And then some. Friend of mine rode backseat in F-15s. After retirement, he spent two-three years as a contractor for Boeing training allied military in the Middle East and paid off his mortgage, and much much more (I want to say at least 1, maybe 2 investment properties owned effectively outright).
Another factor is that your expenses can be quite low while you're in, even with a family. Put an officer's salary on top of that—which isn't amazing, but isn't terrible either—and you can save a fair bit of cash even before you even start the contractor + retirement double-dipping.
Though there are real costs—the schools are generally very good, but you may have to move every couple years. The bureaucracy is hellish (though, for all their dysfunction, they've got a lot of shit figured out way better than your average bigco). You'll probably serve under and with some real assholes at some point. And there's ever the temptation to get out early and start taking those sweet contractor dollars before you secure the government retirement check. Plus, you know, you may have to go kill people or get killed or what have you.
[EDIT] Oh, another downside: it can be really hard for your spouse to have a career, due to all the moving and often living in places without much economic opportunity.
And it may be really hard to get an actual spouse instead of gold diggers of either gender.
I think that an enlisted service member who's good enough, and lucky enough, to learn and do some technical things can easily 3x their pay by working as a contractor after their initial enlistment. But their starting point is low as an E-3, E-4. They can go from making $40k to $120k, sure, especially if they're willing to work in a combat zone.
I don't know a single O-4, O-5, O-6 (and I'm talking aviators and IT/cyber officers) who has "fallen into" making 3x as a civilian. Their pay in uniform is $160-240k. Many of them seem to opt for civil service jobs as a GS-14, GS-15, which will match their previous pay at best (but be in addition to the $50-90k pension).
I hope you're right, but I'm certainly not counting on a $600k job offer when my time comes.
I do think the really high paid ones usually require living in one of a few areas (NOVA, say) and some travel, which isn’t in a lot of folks’ life plan for their 40s and 50s. But yeah, I may just have the “graph” wrong.
[edit] my more narrow point was just that an ex-officer with enough money to safely invest in a real estate business that might plausibly grow to $11m value under even moderate success, isn’t that weird a notion.
I'm still thinking about the exponential curve vs. S-curve. I do think there are a lot of jobs, regardless of someone's final military rank like you said, that will pay low six-figures just for the security clearance and knowledge of certain systems. The few jobs that pay much more - getting into the world of corporate executives, board members, consultants, lobbyists, media personalities, guest speaking - might be accessible to some retired flag officers, but there aren't a lot of retired flag officers to begin with.
Are we talking 300-600k / yr? More?
Thank you
A general makes the most, $221 900 per year.
That site also has pay for non-military jobs. Lots of interesting stuff there.
For example here's their page for computer science [2]. Average government computer scientists makes $142k. There's a graph showing the distribution and it is very uneven--looks like you can make pretty good pay or pretty terrible pay. 5 times as many computer scientists at the FAA (250) than at the IRS (53). 180 at the FBI. Nearly 1500 computer scientists total.
Some surprised me. The government has a little over 1000 archeologists [3]. I guess that explains where all those other thing came from in the warehouse they stored the Ark in!
[1] https://www.federalpay.org/military/air-force/ranks
[2] https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/computer-sc...
[3] https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/archeology
You also have to understand how career progression works. Like it's nonsense to look at the basic pay for an O-5 with less than two years of service, even though there's a number on the chart for that. Outside of exceptionally rare circumstances, an O-5 will have at least 15 years of service.
Details of your service, who you know, what you're willing to do (travel, say) can start adding fives and even sixes of figures to your comp in a hurry (each!), from there.
[EDIT] This is for post-"retirement" former military folks in general, not that specific case. You're probably not getting one at all for under $200k/yr unless they just don't want to do one of the kinds of jobs that pay a premium for retired military. And that's, again, way on the low end.
[EDIT EDIT] Also if you account for all benefits, the multiplier on military comp may not be as large. These places tend to offer good bennies, too, but not... you know, housing and such.