Retirement Plan

Benefits for the rest of your life, only if you serve 20 years. There are still great benefits such as, TA assistance, discounted purchases on or off post, and majority of the time you get better deals than economy.

Unlike a true pension, its % based, so 50% retirement is only 50% of BASE Pay, not all pay. Base pay is about 1/2 of pay, so you really get %25 retirement which is heavily pulled from for Tricare, survivor benefits, taxes, etc.

Full retirement in 20 years.

If you are going to 20+ years and retire, you get 50%+ of your last base pay until you die. You can also start putting money into your TSP account for more money towards your retirement.

Retirement pay is great supplementary income when out of the service and receiving compensation from other employment. The catch is you must give 20 years of service to qualify. This can be a very long 20 years depending on your branch of service, # of moves, # of deployments, etc. If you can't make it to 20, you depart the service without any deferred compensation. Kind of all or nothing proposition.

You can't beat federal retirement. You just go to get to that point in your career. Not many can, but if you do it will last a lifetime.

Congress is trying to take away our retirement plans to implement some form or another of their idea of "cost savings" plan

It is secure as any retirement plan. the only way to lose it is for the country to tank or the government to take it away and it is such a sacred thing politically that no politician would seriously consider it if they want to be reelected.

20 years and you are done.

i retired after 30 years with 75% of my base pay per month.