Data Sheet on US Air Force Lifestyle
Purpose
The goal of this write-up is to give you an idea of what to expect as a lifestyle in the US military from the perspective of an Air Force enlisted guy in his 20's. I'll talk about what I consider to be the pro's and con's of the military as well as the differences that I noticed between careers and branches. I'll talk about duty hours, living arrangements, physical training, deploying, money, costs of living, benefits, rank/promotions and re-enlisting.
Branches
Technically the US has five, not four, branches of the military. The Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. Each branch has it's own distinct personality, culture and lifestyle differences.
I joined the Air Force as a young single guy. At various stages in my career I worked alongside every other branch besides the Coast Guard. Summed up in a single sentence is from my limited point of view how I saw the other branches.
The Army
Lowest common denominator of the American working-class.
The Marine Corps
Very competent, tough and military-like but very few chicks.
The Navy
Lower standard for physical fitness and limited operational competencies; get to see the coolest parts of the world.
Coast Guard
No idea.
Duty Hours
One of the best perks of being in the Air Force vs all the other branches is that we do not have daily formations. Formation is when everyone in your unit lines up in a square at 6am and someone takes roll-call and does daily announcements and whatever else. This is standard practice in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.
In the Air Force if work starts at 6:45, you roll in with a cup of joe at 6:45. Whether your job is considered operations or "ops", mission support or admin will dictate what your work schedule will be. For instance if you are admin or medical your work week will be very civilian-like in a 9-5, M-F and holidays off capacity.
Operations jobs work 24/7, 365 and the work schedule is often dependent on the staffing level of your workplace (often called a "shop"). If your shop is "fat" (many people) you might be working a 4-and-2 schedule meaning work four days, two days off, repeat. Some jobs like security forces (military police) have very long work days up to 14 hours. They are usually compensated with more time off but I'm not too familiar with that practice. If your shop is "lean" you might have a 6-and-2 schedule which everyone hates.
When staffing is fat and management isn't around (after 4pm usually), the front line supervisors can play with the schedule. Bidding wars would break out for who gets the "early out" tonight or the "late in" tomorrow. A lot of the time if you have enough people at work, you'll come in for a 3-11pm shift and go home by 7pm. There were weeks that I'd work 25 hours and get paid for 40. Usually management knows that supervisors are "cutting people out early" but as long as they run a tight operation they turn a blind eye.
In my ops job we were limited to working 8 hour days. Again based on staffing levels sometimes your days off would be Monday and Friday. Having split days like that was not uncommon and working weekends was regular practice. Weekends on an Air Force base means everything slows down and management isn't around so weekends were minimum-staffing and lots of free time at the shop to do whatever personal things you wanted to do (surf the internet, read a book, play a video game, watch movie etc).
Another distinction among jobs is "essential vs non-essential personnel". In the event of natural disasters or bad weather, sometimes the base with close down partially. They'll make announcements that all non-essential personnel do not have to come to work. These people would be admin, computer people, office workers etc. Operations is always considered essential because planes still need to fly and wars need to be fought. Like weekend days they'll cut staffing to minimum so maybe two people will show up to a shift on a bad weather day. If it's particularly bad like a hurricane then often the entire based is closed and my shop would close completely (very rare). Other times you would be told you don't have to come in to work but be ready if they call you so stay home and stay sober. Again very rare.
If you work an unconventional schedule like operations jobs do, you won't be able to go eat at the chow hall often because of it's hours and your hours won't mesh. So you'll get an extra tax-free allowance of around $300 every month to get food on your own.
Lastly, certain jobs within operations are considered so crucial that time off needs to be maintained. Jobs like aircrew and air traffic control cannot be disturbed in their time-off hours and if you live on the base you get a placard to put in your window saying "CREW REST". So if the shirt (first sergeant) is doing room inspections for drugs/alcohol/hookers/bad hygiene you will be passed over much like the Hebrews in Exodus. If you are not in these "special" career fields expect to be disturbed for any number of random things by leadership if you live on base.
Living Arrangements
As a young single guy entering the Air Force, at your first base you'll be put in the dorms. We call them "dorms" instead of "barracks" because they literally are like college dorms and not military barracks at all. You have your own room with a shared bathroom with another guy (piss-mate). Laundry room is usually in your building and the buildings are co-ed! Fraternization is fine, you can fuck anybody you want outside your leadership chain once you are out of training status and at your first base. The only divide is that your piss-mate will always be the same gender as you so the girls will be a few doors down minimum.
There is a rotating duty for cleaning the entire building. I think once every couple of weeks it'll be your turn to get out the mop/bucket/broom and clean all three floors of the dorm building. One building I lived in had a big community kitchen and the other one didn't. They vary a lot. If you're in an ops job though, guess what? No dorm cleaning duty for you because you need to be on crew rest![[Image: wink.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/wink.gif)
Every dorm building has a "day room". The day room at my base had a huge HD TV, Xbox 360, surround sound speakers and leather theater seats. Next to it was a small cardio room with treadmills and ellipticals. You can use this stuff whenever you want.
