Military retention considerations: "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" (very long post)
With apologies to fans of the Clash, that thread title was a huge 1980s lifestyle anthem.
The problem with persistence is that it's not a multi-purpose tool. We don't always recognize when to stop beating our heads against brick walls and just walk around them.
The phrase "leaving active duty for the Reserves" (or National Guard) is not as self-defeating as it may seem because any 20-year combination of active/Reserve service still keeps you in the pension game. The Reserve/NG pension pays out at age 60 (instead of at age 37 or whenever retiring from active duty) but it's based on the pay scale in effect when you turn 60. At age 60, it still includes the COLA and the cheap healthcare. More importantly, a Reserve career helps you keep your morale up to actually reach that pension eligibility-- many veterans find it a lot easier to stay in the Reserves for 20-30 years because they can adjust their participation to match the rest of their lifestyle. Fewer days of duty usually results in a smaller pension of 25-30% of base pay (instead of 50-75%), but Reserves more than makes that up in quality of life and different promotion opportunities. I'll get back to that point near the end of this post.
My specific regret at staying on active duty is my lack of appreciation for all the times opportunity was pounding on my door. Several factors made me oblivious.
First, the military culture excels at convincing you that you're barely capable of holding down your assigned job, let alone worthy of promotion. Active-duty veterans lack the external references to even conceive of how valuable their skills are to civilians, even if they're in niche fields like weapons systems or meteorology. Add in a college degree (let alone a graduate degree or an MBA) and the "average" veteran will never go hungry. I only belatedly learned this when a classmate became a headhunter and found jobs for every one of my troops who was leaving the service.
A second factor was my own unreasonable expectations. My primary career goal of collocation with my spouse was not aligned with our assignment officers' priorities or the "needs of the Navy". Maybe they do a better job these days for dual-military couples (I doubt it), but I sacrificed a half-dozen career opportunities in favor of cohabitation. I would have probably selected for XO and maybe even CO, and easily promoted to O-5. Instead, at the 10-year point I finished my second sea tour and transferred to a poorly-regarded staff operations billet-- the only collocation shore duty available at the time-- while we were starting a family. The post-Cold-War drawdown shrank the XO selection to 40%. I made the cut but I never got put into the game and I spent the rest of my career "on the sideline". 20 years of stubborn attempts to balance active duty with collocation made everyone unhappy.
A third factor was my changing priorities. I think I matured a lot at the 10-year point. Instead of racing around the ocean being a steely-eyed killer of the deep, becoming a new parent made me appreciate how good family life could be. (Better than the families in which spouse and I were raised. We lacked external references for that too.) Just about everything at work conflicted with everything involved in being a good parent.
A fourth factor was my narrow focus. The submarine force doesn't use the Reserves very well, so I had a low opinion of them that was totally wrong. When I hit that bad staff job I worked with five different Reserve officers, all of them submariners, who could have shown me a better way if I'd taken the time to get to know them. Instead I just worked them hard to help me cover my three desks while I struggled with a chain of command that thrived on crisis management, 24/7 on call, and 70-hour workweeks. It never occurred to me to wonder "Hey, this assignment is a load of crap, why are the Reserve guys so much happier than me?" I kept stubbornly tilting at the organizational windmills instead of creating my own new game with my own rules.
A paralyzing problem, frankly, was fear. I couldn't believe that I had skills worthy of an employer's paycheck. How would we pay our mortgage?!? I was worried that if I got out then spouse would end up on an unaccompanied tour at the Navy weather station in Diego Garcia, leaving me home alone for 18 months with a baby. I was worried that we couldn't stay in Hawaii and would have to sell our house into a recession that wiped out our equity. I was afraid that I had no idea how to manage our budget or our investments and that I wouldn't be able to learn how to do it without a steady paycheck. Hey, I was working 70-hour weeks and chronically sleep-deprived with a teething infant. I was lost in the fog of work (http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f30/the-fog-of-work-42328.html#post781363). Spouse and I were barely getting through the daily parenting routine, let alone having thoughtful conversations about our family & career goals. It never even occurred to me to deal with my fear other than through persistence, which I know how to do very well.
Finally, I had no rational basis from which to assess my quality of life. I know now that my life then really sucked, but compared to sea duty it still seemed pretty good. Surviving the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/ever-had-a-close-call-41784.html#post772480) made me appreciate being able to go home (almost) every night.
Against all these factors and fears, "persistence" became the default solution.
