This is why I left active duty as soon as I could when the airlines were hiring. I didn't want to take a gamble of being removed from military flying (flying a desk or UAV), retiring without civilian jobs available, or worse getting to 14-16 years and being forced to leave the military without civilian jobs available and being too old/high of rank for most Guard/Reserve positions.

Spreadsheets are fine and dandy. However, there's so many variables that go into how much you're going to make and they're probably as accurate as blindly throwing darts at a dart board. I've seen guys make the bare minimum at company XYZ and know FOs who made 400 large.

Timing is simply everything in this career. Getting seniority as fast as you can makes life so so so much easier ... either total seniority or in base/aircraft seniority.