Thinking of enlisting...Follow

With my son due in December, I've been thinking about how I could better provide him a life unlike my parents gave me. So I was thinking instead of cycling through sh*tty low pay entry level jobs, I could join the great American armed forces. Problem is, I have no idea what to expect aside from the bits and pieces I've seen on television.

My wife is against the idea, because she thinks I'll have to move far away for years at a time and never see her again, or my son, but we've recently learned that the wives and family of military personnel can travel with them to an extent-- we just don't know what the conditions of that are or how that might work.

I'd have to say my biggest worry aside from that is what I'd need to do to prepare beforehand. I am naturally very strong and limber, but I'm out of shape due to lack of physical activity. I know the purpose of boot camp is to correct this, but I feel it would be adequate to prepare before that.

The other thing that concerns me is that I am not much of a "people person." I am not friendly or affable towards people I've never met and rarely to people I know.

My biggest hurtle yet is my massive amount of pent up anger... I don't have violent outbursts when I'm angry... instead, it takes a great deal of energy to contain it, and doing so causes my speech to become incomprehensible and I become very dizzy. I have been humiliated and wronged by rude people many times, and each time all I could think about was how easily I could kill them with just the hands I was born with, if not for the consequences, which in turn leaves me feeling helpless and depressed when they walk away unscathed and I can do nothing about it. I fear my anger will get the best of me one of these days, if it doesn't slowly kill me from the inside first. I have a bad feeling the stress involved in certain aspects of the military might be enough to undo my ability to keep myself under control.

Then again, one of the reasons I'm considering it is for a means to release all of that anger. Even now there is nothing in particular bothering me, but I can feel it somehow. I sometimes pick things up and bend or break them without thinking about it, and lately I've been waking up to excruciating pain in my chest which a doctor at the hospital tells me are panic/anxiety attacks.

Regardless of what you decide with the military, do this. What you're describing definitely isn't healthy.

I'm a military dependent, my wife is active duty AF. We both joined at the same time, but my paperwork got screwed up to the point that she would have been in for 2 years before I even went to basic.

A few questions. What branch are you looking at getting into, do you even know what you're looking for? How old are you? What's your education level? Do you have any professional skills?

Just to clear something up, you're not going to walk into a recruiter tomorrow and go to basic next week. You're probably looking at the end of the year at the earliest (depending on your job). When you do go to basic, you will receive BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) based on where you currently live. This is meant to help your family while you're in basic. After that, you'll go to phase 1 training (schooling) and your family won't be allowed to join you. They can move, but it's on your dime and you'll still be required to live in the dorms, plus be under heavy restrictions as far as what you're allowed to do and when. Phase 1 can be a few weeks to a few months, depending on the job. From there you go to phase 2 OJT (On the Job Training). Again, depending on your job, OJT can be a few weeks to a few months, if you even have a phase 2. Depending on how long your phase 2 is, your family may be moved to you. Once you're done with phase 2, you go to your first duty assignment and your family will be moved to you if they haven't been already.

As far as basic, they will find your anger issues. Drill instructors are specifically trained to find weaknesses and exploit the hell out of them. Their job is to break you, and many of them take a lot of pride in doing so. If you screw up in basic, you start over, repeatedly. Basic becomes purgatory for those who can't hack it. Now from what I understand basic is pretty easy if you can play the game, but you need to get your anger issues dealt with prior to going in.

It has its benefits, but those benefits have their costs. Just keep in mind that it's not just a job, it's a complete lifestyle. Your hours and deployment schedule depend on your job. Also, everything is sacrificed for the service. While you may not feel that, your wife will. Most military spouses don't work if kids are involved because your schedule can change at any time and the military will expect the spouse to make the sacrifice to take care of the family.

Whatever you decide to do, get your anger issues dealt with. A kid will bring on a whole new level of stress you've never experienced before.

Join the air force. They don't do sh*t. Atleast, not in the Canadian Military anyway. Also, see a therapist as others have said. And run, a lot. That's going to be one of the biggest things you'll have to overcome on a fitness level from what I've been told.

