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Resigning Gouge

Tycho_Brohe

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Additionally, as DanMa pointed out, if you end up in financial trouble because you're between jobs, having a lower monthly overhead allows you to live off of savings for that much longer.

The factor that's often missing from these calculations is the probability one lives long enough to see the benefits of leveraging a 3-5% APR mortgage into long term investments squeezing out an extra 3-4% ROI over the money that would be saved by paying off the loan sans interest, and also the probability that they are in a condition to enjoy it.
I would argue that the benefit of getting a mortgage, in general, is less about arbitrage and more about liquidity. If I end up in financial trouble because I’m in between jobs, I’d rather not have sunk 6 figures of my cash into equity that I would then need to borrow against at a higher rate (home equity loan) if I wanted it back. I’d rather have a $1200 monthly mortgage payment and $200k in savings, because then that savings can cover my other expenses too, instead of only removing the need to make mortgage payments. There’s certainly something to be said for the feeling of not having a mortgage, or even being completely debt-free. But if, for example, my budget is $5k per month including the mortgage payments, the 200k I would’ve sunk into the house could instead cover my expenses for over 3 years.

All that said, definitely agree with others about renting being the best choice here. Especially considering OP’s concerns about job security and potential substantial pay cut.
 

Pags

N/A
pilot
I would argue that the benefit of getting a mortgage, in general, is less about arbitrage and more about liquidity. If I end up in financial trouble because I’m in between jobs, I’d rather not have sunk 6 figures of my cash into equity that I would then need to borrow against at a higher rate (home equity loan) if I wanted it back. I’d rather have a $1200 monthly mortgage payment and $200k in savings, because then that savings can cover my other expenses too, instead of only removing the need to make mortgage payments. There’s certainly something to be said for the feeling of not having a mortgage, or even being completely debt-free. But if, for example, my budget is $5k per month including the mortgage payments, the 200k I would’ve sunk into the house could instead cover my expenses for over 3 years.

All that said, definitely agree with others about renting being the best choice here. Especially considering OP’s concerns about job security and potential substantial pay cut.
The other thing you need to keep is that you can now look beyond the PCS cycle. Ideally you'd be buying a home you're going to stay in for awhile and can build equity in, etc. You don't want to buy a house in the wrong area and then be stuck in it. For instance, if you had less money at the start and you bought in a crappy school district when your kids were little it might not matter....for a few years. But then it will and selling that house and buying another might be hard. But if you had rented that first house then it would be easier to move to the longer term house. Once you stop worrying about moving every 2-3yrs it gets pretty nice to have a house you don't want to leave.
 

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
It will be interesting to see how much of nut punch the coronavirus pandemic gives to air travel, and the airlines. The virus seems to be sneaking around the barricades. Maybe Fedex or UPS as first choices.
I work for a logistics company, and the industry is feeling it overall. Not just because of air & ocean carriers having issues, but because China is decreasing manufacturing output via the controls they put in place. So there’s less to ship in the first place.
 

DanMa1156

Is it baseball season yet?
pilot
Contributor
Sorry for the slow responses. Just finished up a port call and didn't want to use precious beer drinking/sightseeing/lady watching time on AW. I am sure most of you understand. :)

Meh, maybe prioritize taking care of people, regardless if they are getting out or not. Not taking care of people is one of the reasons we are understaffed. Also, terminal leave helps justify the reasoning for being understaffed. It should be accounted for by Millington in filling billets..

Yeah, no don't get me wrong, I don't like the policy, but I respect that he set expectations. That's more than most. The rest? Yeah, garbage policy.


Your CO is a bit misinformed. Millington isn't going to slash billets because your CO lets people go on terminal. In fact, it's likely to have the opposite effect where they formally see a demand signal for a new person and send the replacement sooner. Also a conversation to have at wardroom planning conferences to get the detailer on the same page.

It's not about slashing billets, it's that they want more billets or at least a higher % of them manned. He claims Millington would just say: "why give you more if you have x% on terminal leave? You obviously don't need them and thus your staff can continue to be remained at x%."

