{"id":57941,"date":"2015-01-29T11:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T16:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=57941"},"modified":"2015-01-29T11:53:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T16:53:40","slug":"what-my-pension-means-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=57941","title":{"rendered":"What my military pension means to me"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news<\/a> this week is that the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission<\/a> will release their report and recommend changes to the military 20-year retirement system, abolishing the old system for a 401k-type of program and will delay any pension benefits until the age of 60, or longer. Of course, it’s because the Commission doesn’t have any representatives on their little club who understand what a 20-year pension represents to enlisted retirees who aren’t flush with disposable cash.<\/p>\n

I retired at the age of 38 along with my family. I went to college the month after I left the service. It was a fairly tough transition – I worked a full time job with a security company as a rent-a-cop on a construction site, I also worked as a work\/study student in the campus VA office, all while carrying a full load of classes. The pension helped us meet our transition expanses until I graduated. <\/p>\n

After college, I went into sales with an investment company, a totally foreign environment. While I struggled to learn the business and how to teach other people what they needed, the Army pension paid the bills. Eventually, I failed at that business because some people are too stupid to help, and I’m no salesman,<\/p>\n

When I went to work for the National Archives, most of the people my age had been at the job longer, so I was behind my peers in pay, but living in the District of Columbia, my employer didn’t take that into consideration and I still had to pay rent and bills. My pension gave me parity with my peers in an expensive environment.<\/p>\n

My pension was $999\/month when I retired in 1994 – it wasn’t a lot, but it made up for those years that I wasn’t competing in the workforce. It has kept pace with inflation, and it’s half-again as much now. It’s still not a lot but now that I’m retired and I’ve made as much as I’m ever going to make, it still makes a difference. <\/p>\n

This Commission is only looking at how they can save the Pentagon some money, they aren’t looking at how their decision will impact future soldiers and how they’re going to make their transition to civilian life more difficult with their cost-cutting.<\/p>\n

They’re recommending a 401k-type retirement as if it is a new idea. It is not – military members have the Fed’s Thrift Savings Plan available with tax-deferred benefits. But service members don’t get the employer match benefit that civilian employees have, and the tax-deferred money isn’t available to retiring members until they’re 59 1\/2 years old, unless they are disabled. <\/p>\n

So, it doesn’t make military retirement as attractive to careerists as the current program does. And therein lies the problem – a professional force needs to retain it’s experienced warriors. Those experienced warriors aren’t going to stick around if the Pentagon’s bean counters are only looking for ways to save money regardless of how it affects the folks kicking doors and making widows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news this week is that the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission will release their … What my military pension means to me<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}