Even if you're full time?

I have a buddy who's been in active with the AF for about 7-8 years now and so far he's only been to Japan, South Korea, (somewhere else), Florida, Vegas and Ohio. His family's been with him ever since the end of his Japan hitch.

Ahh, okay. He made it sound like a great time so I assumed he had picked it.

For some reason, I just thought of Lyndie England.

Kunsan AB, Korea is still a shor tour, can't bring family. But Osan AB you can bring your family now. Thre are only a few locations that are considered short tours (not deployments) these days. Thule, Greenland and Turkey come to mind. Iceland was another, but we pulled out of there. Those tours tend to be 12-18 months long.

We used to say "Your short when you get here" for Korea tours. 1 month to in-process, 1 month leave for mid-tour, and 1 month to out-process leaves approx 9 months of actual working.

Why are you only considering cycling through entry-level jobs. I mean, in theory, the point is to stay in one of them and work your way up, no?

And I fifth (or whatever it is) the call to find a therapist. You have enough to talk to him about now, and once your son is here you are going to be even more stressed and sleep deprived.

Another thing to keep in mind is that entry-level military pay sucks. It takes a few years of service before you start making a decent living. If your wife is providing an income as well, you might still be looking at a drop in budget (considering your income + housing stipend + her income).

Just looking at the pay tables:

E-1 under 1 year of service (Basic training) - $1467.00/month
E-3 at 3 years of service - $1950.00/month
E-4 at 4 years of service - $2123.40/month

Basic Allowance for Housing varies by location, but looks to be approx. $1200.00 (non-taxable)/month at E-1.
Basic Allowance for Subsistance is about $240.00

Keep in mind that health care is free and most of the extra money earned is non-taxable. Anytime you deploy to a combat zone (doesn't mean you'll be in direct combat either), federal taxes are waved for the period of deployed time.

Personally, having a constant pay check the 1st and 15th of every month is comforting during this current fiscal situation of the nation.

Also, there are programs available to get your commision as an officer if you are able to complete a degree while enlisted. The Air Force has "Bootstrap" and others, they are competitive but there are options.

idiggory, That's pretty venomous there. Personally I'm pretty surprised at that response.

Your family is not kicked out of housing just because you deploy, if anything unit go out of their way to ensure your family is taken care while your gone. I'm a Navy brat and we did move quite a bit, but things have changed these days. In the Air Force (I'm sure the Army/Navy aren't too different), you can stay at one location for a decent amount of time. The communities are small enough that you'll run into friends sooner or later if you do move. Military life is much more stable than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

What you don't realize is the fact that less that 10% of military jobs are combat jobs, the rest are no different a 9-5 job. An aircraft crew chief in the USAF will work an average 8-10 hours a day turning a jet, no different that if you worked maintenance on B767s for United or American Airlines. If you pick an IT job, you'd work a help desk fielding calls on why some dudes MS Outlook doesn't work. If you worked for CE, you'd be on air conditioners or something. When I worked the flight line and they were handing out M-16s as I went through the gate, there were bigger problems at hand that a losing ground war.

Any decision he makes should be made with his spouse. Her input and concerns are extremely valid! Take her to the recruiter also and let her ask some questions. The recruiters are there to help.

There are day care centers on base (Child Development Centers) for all ages so you wife will be able to take a job. The services also provide priority in hiring military spouses for on-base jobs as well, gives them the highest placement for open positions.

I'm not trying to sell him up the river, but I detest when un-imformed people such as yourself spew some garbage like that. Brats are @#%^ed up indeed.

Edited, Aug 24th 2011 9:46am by klausneck

So it's a one man army you're after, then?

Those work much better in the films.

Kuwoobie feels like putting a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldn't screw to save its species. He wants to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches he'll never see. He wants to breathe smoke...