Leave is an entitlement, not a request. At any given point, a command should be able to operate with 8.5% of their people on leave. I wouldn’t care if one is consistent with this kind of blanket policy, that just means they’re consistently wrong.

Take your leave. Drop tues-Thurs leave chits a couple times in a row. When one gets denied, start a paper trail and ask why. It’s literally thousands of bucks this one guy has decided you don’t deserve because he can’t manage his personnel or cares more about perception than reality.

And we wonder why people don’t want to stay in the canoe club run by mutant clowns.

No lie, I have thought about doing this.

Concur with renting. Save money, don't lock yourself in.

I'd have a long conversation with your wife and do some expectation management. If your wife is close to her family, I would very highly consider moving to where they're at. You're going to be gone a lot. And not making a ton of money. The war chest will obviously help, and in my opinion military wives are used to their husbands being randomly gone, but I think this could help her out a lot. Especially coming from an overseas tour. If she's not close with her family or for whatever reason it's just not a good idea, possibly consider going back to where your family is.

Being local to your guard unit would be a tremendous help as well, for fairly obvious reasons. If there's a base you can drive to for the regional that's palatable, do that too. If one of these locations is close to a base for a different regional that you find palatable, consider that. Regionals are desperate for bodies. Don't feel loyalty to the one just because you already have a CJO. Don't jump ship willy nilly, but if you worked at airline x for 6 months and then went to airline y it's pretty understandable to explain at a later interview that you didn't need to commute, etc etc.

The road to the majors may not be easy or super quick, and I would have a conversation about that as well. Not trying to scare you or be mean, but you (and of course everyone else doing rotary transitions) should have realistic expectations.

Appreciate the advice. Based on our current lifestyle and savings rate, I think what will most change will be just the volume of how much and what % of income we're saving and I expect our housing will be more modest compared to what I had in Pensacola; fortunately, base housing at my current location is very modest and we've been doing fine.

Kind of just skimming this, but if you're having such a hard time with your front office/admin, what makes you think the Skipper will approve SkillBridge?

Without re-reading everything I wrote, I think I wrote that I do not expect Skillbridge to be approved. I am expecting I will only be approved to depart on the last day of my PRD, no terminal, no Skillbridge.

The ‘no terminal leave’, no skill ridge etc. policy, especially when overseas, is unreal. I understand manning sucks but there’s a huge majority of people transitioning who don’t have a plan nearly as comprehensive as DanMa. It’s your transition and you only get to do it once and it takes lots of time to plan and do right. Once you make the leap your first role on the outside sets your baseline value in the civilian job market and starting low and trying to work your way up is like trying to raise raising a shitty GPA.

Ha, part of the reason I asked for overseas orders was because I was told most commands understand the difficulty of transitioning overseas and will help you out... bad gouge for the command I ended up at!

It’s a shame they didn’t write SkillBridge such that a CO has to justify a denial to their ISIC, or some other deliberately uncomfortable echelon, using specific reasons. In writing. For each individual denial.

If you’re going to get a pound of flesh like that, there should at least be some admin pain involved.

I can see why it's not, but yeah, I wish it was. Without any teeth behind it, there's no reason any CO would want to approve it other than good will.
 

JTS11

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
At a minimum your command should grant you 30 days of terminal leave. I somewhat understand that maybe they couldn't grant 100 days if they're in some kind of pissing contest with Millington (not your problem though). I get it, it's almost impossible to use the leave you rate (having had leave stripped off the books after going over a certain amount, I wish I would have burned more in conjunction with PCS moves)

I'd contemplate the T-Th leave submissions
 

SynixMan

HKG Based Artificial Excrement Pilot
pilot
Contributor
Honestly, if I knew I wasn't going to get it approved as terminal, I'd take it as a payout. If you're already seeing your family most nights, plus some semi-frequent 96s on a staff, I don't see the benefit of taking some weekends off. Just base pay sellback is $248/day. Something tells me your FO self would rather have a bit of cash in pocket.
 

