Army captain: Dudes! Stop your whining, you’ve got a pretty good fat deal already

By "A Happy Camper"

Best Defense guest columnist

I am an Army captain with five years of service,
married to a brilliant young woman.

Ideally, we would live downtown in a vibrant
metropolis where we can walk or take public transit everywhere; my work would
involve developing some sort of deep technical expertise in furtherance of
national security, and my wife would be able to climb the ladder of her own
lucrative career. Of course we'd also like to retain my current salary relative
to our cost of living, my 30 days of annual leave, numerous four-day weekends,
paid-for educational opportunities, as well as the option to collect a pension
and virtually free healthcare for life after just 20 years.

Although reality falls short of our dreams, it's
still pretty good. My wife got into teaching after we married because of its
"portability," and the Army, to its credit, paid for her
certification program through MyCAA. Teaching pays less than she might have
earned otherwise with her education, and there will be frustrations as we move
around (transferring her license, gaps in employment, leaving before vesting in
any retirement plan), but she was hired immediately by the school district here
and given good opportunities for professional development. As for my own work,
I hope to find some greater depth and specialization by moving into a certain
functional area. We can't put down roots in a big city yet, but I can choose to
attend graduate school in one, and we could be assigned to Washington, DC at
some point. Finally, when I add up the total compensation for 20 years of
service -- salary, pension (assuming we survive to average life expectancy),
healthcare, undergraduate, graduate, and professional education -- it comes to
about $5 million (adjusted to 2013
dollars). That's $250,000 per year in uniform, with several of those years
spent as a student in flight school, CCC, ILE, graduate school, etc.

I believe that I'd be competitive for civilian jobs
with my STEM degree from a top-50 university, and many complaints about the
Army definitely resonate with me, but it seems unrealistic to expect a much
better deal than we're already getting. So for now I'm one junior officer that
actually plans to stay in. That said, I value my marriage above all else; if my
wife gave me an ultimatum because she wanted a high-powered career in big law
or finance, or because she couldn't handle another deployment, I would choose
to leave too.