Originally Posted by
arouth
When you say drop trips to the minimum allowed, that is where I get a little confused. Does that mean instead of going on 3 or 4 day trips, you do out and backs?
As others have said it depends on the airline. Out and backs tend to go senior since they tend to pay more (for instance an island hop pays about 7.5 hours vs an average of 5 hours a day on a three or four day). I'm saying just fly the minimum hours that you can get away with at your airline. There are ways to improve your QOL, and I'm a 1300 mile commuter ( to the airline) (650 miles to my reserve job), yes a double commuter and still happier than I was on active duty.
What I'm really saying is your retirement is barely going to pay your rent or mortgage. You're losing a lot of tax free pay (bah/BAS) and if you move out of a small crappy AF base town to a nice city, your cost of living is going to sky rocket. You might be worried about being away from home, but trust me your wife is more worried about you putting food on the table and a roof over your heads. The easiest way to do it is the airlines. Before you know it you'll be making far more than you do now, and...enjoying it. You'll get in a groove with being away from home and you'll enjoy having chunks of days off with out even thinking about work. Don't get me wrong the first year will kind of suck, but it gets better.
Or, you could find a job flying locally that might be awesome, but most likely won't be and you'll be under paid and over stressed. Stressed about the job, and stressed about your finances.