Welcome to the board, Sax.
I'm not sure what happens if you put more than you're allowed to in there. Do they penalize you or just not let you do it?
We went through this with spouse's Reserve pay last year when she finally hit the limit. The TSP computers will kick in after DFAS exceeds $15,500. Your LES will show a "too much" allotment sent over to the TSP and the following month's LES will show a refund from the TSP. After that your LES won't show any TSP contributions until the next calendar year.
You can leave your percentage at whatever you desire year-round. (We leave spouse's at 92% and another 7.45% goes to FICA.) The percentage is overridden by the $15,500 limit but next January your chosen percentage will kick right back in.
Tomcat, Did you take college classes while working full time or was there some kind of program that you qualified for that let you take time off to go to college full time? I've been thinking about getting my Bachelors degree. I have enough credits for an AA, but I've been learning Arabic at DLI for a year now and haven't had much time to take college classes. I hear that I'd need to get a math or science degree to be competitive for an officer position.
Some prefer full-time on the GI bill (out of the service) or a service academy/ROTC, others prefer PACE (afloat), still others prefer shore duty where you can attend regular classes. Training commands are very good at getting their instructors into the college groove but you can also do a lot when you're sitting around in the desert waiting for the next event. I served with a Navy diver who was selected for Seaman-To-Admiral but had to wait five years after commissioning before he was sent to college for his degree-- but he finished a lot of it at the training command while he waited. He even managed to get promoted to LCDR with only one "observed" lieutenant FITREP.
Go get your degree any way that suits you. Even if you're just taking one course a semester, if you're interested then you should try to do it (and apply for the tuition assistance). You may be more competitive for commissioning if your degree is in rocket science or nuclear engineering, but only if the program actually interests you & motivates you to get the degree. So chase down the degree that makes you happy, get a bachelor's, and let the selection boards worry whether that's good enough for them. If they couldn't take you even with a degree that motivated you then you didn't want to join that community anyway!
It's just been going to school to learn Arabic. I graduate in a month and a half and go to Ft. Gordon, GA, so I'll see if I like doing the job when it's not just school.
Ahhhh, DLI. Monterey was the best duty station we ever had, and we lived in fear of the detailer discovering what we were up to.
The 1980s DLI students used to work out in the NPS gym wearing t-shirts that said on the front in smaller letters: "We're learning Russian" and on the back: "SO THAT YOU DON"T HAVE TO!"
Hope you've made the most of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Tinnery Restaurant, Wills Fargo, and every Chinese restaurant between Cannery Row & Seaside. That stuff might be a little hard to come by at Fort Gordon.
Friar, what you say makes sense. Why would they want to make someone that they just spent 1.5 years training in Arabic an officer. They'll just have to train someone else to replace him. I guess the only thing you can do is give it a try and see.
I attended USNA with a guy who'd spent two years at a listening post eavesdropping on the Red Chinese ordering pizza. When a PRC PLAN officer visited USNA and was dining with the mids, George went up to the head table and started a conversation in Mandarin-- then switched to Cantonese. The interpreter later said he'd told the PLAN officer that all the mids studied those languages "just in case". Made a big impression.
Guys who can learn an intel language are just as valuable as officers as they are enlisted-- especially when no one on the other side expects officers to know those languages. The ability to learn a language indicates that you might also just possibly be capable of absorbing the academic, professional, and leadership training necessary for commissioning-- so your language skills may make you more attractive to a commissioning program.
Get any degree you want in any manner you can, and obtain the commission from any source that motivates you. If you decide to attend a service academy, though, make sure you're interested in repeating recruit training for an entire 52 weeks. You may discover that your fleet experience has drastically lowered your tolerance for USNA's spit & polish...
). I can retire when I'm 40 and get a retirement, which seems like a really good deal. Around $30k a year for the rest of your life just for doing 20 years in the military. That will be in addition to the money that I'll have saved. I've got $22k saved after being in the military for a year and a half so far. $8k of that is from the enlistment bonus. 
