That's a tough question and each guy's situation is different. If I could rewind life a couple years and have the 20 year ACIP bonus available again, I'd do it in a heartbeat. With half up front, the compound interest and/or investment growth works out to be quite a large sum. Even going back on AD today without the bonus available I'd still come out well ahead financially. With each passing day and active duty pay period with the AFRES, the incentive gets larger. Time value of money is they key here.

Try this: find an online retirement calculator. Input some numbers to answer this question: "instead of an O5 pension starting at age 43 (or whatever your 20 year retirement age is), what if Uncle Sam paid me cash to invest, so that starting at age 43 I could withdraw it at an amount equal to said O5 pension until age xx (where xx equals your expected age at death)." Put another way: Let's say you're age 33 now and have 10 years to AD retirement. How much would you have to invest each of those 10 years in order to withdraw it for 40 years (or more - 3 out of my 4 grandparents lived past 90) at the rate of O5 retirment pay to end up with zero remaining at death? The result will blow you away, and that's essentially how much your pension is worth in addition to your salary.

Then again, I'm the breadwinner in the family and my wife has a very portable (but not very well paying) job and could work anywhere in the country. If she earned a bunch of $$ and PCSing all the time would hinder that earning potential, then it may have made sense to separate so our combined earnings would surpass my reduced earnings. Such is not the case in my family.

So to answer your question, yes I'd go back on AD. It may suck, but 6-7 years is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of your life. Of course as soon as I'd sign the paperwork, UPS/FDX would start hiring again and call me the day before I left on a 1 year remote