Edited, Aug 24th 2011 10:55am by Eske

I have never, since the day I was born, lived in the same place for more than two years. I have never had a chance to settle. I never had friends and any concept of home I ever had was fleeting. Usually it was because my mother would remarry, or my stepfather would find a job in another state, or our landlord decides they want to sell the house we live in and we have x amount of months to buy the house or GTFO. Or it's just the need to move into a bigger and better place that just happens to be 500 miles away.

Today it's much of the same thing. I would have a pretty decent job had I stayed in Texas, but had to move back to Florida after not quite two years because my stepdaughter needs to live close to her father, my wife's ex-husband, who's tiny one-bedroom apartment we are all now living in until I can come up with the money to move yet again into our own place, where some unforeseen event will inevitably force us to move not two years down the road.

I always come off feeling like all of you live in some distant magical world filled with freedom and opportunity.



I'll look into it, but I have a feeling I won't be able to afford it, and last I checked any free/low cost options were backed up by 6 or 7 months. That and every time I open a newspaper I hear about mental health services being cut, which leaves me wondering if it's even an option.

Why the hell did you do this? While I'm sure there are some additional details, IMO this was the wrong decision. You had a good job and a stable living environment, and you allowed issues with your wife's ex to screw it up? Why does your stepdaughter "need" to live near her father? What you should have done is stayed where you were, taken custody of the step daughter (aided by the fact that you and her mother are married and weren't living in a crappy one bedroom apartment perhaps), and built a good life for your family. Dunno, it sounds to me like your problem is that you still allow other people to make your decisions for you.



Freedom requires that you free yourself first. Once you start making decisions for yourself that are good for *you*, the rest will follow. As long as you keep sacrificing your own life for others, you'll always be in this state. Heck, it's a good bet that this is what's causing your stress. At some level, you know that this is happening.


I can't begin to guess at the details behind all of this, but I really strongly suggest that you look at the pattern of behavior in your own life and work to change things. Just at first glance, it looks to me like you allow others to rule your life and as a result never feel in control. I don't think entering the military is the right answer since that's just more of what is the problem in your life. You're allowing someone else to decide where you live, what work you do, and god knows how many other facets of your life. You need to start doing what you want to do and that's in the best interest of your life.

What?

Completely ignoring the psychological mind@#%^ that this situation is going to cause your stepdaughter, how the hell can you be ok with this? As a husband and a father sometimes you need to put your pride away and do what needs to be done, but there's a limit.

@Klausneck

How was my post venemous. At all? I'm legitimately curious, because I don't see it. I just mentioned things that I'd think of as big considerations I'd need to look into.

For example, you mentioned day care centers so his wife could work. That's nice, but the kids weren't even my point--it was more along the lines of the fact that she'd need to find a job every new place they went, which just puts her in the position of always working entry-level, low-pay jobs.

And regarding military kids, I only know 5 people who grew up on bases. All but one of them have pretty recognizable issues which are quite often found in military kids, due to their unique environment when growing up. One of them has essentially become a pathological liar--not because she wants to be dishonest or hurt people, but because she was always in a position (her whole life) to create a new history for herself every few years. And being that she was always on military bases, she could get pretty wild and have it still be believable. Another has the same issue, but on a smaller scale (she lies a lot about her history, but is still fairly honest when it comes to the little things).

Do all kids end up with complexes? I'm sure they don't. Is there a higher rate of it, due to the fact that they can't live an established life style? I'm sure there is. And that's something to consider if you already have kids and are thinking about enlisting because of them. At the very least, it's something you need to prepare for so as to counteract it. It should probably be noted that the internet has made long-distance friendships much easier, so it might be less of an issue for a modern kid. I dunno.

That said, I am really worried about your reasoning Kuwoobie. Why are you assuming that there is some issue that will force you to move in 2 years? I get moving to florida so that your step daughter could be near her father. But is there some kind of forseeable event you are thinking will occur? Because, frankly, part of the point of settling down is to put yourself in a position to resist those kinds of situations. If your stepdaughter's father moves, but you have a good house and job, it might be a very different discussion.

