It's kind of complicated. I'm grandfathered into an older version of a military pension which pays you half of your base pay monthly for the rest of your life, which still adjusts for inflation over time. Right now that would be roughly 3k a month in passive income. It's not enough to flat out retire, but it's essentially an additional 36K annually to add to whatever job I get after this.
Like, I could go into the nuances of it, but if I retire at 39 I could bring in close to 80K annually just going to school full time when those benefits pay out, which would be pretty nice if I want to pursue my masters.
But younger people joining the military don't get that benefit, they get a 401K style matching pay in, which has it's own set of pros and cons.
Like I said, complicated. Either way, I'm pretty happy to move onto the next thing.
WOW! that grandfather thingy you are part of, sounds much better than what we have in my tiny country. That said, at some point in time our military doesn't have anything to protect anymore, when our dykes break, putting (almost) the entire country under water 😂😂😂