After a short while of living in the dorms and staying out of trouble you can move off-base. It took me a year of waiting which is about average. If you move off-base you get an additional tax-free stipend in your paycheck based on the average cost of living in your zip code. Ours was around $1,000k/month. The base has on-site "base housing" where families can move into. You also have the option of renting one of these houses with your friends which is what I did with two co-workers from my shop. We rented a 3-bedroom house on base (technically outside the gate in the civilian world) that cost $1500/month with all utilities included. So we paid around $500/person and pocketed the rest of our housing allowance. The quality of the house was pretty good though they were old. The base then constructed brand new town houses that they moved people into.
If you enter the military already married or with custody of a kid then you won't ever have to live in the dorms and can live off base immediately.
Also I'll mention that I was stationed at the same base for my 4-year enlistment and never saw the outside of the country.
Cost of Living
This is a short section. Basically the cost of living on a military base is good but staring out you don't have much money. There were times when I managed my money really poorly as an E-3 and was flat-out broke without a penny to my name. Living in the dorms without the housing allowance you don't get a ton of scratch at first.
Everything on base is tax-free from the Exchange (basically like Target) and Commissary (grocery store). Eating at the chow hall is cheap as fuck. Breakfast of a cheese omelette with a croissant, piece of fruit and a drink is like $2 and some change.
Once you move off-base and collect your housing/food allowances and move up a little in rank (E-4/E-5) the cost of living becomes great. Paying $500 a month for rent and netting over $3k a month as a 23-year old guy was very comfortable.
I did see a lot lot LOT of people in credit card debt in the military. People that come in with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, or that knock up a girl and start a family at 21 start using credit cards for everything and are always in dire straits. If you are conservative with your spending or are a young single guy I can't see the cost of living being bad at all. You just need to suck it up past the first couple of years where you get paid hardly anything.
Also every year the Air Force sends you a personal letter in the mail. In it, they outline all the fringe benefits you get aside from your salary and stack it up against how the cost of living would be in the civilian world. And for the most part they are correct. There are many many benefits you get in the military that people take for granted and then get out, and are surprised at the cold harshness of life outside the government.
Benefits
The biggest benefit to being in the military is free health care. I've seen specialists, had MRI's done and been sent to private physical therapy offices for injuries and paid zero out of pocket. It's a nice sound to hear the pharmacist or doctor looking at your health care plan and saying, "Ok and your co-pay is....Zero!"
The running joke in the military is that the doctors try to solve every problem you have with Motrin. If you come in with a stomach ache and bleeding ears, they will give you motrin. I've had a fair number of injuries and medical issues while I was in the Air Force and I can attest to their incentive to solve your problem with the lowest possible cost at first. However, if you make a follow-up and press them they will relent and refer you to civilian specialists. It's not a brick wall, it's just an annoying hurdle to get around.
Again to bring up the difference in career fields...In the Air Force there is Family Practice and Flight Medicine. If you fly for a living or are on "flying status" you go to flight medicine. This is a smaller, more specialized clinic on base because as a flyer you have restrictions on what kinds of drugs you can take. They'll prescribe drugs to a secretary that they wouldn't dream of giving to a C-17 load master for instance. Waiting and appointment times at flight medicine are usually better because they serve a very small percentage of the base population.
If you are sick and can't go to work, you have to go to the doctor on base to be checked out. Because of this many people can't get an appointment in time or the doctors office is closed, so you have to go to work anyway. This is a pretty big issue they stress because they don't want malingerers saying they're sick and not getting anyone to verify.
Aside from medical benefits, only your "base pay" is taxable. You get many other allowances throughout the year for clothes, food, housing that are not taxed. This is why on paper your salary may look small but in reality you are living at a much higher standard of living.
You can fly overseas on space-available flights on military cargo planes. I've never done this personally and have heard it is very hit-or-miss but for a young single guy it'd be cool to take a chance on getting a free spot on a C-17 going to Europe or Asia for the week.
Everyone gets 30 days of paid vacation time per year. At my shop we had a Leave Calendar where you put in your leave requests and they were handled on a first-requested basis. I've never had leave denied. If you save up your leave and don't use it, it can really add up and be used at the very tail end of your enlistment if you decide to get out. When I got out after 4 years I had 70 days of leave saved up. So I simply left the Air Force 70 days early and continued to get paid my normal paycheck until the leave expired. I even was "double-dipping" by collecting a paycheck from a civilian employer simultaneously. Not uncommon.
There are also lots of opportunities to do cool things in the community. There are always base-wide e-mails going out asking for people to volunteer to work security at a major league football game or be part of the opening pitch ceremony at an MLB game. Things like that. We even got an open call from the producers of the Dark Knight Rises looking for military people to be extras as police officers in the movie. Side bar, they picked me up for that and I got outfitted in a Gotham City PD uniform and everything but couldn't attend the shoot because I had to work a weekend shift on the base. Regret!
Frequently the base receives e-mails offering free concert tickets, major league sports games tickets etc. All "just because". First-come, first-served.