Honestly, it doesn't sound healthy for your family to move every time he sets up shop in a new location.

I dunno, it just strikes me as odd that you are resigned to a fate of moving, which would prevent you from taking a job with promotion opportunities, and yet be willing to enlist, which would completely dictate a life of moving (and wouldn't at all eliminate situations that would lead you to move, except that now you'd have no options).

I'm guessing I just don't understand the situation. If you enlist and get sent to, say, Okinawa, your wife will go with you, no? Well, where will your step daughter be?

I like your story, because it's wrong but you're SO SURE it's right. See, the thing is DEP isn't something you can get "deactivated" from. If "the person you knew" was activated through DEP then he'd have been shipped off. It isn't a negotiable status. What happened was paperwork error, which does happen. Hell, it happens a lot. The funniest part for me is imagining you actually believed that, in a fifteen year span, that the Navy couldn't find someone as good as this "person you know" so they just HAD TO HAVE HIM COME BACK like a plot from a generic Rambo movie.

Edit: It's paragraph 10a of the enlistment contract. That's what you'd call a cite.

I'll just say I might have exaggerated. I've been briefed countless times on IRR (the program I've been calling DEP, another mistake I made) and everything I've been told and I, in turn, tell potential recruits, says that it doesn't happen. Especially now with unprecedented overstrength. Either way, it isn't something you should really have on your mind if you decide whether or not to sign up. It's just one thing you should know about in the end.

Edited, Aug 24th 2011 9:48pm by lolgaxe

Uzbekistan, and I'd need proof beyond "someone told me this happened."

Probably Stop Loss.

Read this.

Stop Loss isn't called up lightly though. Normally, after they sort out which jobs they need the rest are taken off Stop Loss status fairly quickly. High demand/low populated fields tend to stay longer on Stop Loss status, but again it's a rare status. I know after 9/11 happened they did a blanket stop loss. Within 3 months, the USAF had begun release most fields from the status. Within the year it might have been a handful left on it.

(USAF point of view) Almost all overseas bases are accompanied, your family comes with you. In the Pacific, you have Misawa, Yokota, Kadena in Japan; Osan, Korea; Guam, Alaska, Hawaii. In Europe, RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, UK; Spangdalem, Ramstein, GR; Aviano, Ghedi, Italy; Incirlik, Turkey. All good locations.

Not sure where the idea his wife would get only entry level jobs. We have several spouses working in our unit at the GS-09/-11/12 level that were hired at that level without prior civil service time. GS-09 step 1 is $41k/year starting out. If that's entry level these days, then I'm an old fart. Military helps with tuition for college and if the spouse is hired as civil service at any grade they can also receive tuition assistance which covers 75% of class cost. We've had several spouses receive their Masters in Business Management or Criminal Law in our unit through Unv. of Maryland or Unv. of Texas. I don't have their course books, or I'd let you know all the degrees they offer.

There are tons of programs and support functions offered by the services, it's not all "pack your sh*t and move tomorrow and kill people nowz~!" like you see in the movies.

I don't have the slightest clue what those jobs are. You're saying the spouse will work a civilian military job, even without a degree or past experience?

And why the hell are those jobs better paying than the actual active duty jobs are?

Throwing in my .

I'm the wife of a retired Navy vet who did 20 years of active duty. I'm also the daughter of a retired Navy vet who also did 20 years of active duty.

Do many military families move around? Yes. It's par for the course. But it's up to the parents to give their kids the skills needed to deal with that kind of re-locating. That's up to the parents to make sure their kids OK. But living in one area all the time doesn't necessarily guarantee stability and roots.

However, I'm one of the admittedly few whose parents made the conscious effort to give their family roots in one community. I never moved from San Diego. My father and uncles were all in the Navy and my mom and aunts somewhat put their foot down and told the dads that if everything was going to work, the collective family was going to figure out where we would all live. My family picked San Diego. And no one ever moved. The dads were all on the same rotations, more or less, so when they were on sea duty (and most were deployed together), they were together, and the families back home all had each other. It makes sense as to why so many of us cousins all share the same birthdays. My extended family made a huge effort to give us kids the roots that they believed we as kids should have. And some of the dads took orders as "geo-bachelors" so the families wouldn't have to move. And looking back, we kids realized that our parents made huge sacrifices to give this to us.

