with program planning & shipyard supervision. The U.S. Naval Academy runs a "Permanent Military Professor" program where you apply as an O-5, teach leadership & seamanship courses while you get your PhD, start teaching in your post-doc field, and remain at USNA until your senior retirement date. You're then expected to continue as an associate professor on a tenure track, and you may never want to retire from that. Knife fights will break out if you throw a PMP billet into a roomful of guys who want to spend their lives in the DC area tailgating at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
Generally the problems start between 10-20 years when you run out of fun jobs or when the selection statistics go against your performance. If the assignment officer smells even a whiff of "hanging around for retirement" then you go right to the bottom of the billet bucket. In some situations this may be the right choice to make-- 17 years of service, sole family provider, willing to relocate, no major family conflicts, last job before you ER. In most situations, as in civilian careers, it's better to get out and take a paycut pursuing your civilian career while you join the Reserves for weekends, or even to just get out and join the Reserves. I know many Reserve officers who live in one part of the country and take whatever temporary jobs are available at local commands (anywhere from 30-180 days) or volunteer for overseas tours (180 days to three years). With a little salesmanship & initiative it's possible to string together temporary-duty jobs for months or even years.
In my case I stayed active so that spouse & I could anchor our homeport in Pearl Harbor. It didn't work. If I'd entered the Reserves we would have probably stopped working by now anyway or, at worst, kept working for another 5-10 years at local Oahu commands. Things would have been a little bumpy when I would have been mobilized after 9/11, but we still would have had a better quality of life than the way we ended up doing it.
Spouse's case was even worse. She took a job out of community (she'd dead-ended in Pearl Harbor) and did so well at it that she was promoted by a mentor at 17 years. No one was more surprised than her, perhaps me, certainly her community managers. Her assignment officer essentially said "Well, for you to re-develop your career at this new rank, it's necessary for you to take a big step back and do a junior officer's job for two years." Aside from that argument, we'd just returned to Hawaii, found our dream house, and learned that her parents were moving to Oahu to watch their grandkid grow up. It wasn't a good time to announce "just one more move" let alone to Yokosuka. Spouse dug her heels in, the assignment officer called her bluff, and she left about two weeks short of 18 years of service (she was also just a couple days short of mandatory two-year orders to Japan). Having the financial independence part of FIRE (barely) to stick it out made a big difference, and she was willing to work in the Reserves. We estimate that she passed up about $750K in pay & pension, but her pension will start up at age 60 and she'll still make enough money for the life we care to live. The quality of life has been priceless.
One of the other two officers in that same situation retired at a lower rank. The third officer admits that he "folded like a two-dollar suitcase" and took the junior officer job. He retired at 20, which makes it tough to believe the sales pitch about the career re-development.
Spouse spent the first six months in the Reserves learning the system (at zero pay) but got a paying billet at the next opportunity and since then has enjoyed it far more than active duty (albeit for only up to a couple weeks at a time). She could work full-time if she wanted to-- there's plenty of vacant billets at local commands-- but she's been cutting back every year as I corrupt her work ethic she deprograms.
I guess the military moral of the story is to move on when the fun stops. Life might be bumpy for a while but in the long term it's better. If your morale sucks then so will your performance, and that just makes everyone miserable. Or dead.