I can only imagine the cumulative effects of the stress and chronic fatigue. At some point you get so far behind on your sleep that your guardian angel rips a few pages out of the back of your Book of Life and resets your exhaustion level. I was 25 pounds overweight on comfort food. I drank a lot. I was always fighting respiratory infections, which usually became bronchitis and three times turned into pneumonia. Some days I'd have a constant stress headache, everything was too noisy and too bright, and I'd actually be dozing at my desk at 10 AM while "checking" submarine schedules for safety separation. No problem, my boss was dozing at his desk too. How do you know if you're exhausted when everyone around you is even more fatigued?
Based on what I've learned since then, I should have left active duty for the Reserves as soon as the fun meter went negative and it was clear that I couldn't fix the staff billet. I never would have missed a paycheck. Just my stratospheric security clearances would have immediately given me a civil-service job with the feds or the state, or a dozen contractor jobs with local defense companies. I could have taught nuclear engineering to shipyard apprentice engineers. I could have immediately requested Reserve mobilization or long periods of active duty at a dozen Hawaii military commands. Or I could have just been a stay-at-home parent, raising a kid and backing up my spouse's career while she brought home the big active-duty bucks. I could have done one weekend a month of Reserve drill, two weeks a year of active duty, and a Reserve pension at age 60.
How did I learn about this? Part of it was my headhunter classmate. Part of it was personal experience-- 10 years later when I was retiring I never even wrote up a résumé, let alone looked for a job. Yet shipmates and headhunters tracked me down to offer a half-dozen jobs, all six-figure salaries in Hawaii. Six months after retirement, when the ethics rules had cleared, I got another round of civil-service offers at the GS-12/13 level. I was astounded.
My spouse also showed us the way. When she was on active duty she was making the same career-limiting collocation decisions in her community. By her 15-year point she'd been pretty much sidelined to serve out her 20 in Hawaii as an O-4, and we were good with that. A year later she unexpectedly (most of all to her) promoted to O-5. Her stunned assignment officers turned on her and two other surprised new O-5s to "upgrade" their skills at "catch-up" tours. It was a toxic mix of combative personalities, questionable goals, conflicting advice, and coercion to get with the program. Collocation was out of the question. Bad faith with two of the assignment officers poisoned the waters. Nearly two years after this drama started, just a month short of 18 years, she left active duty for the Reserves.
When she went Reserves I was still a year short of ER, but I was shocked at how quickly our lives got so much better. She picked up the slack on the home front. She was welcomed with open arms at her Reserve unit and could have immediately mobilized at PACOM. Every time she went on duty up there she was recruited for civil service or contract work. Once she'd left her old active-duty community, her opportunities expanded so much that she became her Reserve unit XO and then its acting CO. Best of all she had many assignment choices and several ways to balance her work with her life.
In retrospect, my realistic (even pessimistic) assessment is that life would have been great if I'd gone Reserves at the 11-year point. I would have retired from the Reserves right about now as an O-6, eligible for a 30-40% pension in 2020. Spouse could have retired from active duty at 20 years as an O-4 at a 50% pension, but she probably would have gone into the Reserves sooner. We both would have made big bucks out of Reserve duty and civilian careers. Today we'd both be spending down our (much bigger) ER portfolio while waiting for our Reserve pensions. Sure, we'd have been mobilized after 9/11 and maybe done a couple years in the sandboxes, but that's manini compared to the stress and effort I [-]exhausted[/-] expended to get to 20. I have no idea how close I was to alcoholism or a cardiac incident, and even today I wonder how I'd do on a PTSD screening.
My advice? Stay on active duty as long as you're having fun. Get a college degree and consider a graduate degree. If you want to be an officer then get a commission. If you want to stay enlisted then be a leader and an expert in your specialty. Don't quit active duty at the first sign of adversity, and it might be worth waiting out a bad boss. But don't keep beating your head against a brick wall to get to 20 years. If the negatives keep you from appreciating all that's good in your life, then go to the Reserves/NG. Have faith in your military skills and trust that you have options. If you're accustomed to a very low standard of living and if you practice an LBYM lifestyle then you'll have no problem buying yourself the time to create the life you seek.
Thanks for bringing up the question, LB. Spouse and I enjoyed having this conversation tonight with our kid, who's starting NROTC in just 101 days...
With apologies to fans of the Clash, that thread title was a huge 1980s lifestyle anthem.
