Slim11

Thanks for posting. My information was several years old. The guy who told me had no children and his wife was insured by her employer.

That's a little more than half of what I have to pay. That will change next years when I get to drop my company's insurance for Tricare Standard.

tunes

your number was about right for a member only rate.

sherpster

5 years to go? I am no fighter guy but that's a lot of retirement money to throw away. I have no idea what your pension number will be but let's say 50K a year. How much do you have to have in your 401K to be able to draw off 50K a year, inflation protected, for the rest of your life? (Hint: a lot!) Plus you get medical and dental coverage. I got off AD the first time with 11 years in so I understand the feeling of "I can't do another day" but take the number you came up with above (use $1,000,000 for arguments sake) and divide it up by 5 years and then throw in your regular pay. So....1 million divided by 5 = $200,000 a year plus your 130K a year pay for $330,000 a year for the next 5 years.
Just one persons opinion

Hacker15e

A guy that retires as a Lt Col right at the 20 year mark will take home about $37K/year after taxes.

FIFY. Tricare is a great deal for retirees to be able to purchase, but it isn't included free as part of the retirement benefit. The dental coverage sucks, BTW, compared to the dental at just about any other company that offers some kind of health care deal. Even the dental plan at the regional I flew for was better than Tricare's dental coverage.

Hacker15e

FWIW, when I did the financial analysis on the stay-vs-go question back about 9-ish years ago (and before the current wave of pay and QOL increases at the majors), all of the financial benefit to separating as soon as your ADSC was complete were wiped out in the event of a single furlough or bankruptcy.

All of that analysis and discussion is still here on APC for anyone who wants to go dig it up.

That discussion ultimately came back to quality of life being more important than the bottom line. Thus, guys that were unhappy with the lifestyle of being on active duty were better off cutting loose and going to the airlines immediately. Guys who could tolerate and navigate the military career BS were better off staying until 20 before going to the airlines.

I will say that, as someone who retired at 20 and has a year or two of flying at the airlines behind me, at this point in my life I vastly prefer the airline lifestyle to the active duty fighter pilot lifestyle -- and so does my family. I don't at all regret staying until retirement...but I do wonder how my life would be different if I'd separated when my ADSC was done 10 years ago and gone to SWA or FedEx or Continental or...

Sliceback

1. Get a reserve retirement as a minimum
2. Get a regional job if you don't get hired right away.
3. Start hitting the job fairs when you can.

Doing some research of new hires right now. 70% went to jobs fairs. MIL - 1.7x, CIV - 2.6x.

Hiring demand numbers are increasing every year, did to retirements, fir the next eight years before they peak. At the peak the Big 4 retirements will be slightly more than 2x what it is today. If you get hired now the replacements are behind you. If you get hired in five years they're ahead of you.

TSRAGR

I've looked at the numbers and it's still a wash, even w/some recent pay increases at the majors, the lack of increase in the pilot retention bonus is not helping the numbers.

Sliceback--I'll certainly get a reserve retirement, no brainer there.

Overall, I'm one of those guys that's on the fence enough that if the AF raised the bonus and made it make a bit more financial sense, I'd probably rough it out. But I had a coming-to-Jesus the other day as I was looking through my 69 worthless emails about DTS orders, Leave, MICT, WIT and all the other crap I deal with, not remotely associated with tactics and my craft, that it's time to go. I love what I do, the bros and jet are awesome, but the queep, lack of fun and leadership issues are driving dudes out left and right and it's easy to see why.

You gents on here chat about your rough debriefs down the jetway leaving the A/C..."so you down for an IPA, or Stout tonight". I know the grass isn't always greener, and my magical pilot hands might not be seen at a major for a while, but it certainly appears shades greener on here. I know I'm no special snowflake, but I also know I'd rather be on this side of the hiring over 5 yrs from now.

PS-I don't know how you guys quote multiple posts, pure-genius.

Hacker15e

That's all the decisionmaking you really need at this point. To quote the great soothsayer Zero:



Once the BS is no longer counterbalanced by the fun of performing the mission, it is time to go.

Find a reserve gig (even if it is flying an MWS that you don't particularly love, or even if it is a <gasp!> desk job), and start making plans for your next career.

I was a dyed-in-the-wool fighter pilot, and I love the lifestyle and job at the airlines. If someone would have told me a decade ago that I would think that, there's no way I'd have believed them. You'll look back fondly on your AF time, but you won't really miss it.

GucciBoy

Not a fighter guy but the grass is definitely greener.


