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Comment by monkmartinez | Hacker News Reader

Just skimmed the article for lack of time, I will give it a proper reading in a bit...

I may have missed it, but I was fully expecting to see something about the Military here. At least for USA based persons. I have several friends that are beginning to retire or thinking about retirement in their mid to late 30's.

Full health insurance, and a pension for the rest of their lives. It may not be a ton in all cases, but most of my friends are young enough to pursue whatever they want with a ton of financial security if they so desire. Or go chill in a van down by the river.... either way it's a decent option.

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Military pensions aren't super high, unless you're very high up. I picked 03 on the calculator (Army Captain, mid-level officer) and got < 40k before taxes. High enlisted ranks are looking at < 30k. The benefits are good though.

http://militarypay.defense.gov/Calculators/Active-Duty-Retir...

An extra 25k/year after taxes does give you a bunch of flexibility, but it's not really 'do nothing' retirement unless you live somewhere cheap, especially if there's a family to support.

You can't 'retire' in the sense that you receive a pension with less than 20 years. Which means you were at least an E5 (you had to mess up a lot to retire as an E5). You are certainly higher than an O3 if you were an officer.

Presumably after 20 years you've also got other savings such as the TSP retirement account which the military matches 50% on (up to a certain amount only I believe). Your retirement payout can be based on your highest 3 years of service (you get to choose now), which are typically going to be the last few, which if much of that is spent overseas will significantly increase your retirement package.

You still won't be living in SF but you should be able to live pretty comfortably in a normally priced city as long as the retirement package isn't your only form of savings. Bonus points if you'er now 20 years into paying off your house as well.

>Which means you were at least an E5 (you had to mess up a lot to retire as an E5)

Looks like the high year tenure for an E5 is 14 years so you'd have to retire at least an E6.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Year_Tenure

The median individual income is around $30k so it's definitely livable.

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