The Naval Academy and the submarine force teach "persistence" as a life skill. Think of Tim Allen's character in "Galaxy Quest" ("Never give up! Never surrender!!"), only without Sigourney Weaver.
The problem with persistence is that it's not a multi-purpose tool. We don't always recognize when to stop beating our heads against brick walls and just walk around them.
The phrase "leaving active duty for the Reserves" (or National Guard) is not as self-defeating as it may seem because any 20-year combination of active/Reserve service still keeps you in the pension game. The Reserve/NG pension pays out at age 60 (instead of at age 37 or whenever retiring from active duty) but it's based on the pay scale in effect when you turn 60. At age 60, it still includes the COLA and the cheap healthcare. More importantly, a Reserve career helps you keep your morale up to actually reach that pension eligibility-- many veterans find it a lot easier to stay in the Reserves for 20-30 years because they can adjust their participation to match the rest of their lifestyle. Fewer days of duty usually results in a smaller pension of 25-30% of base pay (instead of 50-75%), but Reserves more than makes that up in quality of life and different promotion opportunities. I'll get back to that point near the end of this post.
My specific regret at staying on active duty is my lack of appreciation for all the times opportunity was pounding on my door. Several factors made me oblivious.
First, the military culture excels at convincing you that you're barely capable of holding down your assigned job, let alone worthy of promotion. Active-duty veterans lack the external references to even conceive of how valuable their skills are to civilians, even if they're in niche fields like weapons systems or meteorology. Add in a college degree (let alone a graduate degree or an MBA) and the "average" veteran will never go hungry. I only belatedly learned this when a classmate became a headhunter and found jobs for every one of my troops who was leaving the service.
A second factor was my own unreasonable expectations. My primary career goal of collocation with my spouse was not aligned with our assignment officers' priorities or the "needs of the Navy". Maybe they do a better job these days for dual-military couples (I doubt it), but I sacrificed a half-dozen career opportunities in favor of cohabitation. I would have probably selected for XO and maybe even CO, and easily promoted to O-5. Instead, at the 10-year point I finished my second sea tour and transferred to a poorly-regarded staff operations billet-- the only collocation shore duty available at the time-- while we were starting a family. The post-Cold-War drawdown shrank the XO selection to 40%. I made the cut but I never got put into the game and I spent the rest of my career "on the sideline". 20 years of stubborn attempts to balance active duty with collocation made everyone unhappy.
A third factor was my changing priorities. I think I matured a lot at the 10-year point. Instead of racing around the ocean being a steely-eyed killer of the deep, becoming a new parent made me appreciate how good family life could be. (Better than the families in which spouse and I were raised. We lacked external references for that too.) Just about everything at work conflicted with everything involved in being a good parent.
A fourth factor was my narrow focus. The submarine force doesn't use the Reserves very well, so I had a low opinion of them that was totally wrong. When I hit that bad staff job I worked with five different Reserve officers, all of them submariners, who could have shown me a better way if I'd taken the time to get to know them. Instead I just worked them hard to help me cover my three desks while I struggled with a chain of command that thrived on crisis management, 24/7 on call, and 70-hour workweeks. It never occurred to me to wonder "Hey, this assignment is a load of crap, why are the Reserve guys so much happier than me?" I kept stubbornly tilting at the organizational windmills instead of creating my own new game with my own rules.
A paralyzing problem, frankly, was fear. I couldn't believe that I had skills worthy of an employer's paycheck. How would we pay our mortgage?!? I was worried that if I got out then spouse would end up on an unaccompanied tour at the Navy weather station in Diego Garcia, leaving me home alone for 18 months with a baby. I was worried that we couldn't stay in Hawaii and would have to sell our house into a recession that wiped out our equity. I was afraid that I had no idea how to manage our budget or our investments and that I wouldn't be able to learn how to do it without a steady paycheck. Hey, I was working 70-hour weeks and chronically sleep-deprived with a teething infant. I was lost in the fog of work (http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f30/the-fog-of-work-42328.html#post781363). Spouse and I were barely getting through the daily parenting routine, let alone having thoughtful conversations about our family & career goals. It never even occurred to me to deal with my fear other than through persistence, which I know how to do very well.
Finally, I had no rational basis from which to assess my quality of life. I know now that my life then really sucked, but compared to sea duty it still seemed pretty good. Surviving the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/ever-had-a-close-call-41784.html#post772480) made me appreciate being able to go home (almost) every night.
