![]() We highly recommend that you contribute at least enough to get the government’s 5% match every month. You’re reading BogiDope, so we’re going to assume you’re not a great fool. Only a great fool would voluntarily forego this benefit. The Military Money Manual is a great place to get information on the specifics.) The TSP is essentially the military’s version of a civilian 401(k) plan. (There are a lot of caveats and fine print associated with this 5%. We’ll cover military retirement funds in great detail in an upcoming BogiDope article, but an important thing to know is that the US Government will match your contributions to a retirement account, called a Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), up to 5% of your base pay each month. However, if you choose to live in base housing, you will automatically net $0 and this will not be an option. It’s certainly possible to find housing for considerably cheaper than your BAH allowance, which is a nice way to make a bit of extra money. You can find values for a specific set of criteria on the Defense Travel Management Office website. The value depends on your zip code, your pay grade, and whether you have dependents living with you (take note that the “with dependents” rate does not increase based on the number of dependents you have). It is intended to pay for meals, but at $254.39 per month (as of 2019), it probably won’t cover all your needs.īAH is intended to cover the average housing cost in the area where you’re assigned. You get to keep the full amount of your allowances, whether you spend that amount each month or not.īAS amount is the same for all officers, regardless of rank or time in service. Since they’re “allowances” rather than pay, you don’t have to pay any taxes on them. These are (awesome) parts of your overall compensation as a military member. The government gives military members a Basic Allowance for Sustenance (BAS) and a Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH). These two types of pay are nice, but they’re not the only money you’ll see in your paycheck. The explanation of those rules gets a little involved, so we’ll save it for another time. ![]() Although the idea is that you should only receive flight pay during months that you perform flight duty, there are some allowances for pilots in non-flying assignments to continue receiving flight pay. This starts out at a miserly $150 per month but increases to $1,000 at the height of your flying career. Flight PayĪircrew members also receive flight pay, also known as Aviation Career Incentive Pay (ACIP). At a full 20 years of service, this nearly triples to $9,243.60 per month for an O-5, Lieutenant Colonel (or Commander in the Navy/Coast Guard). In 2019, a brand-new O-1 (with less than 4 years of prior enlisted service, if applicable) makes $3,188.40 per month. The Navy and Coast Guard call the associated rank Ensign, while all the other branches call it Second Lieutenant. The lowest pay grade for commissioned military officers is O-1. There’s a lot to be said about the value of transparency when it comes to making career decisions and instilling a good work ethic. When you look at someone’s uniform, you immediately know his or her name, what he or she does, and how much money he or she gets paid every year. (To be fair though, Google recently paid some money to male employees after finding that they’d been underpaid when compared with their female peers.) Thankfully, the military avoids this stupidity. Women frequently get paid less than men for the same job, in large part because of these secrecy games. Most companies make individual salaries a big secret. ![]() Most civilian employers negotiate pay with new employees, after hiring them for the job. We’re going to look at pay using the 2019 pay tables on the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) website. We’ll cover that here today.īefore we get going, I want to mention that military pay is public data. One of the important parts of deciding whether to join the military or not is to understand the pay and benefits it offers. It can also set you up for an enjoyable and lucrative civilian flying career later in life. ![]() The military offers some fantastic career opportunities for pilots.
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