The benefit of the GS world is not worrying or wondering that your labors and ingenuity aren’t mainly getting pilfered by rich people to make themselves richer while tossing you peanuts and expecting you to be grateful.
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VTU Guam remote gouge
- Thread starter snake020
- Start date
Don’t a lot of GS types work on LCS, DDG-1000, F-35, CVN-78, etc.?
What do you mean?
I don't worry about that either. Because I get paid a fair wage, a 401(k), and a cut of company stock for a fair day's work. They honor their side of the contract I signed and I honor mine, so no one's "pilfering" anything.
Ahh, those sweet RSUs! Aka, the golden handcuffs!
That is true if you are just punching the clock and meeting the basic job description. But as you go higher up, if your ideas and hard work are the main ingredient to: winning new contracts/revenue, forging new customer relationships, developing lucrative new intellectual property, etc. - if you don’t have an equity stake, you’ll feel less enthused. (And it sounds like, in your partular case nittany, you do get an equity stake.)
For government contractors, there’s also the question of the overhead being charged on top of your salary, and where that overhead goes. Example: you earn $100k salary, your health insurance and 401k probably cost $40k, but the company bills you out to the government at maybe $300k per year. Eventually people begin to ask where the rest of that revenue goes. And they may realize it’s not going back to them/ their team, to the point where the risk-reward has become unbalanced.
It’s just a different employment feeling than when someone is serving in uniform or govt civilian. Having gone back and forth a number of times between both worlds, maybe I’m more attuned to the differences.
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What usually happens is the VA deducts one day of your disability pay for every point you earn in the reserves. If the VA screws it up they do give you an opportunity to correct it as noted in the article. As an officer your reserve pay will almost always be higher than your VA disability, and if it isn't you might have an issue staying in the reserves.
Which brings up another point with VA disability and reserves. From what I could find there is/was not a Navy Reserve-wide policy about your VA disability affecting your ability to stay a drilling reservist but I personally know several folks who were involuntarily transferred to the IRR due to having a disability rating of 30% or higher (you have to report it on your annual medical). We had an OS1 in the IRR drill with my unit for about 4 years without pay so he could get to 20 years because the NOSC found out his VA disability rating was 60 or 70%. On the other hand we had a YNC who overlapped with him for a bit who was rated at 80% and still drilling for pay (though she didn't take it). I knew several other folks in both categories and the general theme was that it was NOSC dependent, and then it was time dependent because the policy seemed to change from year to year even at the same NOSC. I had a small rating so didn't worry about it too much but the concern was there until I hit 20, but I never found out the Navy Reserve's official policy if there is one though admittedly it wasn't something most folks affected wanted to dig too deep on.
The seeming capricious moving target VA disability 'policy' sort of encapsulated the Navy Reserve experience for me in several ways.
A very important thing to note, make sure every year you serve in the reserves is a 'good year'. The first and most important one is your Anniversary Year runs on your own individual calendar, it usually starts the day you originally commissioned and ends the day before the next year unless you had a break in service (a full break, not IRR). You, and only you, care about whether or not you get a good year for retirement. No one else knows or cares when your year starts and ends so it is all on you. This is a decent official explanation of it.
A good year is different than maintaining good standing with the Navy Reserve, that is based on the FY. You have to do your minimum number of drills (usually 40) and minimum amount of AT (usually 12 days) to remain in good standing with the Navy Reserve.
The problem is that you can have a good year in one but not the other if you aren't careful. A good retirement year is basically only points where the one for reserve standing is based on points and types of participation. If there is a significant delta between the two you have to be aware of it and balance out your drilling and AT accordingly. If you screw up the timing on your FY reserve requirements you could get a nasty gram from the NOSC telling you that you've been a bad reservist and could get separated if you do it for a second year in a row. I wouldn't personally know anything about official letters chastising one for a lack of participation...but it does not affect your retirement so not a huge biggie unless it becomes a habit.
You also need to make sure the Navy is correctly tracking your points by regularly checking your Annual Retirement Point Record/Annual Statement of Service History (ARPR/ASOSH) on BOL, it can take a few months sometimes to catch up but I checked it every drill month out of habit to make sure it was correct. If you stay in the reserves long enough they will screw it up sooner or later.
A final important note, make sure every year you serve is a good year for retirement if you top out at LCDR because you don't have any wiggle room to get a bad retirement year as an O-4 and still get reserve retirement. Historically LCDR's have only been allowed to serve a maximum of 20 years, whether you get 20 good retirement years or not. That is still the official policy but in the past decade the Navy has allowed LCDR's in certain designators, some URL's and Intel O's but not all designators, to serve up to 24 years with waivers to make up for personnel shortfalls. The same policy also allowed LCDR's with 16 or more good retirement years up to 24 years to get 20 good years for retirement but both policies are based exceptions to the current policy/law and are only good for one or two years at a time. This has not always been the case and I knew several older reservists that had stories about their peers who had not gotten 20 good retirement years and lost out on retirement.