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Albief15

I jumped at 14 years. The math wasn't relevant to me, the lifestyle was. I enjoyed it so much I stayed part time when some AGR spots were dangled a couple years after I got out.

I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, and I took some risks. However, I had a working wife, a modest house, and a solid ANG gig lined up. I knew there was downside risk but I thought I was prepared. It worked for me.

The guys I know that were at Delta, UAL, and American that got furloughed during that time all ended up okay, but I'm sure it was stressful. I know 4 who made O-6 and secured a full time retirement at that rank. At the same time, I would not have wanted to do the jobs many of them did if I had another option--they worked their asses off and earned every cent they got paid. So--4 quitters I know are all Colonels, and the irony is most did better than the guys who were there contemporaries that stayed in. Then again, we had a superior ANG unit that insisted your crap better be together if you joined them, and everyone worked pretty hard. It was not a weekend flying club nor a place to just cruise a few years.

Like Hacker, I loved flying fighters. I also love flying airlines. I also love flying GA. I think your attitude is about 99% of your happiness. What I will say is doing the part time stuff allows a more gentle mental transition than being "Lt Col Badass" one day and "Mr Jones" in the commissary the following Tuesday. While every guy I know has made that transition just fine, I did appreciate the fact that I got to sort of ease out of the F-15 business on my terms and not just have to STOP abruptly one day and start a new life. It was nice to still be pretty good at something (teaching F-15 stuff) while I was a complete rookie at another (becoming an 727 FE). The social network and friendships were also appreciated. One thing overlooked it often when a guy retires everything changes overnight--work, friends, and often where you live. Flying at your local base keeps a little stability as your world is changing around you. Its busy doing 2 jobs--but I found when I was working by my choice it was simply a lot more enjoyable.

Your million dollar questions should be:

1. Can I survive if the airline industry blows up for 2-3 years? While 9/11 was really just part of the reason things went down so fast in 2001-03, the terror threat to your livelihood cannot be ignored. Do you have a backup?

2. What if nothing happens? Can I stomach going to work for 5 or 6 more years doing the same thing over and over, or will I be completely miserable? One good assignment or something you always wanted to do (command? exchange tour? etc) might make it worth gutting out. Conversely, if you find yourself working in an AOC overseas remote for a year while your old squadron mates pop in and out on an AEF or channel mission telling you about their great new airline gig, you are going to be pretty depressed that night at the DFAC.

For me--it was a bus ride. In 1997 I rode a cattle car from Germany to ATL for a WSEP deployment at Tyndall. The deployment commander was a mx major (I was a capt/flt CC) and had our squadron spread across 4 busses going from ETAD (Spang) to Frankfurt. He had assigned seating. He separated the pilots into 4 groups and spread us across the buses. I rolled with it...

When we landed in ATL on a Friday night, something happened that prevented us from flying on to Tyndall, so buses were chartered for the 6 hour ride on to Tyndall. At this point--quite tired of all the adventure and being treated like a third grader when I was an early 30's F-15 IP, I asked if I could peel off, grab a rental car with several of my fellow pilots, and go catch an AU football game the next day. We would be down at Tyndall by Sunday morning and would be there for all mandatory indoc stuff that evening. Our DO--who at the time was a 2 ship flight lead and not an IP, pointed out I it would be disrespectful to the Mx Major and we needed to be team players and ride along on the bus. He didn't want to rock the boat and explained we were being selfish and not team players. The fact we were on the road 120+ days a year, rolled through an ORI recently, etc etc really didn't matter. What mattered was we all needed to be treated the same, and we need to make sure we didn't hurt any non-pilot feelings.

As I rode down the Georgia highways that night, dog-ass tired and disgusted with being treated like a child, I had a "Scarlet O'Hara" type moment where I said that "As God is my witness, the first time I can get out I will never let anyone make me do this bull**** again...." It wasn't flying combat away from family, or long nights in the vault, or the wear and tear on my back that drove me out. It was being forced to sit on a bus...in assigned seats...because someone up the chain didn't have the balls to make a decision and let us simply manage ourselves during a routine peacetime deployment. I knew I always wanted to be an airline guy anyway, but that night/early morning was when I simply knew it was over. It was four years later before I could see daylight, but I never wavered a moment after that trip.

Sometimes when I fly into Singapore or Seoul now as a 767 captain, and the limo picks us up, I still think about that time. And I smile. I don't get to shoot aim-7s anymore, but I also have tremendously less bull**** in my life. And I have a lot more money. I can live with the tradeoff...