...And then there's those of us Andy Dufresne types who never spent a day in Active Duty, while carving ourselves a tunnel to an Active Duty Retirement in the backdrop, for the relative low price of having a willingness to not promote, spend some time in crappy CONUS duty stations, and "be just a pilot".
My family ain't starving either.
Sure, there's been opportunity costs to it, and the first 5 years were no picnic and considerably lagged in pay and benefits compared to AD bubbas. But considering airline "flying" didn't and still doesn't motivate me vocationally, it really was a no-brainer for me coming out of dead-end academia and engineering work I had no intention of applying professionally.
But that's also why I try to stay out of these AD-centering conversations. I recognize my career experience is enough of an outlier to be irrelevant to the AD discussion.
I will also plug this forum as a very consequential place, where I met folks who were instrumental in getting me pointed in the right direction hiring wise, and who have become real world acquaintances, co-workers and friends. This in spite of much of the otherwise high noise-to-signal ratio that permeates the airline kvetching on here otherwise.
Cheers!