If you play a sport, the military has many intramural teams that compete with each other and around the world. Mixed Martial Arts is also gaining a lot of traction even in the Air Force. There are MMA tournaments that you can compete in every year and training courses with the Army, Marines and even the Air Force has now to learn basic grappling/self-defense skills. The quality of the instruction is suspect but it is what it is and you can do it on "company time".
Every base has morale, welfare and recreation (MWR) facilities. At my base we had a large gym that was better than LA Fitness. A full track outside next to a big golf course and soccer/football fields. An indoor swimming pool in a separate facility, a base movie theater and a really good library. Pretty much everything is free (not sure about golfing) and I have to admit I miss all the free MWR stuff the Air Force offered.
And of course there is the education benefits. You can write an entire book about the VA/GI Bill bennies so I'll sum it up really quick like this. You can get several college degrees for free. I left the Air Force with an AAS that I didn't pay a dime for and now in my civilian job I'm still getting GI bill money every month ($1800 monthly) just for being in OJT status on the new job. When I was unemployed for a while, to supplement my income the VA paid me to do an online college course in my free time that I didn't pay anything for. The education benefits are insane and I am very fortunate to be my age (25) and have zero college debt. For more info on education bennies check out the official site: Post-9/11 GI Bill
I'm sure people can point out other benefits that I haven't listed. This because there are just so many small things that you take for granted and don't think about.
Physical Training
Physical Training (PT) is a requirement in every branch of the service. The Air Force doesn't take it too seriously although lately they have been kicking people out for failing PT tests so the culture is changing it seems. While the Army and Marines do PT sometimes 5 days per week, at my shop in the Air Force we had PT two days per week. It's lead by a volunteer for the duty (PT Leader or PTL) and whatever he wants to do for that 45-minute session is what you'll do. In the winter we had PT inside a big basketball court and in the spring/summer it was outside on the track. Running, pushups, stations, just calisthenics with no real programming or reasoning. From an athlete's point of view, PT is an annoying distraction.
A lot of the time the current trend of the moment regarding PT will depend on your unit commander. If your commander is not a big PT guy he may not stress it much. If people are passing their PT tests and not bringing bad attention to the unit, they may just let people slide on attending PT sessions and not care too much. I'd often dodged going to PT to go home and play video games, and find my supervisor online playing against me when he too was supposed to be at PT!
Then again, if your unit has had some failures and the overall trend is that PT needs to get serious, then leadership will freak out if people are missing from PT sessions and raise hell about it. Even then it's not a big deal since it's only two days a week at 3pm. So if you're working 7-3 you go after work, and if your'e working 3-11 you go before work, go home and shower then report to work around 4:30.
The PT test requirements are really tame and most people shouldn't fail it unless they're complete fat fucks who totally blow off keeping themselves in decent shape. They do the PT test every 6 months and if you score an excellent (90 or better) then you don't have to test for another year.
At one point our commander authorized a day off from work for anyone who could show documented 50 hours of physical training in their free time. I did so with a notebook and got a day off without much ado.
Other people in other jobs did PT at different times. Firefighters in the Air Force I would see outside the fire station on my way into work at 7am, running in the cold. It varies a lot.
The EPR System
Every year you have a performance review called Enlisted Performance Review (EPR). It's based on several criteria and you can score from 1-5 on each of them. If you get 5's on every criteria it's called a "firewall-five" and basically means you scored perfectly.
The EPR system is completely fucked. Your direct supervisor writes your EPR in bullet-form using information from you on your accomplishments over the past year. Their goal is to make you look as amazing and perfect as possible (thereby making themselves, their boss and your unit look good) by inflating every accomplishment you have to it's maximum bullshit level. There are competitions at different command levels for "Airman of the Year/Quarter" etc so everyone is always competing against everybody else. Early promotions are competed for which means a lot in terms of money and looking good for future competitions.
What this comes down to is that by default, you will be scored 5's across the board on your EPR. You will be made to look as amazing as possible unless you had, on the books, paperwork handed to you for disciplinary reasons in the past year. In that case, they may deduct a point from your EPR score somewhere because they can't defend it otherwise. A "3" on any EPR bullet point is almost like a death sentence and makes you look like gutter shit. Even a "4" is enough to really cause agony for people.
Generally you write your own EPR with bullet points and give it to your supervisor. He'll then polish it and make it sound better, send it to his supervisor who will make it even shinier and better before sending it up the chain of command. Again, it's in everyone's interests to make "their people" look as good as possible because everyone has a boss who wants awards won and his people not to look like fuck-ups. It's a complete sham and everybody knows it.
Ranks/Promotion
When it comes time to test for promotion, your EPR score does count towards the overall grade. The other portion is based on a couple of written multiple-choice tests. The first is based on Air Force history and protocol. Who was the first person to die in an aviation-related accident? What is the proper way to display the US flag? Things like that.
The second test is based on your specific career field. So it's all technical questions that you would know/study for in advance from the books your shop has.
Most people I have met in the Air Force don't care about being promoted because career advancement past E-4 means more paper pushing and extra duties. You also get further away from doing the job itself and being a desk-operator. Lots of people will test for promotion and randomly fill in the bubbles and walk out after 5 minutes.
