Greetings all, I hope Memorial Day weekend is treating everyone well. For those of us that have to clock a few hours, I feel ya. For those able to take a knee, good! For those morning a loss, cheers to the memory of the fallen.
I had a little down time today and was playing with my personal pay trackers. Since enlisting I have jotted down all of my LES data into my own database. It started as a way to pass time in the barracks and deployment, then grew into a lifetime of passion for personal finances. Here's what 20 years of service looks like for a dude that's retiring as an E-6.
Graph 1: Income and Deductions over 20 Years
Recently across social media I've seen a lot of the memes about a BUC-EES manager making $X or other tidbits about military pay and I realized I had never looked at what my "annual" pay was.
I came in at the tail end of '05 so that data is trimmed off for the sake of cleanliness, and I am punching at the tail of '25, hence my '25 numbers being less than '24.
'24 is accurate up to the May LES that just dropped and the rest of the year along with all of '25 is loaded as an estimate.
Bonus Graph: TSP contributions over 20 years.
When I first entered service the Roth TSP wasn't a thing. I switched when it became available and was at a spot where I learned TIME IN the market beats TIMING the market so I tightened the belt and dumped what I could into the account and then tailored off after '21 to fund other goals. My contributions ended up at $155k total and landed in the market 4 years earlier then the end of my career. On the flip side, had I left contributions at a flat 10% across my entire time in service I would have only contributed $130k across 20 years and I'd still be dollar cost averaging into the market.
It's been a great ride, I'm just ready to go.
For the young guns out there looking to make solid financial choices – use the resources available to you and you'll do great.
~18 months to Retirement E-6 Reflecting on the Financial Journey or: “Enlisted Millionaire” ready to hang it all up.
byu/DoinOKthrowaway inMilitaryFinance
Posted by DoinOKthrowaway
4 Comments
This is great, having a little bit of difficulty viewing the graphs on mobile but the message is there. Will you have the opportunity to skill bridge?
Thanks for posting this, great work! 😁 Cheers to you as well!
Congrats bud!
I wish I had tsp when I 1st enlisted…didn’t get it till I had been in 9 years…couldn’t contribute max only 7% 1st year….think it went up 1% a year for 5-7 years before you could contribute more….no match.