When I got married, I told my husband that for our own children, we were going to have to provide the roots and stability I had. I didn't want to move every 3 or 4 years. We didn't. He couldn't get orders to keep us in San DIego. And so for the first time in my life, I had to move and I was homesick. But I sucked it up and we lived on the same military base for 10 years. Our kids went to the same school until my husband retired and we moved back to San Diego. Before they started school, they were at the base daycare center and when they started school, they were at the base afterschool center. The military makes an effort at giving the military families a good quality of life. We went to the movies for free on base. The military had a circus come to the base every year so we went to that. There were carnivals, fiestas, etc. The Catholic church on base was active. We really didn't have to leave the base, it was a city until itself, but we would because the base is a very small community and you do want t expand.

I found a job in the area we moved to that was in line with my career path before my husband and I met. And I stayed at the job for until my husband retired and we moved. And I always made more money than my husband. I didn't need the military's assistance to get a job. Do military spouses need the assistance? Yes, some do. Others, if their job skills and education are transferable to wherever they are, maybe not. But the military helps on that. And depending on your rating and deployment, you can get family separation pay, hazardous duty pay, sea duty pay, etc. And if you keep your mind on your budget, you can save up money and your quality of life doesn't suffer, despite the fact that the military pay is low. But the benefits are there. Health, vision and dental are all paid and life insurance is covered for the member and entire family.

In my opinion, the military benefits that you get if you get through 20 years are worth far more than the pension check. The health, vision and dental benefits are almost free (we don't even pay $200 a month as a premium for all of it). There are no co-pays if you stay in-network but if you have to go out of network, the co-pays are still low. As long as our kids go to the one of the public colleges in California, we will never have to pay their tuition. Ray and I are only paying for our oldest kid's books and parking permit. And that's not even the GI Bill that Ray is utilizing to finish up for his degree.

Did I like being a military spouse? All I can is it takes all kinds to make this world go 'round. Our family only associated with a couple of families on base. There is a lot of drama on base, but there's drama anywhere, no matter whether you're civilian or military. We focused on our family. Did I hate it when Ray was deployed? Hell yes. In the first 10 years of our marriage, he was on sea duty for 6.5 years of it. He'd be home for a couple of months and then be gone again. But my job as a military spouse was to keep the home fires burning and everything stable and handle whatever issues come up on my own. Did I worry? Of course. It was no picnic having a husband in the Persian Gulf when 9/11 happened. But it goes with the territory. So that my husband could do his job overseas and not be distracted with any issues at home. When he was home, he was there for me and the kids. The same as any civilian spouse that travels for a job.

Every marriage has its mountaints and valleys. The military lifestyle can amplify issues, but that's where communication and a sense of humor are needed. but it's up to you and your spouse to make what your life is. Nothing in life is the perfect answer.

ETA: I should note that the base that we got orders to is also considered to be a low-desirable area to live in (even though it is in California). Which is why it may have been easier to keep getting orders to stay in that area.

Edited, Aug 25th 2011 3:32pm by Thumbelyna

Hey, do military wages get social security tax taken out?

I do agree with that. The bottom line is, any major life decision needs to be discussed with your spouse and family. Whether you're going into the military (enlisted or officer), joining law enforcement or emergency services. Hell, even if you're taking a job that's going to demand weeks of traveling at a time.

The big picture here is that someone is trying to figure out how to support his growing family. Ideally, those that want to serve for their country should be the ones joining the military. Realistically, his motivation is the same as was my husband's and my father's. They wanted to support their families and provide a stable future. It's about 1 in 5 that makes it through the full 20 years of service to get the veteran benefits. Most see it as a stop gap to gain some skills and possible education and use it as a springboard for a civilian career.