Re-Enlisting
The Air Force has the highest re-enlistment rate of any branch. There are also bonuses given to re-enlist if you are in certain career fields. I've seen these bonuses be as high as $90,000. **If you re-enlist outside the US, your re-enlistment bonus is tax-free**. Managers negotiate with Airmen to get them deployments to Iraq for 6 months in their re-enlistment window so they can keep a ton more of the money.
I was on the fence about re-enlisting many times. I tested for promotion and passed my first attempt so I would have been an E-5 if I stayed in. Slight pay raise and with lots more responsibilities plus a huge re-enlistment bonus.
The alternative was pursuing the civilian equivalent of my job in the Air Force which I already loved. The civilian counterpoint pays 3x the money and lots of freedom to move around the country if I desired. I decided to leave the Air Force and pursue that job which I am currently doing, making a little under six-figures (with a doubling of my salary on the way) as a 25 year old.
Deployments
I can't comment on deployments because I never deployed. The Air Force deploys on 6-month rotations and generally has the best standard of living but beyond that I can't give much information. People usually come back from deployments with a nice tan and 20lbs lighter. Facebook activity soars when people are deployed and homesick. They have Pizza Hut in deployed locations. If you get caught fucking a girl over there you will be sent home early with disciplinary action.
Personal Cons
A lot of the stuff I mentioned above I may have painted in a rosy light. There are cons to the Air Force lifestyle as well.
Commanders Calls, Briefings, PT, Training, Wing Runs
Every month (I believe) there is a Commander's Call. At different levels of leadership the boss will have a big town-hall type meeting where everyone sits in an auditorium and they talk about drunk driving, suicide prevention, sexual harassment and a myriad other things like that. These meetings are only about an hour but they're really repetitive and annoying.
Physical Training was an annoyance that added up like a piece of dirt to a mole hill. It was just one more mandatory annoying thing you had to do. Again as an athlete I love working out but hated HAVING TO and hated having some ignorant jackass making us do stations of flutter kicks, pushups and squat thrusts. I didn't get anything out of it.
Training new guys or apprentices in your job was my major gripe. The amount of paperwork involved alone is staggering. You write up huge documents every week on your trainee's performance. You run simulations on them, test them, grow them and are responsible for them succeeding in the job. You don't have a choice--You WILL train new Airmen. I loved my job in the Air Force--That is, doing the job--But I hated having to hold someone's hand, sit back and watch and write up the insane amount of documentation for their progress. Everyone pretty much hates training people but it's a necessary evil since there aren't designated trainers. Everyone trains everyone. I have a funny picture of my supervisor sitting at a desk with balled-up pieces of paper all around him, on the floor, everywhere. He was writing training reports and kept fucking up one little thing here or there and having to start over again. It took hours for him to finish and he was just sitting there in misery with these balled-up training reports everywhere.
Wing Runs are 2 or 3-mile runs that the entire base gets together and does once a month or so. Like PT and a commander's call combined, I hated it because we "had to do it". Often we'd run on the concrete apron of the airfield ramp, brushing alongside huge military aircraft and hundreds of other Airmen. Big speech before and after the run and lots more political-correctness talk and motivational stuff.
Conclusion
I can feel a wave coming. A wave of Army/USMC hardcore infantry killers ready to rip to shreds the thoughts and experiences of a young Airmen in the world's best Air Force like pieces of cotton candy on a hot boardwalk day.
Compared to many, in the Air Force you have nothing to complain about. You won't go through 13 weeks of hell in boot camp. You won't be living in the woods/desert/mountains without bathing or having a hot shower for months on end. You won't low crawl with a Bowie knife clenched between your teeth, your friend's blood stained across your face as you single-handedly dismember a jidhadist before breakfast.
It is what it is. The Air Force attracts the best-educated and most professional people in the country. It's cushy for a reason--To get people to stay in. If the Air Force had the same living conditions as the Army, people would leave just as often. Instead what you have is professionals who stay in their jobs for 30 years, retire and often come back to work as DoD civilians doing their same job.
Is it very military-like? Fuck no. Well, maybe. It depends on your job.
This is all written from an extremely, extremely narrow point of view from one guy, in one job, on one base for four years. My roommate in the dorms would write a completely different data sheet based on his job/experience and you'd be shocked that we were in the same branch, let alone lived 20 feet from each other.
When I wrote above that you won't low-crawl with a Bowie knife in your teeth etc, well I know guys in the Air Force that have done that and are decorated war heroes. Different job, different experience.
Overall I would do the entire experience over again and wouldn't change anything. I loved my time in despite any annoyances that I had. It's a great way for someone to supercharge their career with free training in a job of your choice and save some money as opposed to going into debt with college degree that won't get you a job anyway without experience.
Lastly, I've heard countless Marines, Soldiers and Sailors all recommend the Air Force for their own family members above their respective branches. This data sheet is on the Air Force lifestyle, not on being a bad-ass or killing people. If you want the best lifestyle in the military, hands-down that is in the Air Force.