Against all these factors and fears, "persistence" became the default solution.
I can only imagine the cumulative effects of the stress and chronic fatigue. At some point you get so far behind on your sleep that your guardian angel rips a few pages out of the back of your Book of Life and resets your exhaustion level. I was 25 pounds overweight on comfort food. I drank a lot. I was always fighting respiratory infections, which usually became bronchitis and three times turned into pneumonia. Some days I'd have a constant stress headache, everything was too noisy and too bright, and I'd actually be dozing at my desk at 10 AM while "checking" submarine schedules for safety separation. No problem, my boss was dozing at his desk too. How do you know if you're exhausted when everyone around you is even more fatigued?
Based on what I've learned since then, I should have left active duty for the Reserves as soon as the fun meter went negative and it was clear that I couldn't fix the staff billet. I never would have missed a paycheck. Just my stratospheric security clearances would have immediately given me a civil-service job with the feds or the state, or a dozen contractor jobs with local defense companies. I could have taught nuclear engineering to shipyard apprentice engineers. I could have immediately requested Reserve mobilization or long periods of active duty at a dozen Hawaii military commands. Or I could have just been a stay-at-home parent, raising a kid and backing up my spouse's career while she brought home the big active-duty bucks. I could have done one weekend a month of Reserve drill, two weeks a year of active duty, and a Reserve pension at age 60.
How did I learn about this? Part of it was my headhunter classmate. Part of it was personal experience-- 10 years later when I was retiring I never even wrote up a résumé, let alone looked for a job. Yet shipmates and headhunters tracked me down to offer a half-dozen jobs, all six-figure salaries in Hawaii. Six months after retirement, when the ethics rules had cleared, I got another round of civil-service offers at the GS-12/13 level. I was astounded.
My spouse also showed us the way. When she was on active duty she was making the same career-limiting collocation decisions in her community. By her 15-year point she'd been pretty much sidelined to serve out her 20 in Hawaii as an O-4, and we were good with that. A year later she unexpectedly (most of all to her) promoted to O-5. Her stunned assignment officers turned on her and two other surprised new O-5s to "upgrade" their skills at "catch-up" tours. It was a toxic mix of combative personalities, questionable goals, conflicting advice, and coercion to get with the program. Collocation was out of the question. Bad faith with two of the assignment officers poisoned the waters. Nearly two years after this drama started, just a month short of 18 years, she left active duty for the Reserves.
When she went Reserves I was still a year short of ER, but I was shocked at how quickly our lives got so much better. She picked up the slack on the home front. She was welcomed with open arms at her Reserve unit and could have immediately mobilized at PACOM. Every time she went on duty up there she was recruited for civil service or contract work. Once she'd left her old active-duty community, her opportunities expanded so much that she became her Reserve unit XO and then its acting CO. Best of all she had many assignment choices and several ways to balance her work with her life.
In retrospect, my realistic (even pessimistic) assessment is that life would have been great if I'd gone Reserves at the 11-year point. I would have retired from the Reserves right about now as an O-6, eligible for a 30-40% pension in 2020. Spouse could have retired from active duty at 20 years as an O-4 at a 50% pension, but she probably would have gone into the Reserves sooner. We both would have made big bucks out of Reserve duty and civilian careers. Today we'd both be spending down our (much bigger) ER portfolio while waiting for our Reserve pensions. Sure, we'd have been mobilized after 9/11 and maybe done a couple years in the sandboxes, but that's manini compared to the stress and effort I [-]exhausted[/-] expended to get to 20. I have no idea how close I was to alcoholism or a cardiac incident, and even today I wonder how I'd do on a PTSD screening.
My advice? Stay on active duty as long as you're having fun. Get a college degree and consider a graduate degree. If you want to be an officer then get a commission. If you want to stay enlisted then be a leader and an expert in your specialty. Don't quit active duty at the first sign of adversity, and it might be worth waiting out a bad boss. But don't keep beating your head against a brick wall to get to 20 years. If the negatives keep you from appreciating all that's good in your life, then go to the Reserves/NG. Have faith in your military skills and trust that you have options. If you're accustomed to a very low standard of living and if you practice an LBYM lifestyle then you'll have no problem buying yourself the time to create the life you seek.
Thanks for bringing up the question, LB. Spouse and I enjoyed having this conversation tonight with our kid, who's starting NROTC in just 101 days...
