I will be at 20 years in the military soon(within 6 months). I have two basic choices right now. 1) Retire from the military and move on the real world(I have so many possibilities in mind it is driving my wife crazy) or 2) Make the decision to stay in until 24-26 years to increase the retirement benefits I will receive by 10% or 15%.
I know you all have questions so I will do my best to anticipate them in advance. I used to LOVE my job, not it is not even fun anymore. We are doing much more with even less these days(I had 16 personnel working for me last year and now I am down to 6 with constricted budget). Here is the important one...I would be deployed multiple times for the next 3 years(away from home 6-10 months at a time).
Welcome to MMM, FIT.
You're showing early signs of burnout, and you have skills. You have no reason to stay on active duty a minute past 20. If you haven't already, then you and your spouse need to get to retirement TAP ASAP. Maybe file your retirement request tomorrow so that the assignment officer leaves you alone for a while. I don't know what service you're in but if you get to your Navy PRD before you've negotiated orders or filed for retirement, then they're allowed to send you anywhere they want for two years.
My spouse and I have been in your shoes, and being able to retire to regain control over your life is a huge relief.
Before I go further, let me be a devil's advocate and dig into the money part a little: the deployments mean that you'd have a chance to put over $50K/year tax-exempt pay in your TSP, as well as the 10% APY of the Savings Deposit Program. This next tour could give you a huge financial boost beyond just the few hundred extra pension per month for the rest of your life (and your spouse's survivor benefits).
But you'd be deployed. And your family would be miserable. And, frankly, nobody within two levels of your chain of command on either side of you would be very happy at seeing your smiling face either. You'd be grimly clenching your jaw and getting through this experience, which would put a tremendous chronic stress on your blood pressure and the rest of your general health. You could ask you kids how they'd feel about missing you for those deployments just so that you could earn more savings to pay for their college, and I bet they'd rather have you around instead of having more money. (I suspect that the 17 year old is worried about how you'd feel if you were deployed to pay for his college and he flubbed a chemistry test. No pressure!) You could mention to them that ROTC is totally free of any obligations for the first year, too...
Once your spouse takes a job with no looming transfer date, she'll be able to make long-term career plans for her own promotions and higher pay.
It's just money. As you say, you can always get a job. You and your kids can find other ways to pay for college. Military.com lists states that offer scholarships to military veterans, and some of those state benefits include families as well. Here's the link:
http://www.military.com/benefits/veteran-state-benefits/state-veterans-benefits-directory.html?comp=7000022779939&rank=1If you haven't already seen it, there's a copy of "The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement" in the Hickam library and another one at the AMR/Fort Shafter libraries. There are also a couple copies in the state library system. Borrow them, or buy the Kindle version from Amazon. The first chapter is free at
http://www.impactpublications.com/militaryguidetofinancialindependenceandretirement.aspx and the first six months of the blog excerpts most of the book (except for the reader stories and the checklists). You can go to The-Military-Guide.com and click on the "Start with this link!" box (
http://the-military-guide.com/start-here/).
I'm up the road in Mililani. Give me a PM or an e-mail if you want to get together around Pearl Harbor for a cup of coffee to talk over the details.
Maybe you should check the TAP website, too, and get their schedule... unless you can get 30 days of leave in the next few months, then TAP is the best way to find a little quiet time to think through it all.