Purpose
The goal of this write-up is to give you an idea of what to expect as a lifestyle in the US military from the perspective of an Air Force enlisted guy in his 20's. I'll talk about what I consider to be the pro's and con's of the military as well as the differences that I noticed between careers and branches. I'll talk about duty hours, living arrangements, physical training, deploying, money, costs of living, benefits, rank/promotions and re-enlisting.
Branches
Technically the US has five, not four, branches of the military. The Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. Each branch has it's own distinct personality, culture and lifestyle differences.
I joined the Air Force as a young single guy. At various stages in my career I worked alongside every other branch besides the Coast Guard. Summed up in a single sentence is from my limited point of view how I saw the other branches.
The Army
Lowest common denominator of the American working-class.
The Marine Corps
Very competent, tough and military-like but very few chicks.
The Navy
Lower standard for physical fitness and limited operational competencies; get to see the coolest parts of the world.
Coast Guard
No idea.
Duty Hours
One of the best perks of being in the Air Force vs all the other branches is that we do not have daily formations. Formation is when everyone in your unit lines up in a square at 6am and someone takes roll-call and does daily announcements and whatever else. This is standard practice in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.
In the Air Force if work starts at 6:45, you roll in with a cup of joe at 6:45. Whether your job is considered operations or "ops", mission support or admin will dictate what your work schedule will be. For instance if you are admin or medical your work week will be very civilian-like in a 9-5, M-F and holidays off capacity.
Operations jobs work 24/7, 365 and the work schedule is often dependent on the staffing level of your workplace (often called a "shop"). If your shop is "fat" (many people) you might be working a 4-and-2 schedule meaning work four days, two days off, repeat. Some jobs like security forces (military police) have very long work days up to 14 hours. They are usually compensated with more time off but I'm not too familiar with that practice. If your shop is "lean" you might have a 6-and-2 schedule which everyone hates.
When staffing is fat and management isn't around (after 4pm usually), the front line supervisors can play with the schedule. Bidding wars would break out for who gets the "early out" tonight or the "late in" tomorrow. A lot of the time if you have enough people at work, you'll come in for a 3-11pm shift and go home by 7pm. There were weeks that I'd work 25 hours and get paid for 40. Usually management knows that supervisors are "cutting people out early" but as long as they run a tight operation they turn a blind eye.
In my ops job we were limited to working 8 hour days. Again based on staffing levels sometimes your days off would be Monday and Friday. Having split days like that was not uncommon and working weekends was regular practice. Weekends on an Air Force base means everything slows down and management isn't around so weekends were minimum-staffing and lots of free time at the shop to do whatever personal things you wanted to do (surf the internet, read a book, play a video game, watch movie etc).
Another distinction among jobs is "essential vs non-essential personnel". In the event of natural disasters or bad weather, sometimes the base with close down partially. They'll make announcements that all non-essential personnel do not have to come to work. These people would be admin, computer people, office workers etc. Operations is always considered essential because planes still need to fly and wars need to be fought. Like weekend days they'll cut staffing to minimum so maybe two people will show up to a shift on a bad weather day. If it's particularly bad like a hurricane then often the entire based is closed and my shop would close completely (very rare). Other times you would be told you don't have to come in to work but be ready if they call you so stay home and stay sober. Again very rare.
If you work an unconventional schedule like operations jobs do, you won't be able to go eat at the chow hall often because of it's hours and your hours won't mesh. So you'll get an extra tax-free allowance of around $300 every month to get food on your own.
Lastly, certain jobs within operations are considered so crucial that time off needs to be maintained. Jobs like aircrew and air traffic control cannot be disturbed in their time-off hours and if you live on the base you get a placard to put in your window saying "CREW REST". So if the shirt (first sergeant) is doing room inspections for drugs/alcohol/hookers/bad hygiene you will be passed over much like the Hebrews in Exodus. If you are not in these "special" career fields expect to be disturbed for any number of random things by leadership if you live on base.
Living Arrangements
As a young single guy entering the Air Force, at your first base you'll be put in the dorms. We call them "dorms" instead of "barracks" because they literally are like college dorms and not military barracks at all. You have your own room with a shared bathroom with another guy (piss-mate). Laundry room is usually in your building and the buildings are co-ed! Fraternization is fine, you can fuck anybody you want outside your leadership chain once you are out of training status and at your first base. The only divide is that your piss-mate will always be the same gender as you so the girls will be a few doors down minimum.
There is a rotating duty for cleaning the entire building. I think once every couple of weeks it'll be your turn to get out the mop/bucket/broom and clean all three floors of the dorm building. One building I lived in had a big community kitchen and the other one didn't. They vary a lot. If you're in an ops job though, guess what? No dorm cleaning duty for you because you need to be on crew rest
Every dorm building has a "day room". The day room at my base had a huge HD TV, Xbox 360, surround sound speakers and leather theater seats. Next to it was a small cardio room with treadmills and ellipticals. You can use this stuff whenever you want.
