US Army benefits

Army retirement benefits are excellent, and generally free medical and dental coverage are fair to good.

The worst thing about military service is that there is no such things as normal hours. The best thing is you earn paid time off at a very good rate and it starts accruing on the first day of service.

Best thing is medical coverage. Worst thing is red tape to receive benefits particularly as a veteran.

Best thing about the US Army is the holidays and then the health care insurance package.

Best thing is vacation time (30 days a year plus four-day weekends about once a month)

The medical benefits are amazing. Everything except cosmetic medical procedures are covered. This includes dental procedures and orthodontics. The amount of paid leave days is 30 a year accured at a 2.5 days/month rate. Maximum amount of days you may hold before you start losing them are 60 days. Anohter amazing benefit is the fact that only the base pay is taxable. The remaining monetary benefits are all tax free. During deployment, all pay is tax free. Downfalls with government employment are pretty obvious: no stock options, no performance based bonuses (only specialty bonuses for certain functional areas), and promotions are strictly based on time in service first, and once eligible by merit.

The Army has the best benefits package out of any employer on the market. With any military service, if you complete 20 years of service you get a pension that starts immediately. No one has a better package except for Congress and that is because they wrote it themselves and voted on it.

You have to look beyond the "base pay" at the Army and consider the overall benefits package when assessing your compensation. In addition to base pay, you get housing, meals, special duty pay, full medical insurance (including dental and optical) for you and your dependents, there is a TSP option, retirement at 20 years, incredible education benefits (in addition to the GI Bill), numerous training opportunities, travel (with pay and per diem), potential to live overseas (Germany, Italy, Korea, etc.) which includes all moving expenses paid including household goods transport (and/or storage), vehicle shipping (both ways), dislocation allowance, COLA pay, etc. Plus there are so many programs, organizations and special services available to service members on and off the installation that it literally takes a book to cover them all.

Vaction amount is really good you earn 2 and a half days per month

You can't go wrong with free med and dental. 30 days leave acrued per year and all of the holidays and days off are a real perk