Welcome, Heidi, and a few suggestions:
First, if you and your spouse have all the degrees you want, then you could transfer your GI Bill(s?) to your kids. That'll get them started on their college degrees, and possibly finished. Second, wherever you decide to retire, check the state's veteran's benefits for your kid's college tuition (and possibly room/board). My daughter's in Houston, and she seems pretty impressed with Texas veteran's benefits for college expenses. You'd be able to get your kids through a state college. Harvard would be their problem.
Second, if you have a choice between private & homeschool, I'd homeschool. If you have a choice between public & private, I'd go public. There is no credible research to prove that private schools do a better job than public ones-- let alone homeschooling. But you know your neighborhood better than I do.
Third, make sure you're insured for at least "named perils" on those rental properties-- if not comprehensive coverage. You probably also want flooding insurance-- your nightmare is the upstairs toilet that overflows and doesn't stop running, or the washing machine drain line that blows out while it's trying to fill the tub, so that it spews water all over the ground floor. (Don't ask me how I know those scenarios.) At a minimum you'll want "replacement cost", and probably "adjusted rebuilding cost" to cover the higher expenses of building materials and being required to upgrade to new codes. Armed Forces Insurance is pretty strong in the areas of your rentals, and they have cheaper premiums than USAA. Of course AFI is probably more heavily exposed to Tornado Alley than USAA, and has less capital. For what it's worth we've been with AFI for nearly 30 years and USAA is tops in customer service.
Finally, are you sure you want to get rid of the mortgages so quickly? Do you want liquidity or do you want cash flow? You're paying those fixed-rate loans with dollars that are being eroded by inflation-- which is a good thing. Every dollar you put into paying off those mortgages early is a dollar of liquidity that you can't get back. If you want to build up liquidity then you can do it faster by paying the minimum on the mortgages and starting to build up your cash reserves.
One option would be to max out your Roth IRAs (contributions can be withdrawn at any time). Another option would be to start stashing the cash in CDs with 3-5 year terms. A third option would be to start buying as much as you can in I bonds under both of your Social Security numbers, your kid's SSNs, and even by overpaying your taxes-- the refund could be used to purchase I bonds.
A compromise would be to pay down the Leavenworth mortgage to get rid of the PMI. But the real issue is feeling comfortable enough to sleep at night. You can also hedge your bets by putting half of your excess funds toward the mortgages (to help you sleep at night) and the other half toward building up your cash reserves (for liquidity or vacancies or repairs). I think you can be confident that Leavenworth will do well despite the drawdown, and the rental market will recover.
You can talk to Army officers like Mike at LiveTheNewEconomy.com or Jason at HullFinancialPlanning.com to confirm what I'm going to say next, but... you and your spouse have skills. When he retires (or when you're ready to go back to work) you will be hired. You know how to plan, you know how to communicate, you know how to get stuff done. The bar is not so high. My cousin and his spouse are both Army, and they're beating off the job offers every month. This is in addition to the blogging income of all four of them. I see this concern all the time, and the reality is much better than the scary stories you read in the media. Please don't let the "military inferiority complex" drag you down.
If you're not already doing so, track your expenses and forecast a spending plan. See if you can project that to a 15-year retirement, a 20-year retirement, and a 24-year retirement. Then try to figure out how you want to handle the mortgages, or part-time employment. Try to estimate how much liquidity you'd need to have until you reach age 59.5.
Speaking of insurance: Depending on the sizes of your pensions, you may not both need SBP. When you decide to retire from the Reserves, you should take out maximum RCSBP on yourself (or rather, your spouse should elect that since it's his choice) to cover you through age 60. (It's literally cheap insurance.) When he retires, you should consider whether you want full SBP (your choice) or whether your Reserve pension is big enough to consider skipping SBP in favor of term insurance until Social Security. When you reach age 60 and start drawing your pension, he has two years to consider canceling the RCSBP. My active-duty pension is paying the bills now, and my spouse's Reserve pension will be more than enough. We don't carry SBP on each other because we'd rather have the 6.5% now.
"The Military Guide" is probably in a public library near you. You can also search the blog for keywords or see all the post titles here:
http://the-military-guide.com/post-titles-by-month/Please ask more questions here, or on the blog, or send me an e-mail.