After a short while of living in the dorms and staying out of trouble you can move off-base. It took me a year of waiting which is about average. If you move off-base you get an additional tax-free stipend in your paycheck based on the average cost of living in your zip code. Ours was around $1,000k/month. The base has on-site "base housing" where families can move into. You also have the option of renting one of these houses with your friends which is what I did with two co-workers from my shop. We rented a 3-bedroom house on base (technically outside the gate in the civilian world) that cost $1500/month with all utilities included. So we paid around $500/person and pocketed the rest of our housing allowance. The quality of the house was pretty good though they were old. The base then constructed brand new town houses that they moved people into.
If you enter the military already married or with custody of a kid then you won't ever have to live in the dorms and can live off base immediately.
Also I'll mention that I was stationed at the same base for my 4-year enlistment and never saw the outside of the country.
Cost of Living
This is a short section. Basically the cost of living on a military base is good but staring out you don't have much money. There were times when I managed my money really poorly as an E-3 and was flat-out broke without a penny to my name. Living in the dorms without the housing allowance you don't get a ton of scratch at first.
Everything on base is tax-free from the Exchange (basically like Target) and Commissary (grocery store). Eating at the chow hall is cheap as fuck. Breakfast of a cheese omelette with a croissant, piece of fruit and a drink is like $2 and some change.
Once you move off-base and collect your housing/food allowances and move up a little in rank (E-4/E-5) the cost of living becomes great. Paying $500 a month for rent and netting over $3k a month as a 23-year old guy was very comfortable.
I did see a lot lot LOT of people in credit card debt in the military. People that come in with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, or that knock up a girl and start a family at 21 start using credit cards for everything and are always in dire straits. If you are conservative with your spending or are a young single guy I can't see the cost of living being bad at all. You just need to suck it up past the first couple of years where you get paid hardly anything.
Also every year the Air Force sends you a personal letter in the mail. In it, they outline all the fringe benefits you get aside from your salary and stack it up against how the cost of living would be in the civilian world. And for the most part they are correct. There are many many benefits you get in the military that people take for granted and then get out, and are surprised at the cold harshness of life outside the government.
Benefits
The biggest benefit to being in the military is free health care. I've seen specialists, had MRI's done and been sent to private physical therapy offices for injuries and paid zero out of pocket. It's a nice sound to hear the pharmacist or doctor looking at your health care plan and saying, "Ok and your co-pay is....Zero!"
The running joke in the military is that the doctors try to solve every problem you have with Motrin. If you come in with a stomach ache and bleeding ears, they will give you motrin. I've had a fair number of injuries and medical issues while I was in the Air Force and I can attest to their incentive to solve your problem with the lowest possible cost at first. However, if you make a follow-up and press them they will relent and refer you to civilian specialists. It's not a brick wall, it's just an annoying hurdle to get around.
Again to bring up the difference in career fields...In the Air Force there is Family Practice and Flight Medicine. If you fly for a living or are on "flying status" you go to flight medicine. This is a smaller, more specialized clinic on base because as a flyer you have restrictions on what kinds of drugs you can take. They'll prescribe drugs to a secretary that they wouldn't dream of giving to a C-17 load master for instance. Waiting and appointment times at flight medicine are usually better because they serve a very small percentage of the base population.
If you are sick and can't go to work, you have to go to the doctor on base to be checked out. Because of this many people can't get an appointment in time or the doctors office is closed, so you have to go to work anyway. This is a pretty big issue they stress because they don't want malingerers saying they're sick and not getting anyone to verify.
Aside from medical benefits, only your "base pay" is taxable. You get many other allowances throughout the year for clothes, food, housing that are not taxed. This is why on paper your salary may look small but in reality you are living at a much higher standard of living.
You can fly overseas on space-available flights on military cargo planes. I've never done this personally and have heard it is very hit-or-miss but for a young single guy it'd be cool to take a chance on getting a free spot on a C-17 going to Europe or Asia for the week.
Everyone gets 30 days of paid vacation time per year. At my shop we had a Leave Calendar where you put in your leave requests and they were handled on a first-requested basis. I've never had leave denied. If you save up your leave and don't use it, it can really add up and be used at the very tail end of your enlistment if you decide to get out. When I got out after 4 years I had 70 days of leave saved up. So I simply left the Air Force 70 days early and continued to get paid my normal paycheck until the leave expired. I even was "double-dipping" by collecting a paycheck from a civilian employer simultaneously. Not uncommon.
There are also lots of opportunities to do cool things in the community. There are always base-wide e-mails going out asking for people to volunteer to work security at a major league football game or be part of the opening pitch ceremony at an MLB game. Things like that. We even got an open call from the producers of the Dark Knight Rises looking for military people to be extras as police officers in the movie. Side bar, they picked me up for that and I got outfitted in a Gotham City PD uniform and everything but couldn't attend the shoot because I had to work a weekend shift on the base. Regret!
Frequently the base receives e-mails offering free concert tickets, major league sports games tickets etc. All "just because". First-come, first-served.