With the IRR not being a good option to get good years nowadays, with a few exceptions, it is more important than ever to make sure every year is a 'good year'. It largely becomes a moot point if you make O-5, you've got 28 years to get to 20 though there are still a few that don't quite make it then either.
Getting all of this yet?
Nah, just a stock purchase plan.
Thanks, Flash. I'll keep that in mind. Are there ways to ensure that getting a good year for retirement and staying in good standing with the reserves happen at the same time?A very important thing to note, make sure every year you serve in the reserves is a 'good year'. The first and most important one is your Anniversary Year runs on your own individual calendar, it usually starts the day you originally commissioned and ends the day before the next year unless you had a break in service (a full break, not IRR). You, and only you, care about whether or not you get a good year for retirement. No one else knows or cares when your year starts and ends so it is all on you. This is a decent official explanation of it.
A good year is different than maintaining good standing with the Navy Reserve, that is based on the FY. You have to do your minimum number of drills (usually 40) and minimum amount of AT (usually 12 days) to remain in good standing with the Navy Reserve.
The problem is that you can have a good year in one but not the other if you aren't careful. A good retirement year is basically only points where the one for reserve standing is based on points and types of participation. If there is a significant delta between the two you have to be aware of it and balance out your drilling and AT accordingly. If you screw up the timing on your FY reserve requirements you could get a nasty gram from the NOSC telling you that you've been a bad reservist and could get separated if you do it for a second year in a row. I wouldn't personally know anything about official letters chastising one for a lack of participation...but it does not affect your retirement so not a huge biggie unless it becomes a habit.
You also need to make sure the Navy is correctly tracking your points by regularly checking your Annual Retirement Point Record/Annual Statement of Service History (ARPR/ASOSH) on BOL, it can take a few months sometimes to catch up but I checked it every drill month out of habit to make sure it was correct. If you stay in the reserves long enough they will screw it up sooner or later.
A final important note, make sure every year you serve is a good year for retirement if you top out at LCDR because you don't have any wiggle room to get a bad retirement year as an O-4 and still get reserve retirement. Historically LCDR's have only been allowed to serve a maximum of 20 years, whether you get 20 good retirement years or not. That is still the official policy but in the past decade the Navy has allowed LCDR's in certain designators, some URL's and Intel O's but not all designators, to serve up to 24 years with waivers to make up for personnel shortfalls. The same policy also allowed LCDR's with 16 or more good retirement years up to 24 years to get 20 good years for retirement but both policies are based exceptions to the current policy/law and are only good for one or two years at a time. This has not always been the case and I knew several older reservists that had stories about their peers who had not gotten 20 good retirement years and lost out on retirement.
With the IRR not being a good option to get good years nowadays, with a few exceptions, it is more important than ever to make sure every year is a 'good year'. It largely becomes a moot point if you make O-5, you've got 28 years to get to 20 though there are still a few that don't quite make it then either.
Getting all of this yet?
FormerRecruitingGuru
Making Recruiting Great Again
From my experience, be proactive with your unit along with active duty counterparts to "budget" when you plan on completing IDTs and your ADTs. Not saying knock them all out ASAP, but having them all planned out, in particular your AT will set you up for success.
I feel those who procrastinate or wait for unit leadership to help out are the ones who struggle with maintaining good years.
FormerRecruitingGuru
Making Recruiting Great Again
Those are good points. When my current set of orders end, I do plan on submitting for a VA disability but I don't think it'll be that high (maybe 30-40%).
I'm not sure if every NOSC works this way administratively, but the one we fall under, doesn't allow you to double reschedule your IDTs by yourself**. So you *can* neatly plan out your drill-weekend reschedules (if applicable), but as soon as the plan changes, now the NOSC is going to have to reschedule it again for you, which is an annoying process IMO. Personally, after bumbling through that error in life choices for all of 2021, I just resked when I know for sure it is a day I'm gonna drill. Just don't want to forget to do it before the applicable NOSC DWE arrives.
**if you just do the regular NOSC DWE schedule, this information is largely N/A.
**if you just do the regular NOSC DWE schedule, this information is largely N/A.
NOSC RESPAY has the power to basically fix anything, even retroactively, as long as you have top cover from your unit/CO.
I was 20% when I joined the Reserve and since returning from MOB VA upped me to 80%. Right now going through LOD/MRR and seeing what happens next. Hoping the result is a medical retirement, but I've heard stories of other Reservists with similar ratings that got retained, just with a caveat that they aren't cleared to MOB again.