Military benefits vs civilian benefit

[QuarterMillionMan]

I've never served but military has good benefits compared to civilian benefits. Any military personnel care to share. Military has numerous categories such as active vs inactive, veteran of war vs non-war, service-connected benefit (ie, 50%, 80%, 100%). Living on base is it rent free, shopping at PX, Tricare, GI bill, etc. Military funeral benefit having a spot at a national cemetery along with taps and flag folding (I was impressed attending a family members funeral who had served). Veterans hospital, veterans of foreign affairs, VA home loans, credit unions, etc. I think that I've only scratched the surface here. Anyone care to add or further elaborate on some of these benefits that I've touched upon.

[crazyliblady]

I've never served but military has good benefits compared to civilian benefits. Any military personnel care to share. Military has numerous categories such as active vs inactive, veteran of war vs non-war, service-connected benefit (ie, 50%, 80%, 100%). Living on base is it rent free, shopping at PX, Tricare, GI bill, etc. Military funeral benefit having a spot at a national cemetery along with taps and flag folding (I was impressed attending a family members funeral who had served). Veterans hospital, veterans of foreign affairs, VA home loans, credit unions, etc. I think that I've only scratched the surface here. Anyone care to add or further elaborate on some of these benefits that I've touched upon.

I think you may be a little optimistic on VA hospitals. I have heard that some of the funding for VA hospitals comes from the state where they are located, so some are better than others. Having been married to a vet for years, I can tell you it is not all it is cracked up to be. As for Tricare, he cannot get it because he was not in the service long enough. I was also a dependent as a child and as a teen, I had to start going to a civilian dentist because dependents were no longer eligible for dental care on the base. I am not sure about benefits like these for currently serving members or for burial in a national cemetery.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Some civilian benefits I experienced decades ago working at a hotel they provided an employee meal each work day and they washed employee uniforms. A friend works for Spectrum and gets free cable TV & internet, profit sharing, bonuses, stuff like that.

[kork13]

There's a lot of little benefits, a few big ones, and some golden handcuffs. Note that I'm focusing on financial benefits.

Big benefits:
- PENSION: If you make it long enough to earn a military pension, it can be a true game changer. Spend 20 years on active duty, and get an immediate, lifelong, COLA'd pension. 50% of base pay (under the old system ... New system is 40%, though the young kids also get a TSP match & bonuses that the old system doesn't offer). If you qualify for disability at all (most people qualify to some extent), some of that pension can be tax-free. This pension (for DW & I) serve as a foundation for our FIRE plans.
- CZTE: Combat Zone Tax Exclusion. If you're present in a declared combat zone for even 1 day in a month, that month's income is tax free. On a 6-12 month deployment, that makes a significant difference.
- Education: GI Bill is a fantastic mechanic to pay for a degree program -- it will even pay a housing & books stipend beyond your tuition. Many schools also pair GI Bill with the Yellow Ribbon grant program, to cover any tuition costs above what your GI Bill can cover. Those two are how DW is getting paid to earn her DPT. While on active duty, you can also use a decent (not great) tuition assistance program to take classes (if you have time to work on them off-duty).
- Housing stipend: Beyond our base pay, we get a housing allowance to (notionally) cover rent/mortgage & utilities. This is a tax-free chunk of money that varies by city, generally staying COLA-tied to the cost of rent for a 2-4 bedroom house or apartment (depending on rank).

Golden Handcuffs:
- Medical care: TRICARE (military health insurance) is 100% free while on active duty. If covers most basic & specialty care with generally little-to-zero out of pocket (for most families). But, our doctors aren't paid enough, so the good ones don't stay in, leading to most military hospitals being referred to as "chop shops" and "ibuprofen mills". It's also got all of the undesirable points about universal healthcare -- appointments are extremely challenging to make (4-6 weeks out is typical), doctors never actually have time to really assess you properly, quality of care is 'meh', and lately it's been eroding further. VA medical care is basically similar, but even more poorly funded. But hey! Free healthcare!
- The Pension: Because of the 20yr all-or-nothing cliff to earn the pension, toxic leaders (we've got far too many of them) will often abuse & overwork their more senior folks (with 15+ years in) knowing that they're too committed to quit without making it to 20. These are generally very capable & experience people that ground to a nub & become jaded, cynical, and toxic in turn to the people around them.

Little benefits:
- Discounts: If you remember to ask, probably 25% or more of businesses in a given town (or online) will offer a military discount of 5-25% off.
- Travel! Depending on what you do, there are often opportunities to travel across the country or around the world on temporary duty. You're earning per diem, seeing a different corner of the globe, and hey to break up the monotony of day to day work. Of course, some of those trips can also be a pain (or outright miserable), you're too busy to enjoy the different location, or you get sent somewhere boring ... And then there's the deployments, where you're gone for 6-12 months.... I'll just leave that alone.

I'll stop for the moment, but I'll almost certainly keep adding to the list. These are just the big ones that immediately come to mind while I have a minute.

[disneysteve]

I only have second-hand knowledge of the VA system but it's not very good. When I was a family doctor, many of my patients had veteran benefits so they got some of their care through the VA. The wait time was long. They often saw a different provider each visit so there was not great continuity of care. It was extremely difficult to exchange information with the VA so I was often flying blind with my patients because I couldn't find out what their VA providers were doing at their visits. I seem to remember issues with medications also where the VA formulary was more limited so sometimes I'd prescribe something but the VA would change it to something else that was cheaper and covered for them (but I wouldn't necessarily find that out in a timely manner). Also, the patients often got their meds from the VA pharmacy which had an auto-refill program. That's great, except when I changed something, the VA kept sending them the old med (since as I said they didn't like to communicate). That often led to problems and confusion when patients didn't know what they were supposed to be taking.

[QuarterMillionMan]

I have good things to say about the VA hospital in Long Beach, CA, where I did my 1 year long MSW internship. The staff bent over backwards to service the veterans. I was in the mobile behavioral health program which provided individual & group therapies and would report to the psychiatrist. Once a guy was possibly suicidal which along w/a licensed RN & my supervisor a licensed social worker drove to see the guy along with MPs' and eventually placed the guy on a 5150 hold (72 hour psychiatric evaluation) in the pyschiatric ward. I was impressed with how professional and caring all the staff were in helping the veterans.

[QuarterMillionMan]

I have a cousin who is a pharmacist for the VA hospitals w/26 years and has lived & worked in Portland, Texas, & San Diego. Nice benefit of relocating nationwide whereever a VA hospital is located.