If you play a sport, the military has many intramural teams that compete with each other and around the world. Mixed Martial Arts is also gaining a lot of traction even in the Air Force. There are MMA tournaments that you can compete in every year and training courses with the Army, Marines and even the Air Force has now to learn basic grappling/self-defense skills. The quality of the instruction is suspect but it is what it is and you can do it on "company time".
Every base has morale, welfare and recreation (MWR) facilities. At my base we had a large gym that was better than LA Fitness. A full track outside next to a big golf course and soccer/football fields. An indoor swimming pool in a separate facility, a base movie theater and a really good library. Pretty much everything is free (not sure about golfing) and I have to admit I miss all the free MWR stuff the Air Force offered.
And of course there is the education benefits. You can write an entire book about the VA/GI Bill bennies so I'll sum it up really quick like this. You can get several college degrees for free. I left the Air Force with an AAS that I didn't pay a dime for and now in my civilian job I'm still getting GI bill money every month ($1800 monthly) just for being in OJT status on the new job. When I was unemployed for a while, to supplement my income the VA paid me to do an online college course in my free time that I didn't pay anything for. The education benefits are insane and I am very fortunate to be my age (25) and have zero college debt. For more info on education bennies check out the official site: Post-9/11 GI Bill
I'm sure people can point out other benefits that I haven't listed. This because there are just so many small things that you take for granted and don't think about.
Physical Training
Physical Training (PT) is a requirement in every branch of the service. The Air Force doesn't take it too seriously although lately they have been kicking people out for failing PT tests so the culture is changing it seems. While the Army and Marines do PT sometimes 5 days per week, at my shop in the Air Force we had PT two days per week. It's lead by a volunteer for the duty (PT Leader or PTL) and whatever he wants to do for that 45-minute session is what you'll do. In the winter we had PT inside a big basketball court and in the spring/summer it was outside on the track. Running, pushups, stations, just calisthenics with no real programming or reasoning. From an athlete's point of view, PT is an annoying distraction.
A lot of the time the current trend of the moment regarding PT will depend on your unit commander. If your commander is not a big PT guy he may not stress it much. If people are passing their PT tests and not bringing bad attention to the unit, they may just let people slide on attending PT sessions and not care too much. I'd often dodged going to PT to go home and play video games, and find my supervisor online playing against me when he too was supposed to be at PT!
Then again, if your unit has had some failures and the overall trend is that PT needs to get serious, then leadership will freak out if people are missing from PT sessions and raise hell about it. Even then it's not a big deal since it's only two days a week at 3pm. So if you're working 7-3 you go after work, and if your'e working 3-11 you go before work, go home and shower then report to work around 4:30.
The PT test requirements are really tame and most people shouldn't fail it unless they're complete fat fucks who totally blow off keeping themselves in decent shape. They do the PT test every 6 months and if you score an excellent (90 or better) then you don't have to test for another year.
At one point our commander authorized a day off from work for anyone who could show documented 50 hours of physical training in their free time. I did so with a notebook and got a day off without much ado.
Other people in other jobs did PT at different times. Firefighters in the Air Force I would see outside the fire station on my way into work at 7am, running in the cold. It varies a lot.
The EPR System
Every year you have a performance review called Enlisted Performance Review (EPR). It's based on several criteria and you can score from 1-5 on each of them. If you get 5's on every criteria it's called a "firewall-five" and basically means you scored perfectly.
The EPR system is completely fucked. Your direct supervisor writes your EPR in bullet-form using information from you on your accomplishments over the past year. Their goal is to make you look as amazing and perfect as possible (thereby making themselves, their boss and your unit look good) by inflating every accomplishment you have to it's maximum bullshit level. There are competitions at different command levels for "Airman of the Year/Quarter" etc so everyone is always competing against everybody else. Early promotions are competed for which means a lot in terms of money and looking good for future competitions.
What this comes down to is that by default, you will be scored 5's across the board on your EPR. You will be made to look as amazing as possible unless you had, on the books, paperwork handed to you for disciplinary reasons in the past year. In that case, they may deduct a point from your EPR score somewhere because they can't defend it otherwise. A "3" on any EPR bullet point is almost like a death sentence and makes you look like gutter shit. Even a "4" is enough to really cause agony for people.
Generally you write your own EPR with bullet points and give it to your supervisor. He'll then polish it and make it sound better, send it to his supervisor who will make it even shinier and better before sending it up the chain of command. Again, it's in everyone's interests to make "their people" look as good as possible because everyone has a boss who wants awards won and his people not to look like fuck-ups. It's a complete sham and everybody knows it.
Ranks/Promotion
When it comes time to test for promotion, your EPR score does count towards the overall grade. The other portion is based on a couple of written multiple-choice tests. The first is based on Air Force history and protocol. Who was the first person to die in an aviation-related accident? What is the proper way to display the US flag? Things like that.
The second test is based on your specific career field. So it's all technical questions that you would know/study for in advance from the books your shop has.
Most people I have met in the Air Force don't care about being promoted because career advancement past E-4 means more paper pushing and extra duties. You also get further away from doing the job itself and being a desk-operator. Lots of people will test for promotion and randomly fill in the bubbles and walk out after 5 minutes.
