daylatedollarshort
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 9,358
Congratulations on the little one coming soon!
Congrats! Are you set on getting out at 20, or would you continue for a few more years on AD if given the opportunity vs starting a bridge career?
Heh, just looked at this again after seeing a few updates from others. So here's mine:
I've signed the contract to stick around through at least 20. It only made sense. Now at 16 years and tracking above 55% of our minimum required liquid NW for FI, I think we're on track. Still saving at the same rate as two-plus years ago, but raises and such mean the net going in has grown. I suspect we'll be about 10% above our estimated FI number by 2020. Now working on ways to reduce spending, and focusing on what's next during whatever downtime there is. Definitely still focused on keeping up the current performance, however... No ROAD here.
So that's that. Riding out the last four years... Should be fun, exciting, and eye opening as 20 approaches!
I like the annual updates from others, so another from me:
Orders are sorting themselves out and timing looks like I will be able to retire from active service at 20 in less than 2.5 yrs. We will see how much push back I get as we are short on guys like me around the service.
My current job is really tough on me. Boss and I don't see eye to eye, but I'm her relief in about 8 months, so we work on it. Stress levels are high and schedule uncertainty is at the maximum right now. It makes me feel more firm in my pending decision and action.
DD1 is here... now 10 months old. As mentioned in another thread, I'm not a natural with babies but I love my daughter and cherish my time with her everyday. Not sure I need any more, but I'm 49% of the vote!
I've been struggling with "what's next?" Wife tells me "we don't have to decide yet," and that's true. I don't know that I've had a time with so much uncertainty on the horizon in my life, and I'm excited yet anxious. I want to know what's next.
I've become restless in our house, restless in our locale. I'm feeling the call back east, and have eyes on the life I want to live, whether fully or semi-ER at 42. I see lower COL elsewhere and find that very attractive, but DW is happy and loves her job here. I've been the prime breadwinner all throughout by a substantial margin, so I sometimes get frustrated thinking that I may have to go find something I don't want to do here to be able to stay for her. I've told her a couple of times that to fund the life we both envision here we need more, but there is little to no interest on her part to find work that would make that more feasible. She has always worked jobs she loves, and there is significant human capital there, but I don't like feeling as though I have to be the sacrificial lamb that works a job I hate to fund the life we want.
Ultimately, she is right - we don't need to decide now. I have a job to do for a couple of years and my focus is there. But the writing is on the wall, and I'm poking around.
I have a deployment - probably my last - coming in a few weeks. It's possible the restlessness is due to stress from work, deployment and baby. I'll bide my time and see what ebbs and flows while staying the course toward FI.
We are ahead of our pace now for my target number. We will see what Mr. Market brings in the coming years.
Exciting times are ahead!
I like the annual updates from others, so another from me:
Orders are sorting themselves out and timing looks like I will be able to retire from active service at 20 in less than 2.5 yrs. We will see how much push back I get as we are short on guys like me around the service.
My current job is really tough on me. Boss and I don't see eye to eye, but I'm her relief in about 8 months, so we work on it. Stress levels are high and schedule uncertainty is at the maximum right now...
Thanks for the feedback. I know she has a tough time, as many spouses do, on deployments. My upcoming one will be the third she's endured since we met, and our second as a married couple.It kind of turns into kind of tit for tat. You're gone, the spouse feels lonely. You have to relocate a lot and pretty soon she gets to decide where you live forever and how many kids you have, because sometimes she feels as though she hasn't had much of a voice in things. And it's true, she hasn't. But it hasn't been a bed of roses for you either. Getting out of the service is almost like starting over again from scratch.
In fact your DW might be saying you don't have to decide now because she likes the way things are and hopes they will stay that way for the foreseeable future
The military has the option of denying your retirement or resignation. It's usually just a process denial - in other words, you don't meet all the nitnoid requirements - but occasionally they decline retirements for folks in specialties they need. It's usually not an out-and-out denial, they try to talk you into staying for one reason or another. My rank and subspecialty make me a little bit more rare than your average 20-year officer, so I'm expecting a lot of phone calls when my paper crosses various desks here in about 17 months.I have a few (two, to be more exact) questions that I'm asking out of complete ignorance.
1. When you talk of "push-back" what do you mean? I maybe kinda understand it, but how does it operate in the military?
We're about as philosophically different as two people can be. We try to leverage that and make it a strength, but being second in command, it's a big-time stressor. It's been hard for me at this stage in my career (we're the same rank, promoted on the same day) and having had command once already, to stay in line and go along with certain things that I don't agree with or think are the wrong path. I say my piece, and we move on, but there's a lot of conflict between us on a near daily basis, most healthy conflict, some not.2. What kind of things don't you see eye-to-eye on with your boss? I just can't picture it
...I did a pretty detailed analysis and, for our expected FIRE situation and housing needs, San Diego is comparable to our LCOL area. This shocked me. Obviously home prices are higher. This is partially offset by much better weather and not needing nearly as much inside space. Utilities are a lot lower. Property tax rates are half my LCOL area and held way down over time by Prop 13...
I have a hard time with the property taxes here. We bought our home in 2011, and if we stay there for good, I can still move many other places with property tax rates 6% or more lower than what we have here right now, and the basis for those taxes would be about the same or markedly lower depending on where we move and what we buy. Even with prop 13 to our advantage, it'd take a couple decades of appreciation for those other areas to catch up... and that's in our very modest home right now, where I'm definitely not looking to stay long term and never have been.I did a pretty detailed analysis and, for our expected FIRE situation and housing needs, San Diego is comparable to our LCOL area. This shocked me. Obviously home prices are higher. This is partially offset by much better weather and not needing nearly as much inside space. Utilities are a lot lower. Property tax rates are half my LCOL area and held way down over time by Prop 13.
Shhhh! We try to keep that a secret.
Thanks Ag, back before we were certain about having kids or not, we used my GI bill for my wife's MBA. Rumors about transferability going away were circling, and we weren't sure about babies, so we got the value out of it we thought we could. Not as much as undergrad for DD, but we still got benefit.Nash,
You've probably looked into this already, but I echo the advice that BLUEAFMOM gave last year about looking into the Post 9/11 GI Bill....
I would recommend just calling your detailer and see what he or she says unless you just don't want to tip your hand yet. I was pretty open about my intentions with mine, and wound up staying in 3 more years because he hooked me up with sweet orders to the Naval War College in Newport.
I'm keeping my hand close to the vest for now. I don't honestly believe there's much they'll be able to or want to do when the time comes to stop me (there's no stop loss). Given the politics involved, it's unlikely they will want to involuntarily keep someone on to go do the job they'd want me to do. I don't really want to give them that much heads up to figure out a way to make it happen. I think I'm just going to field a whole bunch of phone calls from folks I don't really want to have to talk to. But maybe they'll just let me sail quietly into the sunset......
Yes. The only thing I could try to negotiate is a different set of follow-on orders in lieu of retirement, and I don't think there's anything they'd be willing to offer me that I'd be willing to accept. The job I'm lined up for at the time I intend to retire is pretty well fixed.I assume pay bands are set? In private sector, I'd say when the calls start tell them some ridiculous amount more than current and see what happens.