DanMa1156

Is it baseball season yet?
pilot
Contributor
Honestly, if I knew I wasn't going to get it approved as terminal, I'd take it as a payout. If you're already seeing your family most nights, plus some semi-frequent 96s on a staff, I don't see the benefit of taking some weekends off. Just base pay sellback is $248/day. Something tells me your FO self would rather have a bit of cash in pocket.

Ha... my staff deploys... But yeah, I think I'll be taking the payout - and mine will payout as a LCDR at least, so there's that... But I definitely plan on taking leave a lot anyway due to use/lose and frankly, just how much I really do not like my job.
 

Hercz40

New Member
pilot
It will be interesting to see how much of nut punch the coronavirus pandemic gives to air travel, and the airlines. The virus seems to be sneaking around the barricades. Maybe Fedex or UPS as first choices.

2 1/2 months later and airlines are slashing flights and contemplating life after the cares act.

On another note, it was briefly mentioned in this thread about the severance payout if passed over for O-4. I have heard about some consequences on retirement payout if you plan to pick up in the reserves or ANG after active duty. Anyone have any experience with this?
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
On another note, it was briefly mentioned in this thread about the severance payout if passed over for O-4. I have heard about some consequences on retirement payout if you plan to pick up in the reserves or ANG after active duty. Anyone have any experience with this?
It will be deducted from your retirement pay, but depending on how much you make in retirement the difference isn’t too bad. Here is the basic rule...

“Service members who received separation pay, severance pay, or readjustment pay under any provision of law based on service in the Armed Forces, and who subsequently qualify under Titles 10 or 14 of the United States Code for retired or retainer pay shall have deducted an amount equal to the total amount of separation pay, severance pay, and readjustment pay without regard to any withholding for taxes. Such deductions will be made from each payment of retired or retainer pay until the total amount recouped is equal to the total amount of separation pay, severance pay, or readjustment pay.”
 

Pags

N/A
pilot
It will be deducted from your retirement pay, but depending on how much you make in retirement the difference isn’t too bad. Here is the basic rule...

“Service members who received separation pay, severance pay, or readjustment pay under any provision of law based on service in the Armed Forces, and who subsequently qualify under Titles 10 or 14 of the United States Code for retired or retainer pay shall have deducted an amount equal to the total amount of separation pay, severance pay, and readjustment pay without regard to any withholding for taxes. Such deductions will be made from each payment of retired or retainer pay until the total amount recouped is equal to the total amount of separation pay, severance pay, or readjustment pay.”
Basically it's an interest free loan. Or, if you don't retire from the reserves/guard/etc that it's just money you get to keep.
 

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
Back in 1992 I got a “golden parachute” lump sum to get out thanks to us winning the Cold War, and was simultaneously encouraged to join the reserves, which I did for a bunch of years. No impact on my reserve retirement pay that I can see.

Guess I shouldn’t be asking? ?
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
Basically it's an interest free loan. Or, if you don't retire from the reserves/guard/etc that it's just money you get to keep.
God you have a sunny outlook! That is simply the best description I have ever read of a bureaucratic process...and you are spot on!
 

Treetop Flyer

Well-Known Member
pilot
2 1/2 months later and airlines are slashing flights and contemplating life after the cares act.

On another note, it was briefly mentioned in this thread about the severance payout if passed over for O-4. I have heard about some consequences on retirement payout if you plan to pick up in the reserves or ANG after active duty. Anyone have any experience with this?

Grizz answered well, but if you get a disability rating that pays you monthly those payments also go to repaying the seps pay, and depending on the rating you may be square long before eligible to collect a reserve retirement.
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
Back in 1992 I got a “golden parachute” lump sum to get out thanks to us winning the Cold War, and was simultaneously encouraged to join the reserves, which I did for a bunch of years. No impact on my reserve retirement pay that I can see.

Guess I shouldn’t be asking? ?
Shhhhh????
 
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