Re-Enlisting
The Air Force has the highest re-enlistment rate of any branch. There are also bonuses given to re-enlist if you are in certain career fields. I've seen these bonuses be as high as $90,000. **If you re-enlist outside the US, your re-enlistment bonus is tax-free**. Managers negotiate with Airmen to get them deployments to Iraq for 6 months in their re-enlistment window so they can keep a ton more of the money.
I was on the fence about re-enlisting many times. I tested for promotion and passed my first attempt so I would have been an E-5 if I stayed in. Slight pay raise and with lots more responsibilities plus a huge re-enlistment bonus.
The alternative was pursuing the civilian equivalent of my job in the Air Force which I already loved. The civilian counterpoint pays 3x the money and lots of freedom to move around the country if I desired. I decided to leave the Air Force and pursue that job which I am currently doing, making a little under six-figures (with a doubling of my salary on the way) as a 25 year old.
Deployments
I can't comment on deployments because I never deployed. The Air Force deploys on 6-month rotations and generally has the best standard of living but beyond that I can't give much information. People usually come back from deployments with a nice tan and 20lbs lighter. Facebook activity soars when people are deployed and homesick. They have Pizza Hut in deployed locations. If you get caught fucking a girl over there you will be sent home early with disciplinary action.
Personal Cons
A lot of the stuff I mentioned above I may have painted in a rosy light. There are cons to the Air Force lifestyle as well.
Commanders Calls, Briefings, PT, Training, Wing Runs
Every month (I believe) there is a Commander's Call. At different levels of leadership the boss will have a big town-hall type meeting where everyone sits in an auditorium and they talk about drunk driving, suicide prevention, sexual harassment and a myriad other things like that. These meetings are only about an hour but they're really repetitive and annoying.
Physical Training was an annoyance that added up like a piece of dirt to a mole hill. It was just one more mandatory annoying thing you had to do. Again as an athlete I love working out but hated HAVING TO and hated having some ignorant jackass making us do stations of flutter kicks, pushups and squat thrusts. I didn't get anything out of it.
Training new guys or apprentices in your job was my major gripe. The amount of paperwork involved alone is staggering. You write up huge documents every week on your trainee's performance. You run simulations on them, test them, grow them and are responsible for them succeeding in the job. You don't have a choice--You WILL train new Airmen. I loved my job in the Air Force--That is, doing the job--But I hated having to hold someone's hand, sit back and watch and write up the insane amount of documentation for their progress. Everyone pretty much hates training people but it's a necessary evil since there aren't designated trainers. Everyone trains everyone. I have a funny picture of my supervisor sitting at a desk with balled-up pieces of paper all around him, on the floor, everywhere. He was writing training reports and kept fucking up one little thing here or there and having to start over again. It took hours for him to finish and he was just sitting there in misery with these balled-up training reports everywhere.
Wing Runs are 2 or 3-mile runs that the entire base gets together and does once a month or so. Like PT and a commander's call combined, I hated it because we "had to do it". Often we'd run on the concrete apron of the airfield ramp, brushing alongside huge military aircraft and hundreds of other Airmen. Big speech before and after the run and lots more political-correctness talk and motivational stuff.
Conclusion
I can feel a wave coming. A wave of Army/USMC hardcore infantry killers ready to rip to shreds the thoughts and experiences of a young Airmen in the world's best Air Force like pieces of cotton candy on a hot boardwalk day.
Compared to many, in the Air Force you have nothing to complain about. You won't go through 13 weeks of hell in boot camp. You won't be living in the woods/desert/mountains without bathing or having a hot shower for months on end. You won't low crawl with a Bowie knife clenched between your teeth, your friend's blood stained across your face as you single-handedly dismember a jidhadist before breakfast.
It is what it is. The Air Force attracts the best-educated and most professional people in the country. It's cushy for a reason--To get people to stay in. If the Air Force had the same living conditions as the Army, people would leave just as often. Instead what you have is professionals who stay in their jobs for 30 years, retire and often come back to work as DoD civilians doing their same job.
Is it very military-like? Fuck no. Well, maybe. It depends on your job.
This is all written from an extremely, extremely narrow point of view from one guy, in one job, on one base for four years. My roommate in the dorms would write a completely different data sheet based on his job/experience and you'd be shocked that we were in the same branch, let alone lived 20 feet from each other.
When I wrote above that you won't low-crawl with a Bowie knife in your teeth etc, well I know guys in the Air Force that have done that and are decorated war heroes. Different job, different experience.
Overall I would do the entire experience over again and wouldn't change anything. I loved my time in despite any annoyances that I had. It's a great way for someone to supercharge their career with free training in a job of your choice and save some money as opposed to going into debt with college degree that won't get you a job anyway without experience.
Lastly, I've heard countless Marines, Soldiers and Sailors all recommend the Air Force for their own family members above their respective branches. This data sheet is on the Air Force lifestyle, not on being a bad-ass or killing people. If you want the best lifestyle in the military, hands-down that is in the Air Force.
